If you had a busy week, you probably missed out a few of Psych Central’s most interesting news stories. But, do not fear: I’ve summarized three of our top brain, tech, and workplace news stories in this week’s “Week in Review” video podcast. In this episode, we answer the following questions:

• How do metaphors affect your brain?
• Can a Smartphone determine when you’re depressed?

• What causes a loss of $225.8 billion per year in the US alone?

Check out our latest video podcast below for the answers:

• Metaphors Can Light Up Brain’s Sensory Area

• Harnessing Smartphones, Apps to Beat Depression
• Co-Worker Support Reduces Workplace Stress, Ups Productivity
• Submit Your Psychotherapy Stories

Also, if you answered our question about Valentine’s Day this week on our Facebook fan page, you’ll definitely want to watch this video — your comment might be included in the final segment!

We’ve listened to your feedback regarding both formats…and the winner is video!

This week’s “Psych Central Week in Review” video brings you some news about the role of social media in mental health, a request from “My Meds, My Self” blogger Kaitlin Barnett Bell for your own personal med stories, and a few of your answers to our questions on Facebook this week! (Be sure to watch — your own comments might be included!)

The full list of topics covered this week in the video include:

News: Online Social Networking May Cause Job Loss
News: Facebook May be Harmful to Self-Esteem
News: Perception of Illness Influences Outcome
News: 1 in 5 Americans Experienced a Mental Illness in Past Year
My Meds, My Self: Tell Me Your Stories About Medication
World of Psychology: Want to Feel Happier? Enjoying Childish Pleasures

As always, please let us know what you think. What type of news would you like to see us focus on in the future? Is there a particular disorder or area of interest you’d like to see covered in our weekly news updates?

In fact, I live in the college town in which I used to attend college.

I moved back here a few months ago and I pass my (er, the college’s) library daily. It brings back plenty of academic memories — and, surprisingly, they’re not the stressful ones. In the six years that have passed since my graduation, the memories of stress and panic and due dates and overwhelming projects has faded.

But the positive stuff remains: the nights spent in a library study nook with my Intro to Communication textbook and a highlighter. (I loved that class.)

The satisfaction of applying a concept I learned in my 9 a.m. Intro to Logic class to my 2 p.m. Composition class. (I could point out all the major logical fallacies in our assigned reading.)

The scent of the pages of a brand-new textbook. (Am I the only one who thinks that new books sort of smell like cucumbers on the inside?)

I hit the peak of wistful sentimentality last week and found a way to re-create a portion of the academic college experience (without the stress!): watching actual college lectures on Academic Earth.

Go ahead. Call me a nerd. I’ll graciously accept your label and even take a small bow.

4 Free Online Psychology Courses

There are dozens (if not hundreds) of free online courses from major universities like Yale and MIT. Academic Earth collects these courses and catalogs them by professor and category. (They’re rated by quality, too.)

And lucky for us lovers of all things psychology, there are four complete psychology courses to choose from:

• Introduction to Psychology with Paul Bloom (Yale)

• Introduction to General Psychology with John Kihlstrom (Berkeley)
• Communication and Conflict in Couples and Families with Benjamin Karney (UCLA)
• Neuroscience Lab with William Grisham (UCLA)

I’m about a third of the way through Dr. Paul Bloom’s “Introduction to Psychology” course right now. I highly recommend checking it out if you’d like to:

• Garner a greater appreciation for the study of the mind

• Expand your definition of “psychology” beyond the world of mental disorders
• Discover how humans create, learn, and use language

Actually, the course description itself is much more compelling than my list above:

What do your dreams mean? Do men and women differ in the nature and intensity of their sexual desires? Can apes learn sign language? Why can’t we tickle ourselves? This course tries to answer these questions and many others, providing a comprehensive overview of the scientific study of thought and behavior. It explores topics such as perception, communication, learning, memory, decision-making, religion, persuasion, love, lust, hunger, art, fiction, and dreams. We will look at how these aspects of the mind develop in children, how they differ across people, how they are wired-up in the brain, and how they break down due to illness and injury.

Dr. Bloom’s presentation of the material is intellectually stimulating, but it’s also quite accessible. Don’t fear: because the course is designed as an introductory one, the professor doesn’t assume his students have any formal study of psychology. He explains complex concepts clearly. He cracks relevant jokes to engage the audience. He explains why you’re still avoiding that food or beverage that you vomited up when you were 8.

If you need a dull lecture to lull you to sleep tonight, don’t watch a lecture from this course. It’ll keep you awake and you’ll be Googling phrases like “object permanence” and “taste aversion” at midnight.

The first lecture (appropriately titled ‘Introduction to Psychology’) can be found here.

Photo credit: TZA on Flickr.

One Hello World is a man, a phone number, and a few musical instruments. Here’s the premise: anyone who wants to tell a story can call (316) 247-0421 and leave an anonymous voice mail message.

“Max,” the mind behind this Postsecret-esque project, will then compose a musical soundtrack to correspond with your story. He posts the completed tracks to his website at onehelloworld.com.

If you couldn’t guess by the quotes, “Max” isn’t his real name. Why the pseudonym, you might ask?

“I just don’t plaster my name all over the thing,” Max explained, “since One Hello World isn’t really about me.”

That’s because it’s about you. And me. And you, and you, and you.

Back in January, I called in and told a story about a panic attack I’d had in college. Unlike any of my other panic attacks, this particular attack resulted in a free chicken sandwich and a chocolate bar from a stranger. (I know, I know — it’s hard to string that one together and compute how A leads to B. If you want to hear the whole story, listen here.)

Max composed some music to correspond with my story and the stories of many, many others. And now, he’s raising money on Kickstarter so he can release a CD compilation of this unique crowdsourced work that highlights the human condition through narrative and music.

Last week, I chatted with Max about the project, his reactions to the voice mails he receives, and his upcoming album, The Listener.

Summer Beretsky: So, I’ll start with a very general question: what inspired you to start the One Hello World project?

One Hello World: Well, I was recording some music one night and I decided it needed more than just my composition. So, I asked my friends to call into a voice mail and tell me how they defined happiness. I compiled the recordings into a track and posted it online. In seeing the interesting work that came out of projects that follow the anonymous contributor model (like PostSecret), I wondered if people I didn’t know would be interested in “collaborating” by sharing their story with me. That’s when I posted the track and the phone number on tumblr. People’s interesting stories (and their candor in sharing them) inspire me to continue to produce soundtracks.

SB: Yeah, people ARE really candid in many of the calls. What do you think makes people so comfortable sharing their stories with you?

OHW: Their own anonymity and my ongoing promise to pass no judgments. My music and the blog are simply a conduit to convey their message.

SB: You’ve probably heard plenty of voice mails over the past…year? About how long have you been doing the OHW project? And what kinds of stories do you hear about most often? Breakups? Failures? Achievements?

OHW: I’ve been producing One Hello World since August of 2010. In that time, I’ve heard thousands of voice mails. The topic I most often hear about is love: falling for the first time, breakups, uncertainty, or cherishing the continued affection of somebody special.

SB: Can you describe the range of reactions you’ve had to the voice mails you’ve received?

OHW: My personal reactions have been on a very broad range. Because I’m listening to the voice mails from an empathetic point of view, my feelings tend to fall in line with that of the caller’s — the more inside the person’s thoughts I can get, the better I can reflect them through music.

SB: Empathy is a wonderful thing! But does it ever get exhausting? Especially when composing music for sadder stories, like the ones about breakups or uncertainty?

OHW: It might if I was always working with the most depressing material. I try my best to maintain a balance of moods and expressions on One Hello World. That’s not to say that I’m not deeply affected by some of the more upsetting stories. Of all I my callers, I’ve only ever known the identity of one. And the reason I knew was because I was familiar with his story of losing his father to cancer. It was very depressing putting together that track for him and to this day is a difficult one to listen to.

SB: So, why do you think the project works? Why do people like listening to voice mails from strangers? (I’m always intrigued by projects like this, and like PostSecret… it sort of feels like spying to me, but in a welcome way.)

OHW: I think the project works because people either have a curiosity for experiences and perspectives that they have not had themselves. Either that or they have the desire to relate to somebody. I know I feel vindicated in my own frustration, joy, sadness (etc.) when I hear from a caller who has had a similar experience or feels a similar way about something. That’s why I think people are interested in listening.

SB: It’s pretty cathartic. Actually, I cried when I listened to the “Dream Act” track. I think about it occasionally, especially when I hear the Dream Act mentioned somewhere and I wonder how that girl is doing. Do you find yourself thinking about any particular callers well after you compose the music and publish it to the site?

OHW: Absolutely. I think about the gal who called in for “Movies When You Die”. Her monologue is almost my mantra. Everyday, I’m writing this screenplay with what I do. Not that I endeavor to live an overly dramatic life, but I wish to live one full of various experiences. I want my movie to be a romance, an adventure, an existential drama where life defines itself by the smallest terms (rather than grandiose ventures). For some reason, that track has really stuck with me.

SB: What have you learned about people throughout the course of this project? People in general, that is. The world at large.

OHW: It’s taught me that, when you break down human existence into the fundamental emotions we experience, we’re all so very similar. We all feel sadness, happiness, confusion, courageousness, etc.

SB: Now, the album. You’re on Kickstarter and I see you’re almost halfway to your goal with about two weeks left to donate. If you raise enough money to produce the album, who do you envision buying it? Who should buy it?

OHW: People who are fascinated by the complexities of modern existence. People who like to hear stories. People who are seeking inspiration for living a full and unapologetic life. And I guess if you’re a film score junkie like me, you might be into the music. Though I’m no Howard Shore.

SB: Do you aspire to be the next Howard Shore? I know that you mentioned on your personal blog, awhile back, that you… Design websites for a living and work on OHW in your spare time. Where do you want the future to take you?

OHW: Like anybody, I have wild dreams for the possibilities of what this project could evolve into. I’d love to work with other musicians. I think it’d be interesting to perform these tracks live, to tour the world and bring these stories to other cultures, to have other cultures contribute their own musical stylings to the project – that would all be wonderful. And maybe this Kickstarter album (“The Listener”) will help me get started in some of those ventures. In all, so long as I have people calling in their voice mails, I’m happy to create music for them.

If you want to leave a voice mail for One Hello World, call (316) 247-0421. To listen to some of the latest tracks, check out onehelloworld.com. To contribute to the project, visit their fundraising page on Kickstarter.

Artwork credit: theonlymagicleftisart.com

So, when it comes time to up the ante and move to a new house or apartment, the word “overwhelmed,” then, is reduced to a gigantic understatement. Your heart palpitates at the thought of cardboard boxes. You get lightheaded just thinking about all the nooks and crannies that are crammed with your stuff. Your skin gets clammy as you weakly try to formulate a plan of attack.

Instead of trying to do everything at once, break down the process into digestible steps.

1. Don’t procrastinate! As soon as you sign your new lease or set a move-in date after a new home purchase, get started with the below tips. Also, now is also the time to call around for rates with a moving company, if you choose to use one.

2. Before packing anything, place a large trash bag in each room of your house or apartment. Go through each room one at a time and throw away any items that you can’t donate to charity or can’t/shouldn’t take with you. (Here’s a partial list of what I threw away before my most recent move: a 2007 calendar, inkless pens, DayQuil that expired in 2005, three decks of less than 52 cards, and socks without mates.)

Limit yourself to one or two rooms per day and make trashing the unnecessary stuff your only move-related objective in the room for now. And if you need any inspiration to toss a few items (in both your old house and in your mind), check out fellow blogger Gabrielle Gawne-Kelnar’s recent post about “existential editing”. Or, if you need a laugh, see what George Carlin has to say about all the stuff we keep in our lives. (Warning: the George Carlin audio is NSFW.)

3. Now, go through each room (one at a time!) and create a charity/give-away pile. Then, gather everything up from each room, toss them into the car, and drive them off to Goodwill, the Salvation Army, or to any friends who might be able to breathe new life into your unwanted items. If there are any items that you have a hard time parting with, take photos of them.

4. Get boxes and packaging tape. (If you’re using a moving company, see if boxes are provided in the total price of your quote. If so, be sure to use their boxes instead of spending unnecessary money for boxes elsewhere!) Use an online calculator to determine how many boxes you’ll need…and round up. It is far more stressful to find yourself approaching the big day with not ENOUGH boxes than it is to have a few left over that you may need to give away.

5. Put together three or four boxes for each room of your apartment or house. Put those three or four boxes in each room and begin filling them with items that you need to bring with you but you’re certain you won’t need to use before the move. Example: if it’s summertime, pack up the winter blankets and the sweaters, the Halloween and Christmas decorations, and the like. Tape up the boxes only if you’re sure that you won’t need any of their contents until you arrive at your new place.

6. Use small boxes for heavier items, like books, and use larger boxes for the lighter stuff. Your back will thank you on moving day…and if you’re not in perfect shape, so will your lungs.

7. Have everyone in your family pack a duffel bag or suitcase with enough clothing, underwear, socks, toiletries, and medications to last three or four days. (Be sure to pack this in the car and not in the moving truck.) This bag will come in handy during the last few nights in your old place and the first few nights in your new place. If you don’t have the energy to unpack once you get to your new home, at least you’ll have enough to get by until you can find that box with your socks and underwear.

8. This recommendation logically follows from the fear of not being able to find socks and underwear: label all of your boxes. Include a general description of the contents of the box and the room into which it should be placed.

9. Pack an “essentials box” of items that you’ll need within an hour or so of walking through your new front door. Paper towels, cleaning supplies, toilet paper, dish soap, scissors, some garbage bags, and a utility knife are a few of the most important items, but you can find a longer list here.

You can also pack a separate “food essentials” box that includes snacks or ingredients for easy meals (think peanut butter, jelly, and bread) in case your new oven or stove needs some TLC before it works properly. Don’t forget to pack these boxes in the car and not in the moving truck!

10. As you get closer to moving day, put together three or four more boxes for each room and pack up the the remainder of your stuff. If you come across anything that will come in handy before the move, don’t pack it yet — save it for last. Think cell phone chargers or any electronic gadgets you might need for the car ride.

11. On your last night in your old home, be sure you (and your family members) are living out of their duffel bags or suitcases. By this time, everything that you wouldn’t take on a weekend trip should be all packed up.

Got any other tips to take the stress out of relocation?
Please share them in the comments!

photo credit: elibrody

Photo credit: vrogy (Flickr)

This blog post, I’m convinced, will be a real disaster.

I mean, just think of all the things that could possibly go wrong! If I post it at the wrong time of day, no one will read it. If I don’t write with super-engaging language and in a clever tone, potential readers will bypass my post for something else on the internet that’s far more exciting.

Oh, and I’ll probably (unknowingly!) insert a blatant typo that my eyes refuse to notice — even after several rounds of proofreeding. Or proofreading. Yeah, that second one.

I’ve painted a pretty gloomy picture there, haven’t I?

It feels a little awkward to admit that I’m a pessimist. The world really seems to be riding the wave of optimism these days, at least as far as popular literature is concerned. Amazon.com tells me that I can choose from 1,503 books about optimism and only 571 about pessimism. And the books about optimism all have these flashy, cheesy-grin-inducing subtitles like “The Key to Happiness” and “Passion, Optimism, and Wealth.”

Gag me. I just can’t buy into that happy-go-lucky, glass-half-full, Mentos-flashing style. But on the other hand, I’m not a walking cloud of pessimistic gloom & doom either. (On most days, at least.)

However, my current reading list contains two books of the half-empty variety: Half-Empty by David Rakoff and The Positive Power of Negative Thinking by Julie K. Norem, Ph.D.

And thanks to both books, I’ve nailed down a precise term for my brand of pessimism: defensive pessimism. Reading Rackoff’s description of defensive pessimism is like reading my autobiography. From his interview with Jesse Thorn on PRI’s The Sound Of Young America:

…defensive pessimists are cousins to dispositional pessimists. They see the world as being a little more negative than it actually is like most pessimists, but what defensive pessimists do is they then take that presentiment of disaster, like “this is going to suck” kind of premonition, and they take arms against it, and they envision their worst case scenario coming true.

This is going to suck because of A B C and D, and they go through each aspect of suckhood and they come up with a contingency plan as to what they are going to do to combat that. It’s a means of claiming agency and getting over your anxiety about the world.

That last line stuck with me when I first heard this radio interview. (The whimsy of the word “suckhood” did, too, but I digress.) Defensive pessimism is a means of claiming agency over anxiety. And anxiety is, well, my forté.

Well-intentioned friends & family members have always told me to try & be a little bit more positive in my outlook. Conventional wisdom suggests that greater positivity equals less anxiety. After all, the less time you spend ruminating about the negative aspects of life and all of the what-if scenarios, the more time you’ll have for sunshine and roses, right?

Well, no. Not for me, and not for defensive pessimists. Defensive pessimists use their pessimism as a tool for reducing anxiety. Pretending to be an optimist would only serve to preserve my anxieties — not diminish them.

Let’s Pretend

For example’s sake, let’s pretend I’m preparing to ask my boss for a raise tomorrow. There’s a lot of potential suckhood here. Lots of things could go wrong, including (but not limited to) the following disasters:

1. My boss might say no to my request.
2. She might tell me I’ve violated some sort of unknown company protocol by asking incorrectly.
3. She might laugh at me.
4. She might tell me that I should be lucky to be earning what I’m earning.

The strategic optimist would probably bypass these concerns in order to curb their anxiety level. However, the defensive pessimist would dive right in, dissect each potential disaster, and concoct some contingency plans:

1. If she denies my request, recite a long list of reasons why I think I deserve a raise. Prepare as many good reasons as possible!
2. Before meeting with her, research my company’s policies for requesting raises. Prepare any paperwork, if needed.
3. Dress myself in a thick skin for the meeting. If she laughs, don’t take it personally.
4. If she tells me I ought to feel well-compensated already, reference a few salary surveys for my line of work, education, and experience. Show her, don’t just tell her, the difference between my actual and my ideal salary.

If I tried to walk blindly into the meeting without making the above plans, I’d feel embarrassingly unprepared and anxious. Worse yet, my performance would suffer. From Norem’s website:

My experimental research shows that if defensive pessimists try to raise their expectations, or avoid playing through a worst-case analysis, their anxiety increases and their performance suffers. If strategic optimists set lower expectations or play through possible outcomes, their anxiety increases and their performance decreases.

Sorry, friends & family: if I fight my true nature, my performance will suffer. Let me play the defensive pessimist role; let me anticipate mild disaster, let me play with those what-ifs for a little while, and let me plan my way around them.

Well, there you have it. I hope this blog post wasn’t terrible. I prepared the best I could, mapped out my contingency plans, and sit ready and waiting with a thick skin if you hate it.

Further reading and listening:

Are you a defensive pessimist? Take Julie K. Norem’s quiz here.

Also, you can check out David Rakoff’s interview with Jesse Thorn on PRI’s The Sound Of Young America, or read the transcript here.

And I can’t wait to see how Harold Camping reacts on Sunday when he’s still alive, on this Earth, and in this human body.

That said, let’s talk about a method of persuasion called “social proof.” In Influence: the Psychology of Persuasion, Dr. Robert Cialdini describes social proof as follows:

“In general, when we are unsure of ourselves, when the situation is unclear or ambiguous, when uncertainty reigns, we are most likely to look to and accept the actions of others as correct” (p. 129).

We’re familiar with this concept. Should I laugh at this joke? Better wait and see if anyone else laughs first. Should I join a sorority? Better wait and see if one of my friends joins first. Should I subscribe to Belief XYZ? Better wait and see if anyone else subscribes to that belief first.

The bottom line of social proof: if someone else does it, we know it’s socially acceptable, valid, and perhaps even truer.

In one chapter of his book, Cialdini recounts the story of three scientists who joined a doomsday cult (incognito, of course) to study its inner workings back in the 1950′s.

The cult was led by two people: a college physician who was fascinated by UFO and mysticism, and a woman (the researchers’ pseudonym for her was Mrs. Keech) who claimed to be receiving messages from aliens called “The Guardians” via automatic writing. The duo’s teachings, according to Cialdini, were “loosely linked to traditional Christian thought” — especially after one of the aliens revealed itself to Mrs. Keech as the current embodiment of Jesus.

Then, a horrific transmission from one of the aliens: a giant flood was coming to the Earth! Of course, The Guardians had good news as well: they wanted to save the true believers by whisking them away to safety via a flying saucer.

Many of the members were so committed to the cult and to this “end times” scenario that they quit their jobs, gave away their belongings, dropped out of school, and severed connections with non-believers. They informed the public about the impending disaster, but they didn’t actively seek new converts. The press was hard on them; the media mocked their beliefs.

See any similarities here?

When it came time for the UFO to arrive, the three undercover scientists sat with the rest of the cult members waiting for the clock to strike midnight. Everyone sat around quietly with their coats on their laps. They waited. And waited.

And then the clock struck midnight. And absolutely nothing happened.

No UFO had come to save them. No “rapture,” so to speak, before the impending flood. (No flood ever came, either.)

A bit dismayed, the group then went through the following four stages:

1. They examined the prediction again.
2. The leaders “re-iterated their faith” to the group.
3. Everyone contemplated the predicament.
4. One of the leaders broke down & cried.

It seemed as if the group were about to dissolve into embarrassed disbelievers. But that’s not at all what happened.

Mrs. Keech then received another alien transmission and wrote it down on paper: “The little group, sitting alone all night long, had spread so much light that God saved the world from destruction.”

This sentiment placated a few of the cult members, but they needed something else to rationalize the fact that the doomsday scenario for which they’d given up their lives, belongings, and jobs didn’t pan out. So, they went to the media…and sought publicity. Each cult member took turns calling a different media outlet to share the good news: their little group, sitting alone all night long, had spread so much light that God saved the world from destruction!

Why were they suddenly seeking publicity after such an awful failure of prediction? To obtain social proof, Cialdini argues.

“Oddly, it was not their prior certainty that drove the members to propagate the faith; it was an encroaching sense of uncertainty. It was the dawning realization that if the spaceship and flood predictions were wrong, so might be the entire belief system on which they rested…[t]he group members had gone too far, given up too much for their beliefs to see them destroyed; the shame, the economic cost, the mockery would be too great to bear” (p. 127).

Lacking physical proof for their beliefs (in this case, a UFO landing followed by a great flood), the cult’s only remaining hope was to establish social proof for their beliefs. The more people who believed their story of having prevented a great flood, the more validated the cult members would feel about their efforts — and their faulty prediction.

“The greater the number of people who find any idea correct, the more the idea will be correct,” Cialdini wrote. That’s the principle of social proof: if so many people believe it, it must be true. Right?

So, back to Harold Camping and the folks who believe in his doomsday scenario: what will he do when the rapture doesn’t happen? How will he (and his followers) rationalize the fact that they’re still alive, on this Earth, and in their human bodies?

Drawing from the cult story above, my predictions are as follows:

1. After the rapture doesn’t happen, Camping and the populace of rapture-ready folks will go through a similar series of four stages: they’ll examine the prediction again (whoops, wrong date?), re-iterate their faith in the rapture, take time to contemplate, and become emotionally distressed.

2. After the rapture doesn’t happen, Camping (or another opinion leader on the subject) will put out a statement that essentially paraphrases what Mrs. Keech had written after the UFO didn’t arrive: “The little group, sitting alone all night long, had spread so much light that God saved the world from destruction”.

3. After the rapture doesn’t happen, Camping and his followers will be strengthened in their beliefs — especially those who gave up their livelihood or property in anticipation of the end. They won’t admit that Harold’s prediction was incorrect — the burden of admitting this will be too much to bear — so they’ll begin to believe more deeply in order to avoid a sense of shame.

4. After the rapture doesn’t happen, Camping and his followers will begin to proselytize more strongly. The social proof that they receive by doing this will make them feel validated and fuel further recruitment.

Only the coming days and weeks will tell, but I can’t be too far off in my predictions. (After all, I’m basing my predictions on science and history, not numerology.)

It’s also worth noting that Harold Camping had previously calculated a definite doomsday for the year 1994, so he’s already used up the “wrong date” excuse before.

Fool me once.

Further reading: When Prophecy Fails by Leon Festinger, Henry Riecken, and Stanley Schachter.

Photo credit: Summer Beretsky

Whatever you do, DO NOT think of an elephant right now!

Seriously.

Don’t think about elephants, or big floppy elephant ears, or elephants at circuses, or elephants in the wild.

Now, be honest: you totally just thought of an elephant. Didn’t you?

That’s exactly how I felt all week when I tried to stay away from the internet.

When I opted to spend a week away from the internet and other technological devices, I expected my brief affair with the IRL (“in real life”) world to whisk me away into romantic oblivion.

Sadly, that was not the case.

Instead, I spent a lot of offline time thinking about the technology that I was sorely missing…and about the stress it invites into my life. The constantly-updating Twitter feeds, the myriad Facebook status updates, the crafted-just-for-me streams of news…there’s far more information thrown at us daily than we can possibly consume.

It’s overwhelming, yes, but it’s also sticky and addicting. It’s not easy to step away from. And if you can step away, it’s not easy to stop thinking about it. (And isn’t that a source of stress in itself, too?)

And so, I took plenty of time during my disconnected evenings to think of ways to dull the loud roar of information in our digitally-enhanced lives.

Here’s how I’m going to get started:

1. Open one tab or window at a time. Seriously. See if you can single-task your way into greater productivity. (Or, if productivity isn’t your goal, see if you can single-task your way into a clearer and more focused mind.)

2. Only use one device at a time. If you’re playing with your iPhone, get away from your laptop. If you’re playing on your laptop, get away from the television. Focus on one gadget at a time. After all, there’s a growing body of literature that says multitasking isn’t the bastion of productivity that our 9-to-5 managers think it is.

3. Turn off your push notifications. Here’s a handy tutorial for the iPhone or iPod Touch. Be sure to disable them for both apps and email. This way, you won’t be distracted from the IRL world by any unnecessary beeps or buzzing. Check your email and your favorite apps on your own accord — don’t let your beeping devices (eh, pun intended?) tell you when it’s time to salivate. Er, I mean, time to check your mail.

4. Avoid staring at a screen within an hour of bedtime. And if you really can’t drag yourself away, you can always use a program like F.lux to dim the screen appropriately for the time of day. The less light barging into your retinas at 11 pm, the better you’ll sleep. From Wired:

Once installed, all you have to do is pick your city, the type of lights you have in your house at night, and whether you want a rapid change at sundown or a more gradual change over the course of an hour. You can also choose whether you want it to start automatically at login or not.

The idea is to try and help people sleep. The human body isn’t conditioned to be looking at sunlight at midnight or 3am, so firing up your computer then will fool your body into thinking it’s daytime still, keeping you awake. While that might be useful if you’ve got an essay or report to finish, it’s no good for getting a healthy amount of sleep.

5. Stop playing Farmville. And Diner Dash, or Mafia Wars, or whatever the heck else is popular right now on Facebook. They’re designed to be addicting, notes SUNY graduate student A.J. Patrick Liszkiewicz:

…Farmville is defined by responsibility and routine. Users advance through the game by harvesting crops at scheduled intervals; if you plant a field of pumpkins at noon, for example, you must return to harvest at eight o’clock that evening or risk losing the crop…[w]hy would anyone do this?

Users feel rewarded for their work, the author argues. And that’s the addicting part. We don’t often receive extrinsic rewards for cooking dinner, counting coins, or cleaning the closet. The rewards we receive for those acts are usually intrinsic — and while intrinsic rewards might feel good, external rewards administer an addicting rush. Do you really want to grow addicted to cultivating a farm of digital pixels? What kind of long-term benefit will this experience provide to you? If you can’t answer that last question, then stop.

6. Treat yourself to more real-life social experiences. Connecting with a friend via an offline channel – like, face-to-face over coffee or lunch – might lessen the FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) that arises from tech disconnection. If spending even an hour away from tech makes you feel uncomfortably disconnected, sharing the experience with a friend or two will help to provide a sense of connectedness.

7. Learn to curate. Collect your favorite blog feeds into Google Reader, and even then, don’t try to read everything. There’s simply too much content to wade through. Pick a few articles or blog entries per day that have interesting titles or that are highly recommended by other readers. Or, find someone (with similar tastes as you) who curates content, and follow his or her recommendations.

When I first joined Twitter over two years ago, I tried my best to read every single update by every single user I followed. This is cheerfully idealistic, but completely not scalable once you follow about 50 active users posting 10+ tweets per day. Try T4BP (Twitter for Busy People) instead and review only the most recent tweet from each user.

8. Get comfy with the fact that you’re going to miss something. I won’t even try to re-hash Linda Holmes’s beautifully-written blog post about how our lives are far too short to experience all of the great art, books, and films that the world has to offer. The internet has some great gems too, and we’re going to miss them.

It bears repeating: we are seriously going to miss on a huge percentage of the content that’s generated even by our own social network alone. We’re going to miss important status updates, we’re going to accidentally overlook important emails, and we’re going to miss out on understanding roughly 98% of all internet memes.

And that’s okay. We can only do so much.

Photo Credit: .:AR:. (Flickr)

Happy Digital Detox Week! This week, I’m joining Adbusters in celebrating seven days away from technology — television, video games, and internet included.

Wait.

What was that last one? Did I just say “internet”? Yeah, internet. That internet thing…that thing that I’m on right now.

Did I just out myself as a failure at my own little project?

It’s only the third day of my week-long experiment and already I’m a hypocrite — but with good reason. Computers and the internet have invaded my life to such a great extent that I can’t completely disconnect. Not even if I wanted to.

Here’s why: I work in an office. Every aspect of my day job, unfortunately, is performed in front of the big bright computer screen. Two of them, actually. And walking to the printer is my only true reprieve from staring at my monitor. Surely I’m not the only one, right?

If my job requires 8 hours of computer and internet work, it’s impossible for me to truly get away from the hum and temptation of electronics during business hours.

I suppose I could use my lunch break to disconnect. I could go outside, take a quick walk, rest my eyes, or grab a snack. But because I’ve successfully stayed away from the internet on both Monday and Tuesday night at home, I’m magnetically drawn to Facebook and Twitter during work breaks. And PsychCentral, of course, to write this very blog post as I nosh on my lunch.

I refuse to stray from my digital detox attempt at home, so I’ve been binging here at work. At 4:30 pm, however, I walk away from my computer and back into an analogue world.

And in that analogue world, will my stress level drop? Will this week undo any of the cumulative anxiety that’s built up in my body & brain? Will I get more sleep at night? At this point in the week, it’s too early to tell. While using technology is stressful, trying so fervently to avoid it is stressful as well.

I’m logging what this partially-disconnected life is like — with paper and pen, of course — each night.

And I’ll be back next week with the results. In digital format.

Photo credit: Helga Weber

Digital distractions are everywhere. You’re only two sentences into this blog post, but I’ll bet you’re already thinking about switching tabs to see if you have any comments on that new Facebook wall post you just made.

Now you’ve reached the second paragraph, and I know you want to — have to, in fact — refresh your Gmail just one more time. Or check your @replies on Twitter, again, just like you did five minutes ago. Or pull up Reddit, again, hoping to see that red/orange envelope all lit up to notify you of a brand new message. Wait — did you hear something vibrate from across the room? Was it your phone? Maybe you should go and check your texts.

Technology can scatter our attention into about a million directions at once. A million, anxiety-inducing directions.

But not all technology is bad for our collective stress level. If you need a break from all the digital chatter, you can turn to your iPhone (but only if you promise to turn off your Push Notifications, just for now). Here are three of my favorite iPhone/iPod Touch apps that can actually help to reduce your anxiety. Sounds counter-intuitive, doesn’t it? I know. But hear me out…

1. Relax & Rest -

If you’ve ever meditated to the soothing voice of Mary Maddux from meditationoasis.com, you will enjoy this app. I use it as a sleep aid, but it’s also good for daytime meditation.

How it works: Choose from three different meditations (Breath, Deep Rest, or Whole Body) that help to bring your awareness to the present moment — and away from any distracting thoughts. You can opt to listen to any of the meditations as voice-only, with music, or with nature sounds.

Favorite part: The quick, 5-minute “Breath” meditation. Short enough to use during breaks at work, yet long enough to actually settle my mind down a bit.

Cons: I definitely wish the app included more meditations — I’ve used this app so often that I’m beginning to memorize the script for each meditation.

Cost: $0.99

2. Equanimity -

I often compare using the Twitter and Facebook apps to sitting in a crowded marketplace. People are everywhere, hawking their wares, throwing hyperlinks at you, telling you what they had for lunch, and demanding your attention.

Equanimity, then, is like sitting in an empty room.

It’s a simple meditation timer with absolutely no bells or whistles. This is a feature, not a bug. Meditation is about focusing on the present moment, and it’s much easier to focus on the present moment when you don’t have unnecessary distractions. (Granted, the premium version of Equanimity has some neat statistical tools available so you can track the frequency of your meditation practice, but it doesn’t really interrupt the simplicity of the app.)

How it works: When you start up the app, you’re presented with a white circle. Click “Start Meditation” and you get about a minute or so to settle into your posture and begin to focus on…well, whatever you’d like. (Because these meditations aren’t guided, this app is best suited for folks who want to meditate in silence and/or are already comfortable focusing on their breath, body, surroundings, or whatever else.) A bell will alert you when it’s time to start meditating; then, you can get lost in the present moment for the duration of your choosing. A gong will sound when you’re finished.

Favorite part: As time passes, the white circle functions like an analogue clock and shades in the elapsed time like a pie chart. It’s very minimalist. The app never tells you that you’ve got precisely 3 minutes and 17 seconds left — instead, you have to roughly approximate how much time is left by interpreting the pie chart.

Cons: In the grand scheme of things, I’m a meditation novice. Sometimes, the simplicity of this app frustrates me. I’ve grown so used to voice-guided meditations that I get lost in long chains of thought when I try to meditate on my own. The triple gong will sound at the end of my meditation, and by that time, I’ll be lost in thought about a project at work. Or the clothes I need to fold. Or the hole in the green sweater that I still, after months, haven’t gotten around to sewing up. I will have forgotten that I’d been trying to meditate in the first place. But perhaps that’s a bug in the Summer Beretsky operating system — not a bug in the app.

Cost: Free, or $4.99 for the premium version.

3. Relax Melodies -

You know those expensive sound machines that include buttons for nature sounds, flowing water, and white noise? They’re definitely relaxing. But most of them only have about 6 different sounds to choose from — and from personal experience, the sounds are often tinny and hollow.

This app has got a whopping 35 sounds…in the free version. (They also have a premium version with 70 sounds.)

How it works: Choose your favorite sound & relax while it loops endlessly. The free version of the app includes all the standard sound-machine sounds (like white noise, rain, thunder, and ocean) and other soothing sounds (like “Icy Snow,” Cavern,” and “Afternoon,”  which combines what sounds like birds, a campfire, and popping twigs). You’ll also find a few ambient musical tracks amongst the sound effects.

Favorite part: Layering the sounds! It’s definitely the best part. (As I type this, I’m listening to “Campfire”, “Zen”, and “Birds” simultaneously.) You can augment your imagination by crafting sound combos: I’ve got “Heavy Rain,” “Storm,” and “Wind Chimes” saved as a preset. It sounds like a late-afternoon storm in the summertime and it’s helped me to escape from a winter-y funk on more than one occasion during the past few months.

Cons: “Zen” is actually a little ominous-sounding and it’s giving me the creeps. (Thankfully, you can easily de-layer individual sounds. Back to just “Campfire” and “Birds” for me, then.) The “Heartbeat” sound that’s available in the premium version is also a bit disconcerting for anyone — uh, like myself — who tends to get panicky when focusing on certain bodily sensations. Also, I’ve found myself actually holding my breath while listening to “Immersed.” Uncomfortable.

Cost: Free, or $2.99 for the premium version.

(For the record: while writing this post, I checked Twitter four times, Facebook twice, and Reddit once.)

What are your favorite apps for anxiety reduction? If you give any of the above apps a try, let me know what you think in the comments.

Photo credit: Thomas Hawk

I’ve had more honest-to-goodness panic attacks in my life than I can count. And by “honest-to-goodness,” I mean the real deal: racing heart, palpitations, nausea, dizziness, shortness of breath, incredibly unsolicited surges of adrenaline…and so on. Simultaneously.

Many people — from friends to doctors — told me to start exercising. My friends said it would reduce my stress and help me to sleep better at night. The University of Georgia says it can reduce my anxiety. My doctor told me that getting in shape will reduce heart palpitations and increase my lung capacity.

True, true, and true. But here’s the big Catch-22 that kept me from following everyone’s good advice: exercising made me panic.

And why? Well, a body that’s going through a nightmarish panic attack is physiologically similar to a body that’s happily jogging along a park trail:

-Heart rate: Increases during panic. Increases during exercise.
-Breathing rate: Increases during panic. Increases during exercise.
-Adrenaline: Increases during panic. Increases during exercise.

I could go on, but you get the idea. Exercise can feel like a panic attack. And who wants to willingly invoke THAT awful feeling?

Well, me.

I grit my teeth as I write this. I don’t want to face this fact, but it’s true: for the umpteenth time in my life, I have become afraid of exercise. The rapid heart rate reminds me of my worst ohmygod-I-swear-this-is-a-heart-attack breed of panic attacks. I am always afraid that the quick breathing will make me pass out — even though I know the extra oxygen I’m inhaling is 100% necessary, normal, and natural during physical activity. And the inevitable adrenaline rushes? They make me want to bolt. Straight out of the gym. To quickly escape the (intangible) threat that is my own fear.

And I hate these faulty associations. A rapid heart rate, as I’m sure I learned in 6th grade health class, is a healthy effect of exercise. The heart is a muscle, exercise strengthens that muscle, yadda yadda, and so on. I know this stuff. I know this stuff deep down in the rational part of my brain, but I simply can’t bring that notion — that exercise is safe and healthy and won’t hurt me — to the front burner when I’m standing on my treadmill.

That said, I am determined to start exercising again.

I faced this problem a few years ago when I was a grad student at the University of Delaware. I lived in a campus apartment building and we (conveniently!) had small gym about a two minute walk away. One day, while feeling anxious about an upcoming exam for my Statistics class, I decided to take everyone’s advice & expose myself to the miracle cure that is physical exercise. I tied my sneaker laces and walked to the gym.

I had a panic attack on the elliptical and I never went back.

Over the next few months, I slowly trained myself to let go of my exercise fear. Thankfully, I took notes. Here’s what I jotted down as a how-to guide for my future self:

1. Start in a comfortable environment. Skip the gym, for now, if it triggers agoraphobia or any sense of unease. Even if you don’t have any fancy equipment, you can begin to exercise in your own home or apartment. Try a few of these activities. Dancing and jogging in place might look a little silly, but they’re legit ways to get your heart pumping.

2. Take baby steps. You don’t need to jump right into the 20-minutes-3-times-per-week deal. Treat yourself kindly. If the sensations of exercise scare you, start slowly. See if you can run in place or dance for thirty seconds. Then, stop. Don’t overdo it on the first day. Try a full minute on day 2. If that works, try two minutes the next day. Such a gentle schedule might sound laughable, sure, but don’t let anyone tell you that you ought to be doing more right away. The goal, at this point, is to reacquaint yourself with the physical sensations of exercise. Two minutes of dancing around in your apartment is better than nothing at all.

3. Distract yourself from the uncomfortable sensations (at first). Sure, the long-term goal for anyone suffering from frequent panic attacks ought to be one that involves developing a tolerance for those disconcerting sensations like lightheadedness and muscle fatigue. Ultimately, learning to cope with those panicky feelings — feelings that might never disappear 100% — will allow you to live a less limited life. But for now, if distraction can help you get through a few exercise sessions and onto a better path, all the better. Try focusing on music while running or dancing, or try watching a TV show in your living room while doing pilates. If you pay attention to the plot line, the musical beat, or the lyrics — instead of focusing such strict attention on your body — your exercise session will probably feel less daunting.

4. Expose yourself to the sensations of exercise (and panic) in other ways. If feeling hot or sweaty is a panic trigger for you, try hanging out in your bathroom for a little while after showering. Feel the warmth and allow yourself to sweat a little bit. Notice the sensations on your skin. Simply pay attention to the way your hands, legs, and body feel. The more often you become aware of and accept these sensations, the more you’ll desensitize yourself to their discomfort.

Tomorrow, you’ll find me dancing around in my living room for about two minutes. (And I will probably look ridiculous, so I’ll be sure to close the curtains. You’re welcome.)

But next month, you’ll find me jogging around the block.

Photo Credit: gavinmusic

The other night, I found myself obsessively listening to a unique crowd-sourced brand of music at OneHelloWorld. OHW is — well, think Postsecret, but for your ears. The site’s creator (who doesn’t identify himself by name) asks the world to call his phone and leave a three-minute narrative voicemail. Then, he creates a musical composition for the background that’s inspired by the content of your message. (“Call it a soundtrack for your thoughts,” the site describes it.)

The result? An intriguing amalgam of personal stories and instrumental melodies. The completed tracks are moving. Some are inspirational; some are depressing.

Always one to take part in the novelty of experimental projects on the internet, I called OHW’s phone number and left a message about a panic attack I’d had when I was twenty years old.

It was one of my most frightening panic attacks. At that age, I was still new to panic disorder and still fairly convinced that I was suffering not from panic attacks, but from a rare physical malady that my doctor must have overlooked.

It was the last day of final exams during my sophomore year at Lycoming College — a small liberal arts school in central Pennsylvania. My schedule for the rest of the day looked something like this: sell my textbooks back to the bookstore for gas money, stuff my boat-like Buick (a family hand-me-down car) with all of my belongings, grab a bite to eat, and drive two hours home to my parents’ house, which is where I’d be spending the summer.

Money received for textbooks: a measly $28.

Time spent packing up car: 2.5 hours (or 3 hours, really, if you count the half hour spent looking for someone to help me stuff a 9 x 12 foot carpet into the back seat).

Food eaten: None. Our cafeteria — where I could get free food — had weird hours that day and wasn’t open until later. I decided to skip lunch.

I drove out of Williamsport, a miniature city swallowed up on all sides by farmland and state forests, and into the great wilds of Pennsyvania.

Twenty minutes later & I was careening through a landscape of green fields (and no cell phone towers or, subsequently, cell phone service). I tried to ignore it at first, but I started getting warm and lightheaded. I remember my shirt sticking to my skin. I rolled down the windows to cool down and, within another few minutes, for gulps of air that my lungs had convinced me I’d needed. The extra oxygen only fueled my lightheadedness. What was going on?

And then it hit me: my blood sugar was low. This is what I get for not eating.

I remember that my hands were shaking while I foraged around my car for food. I had plenty of, well, stuff — my entire wardrobe, my old desktop computer, toiletries — but no food. I found candy wrappers and a half-empty water bottle that, by my best guess, was about two months old.

Let’s recap: no food, low blood sugar, and the next convenience store was at LEAST twenty miles ahead. My hands, tightly gripped on the wheel, grew cold and numb. My toes began to tingle. Then, my nose and my lips. The road ahead of me began to look like a cartoon. My heart started pounding and skipping beats.

And that’s when the panic attack hit — in full force.

I swerved to the side of the road and into a gravel driveway. My mind was convinced that my body was dying, and my body convinced my brain (via adrenaline) that I needed to fight or run. But I could do neither: the only threat — low blood sugar — was abstract. Intangible. I couldn’t run from it and I couldn’t punch it.

I fumbled my way to a bottle of Xanax and swallowed a pill with my, uh, vintage water from the bottle in the backseat.

My cognitions, at the moment, went something like this:

I’m lightheaded, so I’m going to pass out. If I pass out, I will die. My blood sugar will sink to unthinkable levels and no one will find me because I am in the middle of nowhere. I can’t call 911 because there’s no cell phone service. I can’t eat because I have no food. My heart is racing, so I’m obviously going to have a heart attack. And it’s skipping beats, so it’s obviously going to start skipping multiple beats and then skip ALL beats altogether and I am going to die. Xanax won’t stop me from dying.

I was terrified.

At this point, my adrenaline drove me to run up the gravel driveway and knock on a stranger’s door for help.

A nice woman answered, and I barely remember what happened next. I must have managed to mutter something about low blood sugar, because the next thing I knew, I was in her kitchen eating a chocolate bar and a chicken sandwich.

I chewed slowly. The kitchen was quiet. The kind stranger was standing in front of her sink with her arms crossed. She watched me chew.

“The color is returning to your face,” she said.

I nodded. As my blood sugar levels returned to normal, my heart rate slowed down. As my heart rate slowed down, the lightheadedness began to dissipate. And the more firmly planted my feet felt on her kitchen floor, the cooler and drier my skin grew. I tried to recall the woman’s name — she’d told me at the door, I was certain, but I already didn’t remember it.

And then I fully realized my context: I was, indeed, standing in a complete stranger’s kitchen with a chocolate bar and a chicken sandwich. I felt naked in a metaphorically Adam-and-Eve sort of way. The feeling was sudden and pervasive.

I thanked her awkwardly, returned to the Buick, and continued on my drive home.

Since recounting this story to OneHelloWorld’s voicemail, I’ve been thinking about it a lot. This panic attack was one of my most terrifying — at the time. But six years later, it’s almost endearing. Why? Is my brain protecting me from the threat of remembering all of the details? Is it because I can see the story in a fuller context now? Is it because my current narrative of the event frames it in terms of the (somewhat humorous) whimsy of eating chicken and chocolate in a stranger’s kitchen?

For the record — the next time I passed this woman’s house, I stopped by (in a calm, well-sugared state) to thank her for feeding me. She wasn’t home, so I left a card and a replacement chocolate bar outside of her door.

What about you? Have any of your panic attacks (or other negative experiences) grown rosier in retrospect?

Further reading:

Sedikides, C., & Green, J. D. (2009). Memory as a self-protective mechanism. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 3(6), 1055–1068.

Wait, it’s after 5 pm. And this is the internet, not a phone. And I’m at my kitchen table, not in my drab fabric-walled cubicle. And I’m not wearing a headset. Let me switch hats for a moment and return to being a writer for the next few minutes.

Tomorrow, I celebrate my last day of working in a customer service call center. (Despite the rumors, it’s not an easy gig.) Over the past few years, I’ve been called some less-than-savory names through the phone lines. A few customers have threatened me. Even more have called me a liar, played psychological games with me, and screamed words that their grandmothers would be ashamed to hear.

Lesson learned: contacting a customer service call center sometimes brings out the worst in us. Here are a few tips to lower the stress level (for both parties!) in a customer service interaction.

1. Don’t call when you’re angry.

Calling when you are angry can intensify your own emotions. If your anger irritates the customer service representative (CSR), you might not receive the top-notch service you’re expecting. Then, when you realize you’re not getting the service you’re expecting, you grow even angrier. Sound familiar? It’s a downward spiral of frustration.

It’s true that anger is 100% justified sometimes. Once, I had a caller whose checking account was dinged not once but twice for a large deposit that he’d made on an order. Our mistake threw his bank account into the red and his bank’s overdraft fees had piled up. As a result, his checking account AND his linked credit card account had been locked up. He had no access to any of his money, and it was our fault.

That’s a bad day. I’d be angry too. In fact, I’d be absolutely furious.

Here’s what the customer did right: he didn’t yell. He didn’t scream. Instead, he used clear and rational language to convey his emotions, like “I’m very upset” and “I was shocked when I saw my bank statement.” Try this approach next time you contact a customer service department either by phone or in person.

If you can’t imagine withholding anger in this way, take some time to calm down before calling into customer service. Try writing out your complaint as if you were sending a letter. You’ll get all the pertinent details spelled out so that you can more effectively narrate your story — calmly — to the customer service representative that you’ll speak with later.

2. Provide a clear goal.

Begin your call with a summary statement that describes the outcome you’d like to reach — especially if the issue is complex. Something like “I want a refund for a defective product,” “I’m having trouble logging into your website when using Internet Explorer,” or “I need to split my recent order into three shipments with three different mailing addresses” is ideal.

All too often, a customer will begin the call by telling the entire story. If a customer service department is broken down into teams — like billing, shipping, fulfillment, retention, scheduling & the like — then the CSR who happens to answer the call might not be trained to resolve your problem. It’s frustrating for both parties when, five minutes into the full story, the CSR realizes that she needs to transfer you to another team…where you’ll have to explain your story all over again.

3. Be polite to the customer service representative.

Despite our (occasionally) robotic voices, we’re humans. I promise. (The classic android-like voice develops after years of repeating the same sentences — or “lyrics,” as we like to call them — over and over and over again.)

We feel stress too. We sit in small cubicles, we log into a phone queue that meticulously monitors our average call time, and we act as the company’s proverbial punching bag all day long. We have very specific schedules that are dictated not by when we get hungry or when we need fresh air, but by mathematical formulas (including “Erlang C”, if you feel compelled to read further). You’re probably not calling in to speak with someone who is twiddling their thumbs and waiting for a phone call. You may be talking to someone who has been waiting an hour for management’s approval to use the restroom.

Also, there’s what Ruyter, Wetzels, & Feinberg (2001) call “role conflict:”

Role conflict has been defined as “the simultaneous occurrence of two (or more) sets of pressures such that compliance with one would make more difficult compliance with the other” (Kahn et al., 1964, p.) For call center personnel, expectations of the organization, the supervisor or team leaders stressing operational efficiency may clash with the demands of customers who want problem resolution or satisfaction.

So, the customer service representative on the other end of the line has two competing sets of pressures when you call: the pressure to resolve your problem, and the pressure to resolve the call center’s problem of keeping their service level, a quantitative measure of overall call center performance, high.

Keep this information in mind when you call. Know your audience. A polite demeanor makes it easier to serve you. And, it also makes it more likely that we’ll truly identify with your issue and work hard to resolve it.

4. Go through the proper channels before trying to escalate.

True story: once, I had a customer on the line who was unhappy with a service that he’d purchased. Not only did he want to cancel the service, he also wanted a full refund. Unfortunately, he was still under contract for another three months. I explained this to him — as politely as possible — and he didn’t take very well to the bad news.

“I apologize, sir,” I reasoned, “but you’re still under contract. I can make sure your contract doesn’t automatically renew if–”

“SUPERVISOR!” he yelled.

“Oh — okay. I can see if a supervisor is availa–” I began.

“SUPERVISOR SUPERVISOR SUPERVISOR!”

“Sir, if I can–”

“SUPERVISOR!”

He continued yelling “supervisor” over and over again until I finally had to disconnect the call. Perhaps he didn’t understand that I am a human being (and not an interactive voice response system), but it’s more likely that his frustration got the best of him.

Here’s the kicker: had he calmed down enough to converse, I could have transferred him to a supervisor. Or, better yet, I could have continued discussing the terms of his contract, checked for loopholes in his agreement, and offered an early cancellation or refund.

5. Keep accurate records.

Have you ever called into a customer service department twice, only to receive different information from different CSRs? It happens.

“But I called yesterday and someone told me that I could get a discount!” you might say. As a CSR, I can’t do much with a statement like this. Who did you speak with? What time did you call? How do I know you’re not making things up?

Keep a log of your contact attempts in a single place. Be sure to note the date, time, and the representative with whom you spoke — and a summary of what you discussed. This information can help a manager to locate a recording of the call, if needed, at a later date. Also, keep a record of any ticket, incident, or confirmation numbers. Having this information handy will make it easy for a CSR to locate a record of your previous calls. It can save you a headache.

Calling into customer service doesn’t always need to be an anxiety-producing chore. If you follow the above tips — well, it’s still probably going to be a chore. But perhaps a more tolerable one.

A friend walks up to you.

“Hey, no worries,” he exclaims casually, “there’s nothing to be allergic to!”

Uh, what?

“Sure there is — I’m allergic to cats,” you’d probably say.

“Nah,” says your friend, “just stop sneezing. You’ll be okay.”

“What?! I can’t just STOP sneezing on a dime,” you retort.

“Sure you can. There’s nothing wrong with you,” he insists.

“Uhm, care to explain these welts, then? And the red eyes? And the sneezing?!”

Sounds frustrating, doesn’t it? If you suffer from allergies, you know that a reaction to an allergen can produce a truly miserable day. And while panic disorder is no allergy, it produces its own unique brand of misery, too.

And that misery can be compounded by how others react to a panic attack. Hopefully, no one would ever tell an allergy sufferer to “just stop sneezing” or to “make those welts go away.” It would be ineffective and frustrating advice.

However, as a panic sufferer myself, I’ve received a lot of ineffective and frustrating advice over the past few years. Most of it is delivered sincerely, with the absolute best of intentions, from people whom I care about. So, it often hurts to let these people know that their advice isn’t helping (and perhaps is even making the panic attack worse!). It’s not easy. If you haven’t yet developed a thick enough skin to ignore the below advice (I sure haven’t!), please share the below tips with family and friends who care about you.

This post was inspired by this list of things you shouldn’t say to someone who is depressed.

You say: “Just calm down.”
We want to say: “Okay, HOW!?”

Let’s pick this one apart piece by piece. “Just” implies that the act of calming down is a simple one. It’s not. For someone in the midst of panic, calming down can be an extraordinarily difficult task. For you, it might be effortless; for those of us with panic disorder, it might involve medication, breathing exercises, distraction, rituals, positive self-talk and reassurance, and/or time.

The “calm down” part is also problematic in and of itself. If you don’t have any tools, you can’t build a house, right? Unless you can construct some tools from thin air, you’re out of luck. Likewise, if we don’t have any tools or techniques (like the breathing exercises mentioned above) that can help us to become calmer, we can’t “build” anything. We can’t construct a ladder that will allow us to climb our way out of a panic attack. And, the added stress of being unable to comply with a “calm down” request might compound our anxiety.

Better response: Can I help you calm down? Is there anything I can do?

You say: “Why can’t you just relax?”
We want to say: “It’s a bit more complicated than you think!”

During a panic attack, the following physiological changes can occur:

* increased heart rate
* adrenaline rushes
* shortness of breath
* lightheadedness
* heart palpitations
* nausea
* trembling/shaking
* numbing or tingling in hands/feet

It’s like trying to relax while you’re being chased by a wild animal. Or while you’re frantically trying to find your way out of a burning building. Put simply, our panic-filled bodies aren’t capable of turning off the fight-or-flight impulse on cue. We’re not equipped with a switch. Even a steadfast resolve to relax will probably only incite further frustration over the fact that our body is going haywire.

True story: during my very first biofeedback session, the practitioner hooked me up to a computer that measures anxiety via skin conductance (read: sweat), hand temperature, heart rate, and breathing rate. As soon as she said, “Okay, now try to relax!”, my anxiety level (as measured objectively by a computer) surged upward. This is common!

Better response: I’m here for you. What can I do to help you relax?

You say: “There’s nothing wrong with you.”
We want to say: “Oh yeah? Then why does it feel like I’m going to have a (insert-severe medical-condition-here)?”

Classic line, often delivered by well-intentioned close friends, family, and significant others. Sometimes, this sentiment could be helpful — but only if we’re fretting over the “Is this just panic, or is it a heart attack or a stroke!?” question. Otherwise, it’s usually an unhelpful phrase that makes us want to yell, “Yes! There IS something wrong with me at the moment! I’m panicking, and it’s terrifyingly uncomfortable! THAT is what’s wrong!”

Better response: This must be uncomfortable. Can I do anything to make it better?

You say: “Sit down.”
We want to say: “But sitting down makes me more anxious!”

Usually, sitting down is a relaxing activity. We sit down to eat, to watch television, and to read a good book — and all of those events are generally agreeable and soothing. However, merely assuming a seated position isn’t going to act as a panacea.

The panic response sends a rush of adrenaline into our bloodstream that compels us to either fight or flee. It makes us feel like we need to be hypervigilant in order to ensure our survival. If you were really being chased by a wild animal, for example, sitting down would do you no good. That’s why the impulse to stand upright and stay alert is so strong. Leave this one up to the panicker: if we feel more comfortable sitting down, help us to find a safe spot. If we need to pace or go for a walk in order to calm down, let us.

You say: “You’re overreacting!”
We want to say: “Thanks, Captain Obvious.”

While it may be true that our body and mind are in overdrive, we often feel like we cannot control these reactions. In the midst of a rapid heartbeat, a cascading series of negative thoughts, and an intense urge to escape, having someone inform us that we’re overreacting is not helpful. We’re often aware that our body and mind are overreacting, but we may not yet possess the skills to disengage our frantic nervous system.

Better response: If you want, I’ll wait here with you until this passes.

Even though the above statements aren’t helpful to hear during a panic attack, some might be more appropriate after the threat of imminent panic has passed. If you know someone with panic disorder and want to be a great support person for them, check out this guide.

If you’ve ever had a panic attack, what’s the most unhelpful thing you’ve heard from someone who is trying to help? Share your thoughts in the comments or find me on Twitter @summerberetsky.

Stay tuned for the second half of this list — based on your comments — later in the week.

The word “vent” calls forth images of air, smoke, or steam escaping through an opening from a confined area — like carbonation from a soda bottle.  It’s no surprise, then, that we describe ourselves as feeling “bottled up” when we’ve got something major to vent.

And now there’s a new way to do it online at blahtherapy.com.

BLAH Therapy’s premise is simple — it’s a chat website designed to let you twist that proverbial soda bottle lid anonymously and seek a release of pent-up steam.  Once you arrive at the site, you’re prompted to play the role of either “Venter” or “Listener”.  As a Venter, you’re given the floor to talk about anything that needs to be released from your mind. As a Listener, your job is to, well, listen.

Unlike the popular random webcam chat site Chatroulette, BLAH Therapy won’t pull up any potentially indecent video streams from your chat buddy.  It’s entirely text-based.

I first read about the service on Mashable this week, so I decided to test it out right away both as a Listener and a Venter.  For privacy purposes, I obviously won’t disclose the chat log for the scenarios in which I chose to be the Listener – I don’t want anyone’s presumably private venting session to become public.  I will, however, paraphrase the types of problems I ran into.

At first, when I logged on as a Listener, I had a hard time finding anyone who was willing to vent.

Stranger  hi
You hi there

[Disconnected]

Despite my best efforts at greeting them with a friendly hello, I was quickly bypassed. Similar scenarios continued for several minutes, so I changed my mind & decided to play the role of Venter.

You Hi
You Is anyone there?
You I’d like to vent, and stuff.
You But it takes two.

[Disconnected]

You Oh hi!
You Is anyone there?
You I know you’re technically supposed to be a “listener”, but I’d like it if you could at least acknowledge that you’re there. And that you’re listening.
You Anybody? Anybody at all?
You Okay.
You I guess not.

[Disconnected]

You Hey there
You So, here’s my vent: this is the fourth time I’ve connected to a “Listener”, and it seems like no one is there.
You It’s true: I’m venting about venting.
You Meta-venting, if you will.

[Disconnected]

Of course, as Blah Therapy grows, I imagine this situation won’t be as frequent. In fact, only 14 people were chatting yesterday when I ran into the above problems. At the moment I’m typing this, there are 155.

I decided to switch back over to the role of Listener and I found a real live human being — of course, my anonymous partner was also so excited about finding a real live chat partner that he didn’t start venting right away. Instead, we exchanged some small talk, joked about how we hope BlahTherapy doesn’t turn into Chatroulette, and then we started the process. My chat partner was excited to play the role of Venter — he said that in real life, he’s the Listener within his group of friends, so being able to vent was a valuable thing for him. I sat back and listened to him rant about a friendship that’s under stress because it’s also part of a work relationship.

Earlier today, I also successfully connected with a few people while playing the role of Venter. We started off with some small talk, and then I chose to lament about how there’s barely any time in the day for relaxation when I work for 8 hours, commute for 2 hours, and sleep for 8 hours. My listener asked a few probing questions to determine if it was really my schedule or my job that I was frustrated with:

Stranger  and what would your ideal job be
You Hmmm. Ideal job. Probably freelance writing.
Stranger  are you writing right now?
You Yes, actually.

During my next venting session, I decided to launch right in without making small talk. True story, by the way:

Stranger  hi
You So, I was at the train station in Philly and I’d just gotten a hot cup of tea.
Stranger  …
You I sat down on a bench to tie my shoe, and I set the cup down on the bench right next to me.
Stranger  …
You This woman comes along, completely unaware of her surroundings and she bumps right into me & the hot tea…and when I say “hot”, I mean boiling.
You I’d just had it poured.
You Spills all over me.
Stranger  that sucks
Stranger  was it a starbucks?
You I stood up, screamed at the top of my lungs (unintentionally, pretty much) and EVERYONE stopped to stare…but the woman just kept walking.
You Nope, Cosi.
Stranger  $4?
You Probably.

Humorous conversation, but less therapeutic than some would like. (And the burns are all cleared up now, if you were wondering.)

Is BLAH Therapy something you should consider playing around with? Well, it depends on who you are and what you’re looking for. Let’s look at the pros and cons:

Pros:

• You can let loose and get complaints of all shapes and sizes off of your chest. The strangers don’t know you and you never need to interact with them again. If someone starts to judge or reacts in a way you’re uncomfortable with, you can click “Disconnect” and find someone else.

• It reminds me of Postsecret, in a way, because it can be an outlet for letting go of secrets — which when bottled up can cause distress.

• For some people, listening to the problems of others is therapeutic in and of itself.

• It’s good when venting to a friend isn’t appropriate (say, if the situation is about your friend).

Cons:

• The listeners are NOT mental health professionals, so heed any advice cautiously — perhaps in the same way you’d take advice from, say, a friendly single-serving acquaintance from the checkout line at the grocery store. Be smart. They’re everyday people who, like you, merely have an interest in either venting or listening.

• You never truly know if an interaction on the internet is private. Chatroulette, for example, is an “anonymous” (yes, the quotes are necessary) website where users can chat with strangers via both text, webcam, and audio. However, YouTube user PianoChatImprov recorded his now-famous Chatroulette interactions, edited them together, and posted them to YouTube (NSFW due to language, but brilliantly creative and absolutely worth watching). There’s no real guarantee that a Listener will keep your venting session private.

• There’s also no guarantee of getting a legitimate chat partner, but that’s what the “Disconnect” button is for.

• Just because the site is text-based and somewhat safer-feeling than Chatroulette, it doesn’t automatically follow that all participants are going to follow the rules and keep things PG.

And, before you venture off to start listening or venting, here are some tips:

• It’s difficult to play the role of Listener without stepping in to do some venting of your own. In fact, it’s near impossible — so no matter which official role you choose on the website, you’ll be playing a little bit of both roles.

• For the courtesy of the Venter, make sure you’ve got at least ten minutes to spend as Listener. Most vents aren’t quick little Twitter-ish blurbs in 140 characters or less. Real empathy takes some time.

• I found it difficult to play the role of Venter without exchanging at least a few niceties with my anonymous partner. If you feel the same sense of awkwardness, try making small talk first.

• Check out some of PsychCentral’s resources — like Guidelines for Good Listening — if you want to brush up on your listening skills first.

Bottom line: if venting helps you to feel better, and if anonymous (and sometimes unpredictable) interaction sweetens the deal, you’ll have fun playing with BLAH Therapy.

Do you think that anonymous chat is an effective method for releasing pent-up steam? Does anonymity help us to express our feelings more? Give it a try and let us know how your venting or listening session went in the comments.