Sometimes when people say that they are telling you something you should know for your own good, maybe it really is for their own good. Maybe they tell you that you should change something about yourself for your own good when really its something that is for their own good, not yours? “Janey, you should quit talking so much and stop monopolizing the conversation”, when really they are the one who wants to monopolize the conversation and they want you to shut up and let them completely take over. Worse yet they can compliment you about something you are wearing or about a new hairstyle when obviously it doesn’t flatter you at all. Then your best friend can be your worst enemy. How do you tell the difference between one and the other?
Also less lethal but still misleading is a friend-enemy who may monopolize the choice of the next store to go to on “Black Friday” or acts like she is being the most helpful when you are deciding where to eat. It is always presented as the most logical choice but over time you or others don’t get to go where they might have planned to go. If you kept score, how many times did they get their choice while you or others did not get theirs? Maybe you had hoped to have Chinese and to top it off it might have even been your birthday and you didn’t get to have your choice for whatever reason your “friend” gave. Then if you begin to feel slightly angry over time, your friend will have a reason why you shouldn’t feel bad and it makes you look and feel like an oversensitive slob.
Could your friend be a little narcissistic and even insensitive? Not that you could say anything about them or to them. The only remedy often seems to be a little bit narcissistic or insensitive yourself. Often you spend too much time being codependent and meeting other people’s needs and may even have difficulty recognizing your own needs. “Let’s invite Judy (that’s you) to the party, I’m sure she’ll bring the food and even make the decorations.” Whoops, isn’t something going “wrong” there? Maybe the party wasn’t your idea and you had something else planned. But you get coopted!
With the right circumstances, the power of brain plasticity can help adult minds grow. Although certain brain functions decay with age, people can tap into plasticity and refresh the brain.
Targeted brain plasticity exercises help to keep our brains fit. Even those suffering from brain damage may be able to retrain their brains for better function. The key is identifying what brain functions to target and how to best exercise them.
Researchers suggest that there are various methods of harnessing brain plasticity:
Intermittent Fasting
The Society for Neuroscience suggests that fasting increases synaptic plasticity, decreases risk of neurodegenerative diseases, promotes neuron growth and improves cognitive function. When you fast, a metabolic shift reduces the body’s leptin levels. Thus, the brain receives a chemical signal for neurons to produce more energy.
Travel
Traveling encourages neurogenesis by exposing your brain to new, fresh, and complex environments. Paul Nussbaum, a neuropsychologist from the University of Pittsburgh explains, “Those new and challenging situations cause the brain to sprout dendrites.” And a week-long tour of another country isn’t necessary to get this benefit; take a weekend road trip to a different city.
Use Mnemonic Devices
Memory training promotes connectivity in your brain’s prefrontal parietal network and can slow memory loss with age. Mnemonic devices combine visualization, imagery, spatial navigation, and rhythm and melody, so they can reach various parts of the brain simultaneously.
Learn an Instrument
Musicians’ brains show sharp connectivity between brain areas. Neuroscientists explain that the multi-sensory experience of playing a musical instrument allows for the association of motor actions with specific sounds, and memorizing visual patterns leads to new neural networks being formed. As you practice a new instrument, the repetition will allow for neuroplasticity to do its work.
Non-Dominant Hand Exercises
Using your non-dominant hand during routine tasks can help form new neural pathways. Doing this strengthens connectivity between your brain cells. Studies also show that non-dominant hand activities improve emotional health and impulse control. Try switching hands during some simple tasks and give your brain a test.
Read Fiction
Studies show increased and ongoing connectivity in the brains of participants after reading a novel. Enhanced brain activity occurred in the brain area that controls physical sensations and movement. Scientists explain that reading a novel can be a physical transportation into the fictional world. Shifting into this mental state is crucial for learning how to have complex social relationships.
Expand your Vocabulary
When you learn new words, the brain’s visual processes, memory processes, and auditory processes activate. The smaller your vocabulary, the more likely you are to have poor cognitive skills.
Sleep
Studies show that sleep “helps learning retention with the growth of dendritic spines, the tiny protrusions that connect brain cells and facilitates the passage of information across synapses.” Getting 7-8 hours of sleep each night will help the brain retain information.
Try at least one of these ways and disprove the old idea that we lose brain function as we age. The last part of this age will be published next week.
There has been a lot of people looking for a motive for the shooter in the Las Vegas shooting. They haven’t found any accomplices and the shooter was a known moderately (by Vegas standards) successful gambler and he had openly lived that life before the shooting. He had gone on 12 or 13 cruises in the last year. He had several homes. It apparently took a lot of planning, the acquiring of specific knowledge, and the scoping out of other possible locations and events where he could have carried the same type of atrocity. He knew how to aim his semi-automatic weapons standing upon special platforms and he had made calculations to be sure he would aim the rifles in such a way as to enable him to kill or wound the most people.
Now you might not believe in the devil and/or in demon possession as described in the Bible but it seems to fit here. Could a bargain have been made with the devil which allowed him to live the successful life he did even though he started his life with a very low-level job? Also, his girlfriend said that he would struggle and thrash in bed (was he fighting with a demon or dealing with demon possession?). It also accounts for the extensive planning that he did, the knowledge that he acquired, and possibly the targets. Surely the devil would like to have him choose a target which would include a lot of lovers of country music which are often Christians? Maybe he didn’t need an accomplice if he already was involved in a pact with the devil or had opened himself to demon possession. As I present this hypothesis, I am calling upon the name of Jesus to rebuke the devil and his accomplices and to protect me from the devil.
The possibility of mental illness has been proposed, but it usually is not possible for a mentally ill person to be so successful in doing something that involved so much knowledge and preparation. Was he a narcissistic sociopath? a paranoid schizophrenic? Often mental illness leads to confusion and unrealistic ideas of special powers and also unrealistic ideas of how to carry out distorted ideas. Yes, they can desire to kill people. Maybe he had it in for Christians; but if he did, he told no one about it. There has so far been any evidence of any delusions. He was not the type of guy who stood out in any crowd and he was known as a frequent successful gambler but he did not cause any problems. He was not known to associate with anybody but his girlfriend and, if not her, prostitutes.
Why people can’t change:
1. They would have to admit they were wrong about something.
2. They might have to make some other changes too.
3. It would take too much time.
4. They are waiting for somebody else to change first.
5. They would have to admit that they wasted time or money doing the wrong thing.
6. They might have to admit that somebody else was right and they were wrong or too much pride and too much emphasis on winning some type of competition.
7. Having to be always right even if it kills you.
Why they should change:
1. To stop putting money down a rat hole.
2. To become an example for somebody else.
3. To stop wasting time defending why they can’t change.
4. To save more time and money after investing some current time and money making a change.
5. To stop having to hide some deficiency from others.
6. To learn something new.
In the long run there are great benefits: For example, learning to drive as an adult. Erased my dependency on others. Gave me freedom.
Feelings can be overwhelming and are necessary at times. Grief for example, must be expressed sooner or later. It is very damaging especially to relationships if it can not be shared. When I am very hungry, I get so mad that I could spit nails. When I am with family or friends I warn them when I get that way. I am literally not able to fulfill others’ requests until I get something to eat. You probably could name more.
Some feelings people feel are so strong that they literally take over and people thus say that they “involuntarily” do things that they may or may not regret later. They are out of control but it is not their fault. For example, someone says, “He made me so mad…” and this justifies whatever that person does next.
Are we responsible for our feelings? Well, “Yes,” and “No”. We are frequently conditioned at a very young age to respond with negative feelings to certain things. We may be even given rational explanations for feeling that way that we accept as something that motivates us to do certain certain things and often enables us to not accept responsibility for what we do then.
How do we resist all that conditioning? It can effectively put limits on our life if we let it. It is often difficult to undo. How often have we heard someone say, “I can’t help it,” in relation to performing these type of learned behaviors. Is it a Get Out of Jail Free” card like in Monopoly?
What have you learned to feel and to respond to in certain situations. Is it you that is behind it or did you catch it from somewhere or someone else?
Experimental Psychologists study the variables that effect behavior in humans, animals, and sometimes plants. The problem with conducting such studies is that there are many possible variables that may effect behavior. When you conduct research you must be able to control as many variables as possible and be able to isolate the one or ones that you want to study and manipulate them in a controlled fashion. The more control you have over different variables the less likely it is that the experimental situation will resemble what happens in everyday life.
The ideal experimental psychologist has to have some background involving the naturalistic observation of the behaviors or behaviors being studied. The act of observation effects the behavior or behaviors being studied. This has been found to be true in physics. You can’t measure something without effecting it in some way. The simplest study in psychology is watching what is going on in interactions between humans and between animals and even between plants and even more complexly between each form of life and the other forms of life. In fact, often so much is going on that it is easy to miss things that later prove to be important.
Psychologists get their ideas on what variables that effect behavior from other psychologists’ research and observations and also from others’ theories about human, animal, and plant behavior. It is good to know about past results in the field and to use these results to plan what to do in the future. The problem is that any mistakes that were made in these studies could be replicated and perpetuated in the theories formulated from them. The problem is that as science changes so does our view of the world and new things can be measured and observed in ways that were never thought of before.
Prejudices can effect the variables that effect behavior and experiments can be designed that perpetuate these beliefs. Psychological studies have been done that suggest that if the person running the experiments, knows what effect that they want to get that will make that effect more likely to happen than if they don’t know.
Do you know why people do what they do? Do you think psychologists, psychiatrists, and counselors know this automatically when they get information about a new client’s problem? Sometimes it takes at least just a little more knowledge about a situation than what has been given to start with to understand why something is happening. I was taught to do behavior modification therapy and although the process I used was by the book; it had to be tweaked to work right. The necessary rewards and punishments had to motivate the client to do or not do a certain specified behavior or behaviors. For example, I have a family member for whom chocolate ice cream wouldn’t work, but for time for this family member to take a nice long bath would.
Marestail shows moisture at high altitude, signalling the later arrival of wet weather. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
This has been a problem not only when doing behavior therapy but also when doing other kinds of therapy. Sometimes it’s not what you think that is why people do what they do. I knew of a farmer who drank when the weather forecast was bad. I figured he was upset that he couldn’t get into the field the next day and was worried that he wouldn’t get his crops in or out. No, I found out later that he knew he could drink that evening because he wouldn’t be operating farm equipment the next day.
I was using a very successful method of hypnosis for helping a person to quit smoking and I was getting nowhere. The person had very serious health problems caused by smoking. When I did a through follow-up interview, I found out that the only thing that person did for his or her own enjoyment was smoking. He or she constantly did for others 24/7. The amount of such work that he or she did was mind boggling. He or she was at the beck and call of family and friends.
Recent Comments