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Tips for Daily Mindfulness That Soften the Negativity Bias

Neuroscience teaches that each person’s brain generates an “I” and a “me.” The I is the sense of myself as a physical being existing continuously in time and space. It includes sensory, muscular, kinesthetic, and proprioceptive...

Framing Your Interpersonal Microcosm and Macrocosm

Vast numbers of individuals seek their happiness from receiving recognition and approval within their family and/or their workplace. Each of these represents a kind of microcosmic cocoon in relation to larger units of population including the neighborhood, the...

How Cultural Ideals Can Stimulate Self-Contempt

Let’s travel back to the 5th century BCE to ancient Greece. The cultural ideal for a man was to be fit, athletic, handsome, well educated, and scholarly. How would that make you feel if you were a short pudgy man with a huge nose and homely face who looked silly...

Alfred Adler’s Way Out of Chronic Misery

Alfred Adler (1870-1937) was a psychiatrist, psychotherapist, and founder of the school of individual psychology. Although he was originally a member of Freud’s inner circle he broke with Freud over unbridgeable differences in theory. One of Adler’s most...

The Pre-Set Life vs. The Uncertain Path

Some children have their career chosen by their parents who groom them for it, fully expect them to go into it, and would express shock, grave disappointment, and anger should their child reject it. Well known examples are military officers, doctors, dentists,...

What Frida Kahlo Has to Teach Us

Friday Kahlo faced a host of traumas in her life. She had polio as a child. When she was 18 Frida was engaged in pre-med studies and expecting to be a medical doctor. That year, on her way home in a commuter bus, the bus was hit by a trolley car going full speed....

Managing Chronic Stress from Environmental Noise

During prehistory humans lived in a relatively quiet world free of frequent assaults by noise. Think of a place that was peaceful and punctuated only from noises like the rustling of the wind, babbling brooks, the ocean surf, the growls and cries of animals, thunder,...

THE NARCISSISTIC – EMPATHIC CONTINUUM

Are narcissism and empathy ego states or traits? If they are ego states not permanent traits that define individuals, they could fluctuate from time to time depending on changing circumstance. This would explain how one and the same person could sometimes be more...