An acceptance
Feelings are just visitors, let them come and go
Memes in the Watson category “/health and fitness/disorders/mental disorder”
61–80 of 161
Nature Doesn't Need Our Help to Destroy the Earth
For me, the most paralyzing news was that Nature was no conservationist. It needed no help from us in taking the planet apart and putting it back together some different way, not necessarily improving it from the viewpoint of living things. It set fire to forests with lightning bolts. It paved vast tracts of arable…
Scientific Truth is Truth Without Fear
Remember, then, that scientific thought is the guide of action; that the truth at which it arrives is not that which we can ideally contemplate without error, but that which we may act upon without fear; and you cannot fail to see that scientific thought is not an accompaniment of human progress, but human progress…
The Printing Press is the Messiah
The printing press has come like a true Messiah to emancipate the great family of mankind from this double yoke. This Messiah is immortal, and its saving powers must be universal and perpetual. By this, and by no other Messiah, can man be saved from ignorance and misery; the only hell that he has to fear. It will…
The Prefontal Cortex
Executive functions take place in the prefrontal cortex of the brain. I love the term that Stanislas Dehaene uses to describe this part of the brain—a global neuronal workspace. The prefrontal cortex is responsible for the ability to exchange information across the high-level areas of the brain, Dehaene says, so that…
Emotional ABCs
The ABC model of emotion, widespread in contemporary psychotherapy, holds that it is not an activating (A) event, such as rejection by a friend or lover, that causes you emotional consequences (C) such as depression; rather, the linchpin is your invisible beliefs (B) about the event that come in between A and C…
Chemical Cognitive Enhancers
Pharmaceutical amphetamines (such as Adderall and Ritalin) These drugs have been used withouit a prescription, for their tirednessreducing and concentration-enhancing effects, by about 5% of students in U.S. colleges, according to a recent study, with some colleges reporting rates as high as 25%. Modafinil Modafinil…
Connect to a Child's Left-Brain Before the Right
when a child is upset, logic often won’t work until we have responded to the right brain’s emotional needs. We call this emotional connection “attunement,” which is how we connect deeply with another person and allow them to “feel felt.” When parent and child are tuned in to each other, they experience a sense of…
Exercise of Directing a Child's Focus
OK, Nicole, while you’re lying still, move your eyes around the room. Even without moving your head, you can see the lamp over on the table. Now look over at your baby pictures. See them? Now look at the bookcase. Can you see the big Harry Potter book there? Now look back at the lamp. Do you see how you have the power…
The Upstairs and Downstairs Brain
Our amygdala (pronounced uh-MIG-duh-luh) is about the size and shape of an almond and is part of the limbic area, which resides in the downstairs brain. The amygdala’s job is to quickly process and express emotions, especially anger and fear. This little mass of gray matter is the watchdog of the brain, remaining…
PERMA: Five Elements for Well-Being.
Well-being is about what individuals and societies choose for its own sake, that which is north of indifference. The elements of well-being must be exclusive, measurable independently of one another, and—ideally—exhaustive. I believe there are five such elements, and they have a handy acronym, PERMA: P Positive…
The Cost of Irrational Fears
Imagine the typical emotional reaction to seeing a spider: fear, ranging from minor trepidation to terror. But what is the likelihood of dying from a spider bite? Fewer than four people a year (on average) die from spider bites, establishing the expected risk of death by spider at lower than 1 in 100 million. This…
Cognitive Load and Working Memory
The amount of information entering our consciousness at any instant is referred to as our cognitive load. When our cognitive load exceeds the capacity of our working memory, our intellectual abilities take a hit. Information zips into and out of our mind so quickly that we never gain a good mental grip on it. (Which…
Reverse Mentoring-Learning
Or want to strengthen your working memory and ability to multitask? Try reverse mentoring—learning with your teenager. This is the first time in history when children are authorities about something important, and the successful ones are pioneers of a new paradigm in thinking. Extensive research shows that people can…
Creating a Safe Environment for Teaching
To decrease stress for students Set clear classroom rules with predetermined consequences. Keep students' sensitive information, such as grades and personal issues, confidential. Speak respectfully to students, address them by name, get to know them as individuals, and make each person feel special. Use rubrics for…
Reasons to Give Up News
News misleads. News leads us to walk around with the completely wrong risk map in our heads. So terrorism is over-rated. Chronic stress is under-rated. The collapse of Lehman Brothers is overrated. Fiscal irresponsibility is under-rated. Astronauts are over-rated. Nurses are under-rated. News is irrelevant. Out of the…
Arthur Benjamin Explains the Fibbonacci Set
Now these numbers can be appreciated in many different ways. From the standpoint of calculation, they're as easy to understand as one plus one, which is two. Then one plus two is three, two plus three is five, three plus five is eight, and so on. Indeed, the person we call Fibonacci was actually named Leonardo of…
Stress is Healthy
Your heart might be pounding, you might be breathing faster, maybe breaking out into a sweat. And normally, we interpret these physical changes as anxiety or signs that we aren't coping very well with the pressure. But what if you viewed them instead as signs that your body was energized, was preparing you to meet…
Observations are Grounded in Language
What are observations? Some philosophers have taken them to be sensory events: the occurrence of smells, feels, noises, color patches. This way lies frustration. What we ordinarily notice and testify to are rather the objects and events out in the world. It is to these that our very language is geared, because…
Peer Pressure Proof
People who don't have a cohesive sense of self will feel the need to conform and will easily succumb to peer pressure