I do not know how much I agree with this but thought I would share it….JmaC
Psychiatric disorders are not medical diseases. There are no lab tests, brain scans, X-rays or chemical imbalance tests that can verify any mental disorder is a physical condition. This is not to say that people do not get depressed, or that people can’t experience emotional or mental duress, but psychiatry has repackaged these emotions and behaviors as “disease” in order to sell drugs. This is a brilliant marketing campaign, but it is not science.
“…modern psychiatry has yet to convincingly prove the genetic/biologic cause of any single mental illness…Patients [have] been diagnosed with ‘chemical imbalances’ despite the fact that no test exists to support such a claim, and…there is no real conception of what a correct chemical balance would look like.” —Dr. David Kaiser, psychiatrist
“There’s no biological imbalance. When people come to me and they say, ‘I have a biochemical imbalance,’ I say, ‘Show me your lab tests.’ There are no lab tests. So what’s the biochemical imbalance?” —Dr. Ron Leifer, psychiatrist
“All psychiatrists have in common that when they are caught on camera or on microphone, they cower and admit that there are no such things as chemical imbalances/diseases, or examinations or tests for them. What they do in practice, lying in every instance, abrogating [revoking] the informed consent right of every patient and poisoning them in the name of ‘treatment’ is nothing short of criminal.” —Dr. Fred Baughman Jr., Pediatric Neurologist
“Psychiatry makes unproven claims that depression, bipolar illness, anxiety, alcoholism and a host of other disorders are in fact primarily biologic and probably genetic in origin…This kind of faith in science and progress is staggering, not to mention naïve and perhaps delusional.” —Dr. David Kaiser, psychiatrist
While “there has been no shortage of alleged biochemical explanations for psychiatric conditions…not one has been proven. Quite the contrary. In every instance where such an imbalance was thought to have been found, it was later proven false.” —Dr. Joseph Glenmullen, Harvard Medical School psychiatrist
“The theories are held on to not only because there is nothing else to take their place, but also because they are useful in promoting drug treatment.” —Dr. Elliott Valenstein Ph.D., author of Blaming the Brain
“There is no blood or other biological test to ascertain the presence or absence of a mental illness, as there is for most bodily diseases. If such a test were developed…then the condition would cease to be a mental illness and would be classified, instead, as a symptom of a bodily disease.” —Dr. Thomas Szasz, Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry, New York University Medical School, Syracuse
“I believe, until the public and psychiatry itself see that DSM labels are not only useless as medical ‘diagnoses’ but also have the potential to do great harm—particularly when they are used as means to deny individual freedoms, or as weapons by psychiatrists acting as hired guns for the legal system.” —Dr. Sydney Walker III, psychiatrist
“No biochemical, neurological, or genetic markers have been found for Attention Deficit Disorder, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, Depression, Schizophrenia, anxiety, compulsive alcohol and drug abuse, overeating, gambling or any other so-called mental illness, disease, or disorder.” —Bruce Levine, Ph.D., psychologist and author of Commonsense Rebellion
“Unlike medical diagnoses that convey a probable cause, appropriate treatment and likely prognosis, the disorders listed in DSM-IV are terms arrived at through peer consensus.” —Tana Dineen Ph.D., Canadian psychologist
Introduction to Electro-Convulsive Therapy (ECT), how it is used today and an evaluation.
Biological Approach-Orientated Treatment
Electric shock treatment, or ECT, is one of the more controversial of psychological treatments, perhaps seconded only by lobotomy. Its origins, and effect in treating depression and obsessions, are quite surprising…
It was at the start of the 20th century when doctors believed that epileptic seizures were effective in preventing schizophrenia that attempts were made to cure the condition by actually inducing fits in patients. So, how were they induced?
In Germany, Manfred Sakel used insulin to lower the blood sugar levels of patients at the Lichterfelder sanitarium, causing patients to fall into comas and experience convulsions. Some patients experienced positive effects, and Sakel published his results and his method was used more widely. But it wasn’t until 1938 that Cerletti and Bini discovered that electric charges could be used to induce seizures.
ECT Today
Modern ECT treatment is more humane than its original form: many patients’ seizures resulted in broken bones and other injuries, so today patients are given anaesthetics so that they are not awake through the treatment. Muscle relaxants are also used so that the main visible signs of the experience are twitching of facial muscles.
The original treatment involved applying half-second shocks through two electrodes at either side of the forehead. Modern treatment applies the shock to a less active part of the brain.
What is it used for and is it effective?
Modern ECT is humane, but concerns remain as to the ethics of such a treatment that bypassed freewill and normal behavior. However, it has been found to be effective in the treatment of severely depressed patients who have not benefitted from conventional drug treatments and therapy. Fink (1985) found 60% effectiveness among psychotic depressives, but it doesn’t get to the cause of the problem; altering only the biology of patients, and psychologists are still unsure as to exactly why ECT works.
Exploring cultural associations between colors and emotions.
Color and Mood
Does color affect your mood? Psychologists have said “Absolutely!” to that question for a very long time. The psychological effects of color have such an underpinning in research that the findings of chromology, the psychology of color, are used in designing everything from hotel rooms to cereal packages. In one case that made headlines recently, the psychology of color provoked a storm of controversy.
At the University of Iowa, the visiting team’s locker rooms are painted a soft, feminine pink. The lockers themselves are a dusty rose, the showers have pink shower curtains, and even the urinals are of pink porcelain. The color scheme is a long-standing and well-known tradition that sparked fires of controversy recently when a female professor took exception to the implied insult to women. According to history, though, the choice of “innocence pink” had nothing to do with femininity.
The color was chosen by former Iowa football coach, Hayden Fry, who had read that pink has a calming effect on people. And according to Fry, it works – if not necessarily as intended. In his autobiography, A High Porch Picnic [1] , he writes, “When I talk to an opposing coach before a game and he mentions the pink walls, I know I’ve got him. I can’t recall a coach who has stirred up a fuss about the color and then beat us.”
Pink isn’t the only color that has clear psychological associations. Over the years, researchers have worked to identify exactly what emotions and physical effects are triggered by various colors. Despite the amount of research done in the field and the widespread acceptance of many of its basic theories, chromology is often viewed as an immature discipline, and chromatherapy is seen as alternative medicine. Critics point out that color perception is affected by cultural conditioning, and that color is not perceived alone but in combination with other effects in the environment.
Despite all this, there are some generally recognized associations between color and emotion. The chart below gives those associations and ways in which that color is used.
Red
Red increases the pulse and heart rate, and raises your blood pressure. It increases the appetite by increasing your metabolism, which is why red is such a popular color in restaurants. It is active, aggressive and outspoken. One bank found that their lines moved faster when they increased the use of red in the bank lobby, and in a study of several hundred college students, a researcher found that they responded more quickly to cues under red light than under green light.
Yellow
The eye uses more chemicals to see the color yellow than to see any other. School studies have shown that students who take tests in yellow rooms actually do 10-15% better on than they do in rooms painted in other colors. On the other hand, babies cry longer and more often in rooms that are painted yellow, and the color is avoided in convalescent homes because it tends to affect minor motor movements.
Blue
Blue is associated with trustworthiness and confidence. Physiologically, blue stimulates the brain to produce eleven different natural tranquilizers, confirming its reputation for making you calmer. Studies into the effects of the color blue have presented some interesting contradictory findings. In one study, weight lifters consistently were able to lift more weight in a room with blue walls. Other studies have shown that people on production lines are more productive when the walls are painted blue, and that students are more able to focus and concentrate on their work in a blue room.
Orange
Orange has been related to lifting depression. Physiologically, it seems to stimulate the sexual organs (remember that next time you dress for a date!), and emotionally, it is associated with feelings of happiness and well-being. Like yellow, it seems to stimulate happiness and make you feel better all around.
Green
Green is the most common color used for financial ledgers because it is more soothing to the eyes than pure white. There are also some studies that suggest that green may improve reading speed and comprehension. Green is widely used in institutional settings because research shows that the color is soothing. In fact, a recent study carried out at the University of Georgia on the effects of color on the emotions found that 95% of the students surveyed associated green with positive emotions.
Use of Color
There are also some interesting findings in the use of color in medicine. Since the 1980s, doctors have used blue light to treat neonatal jaundice, and in 1990, scientists reported that blue light had been used to successfully treat addictions, depression and impotence. Red light is being used in photodynamic therapy to destroy cancer cells. It also stimulates the muscles, and is being used to increase performance in some athletes, while blue light seems to enhance performance where steady strength is needed.
The psychology behind happiness – how positive affect is quantified and what influences happiness.
Just how happy are you? Do you ever wish for a life that brought more moments to be joyful?
Happiness is often an elusive experience – people will go to great lengths for a fleeting moment of happiness. Even the U.S. Declaration of Independence, written in 1776, asserts the right to “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”.
But what precisely is happiness – how can it be quantified, and is there any measurable benefit to possessing a happy mindset over that of a more stoic realist?
“Happiness is a mystery like religion, and should never be rationalized.”
G.K. Chesterton, English author (1874-1936)
Happiness is a subjective experience – what brings elation to one person will not necessarily satisfy another – but from a psychological viewpoint, we must be able to quantify this state of mind in order to understand it.
When we discuss happiness, we are referring to a person’s enjoyment or satisfaction, which may last just a few moments or extend over the period of a lifetime. Happiness does not have to be expressed in order to be enjoyed – it is an internalized experience, varying in degrees, from mild satisfaction to wild euphoria.
Psychologists often refer to happiness as positive affect – a mood or emotional state which is brought about by generally positive thoughts and feelings. Positive affect contrasts with low moods and negativity, a state of mind described as negative affect in which people take a pessimistic view of their achievements, life situation and future prospects.
Quantifying Happiness
With positive affect being subjective and relative to the individual, can happiness be measured? The United Nations seems to believe that it can, and releases the World Happiness Report, which ranks countries by the self-reported happiness of its citizens.
In 2016, the report listed Denmark as the happiest nation, followed by Switzerland and Iceland. The US was the 13th happiest country with the UK ranking 23rd. Nordic countries feature prominently as being amongst the happiest societies in the world (Helliwell, Layard and Sachs, 2016).1
The World Happiness Report measured happiness levels using the Cantril Ladder, a scale devised by U.S. psychologist Hadley Cantril (1906-1969). Participants are asked to imagine a ladder with 10 rungs, with rung number 1 representing the worst life imaginable, working upto the optimal life represented by the ladder’s highest rung. They are then asked to identify the step number that they feel reflects their life situation, either at present, in the past or how they envisage it to be in the future (Cantril, 1965).2
The four happiest countries identified by the World Happiness Report placed themselves at 7.5 or higher on the Cantril Ladder (Helliwell, Layard and Sachs, 2016).1
Given that these countries are highly developed and prosperous, it is easy to assume that positive affect is linked to wealth. A common wish in our modern age is to possess more money: wealth can signify success and increases a person’s purchasing power, giving them choices that they might not have been able to make before. But can money buy happiness?
It’s a question that troubles not only psychologists, but economists, too. Richard Easterlin, a professor of economics at the University of Southern California, noticed a strange paradox involving money and happiness. Should a positive correlation exist between the two, we might expect citizens of developed countries to be happier than those of less prosperous nations.
Easterlin discovered that this is not the case – rich people within countries tend to be happier than the poorest in the same country, but overall, more prosperous countries are no happier than their poorer counterparts. These findings, known as the Easterlin paradox, contradict popular assumptions that wealthy people enjoy happier lives.
A study of lottery winners and victims of serious accidents delved further into the link between money and happiness. The happiness of 22 winners of large lottery prizes was compared to that of both controls and 29 people who had been paralysed as a result of an accident. The level of happiness experienced by winning the lottery had numbed people to the smaller joys of everyday live – a resistance the researchers described as “habitation”, as only more significant events could bring the winners joy (Brickman, Coates, Janoff-Bulman, 1978).3
The results of these two studies suggest that money alone cannot bring people lasting happiness.
Why it Matters: Benefits of Happiness
Happiness signifies an increased enjoyment of life, which is of course beneficial in itself. But beyond this obvious advantage, are there any further gains to be had from increased happiness?
One study looked at wide-ranging research into happiness to better understand the link between happiness in successful people.
Researchers suggested that there may be a causal link between positive affect and success – that success not only brings happiness, but that a person who is happy has an higher chance of achieving success than somebody experiencing negative affect (Lyubomirsky et al, 2005).4
The findings of this research support another, earlier, study by Daubman and Nowicki (1987) which artificially induced positive affect in participants in a series of experiments by subjecting them to watching comic films and providing them with sweets.
Subjects were then timed whilst they completed an exercise in creative problem-solving. The researchers found that those in a state of positive affect were able to solve the problems quicker than those in a neutral state or those experiencing negative affect (Daubman and Nowicki, 1987).5 Positive affect prior to success, it appears, boosts our intuitive abilities and enables us to achieve more.
Do Happier People Live Longer?
Can happiness lead to a healthier, longer life? Koopmans et al (2010) conducted a 15-year longitudinal study into the happiness of elderly people, known as the Arnhem Elderly Study. They found higher levels of happiness in those who lived longer.6
But does happiness lead to a longer life or does good health and longevity give people reason to be happier? The researchers also accounted for the participants’ levels of physical activity and found that, once exercise was accounted for, the link between happiness and life span was insignificant. This indicates that happiness may lead to increased physical activity, which in turn can be beneficial.
Indeed, a 2011 study suggested that exercise in sedentary males could be increased by first boosting their positive affect levels (Baruth, 2011).7
Encouraging Happiness
Book store shelves are awash with self-help books claiming to nurture happiness – but is positive affect something that we can nurture, or as the World Happiness Report emphasises, is influenced by our environment and life circumstances, often beyond our control?
Let’s look at some factors which can influence and encourage positive affect:
Acts of Kindness
Contradicting the idea that possessions can bring happiness, giving to others may in fact be more beneficial in terms of positive affect. Stephen Post (2005) noted that, whilst citizens in the US and Europe are more wealthy than previous generations, we are no happier as a result. Post emphasizes the personal benefit that acts of altruism – selfless giving or assistance – can provide (Post, 2005).8
The effect of selflessness on happiness was further supported by a 2008 experiment in which participants were given a gift of $5 or $20 and instructed to either spend it on themselves or on other people. Whilst the amount of money received had no notable effect on happiness, participants who gave away the money experienced elevated positive affect following the experiment (Dunn et al, 2008).9
Relationships
Familial relationships and friendships affect happiness and can also be impacted by a person’s levels of positive affect. Our ability to make friends often affects our self-esteem – unsurprisingly, people with extrovert personalities have been to found to enjoy higher levels of happiness than introverts (Argyle and Lu, 1990).10
The contagiousness of happiness is not limited to direct relationships: it can influence the happiness of people by up to 3 degrees of separation from the original individual11
A 20-year study of interpersonal relationships demonstrated just how important the happiness of a person’s friends and family is to their own wellbeing.
Between 1983 and 2003, James Fowler and Nicholas Christakis looked relationships between close relatives and found that the happiness of a friend or close family member who lives up to a mile away from a person can boost their prospects of happiness by around 25%.
The study also suggests that the contagiousness of happiness is not limited to direct relationships: it can influence the happiness of people by up to 3 degrees of separation from the original individual (Fowler and Christakis, 2008).11
Spousal relationships can be of particular influence on happiness levels. A study across 17 countries found that marriage does tend to lead to increased levels of happiness. Cohabiting also boosts happiness but by a lesser degree than marriage. The research emphasises the secondary effects of matrimony, such as the emotional and financial support provided by a partner, may explain this change rather than the act of marriage itself (Stack and Eshleman, 1998).12
Self-Determined Happiness
Positive affect might be influenced by external factors in our everyday life, but if people yearn for more happiness, can they bring it about themselves? Schütz et al (2013) studied the habits and happiness of people whose affect levels varied. The study observed a number of ways in which some people were able to proactively nurture their own happiness:13
The self-fulfilling participants showed significantly higher results than all other profiles on the direct attempts strategy, suggesting that in order to increase their happiness the self-fulfilling individuals are more prone to directly attempt to smile, get themselves in a happy mood, improve their social skills, and work on their self-control.
Pretending to be happy through outward expressions of happiness, it appears, may have led the individuals to internalize this joy.
Maintaining an optimistic mindset can also bear further benefits. Brissette and Scheier (2002)14 found that college students who started the semester with a sense of optimism were more able to cope with stressful events and felt that they had better social support even when their friendship network had not increased.
How emoticons influence emotional communication via instant messaging and emails.
Are you feeling :-D? Or is your work making you :-(? Perhaps this post’s overzealous peppering of emoticons is starting to make you a little :@?
The rise of the internet gave birth to the method of communication we now recognize as emoticons. Text-based representations of feelings, such as 🙂 to express satisfaction, help to make email and instant messaging more personal, communicating graphically what people often struggle to convey with words alone.
Yet, for all the convenience that the shorthand of emoticons provide, they can also land users in hot water. After all, the meaning that one person associates with an emoticon can be lost on – even completely different to – the reader’s understanding of it. The ambiguity of emoticons can lead to undesirable misunderstandings, particularly when two parties are not familiar with one another – for example, when cross-cultural work emails are interpreted differently.
Conversing online or through text messages has led to the loss of important elements in human communication. A face-to-face conversation involves verbal communication, whose meaning can be affected by a person’s tone of voice. Intonation, volume and the stress placed on particular words can change the recipient’s interpretation of a statement completely. Even non-verbal signals, known as body language, can alter or reinforce a person’s message. Confident gestures using the arms and hands, for example, can help to convey an assertiveness which might persuade the listener to comply with a person’s orders, whilst disinterested body language may dissuade one party from continuing a conversation with the other.
Voice modulation, intonation and the nuances of body language, which tend to convey our emotions, are lost in text messaging, where the written word is the only available medium to express ourselves. Sarcasm, for example, can be lost in emails and taken literally by the recipient, with unpredictable consequences.
Of course, the expression of emotions through written communication can be achieved through text alone. For millennia, people have been expressing complex ideas in literature, and conveying a range of emotions in the Romantics novels for instance. Emoticons simply make the expression of emotions more concise and accessible.
Where did emoticons originate?
Graphical depictions using only text characters, known as ASCII art, have been around for many years. However, the use of the portmanteau emoticons (emotion + icons) was popularised by Scott Fahlman, a researcher at Carnegie Mellon University, who posted a message on a bulletin board on September 19th, 1982. Fahlman proposed the use of 🙂 to signify that a person was joking in their message, or 😦 to convey their seriousness. Whilst the meaning of these emoticons had changed slightly since (now denoting happiness and sadness respectively), they have become almost universally understood, and an entire vocabulary of emoticons now exists for users to communicate with.
The development of the graphical user interfaces (GUIs), which allow the display of images, later led to image-based depictions of faces conveying similar emotions to emoticons. These emojis can be seen as ‘reactions’ – a range of options provided to Facebook users to communicate an opinion of another user’s post.
Do emoticons and emojis improve our communications?
The question of whether emoticons help users to communicate better or hinder self-expression is hotly debated and has been the subject of a number of studies. On the one hand, symbols with a universally understood meaning can help us to convey a sentiment without having to phrase it in a convoluted sentence. They also help to reduce the ambiguity of a message’s meaning among different parties, who generally understand emoticons to have identical meanings. A study of students at a secondary school and their use of emoticons suggested that they can help reinforce a message’s meaning. Researchers found that emoticons, when used in conjunction with a written message, can help to increase the “intensity” of its intended meaning (Derks et al, 2007).1
There are, however, drawbacks to conveying emotions using emoticons. A limited choice of emoticons restricts the range of emotions that we can express, and does not allow for the subtle nuances or strengths of emotion that we experience. Facebook’s ‘reactions’ feature, for example, restricts a user’s responses to one of just six emojis – a varied but incomplete representation of feelings. Both emoticons and emotions also reduce the need to develop the written skills needed to express oneself in the absence of such shorthand forms of communication.
Gender Differences in Emoticon Use
Differences between the way in which men and women express communicate are well documented, with females generally recognised as being more emotionally fluent in conversations and willing to discuss feelings than males, who often to ‘bottle up’ or hide emotions. This difference has been noted in not only face-to-face encounters but also in electronic communications. A study which monitored discourse between instant messaging users found that in general communications, female are able to express themselves more than their male counterparts (Fox, Bukatko, Hallahan and Crawford, 2007).2
In online communications, however, males and females interpret the meaning of emoticons slightly differently. A 2015 study of emoticon use amongst participants who used Facebook found that without the use of emoticons, females tended to experience jealousy as a result of online communications. However, when emoticons were present, males tended to suffer jealousy as a result of other users’ messages (Hudson, 2015).3 These contrasting findings demonstrate the need to understand the way in which the recipient will interpret a message, and to be aware that it may differ from one’s own intended meaning.
Whilst ASCII art and text-based emoticons such as 🙂 are easily understood if you have prior knowledge of emoticons, more obscure icons such as 😎 or are less easy to interpret for those unaccustomed to online messaging. The advent of more obvious emojis has removed the need to possess a vocabulary of emoticons in order to understand them. Even so, some have suggested that particular groups of people should not be sent emoticons in order to communicate more clearly with them. Franklin Krohn of the State University of New York in Fredonia, advises against sending emoticons to people of the Baby Boomer generation, or older generations, in a work context (Krohn, 2004).4 As older generations embrace technology, however, we might expect the comprehension of emoticons to become more universal in the years ahead.
Anxiety is a cerebral emotion: when it is intense it �fogs� the mind, producing mental tiredness and the incapacity for intellectual work. I feel it most in my eyes as a regular ache, which generates a sensitivity to bright light. When I am writing or typing under a bright light I control the eye-ache by regularly splashing my eyes with cold water, perhaps every half hour or so. Both the mental tiredness and the ache are intensified when combined with any mode of self-pity.
In social company, anxiety (in vanity mode) stimulates a compulsive need to speak (I get embarrassed by my silence) or compulsive behaviour (such as smoking, drinking alcohol, nail-biting, over-eating). When I have this fuzzy head at home I usually relax on the settee and doze. The cessation of anxiety can be quite sudden and produces an immediate clearing of the head � I �wake up� from my semi-consciousness. The need for a long sleep time each night is usually due to the presence of anxiety or to a mode of self-pity.
Anxiety keeps the person focused on negative emotions ; if I am absorbed in narcissistic joy or jealous love, then if anxiety arises I usually switch out of them into self-pity modes or even hostile feelings.
The fear mode of anxiety is generated by a dictatorial conscience, or the �voice of authority�. This voice has two origins.
It can originate from the family setting: the parents� commands become internalised into an oppressive conscience � �do as you are told�. The voice of authority also comes from one�s soul: the soul directs oneself to practise self-control (here the �voice� is not a clear verbal one but more like an intuitive prompting). If I do something that my soul does not like, then I immediately feel a burst of anxiety in my eyes. However, this �voice� is a subtle one and is unlikely to be noticed by a person who has not developed sensitivity.
In general, narcissism and jealousy are the two avenues to power, the two ways to express and achieve power. Pride and guilt are the two avenues to ethics. Resentment arises when the person�s sense of idealism is restricted by guilt ; bitterness arises when idealism is restricted by pride.
What needs to be accepted is that emotions are not good or bad in themselves, but that the goodness or the badness lies in the context that we experience them and view them. However, since it is common practice to value things rather than contexts, I prefer to label emotions as either positive or negative, rather than as either good or bad.
Anger management is one of the many methods used in psychotherapy to address issues which could lead to uncontrollable rage and much worse scenarios. Being angry for instance is a normal or natural emotion. Anyone could experience the intense emotion of getting annoyed or peeved to something or someone. There are instances when a person could get angry from the pettiest to the most major triggering situations. You could lose your phone and get really annoyed. When your kid throws a tantrum and you get all stressed out, you have the tendency to get furious. When co-workers or bosses get too much to handle at work, you get angry.
Being angry only becomes a problem when this emotion is already interfering with and changing your life. It is not a bad thing to be angry per se but it could lead to negativity in life especially if it already becomes a habit. Hence, the best thing to do is to handle your anger and deal with it through healthy and positive means. Some people have the psychological makeup to do this, while others still need professional help. That is why there are therapists working with those who are grappling with their tendency of being furious and not being able to control it. Managing your anger helps you maintain and develop good relationships from your family to your workplace and social life.
Anger management comes in different techniques and methods. The starting point of dealing and coping with this emotion is through rating it. Therapists would ask you how you would rate your being angry, like for instance, in a scale of 1 to 10. Why is this necessary? The first step of handling and controlling your anger is through awareness. You battle with your anger and try to tame it with two eyes wide open. You know exactly when you are angry and you have the edge to control it. Relaxation technique is another method used once you are aware and know your feelings. There are various ways of doing the relaxation technique.
Calming down and taming that monstrous feeling of being furious is effectively done through meditation and relaxation. It depends on the therapist what method he would use on your case. However, the basic relaxation and meditation approach starts with a simple breathing exercise. Quieting down one self is quite difficult but if you learn how to master the silence and calm your thoughts, this is where calmness and serenity springs out. Aside from focused and deep breathing, other exercises include visualization and guided practice. Oftentimes, clients are asked to just listen to calming music for peaceful and serene disposition.
Both clients and therapists work together during anger management sessions. Those grappling with this intense emotional dilemma are even asked to list down their coping mechanisms. It helps that they are the ones who determine the ways and means to solve their problems. How much you invest on the process of healing spells the result of the process. Anger-free life means better and happier relationships and better outlook.
How Cognitive Behavioral Therapy can be used as a treatment. Article includes an introduction to CBT, exposure therapy, the Negative Triad as well as the successes and criticisms of the treatment.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is a therapeutic approach in psychology that is intended to help individuals learn to cope with anxiety inducing or stressful situations by rationally addressing faulty cognition and the ways in which it leads to inappropriate and self-defeating behaviors. For those with some knowledge of the history of psychology, even the name of the therapy might cause some confusion, as the disciplines of cognitive psychology and behaviorism are often seen as being at odds with one another. In this case, however, the theorists are more firmly on the side of cognitive psychology – they definitely hold cognitive processes to have some degree of agency in causing behavior. They are not simply types of behavior in and of themselves.
The whole of cognitive behavioral therapy is quite vast, with a number of different approaches and techniques that ultimately intend to accomplish the same goals. As a therapeutic device, it has proven quite successful in helping diminish phobias, overcome anxiety disorders, and relieve the symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder.
Exposure Therapy
One of the areas in which cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT, has made the most strides is in dealing with anxiety and phobia. The underlying principle behind CBT is that one holds false beliefs and expectations about the world that adversely color our interactions with others, causing undue stress and anxiety. The psychologist O. Mowrer was one of the first to attempt to undermine those false beliefs with a form of therapy intended to improve behavior by way of cognition.
This type of therapy, known as exposure therapy, worked as follows. Suppose that you were afraid of spiders. Even if you knew rationally that a spider wasn’t poisonous and posed no threat to you, you would still feel anxious when a spider came near you, and have feelings close to panic if one touched you. For the cognitive psychology, what is going on here? You hold false beliefs about spiders on some level, such that when you’re exposed to them, your experience is affected adversely by your irrational cognition. The anxiety and fear you feel as a result reinforces those irrational feelings, making things worse.
With exposure therapy, you would be gradually exposed to your stressor (spiders), while at the same time having your typical response (anxiety and fear) suppressed. For instance, a therapist might place a spider near you and help you maintain a sense of calm through talking and becoming slowly and gradually acclimated to the idea of having a spider near you. In time, you might even be able to touch the spider. Eventually, your fears should diminish entirely. How does this work? It’s simply that, if you’re exposed to a spider without allowing your anxiety to be triggered, the stimulus of the spider gradually becomes disassociated from the response of anxiety, and the phobia is conquered.
Aaron Beck’s Negative Triad
Another cognitive psychologist, Aaron Beck, was the first to formalize the idea of the cyclical interplay between environment, cognition, and behavior, calling it the negative triad. The negative triad works as follows.
First, one holds a “negative schema” regarding the world. Maybe this is the expectation that you will be treated poorly by others, or that others are looking to harm you in some way. Maybe it’s simply the expectation that any cats you meet will bring you bad luck. Whatever the case, these negative schema are self-destructive beliefs with the tendency to induce stress in those who hold them.
When one interacts with the world, this negative schema provides the framework in which the interaction will unfold. If one talks to a job interviewer with a feeling of positivity, one might have good results. By contrast, if one talks to a job interviewer with a negative schema in place, feeling as if the situation is hopeless, then the meeting will probably go bad.
When the meeting does go bad, it reinforces our negative schema. We feel that our expectations have been met, and are thus justified. What we need to come to realize, according to Beck, is that our negative schema actually *cause* the poor outcomes and our own self-destructive behaviors. With conscious recognition, however, these cognitive biases and negative schemas can be overcome, and one can approach the world with feelings of confidence that will ultimately produce good results.
Success with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
Elsewhere, researchers have had a great deal of success applying CBT to posttraumatic stress disorders. Typically, those suffering from this disorder will feel a sense of generalized anxiety as a result of an earlier, unresolved traumatic event. Generally, this event will have led to the formation of negative schema that can, at least theoretically, be undone with CBT. Mark Reinecke at Northwestern University has conducted a number of recent studies that further verify the utility of CBT in combating posttraumatic stress disorder.
Criticisms
While CBT is one of the most popular therapeutic approaches to come out of clinical psychology in decades, it is not well loved by everyone. There are detractors, for instance, who claim that the relative simplicity and low implementation cost of CBT have led to its becoming more popular than warranted. As evidence for this, they cite the general lack of evidence that CBT can be therapeutically effective against schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders.
Evaluation
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is the attempt to overcome anxiety, depression, and neuroses through the conscious recognition of self-destructive beliefs, with the assumption being that changing this cognition will ultimately change one’s behavior, and thusly one’s experience with the world.
CBT has had success in treating phobias through a technique called exposure therapy that involves gradual exposure to the object of fear, coupled with a systematic repression of the anxiety response.
Aaron Beck formalized the cyclical interplay of environment, cognition, and behavior with his “negative triad”, a cycle in which one’s negative schema affects one’s experiences, and those experiences in turn reinforce one’s negative schema.
While CBT has been shown to be effective in treating posttraumatic stress disorder, depression, anxiety, and phobias, little evidence has been cited that it is effective in dealing with schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders.
References
Mowrer, O. “Learning Theory and Behavior.” New York: John Wiley & Sons,
Electric shock treatment, or ECT, is one of the more controversial of psychological treatments, perhaps seconded only by lobotomy. Its origins, and effect in treating depression and obsessions, are quite surprising…
are less easy to interpret for those unaccustomed to online messaging. The advent of more obvious emojis has removed the need to possess a vocabulary of emoticons in order to understand them. Even so, some have suggested that particular groups of people should not be sent emoticons in order to communicate more clearly with them. Franklin Krohn of the State University of New York in Fredonia, advises against sending emoticons to people of the Baby Boomer generation, or older generations, in a work context (Krohn, 2004).
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