What?

Many insomniacs obsessively ‘self monitor’ what is happening as they lie in bed with their eyes shut (or open). “Am I asleep yet?” “How alert am I right now?” and so on. It seems that the insomniacs in the study who were given the fake sugar pill ‘relaxants’ ascribed any alertness they noticed in themselves to their insomnia. If they were still alert even after taking the ‘relaxant’, then the insomnia must be really bad. And, as a result, the vicious cycle of alertness leading to yet more alertness would accelerate. But those given the dummy stimulants were able to ascribe any alertness they noticed not to their insomnia but to the ‘drug’ they had supposedly been given – so they could relax, because they were supposed to be alert. And therefore they were much more likely to fall asleep!

This kind of ‘paradoxical affect’ applies far beyond the bedroom, of course. Milton Erickson was famous for his intuitive understanding of the subtle shades and seeming contradictions of human motivation and how to use this to good effect when treating troubled patients, and paradoxical psychological problem solving is an important aspect of many of the Uncommon Knowledge therapy training courses.

But back to the research: all real, non-placebo, drugs will have psycho-physical effects above and beyond their chemical impact. Makes you wonder whether sleeping pills stop working for some people because it encourages more self monitoring: “Has this pill worked yet? No? Then my insomnia must be really powerful!”

Sleep well.

Mark

It seems there is a set of universals or ‘human givens’ that make us identifiably human, and then there are cultural specifics which make us interestingly different from one another. Confusion arises because we often muddle these up, and assume that what is really environmental learning is fixed and ‘pre-programmed’, and that what are really innate characteristics have been shaped by culture.

For example, psychologist Paul Ekman famously demonstrated that facial expressions of emotion are not culturally determined but universal. He studied isolated tribes who had had no contact with the wider world and found that expressions of sadness, anger, fear and so forth were expressed through the same facial muscular networks (expressions) as anywhere else. These findings contradicted some theories of emotional expression current at the time.

In a fascinating study which echoes Ekman, Thomas Fritz led a team of researchers to Cameroon in Africa, where they found evidence that similar combinations of musical notes provoke similar emotions in the people listening to them, and these responses do not appear to be culturally determined. It is true that musical appreciation is more strongly influenced by culture, but human beings appear to process music emotionally in fundamentally the same way.

That’s more evidence to make us even more cautious about jumping to conclusions about nature/nurture distinctions – a controversy which (speaking of emotions) is still holding up progress in dealing with depression, for instance. Sadness is a universal human experience – a direct emotion. But depression is much more akin to ‘musical appreciation’ – that is, depression is what we make of the emotion of sadness. And we learn what to make of it from those around us. In other words, depression can be socially learned.

We like simple cause and effect. Crossness causes frowns. Happiness causes smiles. But facial expressions are not always and invariably a consequence of emotion. Facial expressions can also generate emotion.

We often think of actors as ‘temperamental’ – but what if constantly adopting the expressions of anger, sadness, aggression, etc actually makes you feel that way? Method acting emotions could end up giving you the real thing. Facial expression don’t just reflect but also form the way that we feel. Botox anyone?

An intriguing study shows that Botox injections can help make you feel happier because you cannot frown while the Botox is paralyzing your facial muscles. Frowning sends signals to the brain which can make you feel irritable or sad. Not only that, but frowning sends signals to other people that you are not in a good mood, and they tend to frown in response – which, in a feedback loop, can also make you feel down, and isolated.

Obviously, if someone is really depressed then it’s likely that many of their basic needs are not being satisfied, and Botox alone could only ever be a partial solution, but it’s conceivable that such a treatment could at least get the ball rolling by lifting their mood enough for them to start getting their emotional and physical needs properly met.

Mind you, I’m not particularly advocating Botox as a depression treatment, but there is a wider point here. Therapeutic interventions which may look as if they are only addressing a small part of the problem (like setting behavioral tasks as part of the recovery program) can have a much greater impact through ‘ripple effect’ than is necessarily immediately obvious.

Which is something to smile about.

Yesterday I spoke to a man with chronic pain who claimed that by far the best ‘pain medication’ was to recall times when he’d been convulsed with laughter. He found this often worked better than ‘pain pills’. I didn’t roll my eyes at this, as you might have expected, as I’m quite well aware that laughter really is a ‘tonic’. A good belly laugh can suppress pain, boost immune response, lower blood pressure and enhance a sense of intimacy and shared understanding with those around – to name but a few of the benefits of laughter.

Humor, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. Well, so to speak!
 We often find the unexpected funny – as long as we don’t feel threatened by the jolt it gives us. Many jokes rely on this for their effect – they mislead our expectations and then suddenly face us with a totally different outcome. This jolt has other uses. A short sharp humor shock can actually help us become better learners and problem solvers as we burst into laughter. This is because it loosens up our everyday mind – which tends to travel along pretty comfortable, predictable tracks. The jolt stimulates the brain to make new connections and get creative. It gets us out of ‘automatic thinking’ and into an altogether looser, freer, livelier-feeling mode of awareness. That’s why you should really take laughter seriously.

Should we be able to laugh at everything, though? Some people find it a bit hard to swallow that you might sometimes get a better understanding of even quite serious matters if you inject humor into them. Isn’t this just trivializing important things, disrespecting the real seriousness of what is at issue? But while no one should laugh at another’s misfortune, for example, helping that other to laugh at their own misfortune here and there, now and then, can – when done sensitively – actually do them a real psychological favor. It can genuinely lighten their burden.

And some sorts of seriousness really could do with a jolt of humor. People who take themselves too seriously (I’m sure you know a few) become pompous and overbearing. You can’t reason them out of it – but a joke might help them see their own ridiculousness. This was often said to be the real role of the medieval court jester – they had special dispensation to remind the sovereign that that they were only human after all by pricking their pomposity with humor. This was too risky for ordinary people to do – they might get their heads chopped off!

Anyway, I asked this guy what were the memories he went back to that were so hilarious they could suppress the pain. And he looked me straight in the eye and said: “No shortage! I worked in banking for thirty years!”

Ho ho.

Mark

The present times are really rather excessively ‘interesting’. 
I don’t know about you, but I am starting to hear about job losses through the grapevine of friends of friends. I heard about one fifty-eight year old woman who, on hearing she was being laid off, got down on her hands and knees to beg for her job. Not nice.

A secure job not only gives us the money we need to survive, it also meets a number of other vital human needs.

For millions of people, losing your job means you lose a whole load of other things besides money. You can lose access to regular human interaction. You can lose the feeling of safety and security. You can lose status (real or perceived). You may no longer feel part of something worthwhile, something larger than yourself. And you may lose the sense of control that routine and having enough money gives us. For better or worse, many of us define ourselves through our work. Loss of identity can hit just as hard as loss of income. When basic emotional needs are not met, we are at risk of greater psychological problems.


As once solid giant employers topple like a house of cards in a tropical storm, we can expect a rise in the incidence of mental health problems across society. This isn’t a sudden new realization. The connection between job loss and the incidence of physical and mental illness was already being flagged up a quarter of a century ago.

Fears that the recession may lead to an increase in domestic violence as families and couples struggle with the stresses of the economic situation have already prompted government action in an attempt to stave off this and other related social problems.

Perhaps the best way to survive these storms emotionally is to be aware of the emotional needs your job was supplying and to look for ways to meet those same needs outside the arena of work. If your needs are being adequately met, you can handle most things. The wonderful thing about us human beings is our adaptability. Meaning, connection, status, routine – they can all be found outside of paid work.

And in the words of Bob Dylan, sometimes all we can do is ‘keep on keeping on’.


Mark


Thinking about and focusing on client resources (even stubbornness can be reframed as ‘determination.’) seems obvious but, believe it or not has been shied away from in psychotherapy for years. See The mad world of psychotherapy.

Mark

Cognitive psychology talks about thoughts but our lives are much more led by what we imagine which is more hypnotic than cognitive.

Depression, anticipatory anxiety even the vivid uncontrolled imaginings of Post traumatic stress disorder and schizophrenia all entail massive firing of uncontrolled and misused imagination. Dreams are processed through powerful imaginings. We don’t cognitively decide what to dream we spontaneously imagine vivid dream narratives which sometimes can terrify us.

Learning to gain more control of our imaginations as well as our thoughts and actions (which can both spring from imagination) is, I think, an integral part to developing and overcoming psychological difficulties.

As the esteemed Sufi poet Rumi said almost 800 years ago: “There is no cause for fear. It is imagination, blocking you as a wooden bolt holds the door. Burn that bar….”

Mark

You and I also need the slow wave sleep which occurs between dreams to rejuvenate and re-energize the mind and body. This, between dream deep sleep also helps us ‘glue’ new learnings in place from the day before. Take a look at this intriguing snippet: A deeper sleep

Good sleep doesn’t just ensure we feel rested and so energized it also helps us process our emotions and stabilize new learning.

All the best

Mark Zzzzz

In a recent article about brain cells, Joshua Freedman a U.C.L.A. neuroscientist, noted that a monkey feels maximal reward not when he eats a grape but rather when he gets it in his possession, anticipating he can eat it.

Getting people to purposely think of something calming could dampen the arousal around anticipatory acquiring (of a desired object/experience) almost in half. Good news for those if us who seek to treat addictions through psychological mean-see: How hypnosis helps people stop smoking

On the other hand knowing that positive expectation can be more rewarding than the actual experience anticipated perhaps we should go easy on offering our loved ones too many pleasant surprises-after all having three weeks to look forward to your surprise party may be a gift in itself.

But imagine if you could take anticipation totally out of the addict’s dependency psychology! For a reminder of how powerful anticipation is see: Placebo hypnosis

Mark

Ever had the experience of having to get up early and waking up just before the alarm? Again this is a kind of placebo response. (Can feel like a nocebo). According to this research there may be a good explanation as to why this happens-as far as activated stress levels are concerned.

People who experience insomnia often state that the stress involved in knowing they have to get up early can drive the sleep disorder it self.

Mark