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When Should You Avoid Dealing With Emotions?
Huffington Post: One of the cornerstones of alcoholism recovery is what's called "emotional sobriety." The idea is that alcoholics and other addicts, if they hope to stay sober over the long haul, must learn to regulate the negative feelings that can lead to discomfort, craving and -- ultimately -- relapse. It's a lifelong project, a whole new way of thinking about life's travails. But the recovery literature also says "first things first" -- which simply means, "don't drink." Especially in the early days of recovery, alcoholics are counseled not to analyze why they are addicted, or how they might have avoided alcoholism: "Don't think and don't drink" is the maxim.
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Study: Nurturing mother plays role in future health
Chicago Sun-Times: Poor children are more likely to become unhealthy adults — vulnerable to infection and disease — than kids from higher-income families, according to a new study. However, the study findings revealed, some disadvantaged children grow up into healthy adults. Their secret: a nurturing and attentive mother. Upward mobility also has been cited as a reason that children from low-income families become healthy adults, the study pointed out. Yet the researchers found that income in adulthood didn’t offset childhood poverty.
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Virginia Tech announces national addiction registry
Virginia Tech News: ROANOKE, Va., Oct. 6, 2011 – C.W. started getting high when he was only 13. "I started off sniffing gasoline out of a lawnmower, then moved on to beer, wine, and marijuana," he said. Soon he was snorting cocaine, taking speed, and basing major life decisions — dropping out of high school, leaving the military, quitting a stable job, even abandoning his family — on his need to get high. He eventually found himself dodging drug dealers who were threatening to kill him over his mounting debt. It was a near-fatal accident that ended up saving C.W.'s life.
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New Research From Psychological Science
Natural-Scene Perception Requires Attention Michael A. Cohen, George A. Alvarez, and Ken Nakayama Many studies have indicated that visual awareness can occur in the absence of attention, but this new study contradicts those findings. Participants were asked to complete two tasks: one in which they visually tracked moving discs and another in which they tracked a specific number in a stream of numbers and letters. In each task, a natural scene (e.g., a mountain) appeared in the background during the final trial.
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Is Violence History?
The New York Times: It is unusual for the subtitle of a book to undersell it, but Steven Pinker's “Better Angels of Our Nature” tells us much more than why violence has declined. Pinker, a professor of psychology at Harvard who first became widely known as the author of "The Language Instinct"' addresses some of the biggest questions we can ask: Are human beings essentially good or bad? Has the past century witnessed moral progress or a moral collapse? Do we have grounds for being optimistic about the future? If that sounds like a book you would want to read, wait, there’s more. In 800 information-packed pages, Pinker also discusses a host of more specific issues.
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Can You Really Wash Away Your Troubles?
Huffington Post: It might really be possible to wash your troubles away. A new review of studies published in the journal Current Directions in Psychological Science shows that the act of washing yourself, including religious rites such as baptism, really holds psychological power. Just washing your hands or taking a shower can help people to "rid themselves of a sense of immorality, lucky or unlucky feelings, or doubt about a decision," study researcher Spike W.S. Lee, of the University of Michigan, said in a statement. "The bodily experience of removing physical residues can provide the basis of removing more abstract mental residues." Read the whole story: Huffington Post
