Good news - High school cheerleaders for the arts.

What a great idea to have cheerleaders for the arts. Students formed a group of cheerleaders for the arts at Mountain View High School in Orem, Utah.

Supposing this became a thing, and there were cheerleaders for the arts at every high school where there were cheerleaders for sports?

Check it out by clicking here.

Delusional people need special treatment - don't poke the bear.

I had a discussion with a woman in her late 50s or early 60s in the Brockport Post Office in Monroe County on Monday 12/12/21 while we were waiting in line.

She told me she was vaccinated but wouldn't do it again.

I asked, "Why not?"

She said, "Vaccinations make people sick. I know three people in the hospital because they were vaccinated."

I said, "Really........"

"Oh yes," she said.

I said, "Well I believe there are a lot more people who could be in the hospital if they weren't vaccinated."

She seemed upset so I changed the subject to the sunny weather we were having and whether she is ready for Christmas.

Today, I ran across this chart.

The cognitive dissonance I was causing by challenging her beliefs spiked her anxiety and she shut down. My psychiatric training has taught me to let the truth go. Many people, maybe most, don't want to hear and know the truth. It is too upsetting for them and they can't handle it. Better sometimes to keep your own council and not poke the bear.

Gaslighting at home, work, or personal life is damaging to a person's sense of reality

How to you manage relationships when a person says one thing and does another and then makes it sound if the contradiction is your problem?

I call this "mystification". Mystifying someone can make them think they are crazy. The opposite of mystification is "validation." Validation is affirming and we feel heard.

From HBR IdeaCast

 Mita Mallick, head of inclusion, equity, and impact at the firm Carta, says gaslighting at the office is more common than many people realize. That’s when a manager or coworker engages in behavior where one thing happens, and they try to convince the victim otherwise. Gaslighting can damage the victim’s well-being and performance as well as the company overall. She explains how to recognize the manipulative behavior, what to do about it in the moment, and how companies can respond. Mallick wrote the HBR.org article “How to Intervene When a Manager Is Gaslighting Their Employees.”

Emergency care wall

 

Psychotherapeutic humanities - Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackery (Novel)

Vanity Fair (Novel)

Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackery published as a serial in a magazine in the 1840s has become, what some people, rate as one of the 100 most important English novels of all time.

Here is a summary from Spark Notes: 

Vanity Fair is a classic novel by English writer William Thackeray, first published in serialised form in the magazine Punch in 1847. The story is told within a frame narrative of a puppet show at a play, highlighting the unreliable nature of the events of the narrative. Vanity Fair follows the lives of Becky Sharp, a strong-willed, penniless young woman, and her friend Amelia 'Emmy' Sedley, a good-natured wealthy young woman. Set against the backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars, Vanity Fair charts the girls' misadventures in love, marriage and family. Becky, manipulative, witty, and amoral, is Emmy's opposite, while Emmy, initially presented as the novel's heroine, is passive, sweet, likeable and a pawn to her family's wishes. Becky, forced to become a governess by circumstances, marries wealthy, while Emmy marries George a man disinherited by his prejudiced father. Critics of the time discussed Vanity Fair's misanthropic view of society, while later critics have called attention to the novel's depiction of the commodification of women in a capitalist society.

Thackeray as the narrator often interjects himself into the narrative with ironic comments. The novel was written for a general adult audience and is widely studied at the college level. This review is written for human service professionals.

The creative tension in the novel is derived from the class system in England in the first part of the nineteenth century when wealth also meant social status akin to the kind of social status that comes from family history. At this time, people could either attain social status through being a member of the titled aristocracy or accumulating wealth. The two main characters of the novel Amelia Sedley and Rebecca Sharp are coming of age where the station at which one marries determines the kind of life the young woman and her children could expect to have. Amelia Sedley comes from accumulated wealth which her family loses and goes bankrupt while Rebecca Sharp is an orphan and through her powers of manipulation and seduction gains access to the upper rungs of English society.

As might be imagined, the intrigue and drama might do a soap opera proud were this story to be adapted to this genre in the twenty first century, 200 years after the first telling.

The novel questions the values of society and takes the position that vanity colors most of human social life especially when it comes to social class consciousness of the time. Amelia is portrayed as the good girl while Rebecca is portrayed as amoral and narcissistic. The reader is led to become conscious of and laugh at the pretensions of society and to question the whole existential basis for the egoistic values that we hold and which govern our lives.

This novel could be used in a college course on human behavior and social environment to demonstrate how societal values influence individual behavior. The novel also highlights that lack of self awareness as the characters sleepwalk through life with no awareness of how their society has molded them. While the narrator does not mock them, he does offer a more objective view of the puppet show in which each character is playing a part. This view reminded me of Shakespeare’s great line his play “As you like it” when Jacques says, “All the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players.”

This novel is recommended for a general audience and especially for  professionals who intend to enter the field of human services in its many forms whether it is as a minister, a teacher, a nurse, a physician, a psychologist, a Social Worker, etc. This novel earns a 5 out of 5 stars.

PS - There have been many movies and TV series made of this novel.

Profile of a Healthy Marriage

PROFILE of a HEALTHY MARRIAGE

by F. Douglas Stephenson, LCSW, LMFT, BCD

Former President, The Florida Society for Clinical Social Work

Modern day society is filled with idealized models that define physical perfection. For most of us, these are unattainable and unrealistic. Idealized models for the perfect marriage abound, but with similar frustrating, unattainable and unrealistic results for most couples. Finding your soul-mate, spiritual and romantic nirvana, making your marriage into a blissful zone of perfect coupledom all are touted as standards for success. Little mention is made of the potential for harm that can occur when these become standards that most individual marriages cannot achieve.

Based on the pioneering and well researched work of John Gottman and associates at the University of Washington, several key factors are identified in a realistic profile of a good marriage. Describing a “Sound Marital House”, the foundation of a healthy marriage includes:

A). well articulated and detailed love maps.
B). mutual admiration and fondness between partners.
C). a strong habit of turning towards one another rather than away whenever one partner asks for attention.

Unhealthy marriages lack knowledge of spouses likes/dislikes, are weak on fondness and admiration between partners , and tend to ignore, make excuses, and not turn toward the spouse when called, thereby producing “Negative Sentiment Override”. With this, the tendency is to assume the worst possible interpretation of the spouses irritating behavior. You give the benefit of doubt with Positive Sentiment Override. Negative Sentiment requires just the reverse, where you assume that your spouse means harm.

Four problematic behaviors have been outlined in the research, and occur when couples cannot well handle insolvable problems. Referred to as the “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse”, these behaviors tend to accurately predict the likelihood of divorce.

1). CRITICISM: troubled couples often attack each other in global ways, defaming each others character rather than carefully describing behaviors that have been annoying.

2).CONTEMPT: Much criticism can mutate into contempt, where spouses judge each other and often assume that they themselves are morally superior to their mate.

3).DEFENSIVENESS: Becoming defensive when attacked leads to less communication, less listening, less understanding of complaints and increasing counter attacking. A vicious cycle can spiral downward rapidly, further extinguishing positive sentiment in the relationship.

4). STONEWALLING: Finally, one of the partners (usually the man) may try to escape from the fighting by Stonewalling, or remaining silent, eyes averted and arms crossed during the exchange. This behavior is guaranteed to inflame the partner (usually female) all the more. Although Stonewalling, Gottman says, appears to be only a passive-aggressive withdrawal, a highly elevated heart rate suggest that the Stonewaller is seeking escape from an intolerable stress situation .

Seeking antidotes to the Four Horsemen behaviors is the central focus of marriage and family psychotherapy. With Gottman and other therapists, global and harsh criticisms by couples are rephrased into softer, more focused complaints. Displays of contempt are combated by encouraging spouses to reconnect with their mutual fondness and admiration. By encouraging each partner to take some of of the responsibility for marital problems, defensiveness and combativeness are combated and often reduced. Stonewalling is worked on by encouraging more self expression and openness of communication.

Gottman shares the view, held by other psychotherapists as well, that a healthy marriage is simply one where spouses basically like one another and can successfully live together in relative peace.

Editor's note: If you are interested in more, I highly recommend this book.

Majority of psychiatrists no longer provide psychotherapy

Researchers analyzing 21 years of data found that the percentage of psychiatrist visits involving psychotherapy has declined by half -- dropping to only 21.6 % of patient visits. Over half of U.S. psychiatrists no longer practice any psychotherapy at all. The study found that for rural, Black, Hispanic, and Medicaid patients psychiatrists' provision of psychotherapy was exceedingly rare.

For more click here.

Editors note:

I have observed this for some time going back even before the 1990s. 

Psychiatrists have become primarily pharmacologists who prescribe medications. 

Most psychiatrists are not even being trained to provide psychotherapy. By comparison a Licensed Clinical Social Work Psychotherapist in New York State must have six years of supervised training before they can become licensed to provide psychotherapy.