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feelings

Shape your environment, shape your mind

April 23, 2021 by Greater Good Science Center

One of the biggest con­trib­u­tors to our hap­pi­ness is some­thing we bare­ly pay atten­tion to: the voice inside our own heads.

As psy­chol­o­gist Ethan Kross describes in his new book Chat­ter, that voice is con­stant­ly ana­lyz­ing the sit­u­a­tions we’re in, reflect­ing on the past and future, and telling us who we are. While some­times friend­ly and optimistic—it’s OK, everything’s going to work out!—it can also be crit­i­cal and down­beat. Our inner voice can berate us for mis­takes or decide our life is ruined. It can rumi­nate on neg­a­tive emo­tions and expe­ri­ences, dredg­ing them up with­out any kind of con­struc­tive resolution.

Accord­ing to Kross, there are three main ways we can turn down the chat­ter in our heads: shift­ing our per­spec­tive so we’re not so immersed in our prob­lems, talk­ing with oth­ers to get sup­port, and chang­ing the envi­ron­ment around us. [Read more…] about Shape your envi­ron­ment, shape your mind

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Filed Under: Education & Lifelong Learning Tagged With: book, brain, calmer mind, chatter, clutter, declutter, environment, Ethan Kross, feelings, nature, rumination, thoughts

FDA clears first CBT-based digital therapeutic to treat substance abuse disorders

September 15, 2017 by SharpBrains

reSET® for Sub­stance Use Dis­or­der. Image Cred­it: Pear Therapeutics

__________

The FDA just approved the first app for treat­ing sub­stance abuse (CNBC):

“The app, devel­oped by a start-up called Pear Ther­a­peu­tics, is designed to be pre­scribed by clin­i­cian and used along­side counseling.

Pear’s tech­nol­o­gy dig­i­tizes a form of talk ther­a­py called cog­ni­tive behav­ioral ther­a­py, or CBT, which focus­es on “exam­in­ing the rela­tion­ships between thoughts, feel­ings and behav­iors”, [Read more…] about FDA clears first CBT-based dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tic to treat sub­stance abuse disorders

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Technology & Innovation Tagged With: app, apps, behaviors, CBT, cognitive-behavioral-therapy, digital therapeutics, FDA, feelings, outpatient therapy, Pear Therapeutics, Reset application, substance use disorders, substance-abuse, talk-therapy, thoughts

Debunking Myers-Briggs personality test: Can we pigeon­hole people?

July 22, 2014 by SharpBrains

Myers-BriggsWhy the Myers-Brig­gs test is total­ly mean­ing­less (Vox):

“The Myers-Brig­gs Type Indi­ca­tor is prob­a­bly the most wide­ly used per­son­al­i­ty test in the world…The only prob­lem? The test is com­plete­ly mean­ing­less… [Read more…] about Debunk­ing Myers-Brig­gs per­son­al­i­ty test: Can we pigeon­hole people?

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Filed Under: Education & Lifelong Learning Tagged With: feelings, Myers-Briggs, personality-test, rational

From Distress to De-Stress: helping anxious, worried kids (Part 2 of 2)

February 19, 2009 by Dr. Jerome Schultz

Last week, in this arti­cle’s first part, we dis­cussed the impor­tance of actu­al­ly teach­ing chil­dren how to get them­selves into a phys­i­cal state of being relaxed, explored sev­er­al sug­ges­tions I hope you found useful.

Let’s con­tin­ue.

Teach­ers can help stu­dent over­come stress by teach­ing them to iden­ti­fy the imped­i­ments they might encounter in doing a cer­tain task. 

The teacher can ask:

What’s going to get in the way of you doing this work?
He or she may have to jump-start the stu­dents think­ing by sug­gest­ing such things as:
— com­pet­ing events (fam­i­ly activ­i­ties, friends call, IM-ing, new video game, etc.)
— lack of ade­quate place to study
— inad­e­quate pri­or prepa­ra­tion or skills
— a neg­a­tive atti­tude (this is not nec­es­sary, I can’t do math, I’ll nev­er need to know this, etc).
— health fac­tors (I’m sick; I’m tired)

Con­verse­ly, teach­ers have to teach stu­dents to iden­ti­fy the enhancers; What’s going to make it more like­ly that you will do this, and do this well?
(exam­ples)
— I have con­fi­dence in my ability
— I feel com­pe­tent in this skill
— I am com­mit­ted to learn­ing this because: I have the nec­es­sary resources to com­plete this task, such as mate­ri­als, sources of infor­ma­tion, peo­ple sup­ports; par­ents, tutor, oth­er kids

Teach­ers can turn dis­tress into de-stress by using the Lan­guage of Success

The key is to de-empha­size PRAISE and empha­size SELF-APPRAISAL.

Teach­ers can encour­age self-eval­u­a­tion by [Read more…] about From Dis­tress to De-Stress: help­ing anx­ious, wor­ried kids (Part 2 of 2)

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health, Education & Lifelong Learning Tagged With: Binnacle-Tech-Foundation, Brain-Plasticity, Cambridge-Health-Alliance, clinical-neuropsychologist, de-stress, distress, feelings, humor, kids, Learning, memory, mindfulness, neuropsychologist--Jerome-Schultz, occupational-therapists, parents, physical-education-teachers, positive-mindset, praise, relax, schools, SELF-APPRAISAL, self-evaluation, state-of-mind, Stress, stress-management, teachers, teaching, yoga, yoga-classes

From Distress to De-Stress: helping anxious, worried kids (Part 1 of 2)

February 10, 2009 by Dr. Jerome Schultz

Teach­ing kids how to relax.

Con­sid­er this vignette:

-Rox­anne: (agi­tat­ed and loud­ly) I can’t stand this freakin book!

-Teacher: Rox­anne, you need to take it easy. Just calm down! Try to relax.You need to fin­ish your reading.

-Rox­anne: (to her­self) Right easy for you to say, teacher. But very hard for me to do. What do you mean calm down? I feel like my head is going to explode.

-Teacher: (see­ing no response) Well if you can’t set­tle down, maybe a trip to the office will help you!

Some kids are so agi­tat­ed that even if they know how to relax, they can’t. If you think about it, calm­ing down when you’re upset is the hard­est time to do it! Oth­er kids can’t calm down or relax because they don’t know what that feels like. Teach­ers, occu­pa­tion­al ther­a­pists, phys­i­cal edu­ca­tion teach­ers and par­ents need to actu­al­ly teach chil­dren (of all ages) how to get them­selves into a phys­i­cal state of being relaxed. This does­n’t hap­pen auto­mat­i­cal­ly. If it did, there would­n’t be so many adult yoga classes!

Set­ting the men­tal and emo­tion­al stage for success.

Teach­ers who want to reduce stress and increase learn­ing know that get­ting kids into a pos­i­tive mind­set will do both. They say [Read more…] about From Dis­tress to De-Stress: help­ing anx­ious, wor­ried kids (Part 1 of 2)

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Filed Under: Brain/ Mental Health Tagged With: Binnacle-Tech-Foundation, Brain-Plasticity, Cambridge-Health-Alliance, clinical-neuropsychologist, de-stress, distress, feelings, humor, kids, Learning, memory, mindfulness, neuropsychologist--Jerome-Schultz, occupational-therapists, parents, physical-education-teachers, positive-mindset, relax, schools, state-of-mind, Stress, stress-management, teachers, teaching, yoga, yoga-classes

Lie to Me, Paul Ekman and Biofeedback

February 2, 2009 by Alvaro Fernandez

You may have watched the new series Lie To Me, with Tim Roth, based on the work of Paul Ekman.

The sec­ond episode, which you can watch for free via Hulu.com Here, is pret­ty inter­est­ing, but the best part hap­pens in the begin­ning, so you only need to watch a few min­utes to learn why what are called “lie detec­tors” are noth­ing but biofeed­back sys­tems that mea­sure phys­i­o­log­i­cal anxiety.

Biofeed­back can be a very effec­tive train­ing tool for emo­tion­al self-reg­u­la­tion and stress man­age­ment, pre­cise­ly because it enables a faster feed­back-based learn­ing loop. Indeed, we are see­ing a grow­ing num­ber of appli­ca­tions in the mar­ket, with names such as EmWave, StressEras­er, RES­PeR­ATE, Jour­ney to the Wild Divine, and others.

Sim­ply, don’t believe the tech­nol­o­gy is an effec­tive lie detector.

Car­o­line and I wrote an arti­cle on Paul Ekman’s work a cou­ple of years ago — let me repub­lish it now, giv­en his work has made it all the way to main­stream TV!

braintop Paul Ekman has con­duct­ed exten­sive research on iden­ti­fy­ing emo­tions through facial expres­sions. As part of that research, and as part of the pow­er of dis­ci­pline and train­ing, he learned how to con­scious­ly manip­u­late 42 facial mus­cles, includ­ing many that in most of us are beyond our con­trol, and even awareness.

In the 60s and 70s when Ekman began look­ing into the uni­ver­sal­i­ty of facial expres­sions, all the major con­tem­po­rary social sci­en­tists, like Mar­garet Mead, believed that expres­sions were cul­tur­al­ly learned, not innate. He trav­eled all over the world with pic­tures of peo­ple mak­ing dis­tinct facial expres­sions and found peo­ple in cul­tures every­where, from mod­ern to stone age, agreed on the emo­tion behind the expres­sion. He then turned to [Read more…] about Lie to Me, Paul Ekman and Biofeedback

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Filed Under: Education & Lifelong Learning Tagged With: anger, biofeedback, contempt, disgust, emotional-intelligence, emotional-self-regulation, Emotions, emWave, EQ, faces, fear, feelings, happiness, hulu, Journey-to-the-Wild-Divine, Learning, lie-detectors, Lie-to-Me, meditation, Paul-Ekman, physiological-anxiety, RESPeRATE, sadness, stress-management, StressEraser, surprise, Tim-Roth

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