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What old story about yourself do you still believe?

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What old story about yourself do you still believe?

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Many of us hold deeply ingrained beliefs about ourselves that are simply not true. You can start to free yourself from them by editing your narrative, says psychiatrist John Sharp.
Every weekday for the month of January, TED Ideas is publishing a new post in a series called "How to Be a Better Human," containing a helpful piece of advice from a speaker in the TED community. To see all the posts, click here.
There are many things in our lives that we have little control over - the news, the weather, the traffic, the soup of the day at our local café. But among the things that we can control, there's a big one: our story.

This narrative is not the one that contains the objective facts of our lives; instead, it's "the story you've been telling yourself about who you are and how everything always plays out," says psychiatrist and Harvard Medical School professor John Sharp.

And he adds, "If you want to change your life, it needs a re-edit."

The problem with this story is that too often, it's not accurate - writer Marilynne Robinson calls it "a mean little myth."

Sharp, the author of The Insight Cure: Change Your Story, Transform Your Life, explains, "Some emotionally difficult scenes are way over-included - just think of all the things you can't let go of - and other scenes are deleted, such as times when things did go well. The worst part about the false truth ... is that it becomes our self-fulfilling prophecy, the basis of what we expect from ourselves in the future."

To begin revising your narrative, Sharp recommends doing the following:

1. Identify where your narrative diverges from reality.

For Sharp, his parents divorced when he was young, and he says, "the false truth that I held to so dearly was that just ... as I couldn't be effective in keeping my parents together, I probably couldn't be effective at much of anything else, and this left me feeling very insecure."

Since you've long accepted your false story as the official account, it may not be super-obvious to you. If you're not sure what it is, try filling in these blanks, says Sharp:
"If I break a promise to myself, I feel ___________."
"When someone ignores me, I feel _____________."
"When my partner or best friend and I have a big fight, I feel _____________."

Why these prompts? Our inaccurate narrative tends to be one that we default to when we're faced with difficulty or disappointment.

Another way to help you identify your old story is to listen to your self-talk and notice when it includes statements that begin with "I always ______," "I'm always ______," or "I never ______."

After you find your ingrained story, think back to your childhood and try to look for the experiences that helped feed it. And if you end up identifying multiple false stories, choose the one that's had the most impact on your life. Sharp says, "While I know there are many stories and many possible revisions for all of us, I truly believe that there's one underlying story that you deserve to identify and rework first."

2. Question your beliefs.

Let's say your deep belief is no matter what you do, it's not enough; perhaps your parents were rarely satisfied with your achievements, even when they were stellar, and fixated on your next report card, exam or accomplishment. So, ask yourself: While that might have been the case when you were younger, is it really true now that what you do is never enough?

"When you view it from an adult perspective, you can see that it's not fair or just to ourselves," says Sharp.

Your story doesn't have to have been caused by your parents, but it's typically the result of a relationship we had when we were young. Explains Sharp, "It happens at a time before we know the difference between a healthy and and unhealthy reaction to something that really scares us, so we hold on to the wrong conclusion."

3. Don't beat yourself up.

It's normal to feel a bit discouraged when you realize how long you've been telling yourself a false narrative. But know you're far from alone - many of us walk around with these stories, says Sharp. "We need to be compassionate with ourselves about how this came into being." Most people come up with them for what he calls "understandable reasons" - the need to maintain a sense of control and the tendency for kids to take specific circumstances and generalize broadly.

4. Introduce positives into your narrative.

Think about all your strengths and talents, and appreciate them. While the situations that led to the false story have made you into who you are today, they've probably affected you in positive ways as well. Maybe they've made you more resourceful, more responsible, more empathic, or more ambitious. These positives, whether they're big or small, deserve a place in your story, too.

5. Leave behind the old story.

"Cut away what no longer serves you," says Sharp. "Identify and gather up all the many exceptions ... and accept that it's safe now to move on. You no longer have to hold on to that false security."

One of Sharp's patients was a woman who avoided all challenges and adversity. Upon reflecting about her past, she realized "she suffered from the false truth that when she fell, she couldn't pick herself up," says Sharp. "Now she knows she can, and her future looks entirely different and better."

Sharp is a fervent believer in the power of editing one's story. "If I hadn't cut away from my 'mean little myth,' then I'm confident now that I wouldn't be here with you today," he says in his TEDx talk. "In my 20 years of clinical practice, I've seen this kind of transformation over and over again."
Watch his TEDxBeaconStreet talk here:

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What old story about yourself are you still believing? Here's how to find it and change it

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Many of us hold deeply ingrained beliefs about ourselves that are simply not true. You can start to free yourself from them by editing your narrative, says psychiatrist John Sharp.

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How my addiction to achievement has almost destroyed me.

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How my addiction to achievement has almost destroyed me.

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How My Addiction to Achievement Has Almost Destroyed Me

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Addiction to achievement sounds healthy. But when you take a closer look at where it can lead, you start to see just how unhealthy it can be.

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How pseudo "feel-goods" put your brain on hold.

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Habitual thinking patterns that cause intense feelings of fear, anger, shame or guilt are not only toxic, but also addictive in nature.

Why? They stimulate pleasure and learning centers of the brain similar to addictive substances.

Toxic thinking is characteristically compulsive in nature and causes intense fear-based feelings, which can overwhelm or zap our body's energy supply. It consists of thoughts that habitually forecast disaster, perpetuate worry, instill doubt, obsess on perfection, describe self (or another) as a victim, or point fingers at others.

So, how can these pain feelings stimulate pleasure?

Though toxic thoughts paint images of self and others with colors of lack, gloom or failure, subconsciously, they are protective strategies that get activated automatically in our defense when something triggers us. Thus, our body associates them with pseudo "feel good" feelings that lower our anxiety, albeit in ineffective, quick-fix ways.

In recent decades, neuroscience research has increased our understanding of the processes that lead to the formation of healthy and unhealthy habits, to include addictions.
Pleasure - and fear - as stimulants and "teachers"?
We now have a better understanding of how intoxicating highs stimulate the "reward" centers of the brain, and the role mixed emotions of - pleasure and fear - play in stimulating these centers to establish an addiction, addictive relating patterns, or emotional reactivity in general.

The high is produced by neurochemicals that induce pleasure, dopamine in particular.

Dopamine is a neurotransmitter, a chemical messenger of the brain that plays a major role in forming addictions, and habits in general, healthy or otherwise. It transmits "teaching" signals to the reward centers of the brain responsible for acquiring new habits.

The other, less known, catalyst that stimulates the reward centers for the release of hormones is: fear.

Whether related to risk taking, taboo or past trauma, fear is a chief chemical-stimulant that works together with pleasure to enhance and intensify the highs in the brain's reward centers. In fact, the brain is in its most alert state of receptivity to learning in the presence of danger.

This makes sense, considering that survival is the primary directive of the part of the mind, the subconscious, that runs the body and is in charge of all the processes involved in forming or breaking habits.

Thus, fear not only reinforces learning, it also increases the chances that a particular memory will receive preferential attention from the subconscious mind.

This means the subconscious mind will record the "experience" in a special place in memory, an "intelligence report" of sorts, which the subconscious mind turns to whenever we get triggered or feel threatened in some way.
(The use of "fear" to condition behaviors also explains why commercial and political advertisements use fear to condition us to behave in certain ways.) Toxic thinking patterns act as "drugs of choice"?
Certain thinking patterns, in particular ones that subconsciously activate the body's fear response, or "fight or flee" system, are powerful.

They activate powerful inner processes that produce dynamic physiological changes in the body. They prepare us to run away or confront a perceived threat. When fear is the basis for behaviors, it is connected to the part of the brain that is responsible for ensuring survival - the fight or flight stress response.

They cause the subconscious mind to automatically perform an instant coup d'état of the body's normal processes. Unfortunately, this disengages the higher thinking processes of the brain by cutting off much of the oxygen flow.

They are limiting in varying degrees.

And herein lies the problem. The brain is always in either "protective mode" or "learning mode." When it's in "protective mode," its otherwise amazing capacity to make informed choices, decisions is not fully functioning. It is no longer in "learning mode."

They are toxic-thinking patterns.

The subconscious mind has a seemingly limitless capacity for memory and multitasking, processing millions, and some say billions, of bits of information per second. It does no original thinking, however. It relies on our thoughts (and associated beliefs, feelings) to form the "perceptions" it uses to determine whether or not to activate the body's fear response.

They are not "real" thoughts.

Our thoughts or "self-talk" are an inner running commentary, a stream of about 60,000 thoughts a day. A good portion of this habituated thinking consists of rigid, black-and-white thoughts - in other words, toxic thinking patterns - such as blame, fault-finding, self-pity, etc. These negatively charged thoughts are not real thinking at all. They are habituated thoughts that emerge from limiting beliefs, many of which are subconscious and carry over from the formative years of childhood. Examples of limiting beliefs are:

If I say no, I will be rejected or abandoned.
If someone says no to my request, it means they don't love or appreciate me.
It's wrong to put "demands" or need something from others.
It's not love if you have to ask; he/she should know what I want/need.
Anger means you are not loved, accepted by or adequate enough to another.
Psychological or physical violence is OK when it is "deserved."

They are based on beliefs that were imprinted in our memory the formative years of early childhood early survival-love maps.

Where do these thoughts come from? Beliefs.

In this case, certain core beliefs that form our self-concept, for example, what it means to love and be loved, what it means to "matter" or feel value in life, in relation to our self and others. They are thoughts that the subconscious accrues in a special record it keeps of all past "scary" moments. These pockets of memory contain related data, such as feelings, images, beliefs, and so on. I refer to these records in cellular memory as our early survival-love maps.

Many of them spawn unhelpful and limiting views of anger, whereas anger is designed to be a healthy emotion that moves us to action to stand up for our selves and not give up on our dreams - once, that is, we accept and respect its value, and learn how to express it assertively - rather than defensively. Some examples of limiting beliefs that produce toxic thoughts about anger include:

Never be angry.
Never talk about your anger.
Men can be angry, women cannot.
Anger leads to abuse and pain.
Anger means you are not loved.
If you make him/her angry, they will abandon you.

They offer quick-fix "pseudo" relief that lowers anxiety and restores body's equilibrium in varying degrees.

The instant relief we get by activating our protective strategies, such as blasting someone with our anger or stewing on how we "always" get the short end of the stick, is what makes toxic-thinking addictive. They are old and "comfortable" ways of protecting ourselves, that is, by lowering our anxiety with instant pseudo "feel good" toxic thoughts.

The subconscious does no original thinking.

Our subconscious mind is completely dependent on the conscious mind to wisely discern between "feel goods" that are healthful and those that are harmful. By design, it has no capacity to do its own thinking.

Whenever something "works" to lower anxiety and restore our body to natural state, the subconscious mind automatically puts it on the "list of things that work to ensure survival." Hence, "things" that neuro-chemically produce pseudo "feel-good" feelings in our body.

The subconscious cannot discern between what is toxic or healthful.

The subconscious mind cannot discern between what "feels good" that is toxic or even destructive, such as junk food or drugs or toxic thoughts, and what "feels bad" yet is healthful, such as learning a new subject or giving a speech or changing a toxic thinking pattern or two.

With repeated stimulation, old reward centers form new neuropathways that demand more of the same, thus, producing more intense cravings. As the body habituates to the highs that repeated stimulation produces, other processes that seek to restore equilibrium then form new neuropathways, which demand greater intensity and frequency to achieve the same stimulation.

An addiction is formed, and along with it, a wide array of emotional, physical and mental health costs.
Genuine versus "pseudo" feel-goods?
This combination of stimulating emotions of pleasure and fear literally conditions our brain to live life at odds with self, a life of contradictory desires and passions that, if not stopped, has power to control and take away what is of lasting and real value to a person's life.

It's safe to say that what distinguishes "genuine" feel-goods from "pseudo" feel-goods is that the former, in contrast to the latter, seeks to delight us yet also enhance our health, growth, transformation, or at minimum, cause no harm.

Toxic thinking patterns and pseudo feel-goods block change and healing. Like addiction, toxic "feel good" thinking patterns are an escape, a series of actions that fail in their attempt to help you to get control over your life, and that lead instead to abandoning control to lies, falsehoods and acts of desperation.

At root all addiction is a fear of intimacy, in particular, an intimate knowing of self.

It is a topsy-turvy system of beliefs that imprisons the mind with lies that lead us to avoid, run away from, block, or "protect" ourselves against what we most need and yearn for in life: To feel alive in meaningful connection to self and life around us, to contribute the love we aspire to express, courageously, with our whole heart.

Speaking of thinking patterns, Carl Jung, one of the most brilliant thinkers in the modern era, was first among other theorists and psychologists to point out that the human mind, or psyche, continuously strives toward a feeling state of wholeness, in search of meaning and purpose. In contrast to pseudo feel-goods, genuine "feel goods" work alongside the directives of the body to ensure that you both survive, and thrive in health and wholeness.

The solution is simple, and though not easy, it's achievable with determination: You are wired for a life time of learning, healing and change.
Begley, Sharon (2007). Train Your Mind Change Your Brain: How a New Science Reveals Our Extraordinary Potential to Transform Ourselves. NY: Ballantine Books. Cozolino, Louis (2006). The Neuroscience of Human Relationships: Attachment and the Developing Brain. NY: W. W. Norton. Damasio, Antonio (2010). Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain. NY: Pantheon Books. Siegel, Daniel J. (1999). The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are. NY: Guilford Press.

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Toxic Thinking Patterns - How Pseudo "Feel-Goods" Put Your Brain on Hold (1 of 2)

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Habitual thinking patterns that cause intense feelings of fear, anger, shame or guilt are not only toxic, but also addictive in nature. Why? They stimulate pleasure and learning centers of the brain similar to addictive substances. Toxic thinking is characteristically compulsive in nature and causes intense fear-based

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28 simple ways to make your life easier.

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28 simple ways to make your life easier.

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You want your life to be easier. But, here's the thing: You want the process of improving your daily existence to be, well, easy.

Hey, I'm right there with you-which is why I've pulled together this helpful list of 28 simple (yes, simple!) ways that you can make the day to day a little more painless.

Whether you want to improve your productivity or take your stress levels down, these handy tips and tricks will make a big difference-without a ton of time and elbow grease.

If You Want to Save Time

1. Create a cheat sheet for the information you commonly need, so you can just copy and paste it.

2. Used canned responses to auto-fill those emails you find yourself writing time and time again.

3. Stop redoing the same report week after week and instead use Microsoft Word's "Quick Styles" to apply your formatting with the click of a button. A number of other Word hacks can help you shave some time off your workday too!

If You Want to Get More Done

1. Utilize the Pomodoro Technique to instill a sense of urgency and kick your productivity into high gear.

2. Block off some untouchable time in your calendar when you can forego any meetings, zone in, and keep your head down in your most important work.

3. Add one (or more than one!) productivity-boosting Chrome extension that will help you power through your to-do list.

4. Find your golden hours and then use that highly motivated time to crank through the most important things on your plate.

5. Limit yourself to one browser tab in order to stop multitasking. Constantly switching gears isn't doing you any favors.

6. Use this extension to hide your inbox so that you can channel your entire focus on your to-do list (and then try these other helpful computer hacks too!).

7. As counterintuitive as it seems, step away from your work and take a break for a few minutes. No really!

If You Want to Streamline Your Inbox

1. Write specific subject lines so you can easily find old messages in your inbox.

2. You know those little stars that appear next to subject lines in Gmail? Leverage them to your advantage by marking the emails that require a response. When you have a block of time, go through and respond to your starred messages.

3. Use an email app to remove the headache from managing your inbox. Let technology do it for you!

4. Set an OOO message even when you're in the office so you can stay away from email and focus your attention on the things that matter.

5. Use Unroll.me to pull together-and unsubscribe from, if necessary!-all of those newsletters that find their way to your inbox.

If You Want to Sleep Better

1. Listen to this podcast to help you fall and stay asleep.

2. Do a few yoga poses to relax your body, focus on your breathing, and decompress before an evening of restful snoozing.

3. Take a hot bath or shower before bed to regulate your body temperature and tell your brain that it's time to sleep.

4. If you can't put down your phone before bed, turn it to Night Shift mode to avoid having your screen throw off your circadian rhythms.

5. Implement a bedtime routine that will help you wrap up loose ends, wind down, and sleep better.

If You Want to Plan Ahead

1. Before you head to bed, make sure you do these five things to avoid that dreaded morning scramble.

2. Creating your schedule for the day? Try planning it backward.

3. Set a theme for each day of the workweek to keep your productive momentum high.

4. Have a vacation coming up? Create a reverse countdown and use this worksheet to make sure you cover all of your bases before you leave.

If You Want to Reduce Stress

1. Label optional events on your calendar so you can quickly see what needs to get done on your busy days-and what can be skipped.

2. Do a repetitive task. As strange as it sounds, it can help to lower your stress levels.

3. When things get overwhelming in the office, try one of these 12 simple tricks to take some time out and inject a little more happy in your day.

4. Go ahead and treat yourself to a fun desk toy that you can play with in those moments of extreme stress.

Give any of these simple tricks a try? Let me know on Twitter just how much easier your life is!

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28 Super Simple Tricks That'll Make Your Life Easier (Even if You Only Try One)

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You want your life to be easier. But, here's the thing: You want the process of improving your daily existence to be, well, easy. Hey, I'm right there with you-which is why I've pulled together this helpful list of 28 simple (yes, simple!) ways that you can make the day to day a little more painless.

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A New History for Humanity – The Human Era - YouTube

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A New History for Humanity – The Human Era - YouTube

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Горан Гулески

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A New History for Humanity – The Human Era

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It is time to reframe how we think about our past. We need a new year 0 for humanity. But which one should we choose and why?

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Break Anxiety and Addiction By Examining Your Patterns | Michael Puett - YouTube

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Break Anxiety and Addiction By Examining Your Patterns | Michael Puett - YouTube

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Higher Self Healing for Depression & Anxiety

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Break Anxiety and Addiction By Examining Your Patterns | Michael Puett

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Who are you? Good question. Harvard professor Michael Puett explores the idea of the "self", and how what you believe to be your true nature may actually just be patterns you've fallen into. Puett's latest book is "The Path: What Chinese Philosophers Can Teach Us About the Good Life" (http://goo.gl/Sltm1b).

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11 Best TED Talks For When You Feel Like You're Burning Out - Motto

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11 Best TED Talks For When You Feel Like You're Burning Out - Motto

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11 Best TED Talks For When You Burnt Out

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Take a few minutes to get advice from some of the world's greatest minds

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Time makes sense in small pieces. But when you look at huge stretches of time, it's almost impossible to wrap your head around things.

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The History and Future of Everything -- Time

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We don’t need our lovers to be perfect. We need them to warn us of their quirks in good time. We need them to give us an instruction manual to themselves.

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We don't need our lovers to be perfect. We need them to warn us of their quirks in good time. We need them to give us an instruction manual to themselves.

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Loving someone isn’t enough to guarantee we will know how to care for them. For this, we need to learn to understand the distinctive way in which they need our love to manifest itself in order for it to feel real to them.

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Why Mindfulness Is a Superpower: An Animation

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Uploaded by Find Your Shyft on 2016-04-21.

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1. For the first exercise, we ask students to make a list of how they want to spend their time at college. What matters to you? This might be going to class, studying, spending time with close friends, perhaps volunteering in the off-campus community or reading books not on any course's required reading list. Then students make a list of how they actually spent their time, on average, each day over the past week and match the two lists.

Finally, we pose the question: How well do your commitments actually match your goals?

A few students find a strong overlap between the lists. The majority don't. They are stunned and dismayed to discover they are spending much of their precious time on activities they don't value highly. The challenge is how to align your time commitments to reflect your personal convictions.

2. Deciding on a major can be amazingly difficult. One student in our group was having a hard time choosing between government and science. How was she spending her spare time? She described being active in the Institute of Politics, running the Model U.N. and writing regularly for The Political Review. The discussion leader noted that she hadn't mentioned the word "lab" in her summary. "Labs?" replied the student, looking incredulous. "Why would I mention labs when talking about my spare time?" Half an hour after the session, the group leader got an email thanking him for posing the question.

3. I call this the Broad vs. Deep Exercise. If you could become extraordinarily good at one thing versus being pretty good at many things, which approach would you choose? We invite students to think about how to organize their college life to follow their chosen path in a purposeful way.

4. In the Core Values Exercise, students are presented with a sheet of paper with about 25 words on it. The words include "dignity," "love," "fame," "family," "excellence," "wealth" and "wisdom." They are told to circle the five words that best describe their core values. Now, we ask, how might you deal with a situation where your core values come into conflict with one another? Students find this question particularly difficult. One student brought up his own personal dilemma: He wants to be a surgeon, and he also wants to have a large family. So his core values included the words "useful" and "family." He said he worries a lot whether he could be a successful surgeon while also being a devoted father. Students couldn't stop talking about this example, as many saw themselves facing a similar challenge.

5. This exercise presents the parable of a happy fisherman living a simple life on a small island. The fellow goes fishing for a few hours every day. He catches a few fish, sells them to his friends, and enjoys spending the rest of the day with his wife and children, and napping. He couldn't imagine changing a thing in his relaxed and easy life.

Let's tweak the parable: A recent M.B.A. visits this island and quickly sees how this fisherman could become rich. He could catch more fish, start up a business, market the fish, open a cannery, maybe even issue an I.P.O. Ultimately he would become truly successful. He could donate some of his fish to hungry children worldwide and might even save lives.

"And then what?" asks the fisherman.

"Then you could spend lots of time with your family," replies the visitor. "Yet you would have made a difference in the world. You would have used your talents, and fed some poor children, instead of just lying around all day."

We ask students to apply this parable to their own lives. Is it more important to you to have little, be less traditionally successful, yet be relaxed and happy and spend time with family? Or is it more important to you to work hard, perhaps start a business, maybe even make the world a better place along the way?

Typically, this simple parable leads to substantial disagreement. These discussions encourage first-year undergraduates to think about what really matters to them, and what each of us feels we might owe, or not owe, to the broader community - ideas that our students can capitalize on throughout their time at college.

At the end of our sessions, I say to my group: "Tell me one thing you have changed your mind about this year," and many responses reflect a remarkable level of introspection. Three years later, when we check in with participants, nearly all report that the discussions had been valuable, a step toward turning college into the transformational experience it is meant to be.

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1. For the first exercise, we ask students to make a list of how they want to spend their time at college. What matters to you? This might be going to class, studying, spending time with close friends, perhaps volunteering in the off-campus community or reading books not on any course's required reading list.

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The Big Think.

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Catch-All Nature of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy

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Too many people are striving for a quick and dirty way to feel hedonistic bliss without accepting the negative feelings they have, says Steven Hayes.

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Eudaimonia ( Greek: εὐδαιμονία [eu̯dai̯moníaː]), sometimes anglicized as eudaemonia or eudemonia , is a Greek word commonly translated as happiness or welfare; however, "human flourishing or prosperity" has been proposed as a more accurate translation.[better source needed ] Etymologically, it consists of the words " eu" ("good") and "" ("spirit").

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How relationships affect our immune system.

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Relationships, Adrienne Rich argued in her magnificent meditation on love, refine our truths. But they also, it turns out, refine our immune systems. That's what pioneering immunologist Esther Sternberg examines in The Balance Within: The Science Connecting Health and Emotions (public library) - a revelatory inquiry into how emotional stress affects our susceptibility to burnout and disease.

As just about every socialized human being can attest, interpersonal relationships play a significant role in our experience of stress - either contributing to it and or alleviating it. And the way we connect - something psychologist Barbara Fredrickson has termed "positivity resonance" - is deeply patterned through our earliest experiences of bonding, which train our limbic pathways. Sternberg traces the cognitive origin of these formative patterns:

Somewhere in our brains we carry a map of our relationships. It is our mother's lap, our best friend's holding hand, our lover's embrace - all these we carry within ourselves when we are alone. Just knowing that these are there to hold us if we fall gives us a sense of peace. "Cradled," "rooted," "connected" are words we use to describe the feeling that comes of this knowledge; social psychologists call this sense embeddedness. The opposite is perhaps a more familiar term - we call it loneliness.

Thus a person, sitting by herself in a room, may appear to others to be quite alone; but that person, if embedded, will have a world of relationships mapped inside her mind - a map that will lead to those who can be called on for nurture and support in time of need. But others, the Gatsbys among us, might be among a crowd of dozens and yet feel very much alone. Many pieces of great literature have in fact tapped into this sense of disconnectedness. Our sense that powerful forces beyond our bodies link us to others is so ingrained that we use phrases such as "times that bind," "family dyes," and "bonding," to describe those intangible connections. And the emotions they evoke are among the greatest forces that affect our hormonal, our nerve chemical, and our immune responses - and through these, our health and our resistance to disease.

We encode these emotions early and carry them forward through symbol and ritual, using physical experiences and objects as memory-anchors. Sternberg captures the enduring echoes of these primal patterns:

A very young child will carry a physical reminder of mother's embrace: a security blanket, a favorite toy, something soaked with all the smells of home and love... The engagement ring and wedding band have the power in an ounce of gold to evoke the memory of the beloved... We are all tethered to our social worlds by invisible but steel strong wires.

And yet, however deeply engrained these patterns may be, relationships are also inherently alive - they grow, change, and invariably become what Leo "Dr. Love" Buscaglia memorably termed a process of "dynamic interaction." In a passage that calls to mind David Whyte's wisdom on endings and beginnings, Sternberg examines the often inevitable evolution - and sometimes revolution - of relationships:

A relationship is built of strings of moments that our mind has pulled out from where they were stored in memory, moments and memories that come with emotions attached. Memories, spliced together like this in a seamless thread, make a relationship seem continuous and whole. So, after not seeing a childhood friend for years, we can pick up where we left off, as if no time at all had intervened. In this way, too, relationships can be sustained in thought during long absences - parents away from adult children, long-distance lovers, commuting husbands and wives. But the same capacity of the brain to forge this chain of memory can lead to difficulties in a relationship if one member evolves past where the other's memory left off. So, a child leaving home for college, who left still on the verge of adulthood and returns an independent adult, will encounter a parent's resistance when the person who steps back into the parent's memory is not the same as the one who left. It takes a period of adjustment on both sides to set the chain evolving back on a new course.

[...]

At times, one small corner of that map can swell and grow, reverberate and suddenly seem to take over our entire world: we fall in love; we are abandoned; we become envious; we hate. The persons who are the object of such feelings can take on gigantic proportions in our minds and dominate our whole social and emotional outlook, coloring every corner of our lives, until, through monumental effort, or simply through gradual erosion of time, they recede again to their rightful place and size.

These fluid social dynamics, Sternberg points out, permeate our culture well beyond our immediate individual experience:

The social world can activate the stress response, or it can tone it down. The effects of these personal connections can be more soothing than an hour of meditation. They can also be as stressful, and more long-lived, as running at top speed for twenty minutes on a treadmill. In fact, of all the sensory signals that impinge on us from moment to moment throughout the day, it is the ones connected in some way to another person that can trigger our emotions most intensely. If emotions are really meant to move us, it is these bonds toward which they push or from which they pull. Whole industries are based on the power of such social bonds: romance novels, movies, cosmetics, fashion, advertising, popular songs. In one way or another, the whole of our popular culture strives toward sealing or healing these social connections.

And heal we must, for the social self is central to our neurobiological experience of stress:

It seems that social conflict brings out an additional and unique hormonal response that is not stimulated by other forms of stress. This unique pattern of hormonal stress response predisposes socially stressed mice to herpes infection. The hormone that does this, which is secreted in saliva, is called nerve growth factor. Those who are prone to herpes virus "cold sores" will find this situation all too familiar. It is exactly when we are stressed - perhaps with lack of sleep and too much work, but especially with prolonged anxiety over personal or workplace situations - that we invariably get a cold sore.

In the remainder of the wholly illuminating The Balance Within, Sternberg goes on to explore the neurobiological underpinnings of this emotional machinery, the role of our psychological patterning in our physiological predisposition to disease, and how we can begin to rewire our response to stress. Complement it with Naomi Wolf on the psychology of stress, orgasm, and creativity and Adam Phillips on why frustration is essential for satisfaction in love.

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the balance within: the science connecting health and emotions

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Stress and the Social Self: How Relationships Affect Our Immune System

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Relationships, Adrienne Rich argued in her magnificent meditation on love, refine our truths. But they also, it turns out, refine our immune systems. That's what pioneering immunologist Esther Sternberg examines in The Balance Within: The Science Connecting Health and Emotions (public library ) - a revelatory inquiry into how emotional stress affects our susceptibility to burnout and disease.

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What holds us back from being more confident at work is often a sense that we are fundamentally different from those who succeed. We suffer – needlessly – from The Impostor Syndrome.

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It sounds normal to say one's out to become a fitter person; but it sounds weird to say one would like to be a nicer or better person. It shouldn't - so here is a guide to 10 virtues of a nice person.

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First Person #2 | PBS Digital Studios

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Bisexual Erasure | First Person #2 | PBS Digital Studios

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In the second episode of First Person, host Kristin Russo talks with the writer, musician, filmmaker and performer, Vivek Shraya, about bisexual erasure and his experience identifying as bisexual. Find us on: https://twitter.com/firstpersonpbs https://www.facebook.com/firstpersonpbs http://firstpersonpbs.tumblr.com https://instagram.com/firstpersonpbs Brought to you by PBS Digital Studios and WNET Interactive Engagement Group.

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[Image description: Two white feminine models wear exaggerated blue eye-shadow and crudely-drawn black eye liner which obscures their faces, red lipstick, and dramatic wigs (pale blonde on one, jet black on the other) with extremely receded hairlines. They have long painted red nails and touch each other with stiff hands.]
Monogamy is a relationship contract which demands sexual and emotional exclusivity under the guise of loyalty. Your one partner is expected to fulfill all of your romantic and sexual needs, or else face with horror the idea that they are not "enough". In platonic friendships these behaviors would be rightly labeled as controlling and manipulative-but within romantic and sexual relationships they're "normal" because monogamy reproduces the capitalist nuclear family, as well as patriarchal mores of people as property.

Because monogamous marriages are recognized by the state, they are given added social legitimacy. Through inheritance, they also keep resources (money, property, citizenship and all its benefits, class identity) consolidated within a minority of families.

Queer "ethical non-monogamy" is about the romantic and sexual autonomy of every individual involved. The only choice I make for my partners is whether or not they get to be with me-if I don't like other choices that they make, I can leave, but I trust them to make the best choices for themselves and to be compassionate, decent people (hello, that's why I'm dating them). But because we live under capitalist patriarchy where privileges are constantly reproduced, anti-capitalist polyamory requires deliberate reflection on how we can actively challenge patriarchy, racism, and ableism, and redress power imbalances within our relationships. Here's a breakdown of why I'm polyamorous and what it means:

Social, emotional, and sexual autonomy.

Within a poly relationship, you have bodily autonomy but so do your partners: you are required to articulate and understand and respect the emotional and physical boundaries within each partnership. My partners are not "mine" and they don't need my permission to do anything with anyone else. There are no "rules" on what my partners can and cannot do. I employ safe safer sex practices and expect the same from my sexual partners, and that's it.

Bodily autonomy doesn't mean you get to do whatever the hell you want without consequences, or that you're entitled to anyone's time or body. Everyone is allowed to turn you down, and it doesn't mean they're "not sex-positive"-get over yourself.

Some poly people put guidelines/rules/boundaries on what their partners can do without them-"you can kiss but no sex without calling me first"; "you can have sex but don't fall in love"; "you can fall in love but don't leave me"-but kind of like Monogamy Plus (and I don't get it).

Clear and honest communication.

Because it can be complicated, you need to be deliberate in your communication. Communicate jealousy, and fear, and desire. If you shame your partner/s for expressing jealousy, you're doing it wrong. Active listening is a big component, and if I notice a date isn't a good listener that's a big red flag.

Being poly doesn't mean I need to know about the details about my partners' other relationships. I like to hear about it and I'm interested, but they're not obliged to tell me any details they want to keep private. This isn't license for anyone to be sneaky and refuse to communicate something important like, "I'm developing feelings for your best friend and we're moving in together", but they're not "cheating" by not telling me something (nothing is "cheating"). I trust them to tell me the important things and not be deceptive.

Continuous communication means active and ongoing enthusiastic consent. Consent need not be enthusiastic to be valid (s/o to my sex worker friends), but in personal relationships I would hope your consent is enthusiastic!

Trust.

I trust my partners to know what's best for them, and to make the best decisions for themselves, so I don't need to police or micromanage them. I also trust them to keep me updated on how my relationship with them is, and what they need, and what they expect from me. I trust them to leave if the relationship is no longer what they want. Mostly I trust that they'll be honest and not be jerks (like, seducing my boss to intentionally complicate my business relationships).

Nonhierarchical relationships.

This lifts burden of expectations for relationships. No one is "primary" or "secondary". Even if I'm only seeing one person at a time, to call them my "primary partner" would be to put pressure on them to maintain that "status", and to imply that I'm entitled to the majority of their time and emotional effort (and that they're entitled to mine).

I'm not part of a "unit"; I'm an individual. I treat all of my partners as individuals (whether they're single, in a poly couple, or in other relationships). Don't use other people to fill a void of desperation or loneliness.

Further to that-your n eeds are met primarily by the self, with the support of partners. There is no pressure to be your partners' Everything. The burden of emotional labor falls on multiple partners, if you have them. Regardless of how many people you're seeing, you're required to do the Emotional Work of knowing yourself, learning how to articulate your feelings, and learning to be sensitive to and respectful of the emotions of others. Your partners should support you, but they're not responsible for your growth.

Relationship fluidity.

Embrace the no-longer terrifying fact that your romantic and sexual relationships are not likely to last indefinitely. Being poly means allowing for fluidity not only between partners but within individual relationships which will undoubtedly change over time. There is no pressure to escalate relationships through the traditional linear stages (friends > lovers > couple > cohabit > marriage > children > divorce), nor to stick to a single relationship definition over time.

Intimacy with multiple people.

This is an obvious plus: you can pursue whatever relationships are mutually desired. Just as you have multiple friendships and work relationships, you can have multiple romances, flings, co-parents, friends with benefits, platonic cuddle buddies... Only the people involved get to define the terms of the relationship.

There is no shortage of love or sex to be had, or to give- only time scarcity. This means I don't indulge bad dates or bad sex; I politely excuse myself to spend time with people who are more fun, or to be by myself. Managing the time scarcity means being honest with partners about my availability and the amount of time I can realistically commit to them-it also means scheduling in time for myself. It's not sexy, but it's Important.

Diminished fear of losing partners.

Confront the reality that partners could lose interest, or fall in love with someone else, or leave you for no reason at all whether you're monogamous or not. Polyamory gives them the freedom to explore themselves and other relationships while they're with you, and makes it easier to leave if that's the best course because you all have less invested in the idea of having One Partner Forever. There is liberation in not being afraid of being alone.

_______

Polyamory is not just cishet couples looking for bicurious women to fulfill the man's threesome fantasy (though OkCupid's new linking account feature would have you think otherwise). It is not an excuse to lie to your partner/s about your intentions with other people. It is a somewhat unfortunate pairing of Greek and Latin roots, but we must choose our battles so I'm letting this one go (but not unnoticed).

There are bad practices within polyamory too, and some people use poly politics as an excuse to be abusive or misogynistic. I encourage everyone curious about it to click that link and get an idea of how to (and not to) poly.

I'm poly whether I'm with one partner, ten partners, or no partners. Here's a comic with some examples of how polyamory manifests. You can practice polyamory while only having one partner by agreeing that neither of you is bound by rules over what you can and can't do with other consenting adults.

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Image description: Two white feminine models wear exaggerated blue eye-shadow and crudely-drawn black eye liner which obscures their faces, red lipstick, and dramatic wigs (pale blonde on one, jet black on the other) with extremely receded hairlines. They have long painted red nails and touch each other with stiff hands.]

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Those songs that get stuck in your head. By Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis.

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Earworms: Those songs that get stuck in your head - Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis

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An interview with Mike Rugnetta from PBS Ideas Channel

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An interview with Mike Rugnetta from PBS Ideas Channel

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Mike makes an excellent point about the ethics of academia as gatekeepers of knowledge. For more of Mike check out Part Two and Part Three of the interview.

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Mike Rugnetta [Part 1] // PBS Idea Channel

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Going down the rabbit hole of my mind 😜

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ENTJ Personality: Mind Wiring For Personal Growth

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http://www.PersonalityHacker.com In this video Joel Mark Witt goes beyond the typical ENTJ personality type descriptions around behavior and talks about the mental wiring of the ENTJ mind.

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After watching this I feel as though I understand myself a little better. This could also explain my love for Foucault.

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Huzzah: I got it in on schedule! I hope you enjoy it! And I don't own the rights to any of the pictures except some of the little doodles. You can probably tell mine from the ones I grabbed off the internet.

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Philosophical Meditation is a technique to clear your mind and reduce anxiety. Download our guide here:
http://thephilosophersmail.com/PhilosophicalMeditation.pdf

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Philosophical Meditation is a technique to clear your mind and reduce anxiety. Download our guide here: http://thephilosophersmail.com/PhilosophicalMeditation.pdf Please help us to make films by subscribing to our channel.

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The things that turn people on are rarely mysterious; they are logically connected up with quite sane desires, often the desire for closeness.

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The things that turn people on are rarely mysterious; they are logically connected up with quite sane desires, often the desire for closeness.

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There’s so much pressure on us to be always rational, calm and sensible: it’s time also to say a word about the essential normality of a little madness.

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There's so much pressure on us to be always rational, calm and sensible: it's time also to say a word about the essential normality of a little madness.

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Most of us are anxious pretty much all the time – but frequently imagine that other people aren’t. It’s time to admit the truth. Anxiety is just a basic fact about being human.

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Most of us are anxious pretty much all the time - but frequently imagine that other people aren't. It's time to admit the truth. Anxiety is just a basic fact about being human.

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Your words may predict your future mental health. | Mariano Sigman

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Your words may predict your future mental health. | Mariano Sigman

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Your words may predict your future mental health | Mariano Sigman

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Can the way you speak and write today predict your future mental state, even the onset of psychosis? In this fascinating talk, neuroscientist Mariano Sigman reflects on ancient Greece and the origins of introspection to investigate how our words hint at our inner lives and details a word-mapping algorithm that could predict the development of schizophrenia.

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Polyamory is defined as “the state of being in love or romantically involved with more than one person at the same time.” It’s not the easiest path to choose; you have to be up for the challenge of being very communicative and open-minded about everything.

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A Polyamorous Couple’s Guide To Sleeping With Multiple Partners [INSIGHTS] | Elite Daily

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Brooklyn residents Tran and Caleb are similar to most couples, except for one small detail -- they're in a loving, open relationship. After a long subway ride one night, Tran brought up the idea and hoped the suggestion wouldn't scare her partner away. Instead of viewing this as something negative, Caleb embraced it.

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We’re still only at the dawn of learning how to use drugs properly – knowing what drugs we need and when we should take them. We look forward to a brighter future for drug use.

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We're still only at the dawn of learning how to use drugs properly - knowing what drugs we need and when we should take them. We look forward to a brighter future for drug use.

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The opposite of addiction is connection.

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The opposite of addiction is connection.

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What causes addiction? Easy, right? Drugs,  cause addiction. But it is not that simple. This video is adapted from Johann Hari's book Chasing The Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs.