Tag Archives: Psychology

Shamanic View of Mental Illness

Posted on by

What a Shaman Sees in A Mental Hospital

August 22, 2014 | By  

ShamanStephanie Marohn with Malidoma Patrice Somé
Waking Times

The Shamanic View of Mental Illness

In the shamanic view, mental illness signals “the birth of a healer,” explains Malidoma Patrice Somé. Thus, mental disorders are spiritual emergencies, spiritual crises, and need to be regarded as such to aid the healer in being born.

What those in the West view as mental illness, the Dagara people regard as “good news from the other world.” The person going through the crisis has been chosen as a medium for a message to the community that needs to be communicated from the spirit realm. “Mental disorder, behavioral disorder of all kinds, signal the fact that two obviously incompatible energies have merged into the same field,” says Dr. Somé. These disturbances result when the person does not get assistance in dealing with the presence of the energy from the spirit realm.

One of the things Dr. Somé encountered when he first came to the United States in 1980 for graduate study was how this country deals with mental illness. When a fellow student was sent to a mental institute due to “nervous depression,” Dr. Somé went to visit him.

“I was so shocked. That was the first time I was brought face to face with what is done here to people exhibiting the same symptoms I’ve seen in my village.” What struck Dr. Somé was that the attention given to such symptoms was based on pathology, on the idea that the condition is something that needs to stop. This was in complete opposition to the way his culture views such a situation. As he looked around the stark ward at the patients, some in straitjackets, some zoned out on medications, others screaming, he observed to himself, “So this is how the healers who are attempting to be born are treated in this culture. What a loss! What a loss that a person who is finally being aligned with a power from the other world is just being wasted.”

Another way to say this, which may make more sense to the Western mind, is that we in the West are not trained in how to deal or even taught to acknowledge the existence of psychic phenomena, the spiritual world. In fact, psychic abilities are denigrated. When energies from the spiritual world emerge in a Western psyche, that individual is completely unequipped to integrate them or even recognize what is happening. The result can be terrifying. Without the proper context for and assistance in dealing with the breakthrough from another level of reality, for all practical purposes, the person is insane. Heavy dosing with anti-psychotic drugs compounds the problem and prevents the integration that could lead to soul development and growth in the individual who has received these energies.

On the mental ward, Dr Somé saw a lot of “beings” hanging around the patients, “entities” that are invisible to most people but that shamans and psychics are able to see. “They were causing the crisis in these people,” he says. It appeared to him that these beings were trying to get the medications and their effects out of the bodies of the people the beings were trying to merge with, and were increasing the patients’ pain in the process. “The beings were acting almost like some kind of excavator in the energy field of people. They were really fierce about that. The people they were doing that to were just screaming and yelling,” he said. He couldn’t stay in that environment and had to leave.

In the Dagara tradition, the community helps the person reconcile the energies of both worlds–”the world of the spirit that he or she is merged with, and the village and community.” That person is able then to serve as a bridge between the worlds and help the living with information and healing they need. Thus, the spiritual crisis ends with the birth of another healer. “The other world’s relationship with our world is one of sponsorship,” Dr. Somé explains. “More often than not, the knowledge and skills that arise from this kind of merger are a knowledge or a skill that is provided directly from the other world.”

The beings who were increasing the pain of the inmates on the mental hospital ward were actually attempting to merge with the inmates in order to get messages through to this world. The people they had chosen to merge with were getting no assistance in learning how to be a bridge between the worlds and the beings’ attempts to merge were thwarted. The result was the sustaining of the initial disorder of energy and the aborting of the birth of a healer.

“The Western culture has consistently ignored the birth of the healer,” states Dr. Somé. “Consequently, there will be a tendency from the other world to keep trying as many people as possible in an attempt to get somebody’s attention. They have to try harder.” The spirits are drawn to people whose senses have not been anesthetized. “The sensitivity is pretty much read as an invitation to come in,” he notes.

Those who develop so-called mental disorders are those who are sensitive, which is viewed in Western culture as oversensitivity. Indigenous cultures don’t see it that way and, as a result, sensitive people don’t experience themselves as overly sensitive. In the West, “it is the overload of the culture they’re in that is just wrecking them,” observes Dr. Somé. The frenetic pace, the bombardment of the senses, and the violent energy that characterize Western culture can overwhelm sensitive people.

Schizophrenia and Foreign Energy

With schizophrenia, there is a special “receptivity to a flow of images and information, which cannot be controlled,” stated Dr. Somé. “When this kind of rush occurs at a time that is not personally chosen, and particularly when it comes with images that are scary and contradictory, the person goes into a frenzy.”

What is required in this situation is first to separate the person’s energy from the extraneous foreign energies, by using shamanic practice (what is known as a “sweep”) to clear the latter out of the individual’s aura. With the clearing of their energy field, the person no longer picks up a flood of information and so no longer has a reason to be scared and disturbed, explains Dr. Somé.

Then it is possible to help the person align with the energy of the spirit being attempting to come through from the other world and give birth to the healer. The blockage of that emergence is what creates problems. “The energy of the healer is a high-voltage energy,” he observes. “When it is blocked, it just burns up the person. It’s like a short-circuit. Fuses are blowing. This is why it can be really scary, and I understand why this culture prefers to confine these people. Here they are yelling and screaming, and they’re put into a straitjacket. That’s a sad image.” Again, the shamanic approach is to work on aligning the energies so there is no blockage, “fuses” aren’t blowing, and the person can become the healer they are meant to be.

It needs to be noted at this point, however, that not all of the spirit beings that enter a person’s energetic field are there for the purposes of promoting healing. There are negative energies as well, which are undesirable presences in the aura. In those cases, the shamanic approach is to remove them from the aura, rather than work to align the discordant energies

Alex: Crazy in the USA, Healer in Africa

To test his belief that the shamanic view of mental illness holds true in the Western world as well as in indigenous cultures, Dr. Somé took a mental patient back to Africa with him, to his village. “I was prompted by my own curiosity to find out whether there’s truth in the universality that mental illness could be connected with an alignment with a being from another world,” says Dr. Somé.

Alex was an 18-year-old American who had suffered a psychotic break when he was 14. He had hallucinations, was suicidal, and went through cycles of dangerously severe depression. He was in a mental hospital and had been given a lot of drugs, but nothing was helping. “The parents had done everything–unsuccessfully,” says Dr. Somé. “They didn’t know what else to do.”

With their permission, Dr. Somé took their son to Africa. “After eight months there, Alex had become quite normal, Dr. Somé reports. He was even able to participate with healers in the business of healing; sitting with them all day long and helping them, assisting them in what they were doing with their clients . . . . He spent about four years in my village.” Alex stayed by choice, not because he needed more healing. He felt, “much safer in the village than in America.”

To bring his energy and that of the being from the spiritual realm into alignment, Alex went through a shamanic ritual designed for that purpose, although it was slightly different from the one used with the Dagara people. “He wasn’t born in the village, so something else applied. But the result was similar, even though the ritual was not literally the same,” explains Dr. Somé. The fact that aligning the energy worked to heal Alex demonstrated to Dr. Somé that the connection between other beings and mental illness is indeed universal.

After the ritual, Alex began to share the messages that the spirit being had for this world. Unfortunately, the people he was talking to didn’t speak English (Dr. Somé was away at that point). The whole experience led, however, to Alex’s going to college to study psychology. He returned to the United States after four years because “he discovered that all the things that he needed to do had been done, and he could then move on with his life.”

The last that Dr. Somé heard was that Alex was in graduate school in psychology at Harvard. No one had thought he would ever be able to complete undergraduate studies, much less get an advanced degree.

Dr. Somé sums up what Alex’s mental illness was all about: “He was reaching out. It was an emergency call. His job and his purpose was to be a healer. He said no one was paying attention to that.”

After seeing how well the shamanic approach worked for Alex, Dr. Somé concluded that spirit beings are just as much an issue in the West as in his community in Africa. “Yet the question still remains, the answer to this problem must be found here, instead of having to go all the way overseas to seek the answer. There has to be a way in which a little bit of attention beyond the pathology of this whole experience leads to the possibility of coming up with the proper ritual to help people.

Longing for Spiritual Connection

A common thread that Dr. Somé has noticed in “mental” disorders in the West is “a very ancient ancestral energy that has been placed in stasis, that finally is coming out in the person.” His job then is to trace it back, to go back in time to discover what that spirit is. In most cases, the spirit is connected to nature, especially with mountains or big rivers, he says.

In the case of mountains, as an example to explain the phenomenon, “it’s a spirit of the mountain that is walking side by side with the person and, as a result, creating a time-space distortion that is affecting the person caught in it.” What is needed is a merger or alignment of the two energies, “so the person and the mountain spirit become one.” Again, the shaman conducts a specific ritual to bring about this alignment.

Dr. Somé believes that he encounters this situation so often in the United States because “most of the fabric of this country is made up of the energy of the machine, and the result of that is the disconnection and the severing of the past. You can run from the past, but you can’t hide from it.” The ancestral spirit of the natural world comes visiting. “It’s not so much what the spirit wants as it is what the person wants,” he says. “The spirit sees in us a call for something grand, something that will make life meaningful, and so the spirit is responding to that.”

That call, which we don’t even know we are making, reflects “a strong longing for a profound connection, a connection that transcends materialism and possession of things and moves into a tangible cosmic dimension. Most of this longing is unconscious, but for spirits, conscious or unconscious doesn’t make any difference.” They respond to either.

As part of the ritual to merge the mountain and human energy, those who are receiving the “mountain energy” are sent to a mountain area of their choice, where they pick up a stone that calls to them. They bring that stone back for the rest of the ritual and then keep it as a companion; some even carry it around with them. “The presence of the stone does a lot in tuning the perceptive ability of the person,” notes Dr. Somé. “They receive all kinds of information that they can make use of, so it’s like they get some tangible guidance from the other world as to how to live their life.”

When it is the “river energy,” those being called go to the river and, after speaking to the river spirit, find a water stone to bring back for the same kind of ritual as with the mountain spirit.

“People think something extraordinary must be done in an extraordinary situation like this,” he says. That’s not usually the case. Sometimes it is as simple as carrying a stone.

A Sacred Ritual Approach to Mental Illness

One of the gifts a shaman can bring to the Western world is to help people rediscover ritual, which is so sadly lacking. “The abandonment of ritual can be devastating. From the spiritual view, ritual is inevitable and necessary if one is to live,” Dr. Somé writes in Ritual: Power, Healing, and Community. “To say that ritual is needed in the industrialized world is an understatement. We have seen in my own people that it is probably impossible to live a sane life without it.”

Dr. Somé did not feel that the rituals from his traditional village could simply be transferred to the West, so over his years of shamanic work here, he has designed rituals that meet the very different needs of this culture. Although the rituals change according to the individual or the group involved, he finds that there is a need for certain rituals in general.

One of these involves helping people discover that their distress is coming from the fact that they are “called by beings from the other world to cooperate with them in doing healing work.” Ritual allows them to move out of the distress and accept that calling.

Another ritual need relates to initiation. In indigenous cultures all over the world, young people are initiated into adulthood when they reach a certain age. The lack of such initiation in the West is part of the crisis that people are in here, says Dr. Somé. He urges communities to bring together “the creative juices of people who have had this kind of experience, in an attempt to come up with some kind of an alternative ritual that would at least begin to put a dent in this kind of crisis.”

Another ritual that repeatedly speaks to the needs of those coming to him for help entails making a bonfire, and then putting into the bonfire “items that are symbolic of issues carried inside the individuals . . . It might be the issues of anger and frustration against an ancestor who has left a legacy of murder and enslavement or anything, things that the descendant has to live with,” he explains. “If these are approached as things that are blocking the human imagination, the person’s life purpose, and even the person’s view of life as something that can improve, then it makes sense to begin thinking in terms of how to turn that blockage into a roadway that can lead to something more creative and more fulfilling.”

The example of issues with an ancestors touches on rituals designed by Dr. Somé that address a serious dysfunction in Western society and in the process “trigger enlightenment” in participants. These are ancestral rituals, and the dysfunction they are aimed at is the mass turning-of-the-back on ancestors. Some of the spirits trying to come through, as described earlier, may be “ancestors who want to merge with a descendant in an attempt to heal what they weren’t able to do while in their physical body.”

“Unless the relationship between the living and the dead is in balance, chaos ensues,” he says. “The Dagara believe that, if such an imbalance exists, it is the duty of the living to heal their ancestors. If these ancestors are not healed, their sick energy will haunt the souls and psyches of those who are responsible for helping them.” The rituals focus on healing the relationship with our ancestors, both specific issues of an individual ancestor and the larger cultural issues contained in our past. Dr. Somé has seen extraordinary healing occur at these rituals.

Taking a sacred ritual approach to mental illness rather than regarding the person as a pathological case gives the person affected–and indeed the community at large–the opportunity to begin looking at it from that vantage point too, which leads to “a whole plethora of opportunities and ritual initiative that can be very, very beneficial to everyone present,” states. Dr. Somé.

Excerpted from:  The Natural Medicine Guide to Schizophrenia, or The Natural Medicine Guide to Bi-polar Disorder, pages 178-189, Stephanie Marohn (featuring Malidoma Patrice Somé).

from:    http://www.wakingtimes.com/2014/08/22/shaman-sees-mental-hospital/

The Depression Trap

Posted on by

6 Lies Your Depression Wants You to Believe (& How to Not Fall Into The Trap)

depression-darkness-man

The world we have created is a product of our thinking; it cannot be changed without changing our thinking. ~Albert Camus

When depression hits, it hijacks your thoughts and feelings. It whispers seductive lies into your ears; lies that gradually start sounding like the truth. I know how that feels, because I have struggled with it too. If on the other hand, you knew the lies depression commonly uses, then you can ignore or replace them with your own inner truth. And every time you do that, you have healed a little bit.

So, here are some common ‘depression deceptions’ to watch out for:

1. It’s a chemical condition. So I can’t really do anything about it right?

Wrong

I’m a psychiatrist and so I hear this one a lot. And it dismays me. As a society, we have gone from one extreme-thinking that everything was related to your mother-to the other extreme-now everything is a chemical condition that is beyond our control. Both are too simplistic. We are complex individuals with unique and rich stories. There is no one answer that will always fit all of us.

Yes your brain is made up of electrical impulses and chemical substances that change a million times in a day and make up your thoughts and/or emotions. And yes, often times, severe clinical depression requires medications. In fact, they can be essential and life saving in some situations. But, and listen to this very closely, even when they work well, medications alone don’t keep you from getting depressed again. What they do, is give you enough relief to then workon your self, and change the things in your mind and life, so that hopefully, you don’t feel that depressed again.

In fact, some forms of therapy, such as Mindfulness based cognitive therapy, has been shown to be even better than medications at lowering the risk of relapse (as long as you’ve gotten over the worst hump).

The human mind is very powerful but much of it is amenable to change. It’s a tough process, but so worth the effort.

2. Anyone with my childhood/job/marriage/health/finances would be depressed!

Each of us lives in our own heads and so we only can feel our own pain. Yes we can empathize with others, but we can’t fully feel anyone else’s joy or pain as intimately as we can feel our own.

This can lead us to feel trapped by the pain of our own life circumstances.

I used to feel this way as well. My depression would tell me “Your mom committed suicide and your dad is a narcissist. It’s not possible for you to ever be happy”. The worst part was, I believed it for a long time.

Since then, I have been fortunate to feel my own strengths, to learn about the brain, to read books and meet amazing people who have overcome great odds, proving to me over and over again that the human spirit is greater than the sum of past events.

You have great inner strength and wisdom within you. Whatever may have happened in your past is only one part of you. Don’t let it dictate your whole life

3. I’ve tried everything. Nothing works for me.

Do you feel like you have tried every single thing to help yourself? And nothing is working?

If that’s the case, maybe you’re trying too hard. Sometimes chasing happinessmakes it more…..elusive, like a butterfly that will only come and softly sit on your shoulder when you can simply be in it’s presence without chasing it.

Try just surrounding yourself with people who seem genuinely happy. Not the Polly Anna kind of superficial happy. But the folks that exude a sense of deep contentment and peace from within. Don’t compare or force happiness to come to you. Just be in its presence.

4. I’ll be happier once I lose weight/get a raise/buy a home…

I wasted lots of my time in my 20’s hoping that if I just worked desperately toward  achieving this or that, I would live happily ever after. Well, I did achieve most of those things, and it did make me feel excited briefly, but soon I had gone back to my usual state of mind. Feeling confused, I would replace it with another “goal” and chase after that, hoping that this time, the happiness would be deeper and long lasting.

And one day I was explaining this theory to a close friend, and she said simply “What’s wrong with now? Why not just be happy now?”

It blew me away. Because she wasn’t telling me to not reach for my goals, but rather that I was missing out on the possibility of NOW.

This very moment is alive with possibility. Whenever you begin to worry about the future or connect your happiness to some elusive goal, take a moment to bring your awareness back to this moment. Use your senses to really see, hear, smell and touch your immediate surroundings. And think of one thing you are grateful for today. Maybe it’s your morning cup of coffee, the hug your son gave you or that your friend called to share a joke. Whatever it is, if you truly loved it, spend a few moments being genuinely thankful that you had that TODAY.

5. I’ve screwed up a lot. I hate myself. I’m not worthy of happiness.

This is a tough one, because when we don’t love ourselves, that’s where the work must start. No foundation, no building.

Whatever you may have done in the past, it’s gone. That moment can never come back.

However, every new breath you take now is a new chance at life.  It’s totally fresh and alive for you to shape as you like. And if this one doesn’t do it, that’s fine, your next breath is again a fresh possibility. And the next. And the next.

Until you take your last breath, you have millions of moments to start over and become the person you want to be. It’s up to you what you do with each one.

6. Most of my life is okay, except for that one ‘X’ thing.

I once read a story that goes something like this.

A professor puts up a big white board with a black dot on it, and then asks his students to describe what they see.

Most of them come close to scrutinize the board and blurt out the answer excitedly “The black dot! There is a black dot on it!”

Finally, the professor says “It’s interesting that most of you didn’t notice the whole white board in front of you, but rather chose to focus on that one small black dot”

This is what happens when we focus solely on the negative things. I’m not saying your difficulties are just dot sized. Not at all. All I’m saying is: Don’t forget to enjoy the beautiful expanse of white in your life. Because it’s there.

Source: “6 Lies Your Depression Wants You to Believe (& How to Not Fall Into the Trap)”, from thechangeblog.com, by Kavetha Sundaramoorthy

from:    http://theunboundedspirit.com/6-lies-your-depression-wants-you-to-believe-how-to-not-fall-into-the-trap/

Wegner’s White Bear Experiment

Posted on by

Wegner’s White Bear Experiment: A Classic Study on Thought Suppression

white_bearIn a study by Wegner et al., participants were instructed to not think of white bears for a period of 5 minutes and to ring a bell each time the thought of a white bear crossed their minds. Following this initial suppression period, another 5-minute phase was introduced during which participants could think of anything they wanted, including white bears, and continued to ring a bell each time the thought of a white bear surfaced. This group was compared to another group of participants who performed the expression phase first, without initial suppression. The results showed that suppression in the first phase was difficult for the participants—most of them thought of white bears despite instructions not to think of them—and that thoughts of white bears rebounded after suppression in the second, free expression phase. In other words, the rate of white bear thoughts during the expression phase was higher in the suppression-first group than in the expression-first group.

In order to control thoughts and behaviours, people often try to suppress unwanted thoughts. Dieters may try to avoid thinking about fatty foods, a person in drug rehabilitation may try not to think of drugs, a student may attempt to concentrate on an exam and suppress thoughts of distracting objects, and a professor may try to suppress aggressive thoughts about a colleague he finds immoral and socially unacceptable. Yet, many times these attempts to suppress one’s thoughts not only fail but also produce the opposite effect.

Source: This is an excerpt adapted from “A motivational model of post-suppressional rebound,” published in European Review of Social Psychology, by Jens Förster and Nira Liberman

from:    http://theunboundedspirit.com/wegners-white-bear-experiment-a-classic-study-on-thought-suppression/

Bringing in Positive Energy

Posted on by
Dr. Carmen Harra

Author, clinical psychologist and relationship expert

Banish Bad Energy From Everyday Life

 Nature designed us as social creatures — we were meant to mingle, communicate constantly, and connect with each other on so many levels. It should come as no surprise, then, that in going about our everyday routines, we come into contact with hundreds of different energies: speaking with friends and family, listening to the many voices on TV, picking up tidbits of conversation from coworkers. Even asking the barista for your morning brew means you’re connecting!

Every energetic encounter, no matter how slight or fleeting, leaves an impression on our own field of energy. But what happens when we meet less-than-positive people and must merge with their dark disposition? This too comes with our daily dose of interaction, and since we can’t always help who’s around us, we must learn to block out energies that are detrimental to our morale. Follow my seven simple steps to banish bad energy from others and uplift your own energetic essence:

Identify who’s prone to a bad mood: Identify the people around you who are most likely to express negative energy. They might be under a lot of pressure, going through a difficult time, or just have a personality that lends a bad attitude. Some people simply see the glass as half empty rather than half full. And that’s fine for them, but their unstable temperament should not spill onto you.

Understand how their moods affect you: Analyze how their negative energy is depriving your own state of being, your emotions, and your ability to function. Once you acknowledge the impact, you’ll understand that their moods might be affecting you more than you think, leaving you physically and mentally drained. You may not realize it, but you absorb energies around you just as much as you absorb oxygen from the air.

Avoid those who give off bad energy: You should not have to “put up with” anyone’s bad mood on a daily basis, whether the person is your boss, family member, or spouse. If you know someone who is constantly low-spirited due to life circumstances or otherwise, it might be time for you to politely create a bit of space between you. You can’t run the other way whenever you see someone scowl, but you should shy away from people who emit chronic negativity and gravitate closer to those who praise a positive mindset.

Find a peaceful place: When you sense someone’s energy becoming toxic, try to retreat to a place of solitude. This might be your private office, your bedroom, even your car if you have nowhere else to go. The important thing is that you withdraw yourself from the unhealthy atmosphere and take a minute to recharge your own energy. When someone else’s energy is making you feel uncomfortable, try affirmations. You can say things like, “I love myself therefore I protect my energy from the harmful vibes of others.”

Create a shield of protection: Don’t allow others to tap into your field of energy; your energetic territory is your very own personal space of being, and very few people should have access to this private part of your self. If you’re an open person who invites others into your “energy bubble,” you grant them the opportunity to modify your mood and mold your well-being to their liking. Remember that when someone enters your energy field, their own state of being doesn’t trail far behind. If you feel this happens to you often, keep your energetic doors closed to invaders.

Practice pure energy: Your energetic levels determine the precious, sometimes irreversible decisions you make. And if your energy is foggy from the emotional fumes of others, you may not always make the best decisions. In unpleasant situations, seek solutions through healing, high-spirited methods rather than through destructive, unruly emotions. Your problems may reach the same resolutions whether you utilize logic or desperation, but you will waste much more energy employing the latter.

Keep your own emotions in check: Just as we exercise our bodies, we must also exercise our emotions. We often believe we don’t have the power to control our emotions, but we do! We tend to enable our emotions by feeding into the negative ones like anger, jealousy, and sadness. Instead, we need to control our negative emotions before they take control of us. Practice keeping your emotions within a normal range in order to keep them healthy and stable. Our greatest mistakes are made in moments of anger, which raises adrenaline levels and takes hold of our actions. Remember that the more you enable anger, the more the nerve cells of your brain evoke this emotion. Similarly, the more you practice feelings of tranquility, unconditional love, and rational thinking, the more you will slip naturally into these moods.

Though our moods fluctuate naturally, they should never flare up or plummet due to the negative influences of others. We must remember that, ultimately, feeling good begins within us, meaning we have to work hand in hand with our inner emotions to stay balanced. Take my seven simple steps into consideration the next time you connect to the energies of others–it might be very soon!

Sending you joyful energy,

Dr. Carmen Harra

from:    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-carmen-harra/positive-energy_b_3746813.html?utm_hp_ref=gps-for-the-soul&ir=GPS%20for%20the%20Soul

Breathing Through Emotional Stress

Posted on by
emotion

How to control your emotional state through breathing

Friday, May 24, 2013 by: Seppo

Tags: Emotion, Breathing, Control

(NaturalNews) For centuries, the art of breathing has been one of a myriad of tools employed by Yoga masters in order to calm the body and mind, in preparation for meditation, contemplation or simply to remain in control of one’s emotions. Long utilized as a spiritual practice, a recent study has now brought the use of breathing as a way to control emotions into the realm of neuroscience. The results are promising and could mean a reduction in the administration of drugs as a form of anxiety, depression and anger management.

The study and its findings

Carried out at the Universite de Louvain by Dr. Pierre Philippot, the research study focused on two groups with the aim of investigating whether breathing can generate and regulate emotions and their intensity.

While we are already aware that breathing has a calming effect on us, in situations such as when we are under pressure or in the midst of panic, it isn’t clear whether breathing actually generates emotions. This study helped immensely in that regard since it showed that each emotion actually has a specific breathing pattern associated with it.

For example:

Panic – Short, fast, shallow breaths
Anger – Long forced breaths
Calmness – Slow steady breaths
Happiness – Long inhalations, long exhalations

The first group was asked to generate each of the above emotions by modifying their breathing pattern and recalling a memory that helps in eliciting that emotion.

Each participant from group one also filled out a questionnaire, citing breathing patterns alongside each emotion according to their own experience. This questionnaire proved to be eye-opening as the answers garnered were in accordance with each other right across the board, for the most part. That is, each participant used a similar breathing pattern to generate happiness (and this holds true also for the other emotions).

The second group was asked to breathe using the breathing patterns from the first study group. Not long after, they began to experience the specific emotion attached to that particular breathing pattern made clear in the first part of the test.

The results suggest – just as Yoga masters and instructors have known for centuries, breathing really does affect one’s emotional state.

What does this mean for you?

Quite simply, it means that there is now another tried and tested method for controlling our emotional state, which previously was believed so difficult. Once this information is passed on to the general public, no longer just in possession of Yoga practitioners, we might see a slight improvement in the general mental health of the population.

Sufferers of anxiety, depression, anger etc. will be able to learn how to control their emotions through breathing and this could mean a drop in the dependence upon drugs as a treatment. For many, drugs are not working, and are in fact making things worse.

Granted, just as with anything that requires concentration, such as exercise or meditation, breathing to control one’s emotions undoubtedly requires discipline and diligence. Nevertheless, these results offer a much needed alternative to the limited techniques already in use for those in emotional turmoil and could one day be employed by therapists and counselors.

The Pathology of Hoarding

Posted on by

Normal or Not? When Collecting Becomes Hoarding

Wynne Parry, LiveScience Contributor
Messy packed room full of antique objects like dolls, an accordion, wicker or basket chairs
 Piles of antique dolls or almost-working appliances may be part of a harmless collection, or they could signal a hoarding disorder, say psychiatrists.
CREDIT: Sergio Schnitzler | Shutterstock

Editor’s Note: With the release of the latest edition of the mental health manual, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), LiveScience takes a close look at some of the disorders it defines. This series asks the fundamental question: What is normal, and what is not?

Perhaps the piles of newspapers, almost-working appliances, or old Barbie dolls start out as part of a harmless, if eccentric, collection. Or perhaps they are items on a languishing to-do list. But as the clutter builds, it can become pathological.

Until the release of the new mental health manual, the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), Wednesday (May 22), hoarding was considered to be part of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). But the American Psychiatric Association task force behind the newest version of the manual has given the compulsion to excessively collect things without value its own diagnosis.

People with what is now known as hoarding disorder hang on to items, because they fear they will need them at some point in the future. They may also feel excessively attached to, or overvalue the worth of, these possessions

Whereas normal collections contain items with value, those amassed by a hoarder are, in an objective sense, junk, said Robin Rosenberg, a clinical psychologist and co-author of the psychology textbook “Abnormal Psychology” (Worth Publishers, 2009). Unlike a collector, a hoarder imposes no limit on him or herself.

“A collector, in theory, will sell or cull a collection when they don’t have enough room for all the objects,”  Rosenberg said. “A hoarder will just fill the room, literally fill the room to the brim.”

This can be dangerous. Piles and piles of old papers can create a fire hazard and potentially life-threatening danger for the person and for firefighters called to the scene should there be a fire. Accumulated junk also creates habitat for insects and other pests.

“It is often a little bit made fun of in films, but as an actual disorder it is not funny,” Rosenberg said. “People can be really crippled by their inability to throw things away and it is a safety hazard.”

OCD can manifest in behaviors such as repeated hand washing for fear of germs or checking locks over and over again to make certain they are locked. Those behind the revisions to the DSM-5 argue that available data don’t show hoarding to be a symptom of OCD.

Some research shows hoarders tend to experience a different pattern of symptoms than people with OCD, and some brain imaging studies show hoarding disorder has a different neurobiology.

The elevation of hoarding to a distinct disorder is among the changes in the DSM-5 that have prompted concerns from critics about “diagnostic inflation” that they say will unnecessarily increase diagnoses of mental illness.

from:    http://www.livescience.com/34576-dsm-hoarding-disorder.html

Or Bodies as Predictors of the Future

Posted on by

Can Our Bodies Predict the Future?

Tia Ghose, LiveScience Staff Writer
Date: 01 November 2012
Photo
CREDIT: The Skeptical Inquirer

People’s bodies know a big event is coming just before it happens, at least according to a new study.

If true, the research, published Oct. 17 in the journal Frontiers of Perception, suggests something fundamental about the laws of nature has yet to be discovered.

“The claim is that events can be predicted without any cues,” said Julia Mossbridge, a Northwestern University neuroscientist who co-authored the study. “This evidence suggests the effect is real but small. So the question is: How does it work?”

Other scientists are skeptical of this interpretation, however. They suggest some bias in which studies get published could play a role in seeing an effect where there is none.

Real effect?

Many studies have shown that physical responses including heart rate, pupil dilation and brain activity change between one and 10 seconds before people see a scary image (like a slithering snake). In most of these experiments, frightening pictures were randomly interspersed with more-neutral ones, so that in theory participants didn’t have any clues about which photo would pop up next. But because the finding seemed so unnatural, those studies were understandably met with skepticism.

To see whether the effect was real, Mossbridge and her team analyzed over two dozen of these studies. As part of the analysis, they threw out any experiments in which they saw bias or flaws.

They still found a “presentiment” effect, in which measures of physiological excitement changed seconds before an event. The finding suggests that people’s bodies subconsciously sense the future when something important is about to happen, even if the people don’t know it.

For instance, if you were a day-trader betting lots of money on one stock, “10 seconds beforehand you might predict your stock tanking,” Mossbridge told LiveScience.

The paper doesn’t claim that people are psychic or have supernatural or paranormal powers. Instead, the authors believe presentiment is a real, physical effect that obeys natural laws — just ones that nobody understands, Mossbridge said. [Infographic: Belief in the Paranormal]

Researchers skeptical

But others doubt presentiment exists at all.

While the statistical methods used in the study are sound, that doesn’t mean presentiment is real, said Rufin VanRullen, a cognitive scientist at the Center for Research on the Brain and Cognition, in an email.

“All it means is that there is a statistical trend for scientists who search for these so-called presentiment effects to actually find them,” wrote VanRullen, who was not involved in the study.

Instead, it’s more likely that the experiments are biased, perhaps unintentionally, in a way the study authors missed, Kyle Elliott Mathewson, a researcher at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, said via email.

It’s also possible that scores of researchers looked for this result, failed to find it and forgot all about it, added Mathewson, who like VanRullen wasn’t involved in the study. Those studies would never be published, he said, so the overall effect in the published studies would be biased.

According to the researchers, in order for such bias to explain their results, at least 87 other unpublished studies would need to show no effect.

“Between psychology labs and parapsychology investigations, I can imagine this many failed experiments that go unreported easily,” Mathewson wrote.

from:    http://www.livescience.com/24479-bodies-predict-the-future.html

Your Brain on Shopping

Posted on by

How Your Brain Thinks When You Shop

Chad Brooks, BusinessNewsDaily Contributor
Date: 03 July 2012
first place

CREDIT: Winning race image via Shutterstock

Marketers take note — being first has its advantages.

New research shows people’s preferences are unconsciously and immediately guided to those options presented first, especially in circumstances when decisions must be made without much deliberation.

In three experiments, when making quick choices, participants consistently preferred people and consumer goods presented first, as opposed to similar offerings in second and sequential positions.

The study’s authors say their findings have practical applications in a variety of settings, including consumer marketing.

“Our research shows that managers, for example, in management or marketing, may want to develop their business strategies knowing that first encounters are preferable to their clients or consumers, said Dana R. Carney, the study’s co-author and assistant professor of management at the University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.

As part of the research, the study’s participants were asked to evaluate three different groups, including two teams, two male sales associates and two female sales associates. After being presented with each group’s options, the study questioned the participants on their choices both by asking their preference up front and then having them complete a reaction-time task adapted from cognitive psychology in which participants’ automatic, unconscious preference for each option was assessed.

Regardless of whom people said they preferred, on the unconscious, cognitive measure of preference, participants always preferred the first team or person to whom they were introduced, according to the research.

To test the theory on consumer goods, the researchers asked more than 200 passengers at a train station to select one of two pieces of similar bubble gum within a second of seeing the choices. The study found that when thinking fast, the bubble gum presented first was the preferable choice in most cases.

The researchers believe several factors could be behind the study’s results, including that the preference for the initial choice has its origins in an evolutionary adaptation favoring firsts. The authors point to the example of how in most cases, humans tend to innately prefer the first people they meet, such as a mother and family members.

Carney said the historic concept of the established “pecking order” also supports their findings.

The study, “First is Best,” was co-authored by Mahzarin R. Banaji, professor of psychology at Harvard University and recently published in the journal PLoS ONE.

from:    http://www.livescience.com/21369-shoppers.html

Phobias, Fears, & Spiders, Oh My!

Posted on by

If You’re Afraid of Spiders, They Seem Bigger: Phobia’s Effect On Perception of Feared Object Allows Fear to Persist

ScienceDaily (Feb. 22, 2012) — The more afraid a person is of a spider, the bigger that individual perceives the spider to be, new research suggests.

The more afraid a person is of a spider, the bigger that individual perceives the spider to be, new research suggests. (Credit: © M.R. Swadzba / Fotolia)

In the context of a fear of spiders, this warped perception doesn’t necessarily interfere with daily living. But for individuals who are afraid of needles, for example, the conviction that needles are larger than they really are could lead people who fear injections to avoid getting the health care they need.

A better understanding of how a phobia affects the perception of feared objects can help clinicians design more effective treatments for people who seek to overcome their fears, according to the researchers.

In this study, participants who feared spiders were asked to undergo five encounters with live spiders — tarantulas, in fact — and then provide size estimates of the spiders after those encounters ended. The more afraid the participants said they were of the spiders, the larger they estimated the spiders had been.

“If one is afraid of spiders, and by virtue of being afraid of spiders one tends to perceive spiders as bigger than they really are, that may feed the fear, foster that fear, and make it difficult to overcome,” said Michael Vasey, professor of psychology at Ohio State University and lead author of the study.

“When it comes to phobias, it’s all about avoidance as a primary means of keeping oneself safe. As long as you avoid, you can’t discover that you’re wrong. And you’re stuck. So to the extent that perceiving spiders as bigger than they really are fosters fear and avoidance, it then potentially is part of this cycle that feeds the phobia that leads to its persistence.

“We’re trying to understand why phobias persist so we can better target treatments to change those reasons they persist.”

The study is published in a recent issue of the Journal of Anxiety Disorders.

The researchers recruited 57 people who self-identified as having a spider phobia. Each participant then interacted at specific time points over a period of eight weeks with five different varieties of tarantulas varying in size from about 1 to 6 inches long.

The spiders were contained in an uncovered glass tank. Participants began their encounters 12 feet from the tank and were asked to approach the spider. Once they were standing next to the tank, they were asked to guide the spider around the tank by touching it with an 8-inch probe, and later with a shorter probe.

Throughout these encounters, researchers asked participants to report how afraid they were feeling on a scale of 0-100 according to an index of subjective units of distress. After the encounters, participants completed additional self-report measures of their specific fear of spiders, any panic symptoms they experienced during the encounters with the spiders, and thoughts about fear reduction and future spider encounters.

Finally, the research participants estimated the size of the spiders — while no longer being able to see them — by drawing a single line on an index card indicating the length of the spider from the tips of its front legs to the tips of its back legs.

An analysis of the results showed that higher average peak ratings of distress during the spider encounters were associated with estimates that the spiders were larger than they really were. Similar positive associations were seen between over-estimates of spider size and participants’ higher average peak levels of anxiety, higher average numbers of panic symptoms and overall spider fear. These findings have been supported in later studies with broader samples of people with varying levels of fear of spiders.

“It would appear from that result that fear is driving or altering the perception of the feared object, in this case a spider,” said Vasey, also the director of research for the psychology department’s Anxiety and Stress Disorders Clinic. “We already knew fear and anxiety alter thoughts about the feared thing. For example, the feared outcome is interpreted as being more likely than it really is. But this study shows that even perception is altered by fear. In this case, the feared spider is seen as being bigger. And that may serve as a maintaining factor for the fear.”

The approach tasks with the spiders are a classic example of exposure therapy, a common treatment for people with phobias. Though this therapy is known to be effective, scientists still do not fully understand why it works. And for some, the effects don’t last — but it is difficult to predict who will have a relapse of fear, Vasey said.

He and colleagues are studying these biased perceptions as well as attitudes with hopes that the new knowledge will enhance treatment for people with various phobias. The work suggests that fear not only alters one’s perception of the feared thing, but also can influence a person’s automatic attitude toward an object. Those who have developed an automatic negative attitude toward a feared object might have a harder time overcoming their fear.

Though individuals with arachnophobia are unlikely to seek treatment, the use of spiders in this research was a convenient way to study the complex effects of fear on visual perception and how those effects might cause fear to persist, Vasey noted.

“Ultimately, we are interested in identifying predictors of relapse so we can better measure when a person is done with treatment,” he said.

This work is supported by the National Institute of Mental Health.

Co-authors include Michael Vilensky, Jacqueline Heath, Casaundra Harbaugh, Adam Buffington and Vasey’s principal collaborator, Russell Fazio, all of Ohio State’s Department of Psychology.

from:    http://www.chromographicsinstitute.com/wp-admin/post-new.php

Logic & Gut Thinking

Posted on by

People Don’t Just Think With Their Guts: Logic Plays a Role, Too

ScienceDaily (Dec. 29, 2011) — For decades, science has suggested that when people make decisions, they tend to ignore logic and go with the gut. But Wim De Neys, a psychological scientist at the University of Toulouse in France, has a new suggestion: Maybe thinking about logic is also intuitive. He writes about this idea in the January issue of Perspectives on Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science

Psychologists have partly based their conclusions about reasoning and decision-making on questions like this one:

“Bill is 34. He is intelligent, punctual but unimaginative and somewhat lifeless. In school, he was strong in mathematics but weak in social studies and humanities.

Which one of the following statements is most likely?

(a) Bill plays in a rock band for a hobby.

(b) Bill is an accountant and plays in a rock band for a hobby.”

Most people will let their stereotypes about accountants rule and pick (b). But, in fact, we have no idea what Bill does for a living — he could be a politician, a concert pianist, or a drug dealer — so it’s more likely that only one random possibility, the rock band, is true, than that both (a) and (b) would happen to be true.

This line of research has suggested that people don’t use logic when making decisions about the world. But the truth is more complicated, De Neys says. When most people read a question like the one above, there’s a sense that something isn’t quite right. “That feeling you have, that there’s something fishy about the problem — we have a wide range of ways to measure that conflict,” De Neys says. For example, he has shown with brain imaging that when people are thinking about this kind of problem, a part of their brain that deals with conflict is active. “They stick to their gut feeling and don’t do the logical thing, but they do sense that what they are doing is wrong,” De Neys says.

De Neys thinks this sense, that something isn’t quite right with the decision you’re making, comes from an intuitive sense of logic. Other scientists have found that children start thinking logically very early. In one study, 8-month-old babies were surprised if someone pulled mostly red balls out of a box that contained mostly white balls, proof that babies have an innate sense of probability before they can even talk. It makes sense, De Neys says, that this intuitive sense of logic would stick around in adults.

This research deals with the basics of how we think, but De Neys says it may help explain more complex decision-making. If you want to teach people to make better decisions, he says, “It’s important to know which component of the process is faulty.” For example, if you want to understand why people are smoking, and you think it’s because they don’t understand the logic — that smoking kills — you might put a lot of energy into explaining how smoking is bad for them, when the actual problem is addiction. It’s a long way from a question about Bill’s career to understanding something like why someone decides to get married, for example; but research like this should help,” De Neys says

from:    http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/12/111229131356.htm