LinkedIn

5.31.2014


5.25.2014

Book recommendation for the week

In the more than twenty-five years since she co-founded Omega Institute - now the world's largest center for spiritual retreat and personal growth -Elizabeth Lesser has been an intimate witness to the ways in which people weather change and transition. In a beautifully crafted blend of moving stories, humorous insights, practical guidance, and personal memoir, she offers tools to help us make the choice we all face in times of challenge: Will we be broken down and defeated, or broken open and transformed? Lesser shares tales of ordinary people who have risen from the ashes of illness, divorce, loss of a job or a loved one - stronger, wiser, and more in touch with their purpose and passion. And she draws on the world's great spiritual and psychological traditions to support us as we too learn to break open and blossom into who we were meant to be.


5.17.2014

What is Resliency

Resiliency is our ability to "Bounce Back" from stress or emotional injury (this applies to individuals, families, and couples 

Adaptation to Stressful Situations is based on:
  • Cognitive Ability
  • Temperament
  • Personality 
  • Coping Skills
External factors:
  • Social Support
  • Quality of school/environment
  • Safety
Resilient people "make sense' of life or trauma

There is flexibility of gender roles

They can

  • Stop the Downward Spiral
  • Avoid arbitrary Inference
  • AVOID: Criticism/Stonewalling/Defensiveness/Contempt


5.16.2014

Exceptional Drought Conditions in California


http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/

IN DEFENSE OF BOREDOM:
It Can Lead to Imaginative Play, Creativity and the Great Outdoors


boredom child
Adapted from “Last Child in the Woods.”
Especially during summer, parents hear the moaning complaint: “I’m borrrred.” Boredom is fear’s dull cousin. Passive, full of excuses, it can keep children from nature — or drive them to it.
In summers past (at least through the fog of memory), children were more likely to be pulled or forced out of their boredom. In the late, hot afternoon, the Mickey Mouse Club might have been enough to pull you in from outside, but most of the day’s TV offered nothing except soaps and quiz games and an occasional cowboy movie — which made you want to leap up and head outside.
“Well, times have changed,” said Tina Kafka, a teacher and mother of three, when I interviewed her for Last Child in the Woods. “Don’t wax too nostalgic,” she advised. “Even if kids have all the unstructured time in the world, they’re probably not outside playing. They’re inside with their video games.”
She recognized how, in her own memories of childhood,  carefully-planned activities pale in comparison to more spontaneous experiences.  Like many parents, she wanted to make sure her own kids have such memories. But how? Here are a few suggestions.
• Recognize that boredom isn’t necessarily a negative. There’s a big difference between a negatively numbed brain and a constructively bored mind. Constructive boredom stimulates creativity. Constructively bored kids eventually turn to a book, or build a fort, or pull out the paints (or the computer art program) and create, or come home sweaty from a game of neighborhood basketball.
• Encourage outdoor play, especially in natural settings. Research shows that when children play in natural play spaces, they’re far more likely to invent their own games, than in more structured settings — a key factor in becoming self-directed and inventive as children and later in life.Research shows that when children play in natural play spaces, they’re far more likely to invent their own games, than in more structured settings — a key factor in becoming self-directed and inventive as children and later in life.

5.14.2014

The single most important skill in life is learning to control one's anger. research shows that the common characteristic for incarcerated males is not drug addiction or a violent childhood.
It is lack of impulse control.


5.11.2014

Rotten bananas aren't all bad!
What do you see?



My Giant Sunflowers



5.09.2014

Compulsive Masturbation

Like addicts of all stripes, compulsive masturbators engage in their addiction not to feel better, but to gain a sense of control over what they are feeling. For them, masturbation is a coping mechanism utilized less for self-pleasure and more for escape, self-soothing, and emotional distraction. In other words, compulsive masturbation is a way to avoid the emotional and/or psychological discomfort caused by life stressors and underlying issues like depression, anxiety, and unresolved childhood abuse, neglect, and trauma. 

Most often compulsive masturbators learn in adolescence (though sometimes earlier or later) how to use/abuse the intensity of sexual arousal and masturbation to mask and distract from emotional discomfort. Over time, especially in a “chronic stress” household (a house with ongoing substance abuse, neglect, mental illness, physical abuse, sexual abuse, etc.), a person can learn to use masturbation as his or her go-to “coping response,” an escapist answer to any and every form of pain and discomfort, including issues as seemingly benign as boredom or loneliness.

5.07.2014

Book Recommendation for the Week
 Our "thirty-is-the-new-twenty" culture tells us the twentysomething years don't matter. Some say they are a second adolescence. Others call them an emerging adulthood. Dr. Meg Jay, a clinical psychologist, argues that twentysomethings have been caught in a swirl of hype and misinformation, much of which has trivialized what is actually the most defining decade of adulthood.

For the 20's set and the people who love them