But unlike most Sundays, when you drive this Sunday coming home from your Super Bowl Party, be especially careful. Why?

Because unlike other Sundays when a football game is televised, researchers found that both non-fatal and fatal car accidents increase 41 percent on average. The risk is highest within an hour of the game’s end, when most people are driving home.

What causes this rise in automobile accidents? Not surprising, alcohol was involved in most fatal injury accidents, as well as a majority of non-fatal accidents. Inattention and fatigue are two additional factors implicated.

Researchers (Redelmeier & Stewart, 2003) examined 27 consecutive Super Bowl games from 1975 to 2001, and then looked at motor vehicle crash data for those same years. They examined accident rates before, during, and after the Super Bowl game, as well as a sample of control Sundays earlier in the year to see if the effect also carried over to normal football games.

Their findings?

We observed a 41 percent relative increase in the average number of fatalities after the telecast. In contrast, we observed no significant difference between Super Bowl Sundays and control Sundays in fatalities before the telecast. [...]

The increase in fatalities after the telecast was evident for 21 of 27 years and amounted to about seven added deaths on the average Super Bowl Sunday as compared with the average control Sunday.

Fatal injuries were largest in states who had a losing team, versus those who had a winning team or had no team in the Super Bowl.

And the results are larger than those for other popular holidays where large amounts of alcohol may be consumed:

The 41 percent relative increase in fatalities after the Super Bowl telecast exceeds the relative increase in fatalities on New Year’s Eve that has prevailed for the past two decades in the United States.

The upshot?

Be careful and especially attentive driving home this Super Bowl Sunday if you’re attending a Super Bowl party, or just watching the game with some friends or family members. Especially if you’re in the losing team’s state. Designate a driver beforehand, and drive defensively.

And of course, enjoy the game. Go Pats!

Reference:

Redelmeier, D.A. & Stewart, C.L. (2003). Driving Fatalities on Super Bowl Sunday. New England Journal of Medicine.

These posts this week remind me of something my friends and I discovered after countless conversations on wealth and happiness. We realized that our happiest memories were not free of financial worries. In fact, we all had fond memories of our (financially) poor moments. For me, it was renting an apartment with cracked windows, a monstrous heater, a blanket as a couch and an air bed to lay on at night. Maybe it’s only in retrospect that we can fully appreciate these moments. Or maybe like our posts below, it’s a good reminder that we don’t need a lot to be happy.

If you’re going through a challenging time right now, take heart. This week you’ll learn how to use the power of positivity to help you get through your most difficult moments and be happy even when you think there’s nothing in your life to be happy about. 

Going Through a Difficult Time? How Positive Emotions Can Help You Cope

(Adventures in Positive Psychology) – Going through a tough time right now? This post might help. Learn how a shift in your emotions could manage your stress and bolster psychological resilience.

The Happiest People Don’t Have the Best of Everything

(Mindfulness & Psychotherapy) – Maybe it’s not the stuff that’s going on in your life right now that’s making you unhappy, but your interpretation of a past event. This insightful post will help you rethink the way you perceive negative events.

Bullying In Preschool – Is It Possible?

(Family Mental Health) – It might be difficult to imagine young preschoolers as bullies. Yet, it is a reality for many kids and their concerned parents. Read this post to find out more about preschool bullying and scroll down to the comments to relate with others who have experienced this first-hand.

How To Pick An Effective Eating Disorder Therapist

(Weightless) – Looking for the right eating disorder therapist may be harder than it appears to be. Did you know, for example, that you shouldn’t search for a therapist based on location, insurance coverage or even experience? Find out why, what red flags to watch out for and what qualities you should look for in an effective eating disorder therapist.

Managing Your Emotions: Part 2

(The Emotionally Sensitive Person) – A negative event or difficult situation can easily set off an emotionally sensitive person. If you’re having trouble managing your own emotions, read here to go from feeling overwhelmed to feeling in control with these must-read tips.

First, let me congratulate you for having your priorities in order with your concern about the kids. You are facing one of the greatest parent challenges. Realize this is a big moment. Take a deep breathe. Another. Now do what you always do when you tackle anything important: have an action plan and rehearse it. If you do this well, there are a lot of positive benefits for all.

Kids are smart, and chances are yours won’t be surprised. They have been living with the tension of your relationship, whether it felt hot (anger) or cold (ice). It hasn’t felt good. Kids hear and notice everything you do, all of the time.

All kids today know other kids whose parents have been divorced. Most kids have known kids and their parents pre-split. News travels about what it looked like before their decision to separate was announced.

Giving your children an age appropriate and respectful explanation of your decision to split can even be a relief from the constant feeling of tension not knowing what could happen. The costs of living in an environment that always feels tense and strained is toxic for overall health and well-being.

Research shows the damaging effects the stress hormone Cortisol has when it is constantly being dumped into your nervous system. Regardless of whether you decide to get back together or divorce, if there is fighting going on, the kids suffer. Making the commitment to remove toxic energy from your interactions moving forward is going to have significant benefits for everyone.

Recognize you both have the opportunity to model for your kids by healthy termination. Let them see how two adults can respectfully make a conscious choice to end a relationship when best efforts have not been able to turn it around. It is a great example you can give to your children for handling future conflict in their lives.

How to Tell Your Kids You’re Breaking Up

Telling your kids you’re breaking up isn’t easy to do in the best of circumstances, but these six tips may help.

1. Tell your kids together.

No matter your differences, you both are their parents and that job comes first. You both need to plan and have this conversation. Start the conversation by letting your kids know first and foremost, you will always love them and that will never change.

2. Take the shame, blame, and criticism out of the decision to split.

Take responsibility for your behavior and show up with the best of yourself for this process. This conversation is the first of many to show how you can work respectfully together and are developing a new relationship as co-parents.

For the first time, in perhaps a very long time, give your kids the experience that you are both on the same page. That’s not to say you agree on all parenting issues, but you both agree your kids come first — before your own interests. From that shared vision, negotiate your differences.

3. Let your kids know what the decision to split will look like.

Who will be leaving the home? When will they stay/live with that parent and where? How their schedules and activities will change and stay the same.

4. Rehearse what you’ll say before you say it.

Anything you want to do well, needs practice. I expect a lot of emotion will likely come up in this conversation. By having dry-runs with your partner, you can work through some of those moments and learn to anticipate and rehearse what things you could say if unconstructive, attack, shame or blame comments get throw in.

Anticipating rough spots, if any come up, gives you the opportunity to plan for modeling the ability to own your own emotion, and that it got in the way of what you really want them to get, namely, you are committed from this moment on to communicate more effectively to be heard.

5. Remind them at the end, where you started.

The two most important things you both want them to take away from this conversation is this decision is not because of anything they have done or failed to do. This is not their fault, #1 … and, that you both love them and will love them, forever and always. Tell your kids that no matter who they are spending physical time with, you always hold them in your own heart and mind.

6. Give your children time to adjust. 

Make room to notice how they are doing, encourage questions, and keep familiar routines.

Your kids will experience comfort and hope for the future, however it looks in the end, seeing the two of you coming together, connecting, and working together for their well-being.

For instance, in its post on its website titled, “STUDY: Manic Symptoms Linked to Specific Criminal Acts,” the unattributed and undated article suggests that a new study was released that demonstrated a causal link between manic symptoms, and well, specific criminal acts.

But when I read the study, and compared it with what was in the article on the TAC website, I saw a complete misunderstanding (or misrepresentation, whether intentional or not) of the new study.

It now makes me question the validity of any information published by the Treatment Advocacy Center on their website, because it appears their bias — to drive home the mistaken idea that mental illness = increased risk of violence — affects their ability to even deliver research news objectively.

It’s pretty clear whoever authored this post is not a researcher and probably shouldn’t be trying to interpret and disseminate research results. The post begins with the mistaken suggestion that the new study (Christopher et al, 2012) found:

Individuals with bipolar disorder are “more than twice as likely as the general population to commit violent crimes and nearly five times as likely to be arrested, jailed or convicted of an offense other than drunk driving,” authors of a new study on the association between manic symptoms and criminal acts report.

While indeed the current authors write that, that’s actually just background information in the study — it does not refer to any new data.

But rather than just take what a researcher says at face value, we do something here other websites don’t provide — a critical analysis. Let’s look at those two statements first, since they set the stage (both for TAC’s and the current researchers’ article).

The current authors (Christopher et al, 2012) write in the introduction to their study:

Persons with bipolar disorder, in particular, are more than twice as likely as the general population to commit violent crimes…

The reference for this statement comes from a single study (Fazel et al., 2010), that examined “violent crime” (which also included crimes such as simply threatening another person), and bipolar disorder in Sweden. (Whether Sweden is like the rest of the world’s population of people with bipolar disorder or who commit violent crimes is an exercise I leave to the reader). Here’s what they actually found:

During follow-up, 314 individuals with bipolar disorder (8.4%) committed violent crime compared with 1312 general population controls (3.5%). The risk was mostly confined to patients with substance abuse comorbidity. [Emphasis added]

That means that the vast majority of the increased doubling of the risk is not from bipolar disorder alone, but rather from someone who has a drug abuse or alcohol problem, who also happens to have bipolar disorder. That’s a big difference, and one conveniently overlooked by the current study’s authors (and duly reported by TAC).

And the second part of the statement:

… and nearly five times as likely to be arrested, jailed, or convicted of an offense other than drunk driving.

This comes from Calabrese and colleagues’ (2003) study of 1,167 subjects from an epidemiologic study of bipolar prevalence using the Mood Disorder Questionnaire (MDQ) to assess for bipolar symptoms. This is an important distinction to note — these were not individuals actually diagnosed with bipolar disorder, but rather were simply assessed with a self-report screening measure they filled out on their own. Whether a person was arrested, jailed or convicted for offenses (of any nature or severity, except for DUIs) was also based upon self-report, not actual jail or court records.

The researchers reported that “MDQ-positive women reported more disruption in social and family life, while MDQ-positive men reported being jailed, arrested, and convicted for crimes.”

But here’s the catch — the researchers never specifically asked about substance or alcohol abuse. Since we know that such abuse is the primary determinant of violent crime and criminal behavior when combined with certain kinds of mental illness, that oversight is significant. It is a confound that means we cannot draw any meaningful conclusions from their findings regarding criminality and bipolar disorder. (Furthermore, it’s unclear why the researchers arbitrarily removed driving while under the influence of alcohol from their results, given its serious nature. They provided no rationale for doing so.)

So both statements that the researchers simply repeated in the current study (without any qualifications) are less than accurate, when you delve into their research support.

But let’s get on with the actual study, shall we?

Prevalence of Involvement in the Criminal Justice System During Severe Mania and Associated Symptomatology

The current study used the NESARC, “the largest U.S. epidemiologic survey to assess psychiatric disorders according to the DSM-IV criteria.” The study used a structured diagnostic interview to generate DSM-IV diagnoses for major axis I and axis II (personality) disorders, a reliable method used by researchers to diagnose disorders in large groups of people.

Here’s what they found:

Among NESARC wave 1 respondents (N=43,093), a total of 42,079 (97.7%) had valid responses to the questions in the mania section and, of these, 1,044 (2.5%) met specified criteria for having experienced at least one episode of mania.

Of these, 135 persons (13.0%) had legal involvement during the episode that they identified as the most severe in their lifetime.

What is “legal involvement”? Is that the same thing as committing a crime or going to jail? Is it the same thing as committing “specific criminal acts,” or a violent crime?

Well, no. It’s one of those fuzzy terms that researchers use when they want to make something seem like a bigger problem that it is. Here’s how they defined it:

Legal involvement was defined as being arrested, held at the police station, or put in jail, during the manic episode that the respondent identified as the most severe in his or her lifetime.

So in America, where you are innocent until proven guilty, researchers who are pursuing their own agenda define things a little differently. These aren’t people who actually were found guilty of committing a crime — they were simply people who may have had a run-in with the police.

The data the researchers do not provide are data that would put that 13 percent into some sort of context. How many people who did not have a manic episode also had “legal involvement?”

Sadly, the researchers do not report that number. An inquiry asking the researchers about this missing data was not returned.

While it’s interesting to see that 13 percent of people who report manic symptoms had some sort of legal involvement — serious or not — it’s a number that exists in a vacuum. It also demonstrates once again that the vast majority of individuals with bipolar disorder and mania had no legal problems.

Other demographic statistics, while not significant, also point in the direction of existing data. For instance, if you’re Black, you’re 35 percent more likely in this study to have reported legal involvement in the study. (Being African-American puts you at greater risk in general for incarceration in America.) If you have less than a high school education, you’re at 45 percent greater risk of having legal involvement.

But when all was said and done, and demographics were taken into account, this is what the researchers ultimately found that had the strongest statistical power (e.g., the most robust results):

When adjusted for demographic and clinical variables not in potential temporal conflict with the most severe lifetime manic episode, being male and having a first manic episode at age 23 or younger were associated with a higher risk of legal involvement.

Surprise! Being a young man — who have an incarceration rate 9 to 11 times that of women — is the strongest predictor of legal involvement. Also have social indiscretions and having both social and occupational impairment are strong risk factors for legal involvement, according the researchers’ data. Again, neither of which are surprising.

And being manic? Well, given the definition of mania (which is different than actually being diagnosed with bipolar disorder, an important distinction blurred by the researchers), it’s little surprise people with more energy, inflated self-esteem, flight of ideas and distractibility might find themselves at occasional odds with societal norms and laws. It’s like noting that you’re more likely to be pulled over for a DUI after you’ve drank too much and then try and drive.

I can’t really answer why TAC misrepresents the psychological research, and doesn’t bother to delve into it more deeply to examine the conclusions drawn by researchers. While I suspect it may be related to their own advocacy agenda, it could also just be due to sloppy reporting on their part.

What the study clearly shows is that manic symptoms are not linked to any specific criminal acts.

Read the blog post yourself: STUDY: Manic Symptoms Linked to Specific Criminal Acts

References:

Calabrese, Joseph R.; Hirschfeld, Robert M. A.; Reed, Michael; Davies, Marilyn A.; Frye, Mark A.; Keck, Paul E., Jr.; Lewis, Lydia; McElroy, Susan L.; McNulty, James P.; Wagner, Karen D. (2003). Impact of bipolar disorder on a U.S community sample. Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, 64, 425-432.

Christopher, P.P, McCabe, P.J., Fisher, W.H. (2012). Prevalence of Involvement in the Criminal Justice System During Severe Mania and Associated Symptomatology. Psychiatric Services, doi: 10.1176/appi.ps.201100174

Fazel, Seena; Lichtenstein, Paul; Grann, Martin; Goodwin, Guy M.; Långström, Niklas; (2010). Bipolar disorder and violent crime: New evidence from population-based longitudinal studies and systematic review. Archives of General Psychiatry, 67, 931-938.

Sheldon, CT, Aubry, TD, Arboleda-Florez, J., Wasylenki, D., & Goering, PN. (2006). Social disadvantage, mental illness and predictors of legal involvement. International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, 29, 249-256.

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.

But Kahlbaum paved the way for Kraepelin’s renowned work and also made some remarkable contributions of his own. In fact, Kahlbaum’s ideas — along with his assistant Ewald Hecker — influenced Kraepelin’s two major concepts: manic depression and dementia praecox (what we today call schizophrenia).

According to Richard Noll, associate professor of psychology at DeSales University, in his book American Madness: The Rise and Fall of Dementia Praecox, “What he produced would eventually revolutionize psychiatry once Kraepelin applied Kahlbaum’s concepts in Heidelberg [where Kraepelin lived and worked].”

Like Kraepelin, Kahlbaum was a German psychiatrist. Born in 1828 in Eastern Germany, Kahlbaum studied medicine at several universities: Königsberg, Würzburg and Leipzig. (He passed away in 1899.) After receiving his medical degree, working at a psychiatric clinic and teaching classes at Königsberg University, Kahlbaum began working at a private psychiatric hospital. He bought the hospital in 1867 and renamed the facility after himself (it was named for the previous owner).

According to The American Journal of Psychiatry:

…over the following 20 years he made it into an exemplary psychiatric hospital that became famous beyond German borders. He considered vocational therapy and arts and music therapy as an important part of psychiatric treatment. He regularly organized musical and theatrical performances for the patients in a room in his clinic that he designated for these purposes. Until 1943, the Kahlbaum Sanitarium was managed by one of his sons, Dr. Siegfried Kahlbaum.

In 1863 Kahlbaum published his book Gruppirung der psychischen Krankheiten und die Einteilung der Seelenstörungen (Classification of Psychiatric Diseases and Mental Disturbances). In it, he spelled out his own classification system.

Unfortunately, the psychiatric field couldn’t care less. According to Noll, the field largely ignored this work because Kahlbaum wasn’t a professor, and his classification system was in direct disagreement with Germany’s most popular paradigm: “unitary psychosis.”

At the time psychiatrists believed that there was one form of insanity, and the differences in symptoms were just stages along a continuum. Also problematic was that Kahlbaum’s classification system was “unnecessarily complex and the terms were unusual in construction,” Noll writes.

But bulky language and complexities aside, with this work, Kahlbaum contributed a key concept: time. Writes Noll in American Madness:

His revolutionary notion was that the only correct definitions of actual mental diseases would have to take into account their natural history of development. Cross-sectional descriptions of patients that were limited to a single time and place could no longer be regarded as valid. Didn’t the symptoms and behaviors of insane patients change over time? Of course they did. For Kahlbaum the most important elements were the period of life during which the symptoms first appeared (age of onset) and the typical ways the signs and symptoms changed over time.

Using this method meant more accurate diagnoses and some clues into the course and prognosis of mental disorders. Noll explains that it changed how case histories were written. In the 1900s, case histories started to include age of onset, alterations in symptoms and outcome.

Over the years, Kahlbaum and his assistant Hecker classified a very large collection of disorders. And some of these are still in use today, though Noll notes that the descriptions may be different from their originals. These include: catatonia, dysthymia, cyclothymia and hebephrenia.

Kahlbaum also contributed in other important ways. According to the same piece in The American Journal of Psychiatry:

He was the first to distinguish between psychoses with and without organic etiology. This dichotomous conceptualization of endogenous and organic mental disorders has proven heuristically fruitful for psychiatric classification since its inception.

In his understanding, psychiatric disorders consisted of a prodromal state, an acute state, a state of remission, and a state of convalescence. He had planned to make such “state-course entities” the basis of his classification of psychiatric disorders.

In the land of the strange but true, as a former Tibetan Buddhist nun I fell in love with and married a man who counsels sex addicts and who is a recovering sex addict himself. Joining him in his counseling practice has allowed me a look into the lives of many people who have struggled with sex and relationship addictions.

These relationships have also impelled me to contemplate how the grace and teaching that I received from my Tibetan teachers can supply guidance in how to work with the compulsions or addictions that manifest in our world today. A young woman called tonight, crying.

Her husband had promised he would stop accessing Internet porn. She had recently given birth to their first child, and on their home computer she discovered that in the previous few days her husband had visited dozens of porn sites.

What should she do?

Earlier today we received a call from a very successful local businessman whose wife had once again discovered a number of sexually explicit text messages and emails on his cell phone. These messages had been sent to and received from friends of the couple, acquaintances, business associates, and prostitutes. His wife was prepared to leave the marriage because she had discovered this sort of evidence previously and he had promised “never to do it again.” Could he be helped?

A woman, a successful attorney, has been working with us because she realized that for the last ten years she has remained in an abusive marriage due to her fear of being alone.

What is it that creates a compulsion to have sex as often as possible? Or to fantasize about sex with an individual of an inappropriate age? Or to compulsively fear being alone, to feel compelled to “be in a relationship?” Why have otherwise reasonable and educated people continued to make choices that lead to greater suffering for themselves and for the people closest to them?

For many, the lure of porn and/or affairs is that the anonymity of connecting with a stranger is less frightening than the intimacy required when connecting with a true partner. For others, the safety of masturbating to pornographic images is instantly satisfying and less frightening than weathering the complexities of human relationship.

The Internet has provided the opportunity to connect more anonymously, and materials that in the past would have required a trip to a porn shop are now available twenty-four hours a day without leaving home. Sexually stimulating material can be viewed with just a few clicks in the relative privacy of one’s home or office.

Internet porn has been labeled “crack cocaine” for the sexually compulsive individual. On television talk shows and in the news, we seem to hear more and more about this compulsion labeled “sex addiction” or “relationship addiction.”

In the counseling program my husband and I offer, many individuals have reported difficult events during childhood. These events seem to have led to a kind of “freezing” of the state of fascination with sex typical of the pubescent child moving into young adulthood. This can manifest as turning to the safety of the non-threatening porn image, as being sexually attracted to children who are the same age as when one’s trauma occurred, or as a need to experience sexual release in unsuitable or dangerous situations.

While masturbation and viewing porn movies may at times be part of a healthy sex life, habits rooted in childhood abuse and/or trauma can become compulsive and limiting, cutting one off from healthy ways of relating to sexuality and to others.

Buddhism to the Rescue

So how can meditative practices and insights help us work with such compulsive and limiting sexuality? Through the years of my practice and work, my thinking on these themes has evolved, informed by wedding the wisdom of traditional Buddhist teachings with the wisdom of Western psychological models.

Western science teaches that our desire to survive, to protect ourselves, to avoid pain, to feel good, or to just be happy is wired into the core of our biology. The urge to connect with another being is also natural; we are social animals and quite naturally require human connection at a biological level. This urge for connection seems to me to mirror our urge to reconnect with the truth of who we are.

At the heart of Tibetan Buddhism is the instruction to look to the core — to the who that is observing. The truth of who we are is the peace we recognize in a moment of meditation when we disconnect from our usual awareness of thoughts, in a moment of undefended love, in a transcendent moment in nature, in a newborn’s eyes, in the moment before we drift off to sleep.

Buddhist teachings point to how each of us can learn to work with urges that have become compulsions or addictions that don’t serve ourselves or others. By bringing such urges into the light of awareness, we can watch them arise as signals of something seeking our attention. At that point we can determine how to respond — or not.

First, we can notice that when uncomfortable, painful feelings arise, our animal instinct may interpret them as threatening and our biochemical imperative may try to take over. We may have a tendency to strike out in anger, to run away or numb out in fear, or to seduce the perceived dangerous entity to protect ourselves from peril.

Secondly, we can realize that suffering is a natural part of human existence. This is a basic tenet of Buddhist teachings. Every one of us will experience loss, disappointment and betrayal. We cannot avoid suffering, so how can we learn to navigate the waves of discomfort when the urge to engage in compulsive or addictive behavior arises? How can compulsion serve as an ally?

Sometimes we use activities like impersonal sex or being in unhealthy relationship as an avoidance of painful experience. The obsessive need for sexual release or the fear of being alone is simply a mistaken expression of the very natural urge we all share to find peace, to return “home.” Instead, we can become more and more willing to fully experience our urges as energy, and we can stand right in the middle of the discomfort.

In 1988, when I was visiting Kalu Rinpoche in India, he said:

“When an enemy arises in your life, even though you may kill it, another will simply arise, because all arisings are simply a manifestation of your own state of consciousness.”

I still remind myself that it won’t do any good to banish the feelings inside of me that I don’t like and don’t want to have anymore.

All we can ultimately do is turn and face the perceived enemy. For example, the mother of one of our clients was inappropriate with him sexually when he was in his early teens. As an older man, he watched porn movies each weekend alone in his small condo. The transient solace of release at the moment of orgasm became his primary source of comfort. Having sex with a real live woman caused him to relive the discomfort he felt from the earlier inappropriate sexual innuendo by his mother.

Instead, he only felt comfortable expressing his sexuality with pictures and videos. As this man began to meet the emotions and feelings that arose with his urge to watch a porn movie — to experience directly the aversion and shame beneath the urge — his compulsive use of porn simply did not seem necessary. He began to date a lovely woman, whom he has now married. Although he still has fears about sex with his wife, and his awareness of his desire for human connection, he is taking steps toward experiencing intimate, connected human sexuality.

In working with uncomfortable feelings, the only antidote is turning, facing, and fully experiencing. When dealing with those places that feel deeply wounded, fully engaging with such feelings can take some time. But eventually, we gain enough perspective and increase our capacity to feel the feelings we’ve previously worked so hard to avoid. We learn that the energy of these feelings will not destroy us.

On the contrary, they allow us to experience the truth of ourselves in a more profound way. A moment during which it seems we cannot bear the discomfort is precisely the moment of opportunity, the doorway to experience a feeling simply as energy, as a force that has arisen. This is how the seeming enemy becomes an ally.

Those who experience sexual or relationship compulsions (whatever form they may take) may also suffer from shame due to our society’s stigmatization around such tactics of alleviating or avoiding suffering. Instead of shame, what’s required is compassion — not as license, but as kindness and empathy born from the understanding that each and every one of us, including you, has our own particular strategies of protection and avoidance. We can finally come to see that our most “shameful” challenges can be held in tender compassion. From this compassion, our hearts can hold all suffering.

Originally published in Inquiring Mind magazine, a semiannual journal dedicated to the creative transmission of Buddhadharma to the West.

There’s that and all the other things you’re dealing with — managing your emotions, getting unstuck, deciding whether to stick through your relationship or end it and learning how to accept yourself and your body. That’s a lot of stuff to deal with.

The good news is that you don’t have to solve every single problem today. The good news is that everyone is a work-in-progress and we have time to work through it. A therapist once said, “If the only thing you ever do in your life is to learn how to cope with all the things you’ve been through that will be enough.”

I hope to pass that same message on to you. Each one of the posts below will help ease you into a different issue of your life. It may not miraculously change things, but if you read it and lean into it slightly, that will be enough.

Coping With A Stressful Situation: Managing Your Emotions

(The Emotionally Sensitive Person) – When you feel hurt or threatened, it’s natural to want to react. But immediately responding to how you feel in the moment will only make matters worse. Instead, learn how you can address your feelings and effectively manage your emotions.

Increase Your Well-Being by “Getting in the Zone”

(Adventures in Positive Psychology) – There are few moments that feel as good as those that involve being in the zone. If you have ever lost track of time because you were consumed in an activity, then you have experienced this sense of flow or being in the zone. But if you haven’t been there for awhile, read this. You’ll learn how to re-energize your spirits and increase your well-being by creating the right conditions to change your life.

Should I End My Relationship? Important Considerations

(Healing Together for Couples) – Wondering if it’s time to end your relationship? This is a must-read for individuals contemplating a breakup or divorce.

5 Amazing Facts About Our Bodies

(Weightless) – How many times a day do you spend thinking about all the ways your body is providing a disservice to you? I bet a lot more time than you spend thinking about the ways it’s working. This post provides a wonderful perspective on the reasons why our bodies deserve appreciation for all that they do.

The ADHD Person Behind The Mask

(ADHD Man of Distraction) – We wear different masks throughout the day when interacting with different people (your co-workers, your doctor, your employer, e.g.). But do you have people in your life who you can trust to be yourself? It’s a great reminder, whether or not you have ADHD, to take the risk and let those you love behind your mask.

But what do you do when you face cheating in your relationship?

I’m pleased to introduce the first of a series of interviews and conversations with two of our resident therapists about a wealth of mental health topics. In this installment, Marie Hartwell-Walker, Ed.D. and Daniel J. Tomasulo, Ph.D., TEP, MFA answer the question about cheating and explore the various aspects of cheating — including how different people define cheating differently — in this latest video from Psych Central.

It may help to read this article about cheating from Dr. Marie as well.

Can your relationship survive cheating? What about the forbidden fruit in relationships? When does flirting turn into cheating?

Dr. Marie and Dr. Dan will be hosting many future videos on relationship and mental health topics in the weeks to come. We will post them here as we publish them, or you can check them out on our new YouTube channel. Want to learn more about Dr. Marie and Dr. Dan?

What do you think about their advice? Please leave your thoughts in our comments section.

In honor of many people’s New Year’s resolutions — “Eat more healthfully,” “Cut out sweets,” “Lose weight,” and the like — I’m re-posting this quiz, to help you determine whether you’re a moderator or an abstainer. When I figured out that I’m an “abstainer,” it helped me tremendously in terms of eating better.

Often, we know we’d have more long-term happiness if we gave up something that gives us a rush of satisfaction in the short-term. That morning doughnut, that late-night ice cream.

A piece of advice I often see is, “Be moderate. Don’t have dessert every night, but if you try to deny yourself altogether, you’ll fall off the wagon. Allow yourself to have the occasional treat, it will help you stick to your plan.”

I’ve come to believe that this is good advice for some people: the moderators. They do better when they try to make moderate changes, when they avoid absolutes and bright lines.

For a long time, I kept trying this strategy of moderation — and failing. Then I read a line from Samuel Johnson, about drinking wine: “Abstinence is as easy to me as temperance would be difficult.” Like Dr. Johnson, I’m an abstainer.

I find it far easier to give something up altogether than to indulge moderately. When I admitted to myself that I was eating my favorite frozen “fake food” treat, Tasti D-Lite, two and even three times a day, I gave it up cold turkey. That was far easier for me to do than to eat Tasti D-Lite twice a week. If I try to be moderate, I exhaust myself debating, “Today, tomorrow?” “Does this time ‘count?’” etc. If I never do something, it requires no self-control for me; if I do something sometimes, it requires enormous self-control.

For instance, we keep a bag of cookies in our cupboard. If I ever ate one of those cookies, they’d prey on my mind constantly. I’d constantly struggle not to eat them. But because I’ve never once eaten one of those cookies, I never think about them. I don’t have to use any will-power not to reach into that bag. It might as well be a bag of flour.

When I told a moderator friend about this, she shook her head pityingly and said, “That’s just sad. Really. Life is too short not to have a cookie.”

“No,” I answered, “for me, life is too short to use up my precious mental energy on a few cookies. I’m happier if I don’t eat them.”

There’s no right way or wrong way — it’s just a matter of knowing which strategy works better for you. Once again, back to the Fifth Splendid Truth: you can build a happy life only on the foundation of your own nature. If moderators try to abstain, they feel trapped and rebellious. If abstainers try to be moderate, they spend a lot of mental energy battling their temptations.

You’re a moderator if you…

• … find that occasional indulgence heightens your pleasure—and strengthens your resolve

• … get panicky at the thought of “never” getting or doing something

You’re an abstainer if you…

• … have trouble stopping something once you’ve started

• … aren’t tempted by things that you’ve decided are off-limits

People can be surprisingly judgmental about which approach you take. As an abstainer, I often get disapproving comments like, “It’s not healthy to take such a severe approach” or “It would be better to learn how to manage yourself” or “Can’t you let yourself have a little fun?” On the other hand, I hear fellow abstainer-types saying to moderators, “You can’t keep cheating and expect to make progress” or “Why don’t you just go cold turkey?” But different approaches work for different people. (Exception: with an actual addiction, like alcohol or cigarettes, people generally accept that abstaining is the only solution.)

Does this ring true for you?
Do you identify as a moderator or abstainer?

The other day, I joined Pinterest, “an online pinboard to organize and share the things you love.” I’d heard so many good things about it, and am just starting to dive in myself.

I also used to say “I’m sorry” when a) I wasn’t sorry and b) at the weirdest times, like when someone would bump into me or when I’d want to express a difference of opinion. (Blogger and author Therese Borchard can relate. She gave exposure therapy a try for eliminating her apologizing addiction.)

And any time I’d make a mistake, big or small, I’d feel like I just committed a mortal sin. All mistakes were magnified and the guilt and shame made me want to crawl under a rock. Making mistakes became a gnawing cycle that also chipped away at my already unstable self-esteem.

Saying no to someone was painful, and there were many times that I just wanted to be alone.

“Pioneering self-esteem researcher Morris Rosenberg asserted that nothing is more stressful than lacking the secure anchor of self-esteem,” according to Glenn R. Schiraldi, Ph.D., author of The Self-Esteem Workbook and a professor at the University of Maryland School of Public Health.

In my case, this was certainly true. My low self-esteem led to several toxic relationships, extra stress and a sinking mood. And along the way, I just didn’t enjoy myself as much as I could have.

Rosenberg’s research, Schiraldi said, revealed the following signs of low self-esteem:

• Sensitivity to criticism

• Social withdrawal
• Hostility
• Excessive preoccupation with personal problems
• Physical symptoms such as fatigue, insomnia and headaches

“People even put on a false front to impress [others],” he said.

People with a shaky self-esteem also struggle with self-critical, negative thoughts, said Lisa Firestone, Ph.D, a clinical psychologist and co-author of Conquer Your Critical Inner Voice. “These thoughts often criticize and hold them back from going after what they want in life.”

Firestone explained that “When a person feels worthless, they can start to show poor performance or stop trying to achieve in areas in which they feel defeated: academically, professionally, or personally.”

Failure can be especially tough on people with low self-esteem. According to Schiraldi, they experience more shame than others.

Fortunately, self-esteem isn’t set in stone. It takes time and practice, but you can absolutely lift low self-esteem and develop respect, appreciation and unconditional love for yourself. And no, this doesn’t mean being selfish or self-absorbed. In his second book, 10 Simple Solutions for Building Self-Esteem, Schiraldi writes:

Wholesome self-esteem is the conviction that one is as worthwhile as anyone else, but not more so. On one hand, we feel a quiet gladness to be who we are and a sense of dignity that comes from realizing that we share what all humans possess — intrinsic worth. On the other hand, those with self-esteem remain humble, realizing that everyone has much to learn and that we are all really in the same boat.

In the beginning of a new relationship, the time I think of as the Golden Days, your partner can do no wrong. Snoring is cute. Picking up the socks that end up all over the house is an act of love. The thought of a serious fight seems impossible — until it happens.

The person you love the most, to whom you are closest, becomes irritating, stupid, or irrational. Suddenly the Golden Days are replaced with reality. You and your partner are shedding your pretenses. Neither you nor your loved one feels the need to impress the other. You are committed to each other. You’re comfortable together.

But the snoring starts to drive you crazy, and you resent the socks you have to pick up. Conflict arrives.

All couples experience conflict, but there are ways to minimize its pain and maximize its growth. Instead of drawing you and your partner apart, conflict can bring your relationship to a new level of intimacy. This happens not by chance, but through learning new ways of relating to your partner and new relationship skills.

1. Decide on a topic and a time.

If there is an issue you want to resolve with your partner, decide together on a time and day to discuss it. Don’t plan it for when you’re tired, or likely to be stressed. If you can, make it for when you’ll have the privacy and time you need. For some, this means talking after the kids are in bed, or when you can hire a babysitter. It may mean planning time on the weekend, when your stress level is lower. Make it an appointment that you have thought about and agreed upon with your partner, and stick to it.

2. Keep on topic.

I can’t stress this one enough. If you’ve set aside time to talk about needed home repairs, don’t start discussing how your partner didn’t take down the Christmas lights until August. It can be very easy to try to get all of your complaints in at once, but resist that temptation. This time is for the agreed-upon topic only. Otherwise you will both become overwhelmed, angry, and frustrated.

3. Learn how to actively listen.

Active listening is more than simply hearing. It is listening with all your attention on what your partner is saying. It means not thinking of what you want to say next, but focusing your entire self on your partner.

As you actively listen, you want to make sure what you’re hearing is what your partner is saying. Saying something like “so, it sounds like you’re really angry that I didn’t go with you to your work party” gives your partner space to clarify — “no, it wasn’t that. It was that you didn’t even ask me how it went when I came home.” Then you try again with a statement such as “you wanted me to show interest in it.”

Ask and clarify until your partner feels like you get it. It might feel strange at first, but once you get a handle on active listening, you will find it is an incredible tool to have for all sorts of conflict in your life, not just in your relationship.

4. Compromise.

A relationship is a partnership that entails give and take. If there is something that you and your partner cannot agree on, then you need to figure out some sort of compromise.You don’t need to be completely enthusiastic about it, but you do have to feel comfortable with it.

5. Be kind.

Some people call this “fighting fair,” but you don’t need to be fighting to use this skill. Don’t call your partner names. This is never helpful, and it only increases tension. Don’t use the word “always” (because it’s often untrue). Try to use “I” statements: “I feel….I think…I need.” Don’t try and read your partner’s mind. “You feel…you think….you need” are phrases to stay away from. Only you partner knows these things — you can only assume or guess.

Learning and using these five skills will improve how you and your partner interact, and your relationship will grow. Couples who have good communication skills are able to work through problems in a healthy way. Conflict will never be fun, but it is expected and normal. Being able to work through problems can lead to growth and deeper levels of intimacy, and in the end makes a relationship stronger.

As such, here’s the second installment in our series on all things creativity. Each month we talk with a different person about their creative process and get their tips for letting our own creativity flourish.

Below, we had the pleasure of chatting with Gail McMeekin, LICSW, a Boston-based national executive, career and creativity coach, a licensed psychotherapist and award-winning author. She’s the President of Creative Success, which helps creative professionals and entrepreneurs leverage their best ideas into heartfelt, prosperous businesses and fulfilling lives.

McMeekin also is the author of many books, including The 12 Secrets of Highly Creative Women: A Portable Mentor and The 12 Secrets of Highly Successful Women: A Portable Life Coach for Creative Women.

You can learn more about McMeekin at her website. Also, check out her free e-book, The Path to Creative Success, which is loaded with exercises to help you to get creative.

1. Do you incorporate creativity-boosting activities into your daily routine? If so, what activities do you do?

I journal regularly and take a daily walk to clear my head and get ideas. Plus I consult my own Creativity Courage Cards that I created with my photographer husband to get a courage prompt for the day, and I always draw a Viking Rune to remind me that everything comes in cycles and to surrender as needed.

2. What are your inspirations for your work?

I am greatly inspired by my work with coaching clients and their challenges and I design solutions for their creative success. I also love to create products like my “Positive Choices: From Stress to Serenity” workshop, journals, charts, cards, etc.

I am using a new technique now called Life Purpose Scientific Hand Analysis, which is not palmistry but a scientific analysis of your fingerprints and your palms to help you to find out your Life Purpose, your Life Lesson, your Life School, which is your spiritual path, and your Special Gifts. People are just blown away by the results and their accuracy and how useful this information becomes in changing their lives.

I also love watercolors and paint myself, and I surround myself with beautiful art and decorating. Also, going out on travel photo shoots with my husband inspires me.

3. There are many culprits that can crush creativity, such as distractions, self-doubt and fear of failure. What tends to stand in the way of your creativity?

I can be very focused on my creative projects and complete them on deadline. But my greatest gift of ideaphoria is also my greatest liability.

I have a continual flow of ideas and I have to make choices daily to put some of them aside. So I record the ideas that pop up to review them later and stay focused on my agenda for the month.

4. How do you overcome these obstacles?

I have learned the art of focus, which is why I teach focus groups [and] help people get their creative projects and businesses launched and … resolve the emotional barriers that get in their way.

These groups have been very powerful and I keep creating new strategies and materials for all the ingredients of focusing, which keeps me on track as well. One woman went from not doing her mosaic work at all to winning first prize in the best international contest in the world, all in a few months.

5. What are some of your favorite resources on creativity?

One of my favorite resources was a magazine called Artist Sketchbook, which I wrote several articles for and read every page of. But it folded, although I still have all my copies and refer to them. Books and art inspire me as well as lovely places.

The show “Create” on PBS is great as well as all of the wonderful programming that they share with us each week. I have always gotten lots of ideas from magazines and I continue to read women’s magazines and travel magazines and get ideas.

6. What is your favorite way to get your creative juices flowing?

I have a photo of my office on my website and I have a treasure map on my desk that reminds me of what I am longing to create next. Listening to music, I usually listen to the same piece over and over doing one project, and keeping a special journal for each project helps me stay excited and alive when I am creating.

I also crave large blocks of time in which to work. In the summer, I will drive the SUV out onto our private beach on Cape Cod and write and paint and hang out with the sand pipers and the seals.

7. What’s your advice for readers on cultivating creativity?

Follow your fascinations and immerse yourself in them. Just begin working on something that you love and don’t let anyone talk you out of it. Trust your process and your intuition.

8. Anything else you’d like readers to know about creativity?

Creativity simply means making new connections and making or inventing something new and useful. You have it in you, but you need to commit to it and work with a mentor or a coach to help you to defeat all your negative inner critics that seduce you away from success. We all need support to get our creative work done and out into the world.

–

Thanks so much to Gail McMeekin for a great interview!

Left to my own instincts, I’d drift absent-mindedly through the apartment, reading, writing, and eating cereal for dinner every night.

Through my daughters, I become much more alive to ordinary pleasures — the comfort of our weirdly soft fleece blanket, the vanishing sweetness of cotton candy, the textures and colors of the Play-Doh, scented markers, and velvety pipe cleaners left scattered around the kitchen.

I’m trying to push myself to enter more deeply into childish pleasures. I love blowing bubbles, but I haven’t blown bubbles in a long time. I delight in looking at new boxes of Crayons and magic markers, but I almost never do any coloring myself. I’ve never used our cunning set of animal stamps.

I do make good use of food dye and sprinkles, however. I use any excuse to pull out our food dye! We have a giant box of sprinkles, colored markers that work on food, sugar crystals, rainbow nonpareils, and the like.

I get so much pleasure from turning vanilla yoghurt into a rainbow confection that I’m trying to be more aware of other opportunities to enjoy childish pleasures.

How about you? What childish pleasures do you enjoy, or wish you took the time to enjoy? Skate-boarding, jump-roping, shooting hoops, playing jacks? A forty-something friend told me that whenever she and her three sisters get together, they play Four-Square. It made me so happy just to hear that.

I’m working on my Happiness Project, and you could have one, too! Everyone’s project will look different, but it’s the rare person who can’t benefit. Join in—no need to catch up, just jump in right now.