Way To Go, Godot!

I’m pulling back the curtain on the brand new psychology community site that I’ve been working really hard to put together. You can find it here: Chicago Psychology.

The idea is to provide a place for mental health professionals and psychology researchers to:

1. Promote their practices and promote themselves to potential employers
2. Share information about new research and clinical insights
3. Network with like-minded psychology professionals in order to build up a good professional reputation and get good jobs

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On a psychodiagnostic residency, where your job is just to understand people, one of the tools you use is the famous Rorschach Inkblot Test. In this test, the patient is shown a standard series of pictures created by squirting ink onto a page and then folding the page over. They are then asked to describe what they see in the blots. The answers contain all the keys to the patient’s perception. You may not see, at first, how an explanation of this technique can be of any practical value to you unless you are training to be a psychologist, but if you’ll read on I can promise you there is a payoff for us wayward seekers of personal growth.

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Rose writes:

Can I get treated for depression? I’ve just been prescribed new antidepressants and sedatives and I’m really frightened but feel I have no alternative as I can’t function normally.

Thanks for writing in, Rose. Your question touches on an issue that has stirred up a great deal of controversy over the last hundred years: the “talking cure,” as Freud called psychotherapy, versus pharmacological intervention. Personally, I think that both can be very useful if applied appropriately.

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A nice, relaxed meal; a slow walk on a sunny spring day; time alone with loved ones. It’s an accepted wisdom that the little things in life are often the most enjoyable. The more you allow yourself to stay in the moment and focus in on the simple pleasures, the better your overall quality of life will be. We all know this already.

The problem lies in trying to remember this simple truth in the midst of all of life’s craziness. Most of us have so much going on in our lives that it seems like all we can do to keep our focus on the deadlines we have to meet, the objectives we have to reach, and the expectations we have to live up to. On top of that, most of us find ourselves surrounded by people who are at least as preoccupied with these things as we are, which reinforces our focus squarely on those things which have the least chance of making us happy right now, in this moment.

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Eric Puryear writes:

A fellow law student and I were debating the current issue of terrorist interrogation, and what practices would offend anti-torture aspects of the constitution and international treaties. The question came up as to whether any practice which compelled someone to speak against their will was torture (see the UN torture definition at the top of the page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torture). From a psychological perspective, what are your thoughts sir?

Photo by danny.hammontree

The definition you reference essentially says that any intentional infliction of severe pain or suffering is torture. And I think most people would generally agree. The problem is that no one seems to agree on how severe that suffering has to be. Is waterboarding severe enough? How about being tazed? Is sleep deprivation torture? Loud music? Bad food? Public humiliation? It all depends who you ask. The folks who have an interest in the torturing will usually say no, and the folks who are being tortured will probably always say yes.

I think the thing to understand here is that everyone sees themselves as the good guys. The torturer is defending god or country or freedom, and so is the recipient of the torture. The situation is hopeless. I recommend against involvement.

Let’s face it: if you’re reading this article, you’re probably not like the others. There has probably always been something a little different, maybe even a little awkward about you. But you used that difference as a strength; you took it as your permission to explore the world from new angles, and to develop yourself into the sort of person who keeps working to develop yourself. And you probably succeed in your personal development. You are probably much more motivated than the general public, much more likely to succeed in business, more likely to enjoy a happy family life and to age gracefully.

Carl Jung based much of his psychology on the idea that people and societies are fundamentally balanced, that each of us has all of the possible dramatic configurations and mythological motivations built in, and that they each have equal importance for our overall being. This means that the things that you really hate about other people are exactly the parts of yourself that you are trying to disavow. Jung called these parts the shadow.

That’s why I think it’s so important to watch CSI:Miami.

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In February, Alex Shalman had the great idea to explore what people mean when they say they want to be happy. The result was a list of five simple questions that formed the basis for bunch of really great interviews which you can read over at The Happiness Project page. What’s great about these interviews is not only finding out what motivates a number of very interesting and motivated individuals, but also the fact that in each one you can probably find some aspect of your own personal motivations. Reading through the interviews, I felt as though I were making contact with the positive natures of dozens of my own hidden personas.

Now I’d like to contribute to The Happiness Project by answering these questions myself, and by encouraging you to do the same.

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In my recent article on hypnosis, I mentioned fairly casually that we don’t live in the present moment. We live in memories and dreams.

This is an idea that will not be unfamiliar to those with a mystic bent, but the rest of you may suspect that there is some craziness going on here. In fact, there is! But it is a craziness that is supported by a lot of very good neurological and psychological research.

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Hypnosis is a sort of spooky and misunderstood phenomenon. Most of what people generally know about hypnosis comes from movies and stage performers, not real clinical hypnotists.

You may not even realize that clinical hypnosis is a very well-established and scientifically validated medical practice. It’s used by psychotherapists, physicians, nurses, dentists, and anesthesiologists to produce a profound sense of serenity in patients who might otherwise be really freaking out. As it turns out, hypnosis is an incredibly versatile and powerful psychological technique, so it would be in your best interests to know a little bit about it and to be open to the idea.

With that in mind, I’ll dispel some of the major myths about hypnosis and tell you some far-out realities about it as well:

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A million authors have written a million articles about amping up your creativity for a minute or two at a time. This article is different, because I intend to help you develop a full strategy for boosting your creativity whenever you need it and as much as you need.

The first thing to get a grasp of is exactly what creativity is. Creativity is novelty. When someone does something unexpected, we refer to that as a creative choice.

The only way to make unexpected decisions is to see some of the unexpected options which are open to you. This is what people tend to find the most difficult, because there is ultimately no way to really expect the unexpected. You have to find a way to open your eyes to something that has been in front of you all along. And that is creativity. Creativity is perspective.

So here’s how to open your eyes:

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People communicate with each other constantly, and in ways we hardly ever even realize. You heard that right: even a truly prolific writer is unlikely to ever match in written words the sheer volume of information that is constantly transmitted to the people around them, in the form of body language, expressions, small gestures, barely detectable fluctuations in muscle tone, in vocal cadence. Beyond these measurable types of physical communication, there’s another level of communication buried under and between the language itself. It occurs just as automatically as body language and just as pervasively. And, like body language, we usually don’t even realize we’re doing it.

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When you’re considering psychotherapy, you should remember that the most important aspect of the treatment, in terms of predicting whether it will be effective for you, is the relationship itself. A deeply trusting and cooperative relationship with your therapist must be developed in order for all the other things that need to happen to happen. So, first of all, find a therapist you like and feel understood by. That means calling up a few different therapists and speaking with them over the phone, maybe even going in for consultations, until you find someone who you feel like you can relate to.

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In my work with sufferers of chronic pain, I’ve taught hundreds of people to practice mindfulness meditation. I do this not only because mindfulness meditation is in itself an effective treatment for chronic pain, but also because it helps the practitioner to manage their thoughts and emotions more effectively. It can help you to boost your creativity and can even improve your hypnotic ability.

Mindfulness meditation is probably the simplest form of meditation. It is deceptively simple; a lot of people have difficulty understanding how doing so little can have such deep and powerful effects on well-being. In studies with headache patients practicing mindfulness meditation every day for just 20 minutes a day, the most notable psychological effect of the practice was a pervasive sense of improved control. This is a common experience for people who take up the practice of mindfulness meditation:

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On some level, most people recognize that psychological factors affect physical health. People basically seem to know, for example, that a stressful career or a ‘Type A’ personality might give them a heart attack, or that an abrasive colleague can give them a headache.

What most people aren’t fully aware of is the profound interconnection between the mind and the body. The past twenty or thirty years have seen an explosion of research on the ways that the mind and the body relate to each other. The further the research goes, in fact, the less it looks like there is a mind apart from the body, or a body apart from the mind. Everything that happens to your body has an effect on your thoughts and feelings, and every emotional or intellectual event has effects on your body.

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For thousands of years, life was simple. You spent most of the day dawdling around with your family. You dozed, made arts and crafts, tended fires, gathered nuts and berries. The only time this lifestyle got hectic was when it was time to track and kill an animal, or when it was time for you to run away from an animal that had it in mind to track and kill you. Simple, acute stressors that you could fully recover from within an hour. There were other sources of stress, of course: fighting for dominance within your group, and fighting against other groups. These probably occurred relatively infrequently, and probably usually didn’t last that long.

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