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How to quit smoking? Think about smoking
I quit smoking many years ago, but even today I can recall the unpleasantness of that time—the cravings, the obsessive thoughts. My strategy was to keep my mind and body busy all the time, in order to keep my thoughts of cigarettes at bay. Sometimes it worked, and sometimes it didn’t. I relapsed a few times before I finally quit for good. There were quitters’ support groups available at the time, but the idea didn’t make sense to me. Why would I want to sit around with other dreary addicts and talk incessantly about the very thing I was trying to banish from my mind? Wouldn’t that just undermine my willpower and leave me more miserable? Well, no, as it turns out.
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Why (some) people drown their sorrows
Imagine that you just lost your job. The bad news came without warning—a company downsizing. You’re one more casualty of the recession. So naturally you’re feeling lousy, and what’s more, you need to go home and tell the family. But maybe, before you do, you’ll stop by your favorite watering hole for a martini—or two or three. You’ve got the time, after all. That’s called drowning your sorrows—or, in psychological jargon, self-medication. It’s quite normal, really, to try to regulate intense negative emotions in whatever way possible, and liquor is a quick and effective strategy. But it’s not a healthy strategy—and the fact is, not everyone does it.
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Are women shunning science?
In 2005, Harvard University president Lawrence Summers got himself into hot water. Speaking at a national conference on "Diversifying the Science and Engineering Workforce," the former Clinton treasury official suggested that the relative scarcity of women in science careers might be explained--at least in part--by a gender difference in intrinsic aptitude for the sciences. Summers mentioned other possible explanations as well, most notably the clash between high-power jobs and family life, but it was his remarks on science ability that grabbed all the attention. Actually, "attention" doesn't fairly summarize what followed.
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Barroom genetics: Triggering heavy drinking
Recovering alcoholics are generally counseled to stay away from “people, places and things”—anything, that is, that might be a cue for drinking. Bars are an especially potent trigger for the cravings that can lead to relapse. Yet sober alcoholics vary greatly in their susceptibility to such social cues. Many appear to have no problem hanging around taverns and parties sipping club soda, and some even work as bartenders. But others—even alcoholics with years of sobriety—get a yearning every time they see even a stranger hoist a glass. Why do some find these cues so vexing, while others appear free of temptation? Some new research points to genetics—but with a surprising twist.
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Pack Up All Your Cares and Woes
Many healing traditions make use of jars—variously called God jars, or resentment jars, or worry jars. The idea is that you can—literally—compartmentalize your troubles, and by doing so take away their emotional power. If this sounds like a lot of New Age gobbledygook to you, read on. The practice is a form of metaphor therapy, which sees psychological truth in common metaphors like “bottled-up anger” and “buried sorrows.” These figures of speech are not arbitrary, a growing number of psychologists believe; instead they are examples of the way abstract psychological states overlap with physical experience.
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No Exit: Living With Walls and Fences
The right to move around is a fundamental human right. Back in 1948, in the wake of World War II, the United Nations declared that all men and women have the right to roam freely in their homeland, to leave, to return if they choose, and to exit again. That political vision recognized a basic psychological truth—that it is a violation of human nature to fence people in. Even so, the global reality never matched the ideal. Citizens of many nations are still denied the basic liberty to pack up and leave for a better place. What are the psychological consequences when this human liberty is violated? When borders are closed and exit papers withheld?
