psychologist

Three Ss to reduce the stress of “homeschooling” our kids: Simplify, Structure, Support

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With nation­wide school clo­sures in effect, many par­ents are now mon­i­tor­ing home­school­ing while at the same time try­ing to make a liv­ing in the midst of an eco­nom­ic cri­sis. In this envi­ron­ment of bro­ken rou­tine and uncer­tain­ty, chances are your child is show­ing big feel­ings and chal­leng­ing behaviors.

In my work as a school psy­chol­o­gist, I’ve been hear­ing from par­ents that despite their best efforts, their chil­dren are strug­gling with meet­ing home­school expec­ta­tions. Kids who [Read more…] about Three Ss to reduce the stress of “home­school­ing” our kids: Sim­pli­fy, Struc­ture, Support

Q&A with Rick Hanson on Neurodharma, brain science, personal practice and well-being

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Psy­chol­o­gist and neu­ro­science expert Rick Han­son stud­ies the men­tal resources that pro­mote resilience, from calm and grat­i­tude to con­fi­dence and courage. Accord­ing to Han­son, the coro­n­avirus cri­sis is expos­ing some of our psy­cho­log­i­cal vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties, and remind­ing us how impor­tant it is to nur­ture our social and emo­tion­al strengths.

In his new book, Neu­rod­har­ma, Han­son writes about how we can cul­ti­vate more equa­nim­i­ty, wis­dom, and moral action using med­i­ta­tion and oth­er prac­tices. As he illus­trates with neu­ro­science research, prac­tic­ing pos­i­tive states of being like these can lead to phys­i­cal changes in the brain, which in turn [Read more…] about Q&A with Rick Han­son on Neu­rod­har­ma, brain sci­ence, per­son­al prac­tice and well-being

Move, Nourish, Connect, Be: Four daily habits to protect our mental well-being while sheltering in place

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It’s a crazy time. Here in the Cal­i­for­nia, we are shel­ter­ing-in-place, leav­ing the house only for essen­tials like gro­ceries and med­ical care. And while we’re all (appro­pri­ate­ly) focused on car­ing for the phys­i­cal health of our­selves, our fam­i­lies, our com­mu­ni­ties, and soci­ety at large, our men­tal, emo­tion­al, and social health needs are quick­ly emerg­ing as pro­found­ly impor­tant, as well. [Read more…] about Move, Nour­ish, Con­nect, Be: Four dai­ly habits to pro­tect our men­tal well-being while shel­ter­ing in place

Trend: More healthcare and research facilities offer multipronged brain fitness programs

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BrainFitnessJigsaw_webCan an exer­cise rou­tine real­ly help keep your men­tal “mus­cles” in good shape? (Har­vard Health Letter):

“Fear of los­ing your mem­o­ry and think­ing skills is one of the great­est con­cerns of get­ting old­er. Maybe that’s behind the increas­ing num­ber of clin­ics offer­ing brain fit­ness pro­grams. “Brain train­ing” isn’t a typ­i­cal exer­cise pro­gram; it incor­po­rates a num­ber of activ­i­ties and lifestyle changes to help boost brain func­tion. “It makes very good sense to pro­mote cog­ni­tive health using a vari­ety of approach­es. I embrace it even as we await more data,” says Dr. Kirk Daffn­er, a neu­rol­o­gist and med­ical edi­tor of the Har­vard Spe­cial Health Report Improv­ing Memory…Hospitals and research facil­i­ties offer brain fit­ness pro­grams, and so do pri­vate prac­tices. “Ide­al­ly you want peo­ple who have done this for a long time and who offer a mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary approach, with a neu­rol­o­gist, psy­chol­o­gist, social work­er, phys­i­cal ther­a­pist, and dietit­ian,” says Dr. Pascual-Leone.”

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To improve memory, enhance attention and other cognitive abilities

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Memory_attentionRemem­ber­ing, as en Extreme Sport (The New York Times):

“We found that one of the biggest dif­fer­ences between mem­o­ry ath­letes and the rest of us,” said Hen­ry L. Roedi­ger III, the psy­chol­o­gist who [Read more…] about To improve mem­o­ry, enhance atten­tion and oth­er cog­ni­tive abilities

Changing our Minds…by Reading Fiction

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(Edi­tor’s Note: we are pleased to bring you this arti­cle thanks to our col­lab­o­ra­tion with Greater Good Mag­a­zine.)

Chang­ing our Minds

By imag­in­ing many pos­si­ble worlds, argues nov­el­ist and psy­chol­o­gist Kei­th Oat­ley, fic­tion helps us under­stand our­selves and others.

-By Kei­th Oatley

For more than two thou­sand years peo­ple have insist­ed that read­ing fic­tion is good for bookyou. Aris­to­tle claimed that poetry—he meant the epics of Homer and the tragedies of Aeschy­lus, Sopho­cles, and Euripi­des, which we would now call fiction—is a more seri­ous busi­ness than his­to­ry. His­to­ry, he argued, tells us only what has hap­pened, where­as fic­tion tells us what can hap­pen, which can stretch our moral imag­i­na­tions and give us insights into our­selves and oth­er peo­ple. This is a strong argu­ment for schools to con­tin­ue to focus on the lit­er­ary arts, not just his­to­ry, sci­ence, and social studies.

But is the idea of fic­tion being good for you mere­ly wish­ful think­ing? The mem­bers of a small research group in Toronto—Maja Dji­kic, Ray­mond Mar, and I—have been work­ing on the prob­lem. We have turned the idea into ques­tions. In what ways might read­ing fic­tion be good for you? If it is good for you, why would this be? And what is the psy­cho­log­i­cal func­tion of art generally?

Through a series of stud­ies, we have dis­cov­ered that fic­tion at its best isn’t just enjoy­able. It mea­sur­ably enhances our abil­i­ties to empathize with oth­er peo­ple and con­nect with some­thing larg­er than ourselves.

Pos­si­ble selves, pos­si­ble worlds

Peo­ple often think that a fic­tion is some­thing untrue, but this is wrong. The word derives from the Latin fin­gere, to make. As some­thing made, fic­tion is dif­fer­ent from some­thing dis­cov­ered, as in physics, or from some­thing that hap­pened, as in the news. But this does not mean it is false. Fic­tion is about pos­si­ble selves in pos­si­ble worlds.

In terms of 21st-cen­tu­ry psy­chol­o­gy, we might best see fic­tion as a kind of sim­u­la­tion: one that runs not on com­put­ers, but on minds. Such men­tal sim­u­la­tion unfolds on two levels.

The first lev­el involves sim­u­lat­ing the minds of oth­er peo­ple: imag­in­ing what they are think­ing and feel­ing, which devel­op­men­tal psy­chol­o­gists call “the­o­ry of mind.” The the­o­ry-of-mind sim­u­la­tion is like a watch, which is a small mod­el that sim­u­lates [Read more…] about Chang­ing our Minds…by Read­ing Fiction