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This Week in BlogTalkRadio, 11/30-12/6
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"Those Darn Guys Who Happen to be Therapists" lead discussions of Life, Love, and the Pursuit of a Richer Life. Psychologist and e-therapist Dr. Jim Weaver, Psychotherapist Hughes Kraft and Couples Therapist Dr. David Sanford talk about important topics in the area of psychology, relationships and personal growth and achievement. Plus our regular feature each week “A Minute on the Mind” where Dr. Mark Kiefner, Clinical Director of Bayside Neurorehabilitation Services, brings us some of the latest and most interesting in brain research. Join us to listen and call in with your questions and comments.
Darn Guys
Date / Time: 12/7/2009 3:00 PM UTC
Category: Psychology
Call-in Number: (347) 677-1667
Psychologist Dr. Jim Weaver, Psychotherapist Hughes Kraft and Couples Therapist Dr. David Sanford talk about important topics in the area of psychology and personal growth and achievement. Join us with your questions and comments on this weeks topic. Plus our regular feature “A Minute on the Mind” where Dr. Mark Kiefner, Clinical Director of Bayside Neurorehabilitation Services, brings us some of the latest and most interesting in brain research on the topic(s) of the day.
Upcoming Episodes
12/14/2009 3:00 PM UTC - Episode 44 - TBA
12/21/2009 3:00 PM UTC - Episode 45 - TBA
Original Air Date: 5/25/2009 2:00 PM UTC
Original Air Date: 5/18/2009 2:00 PM UTC
Original Air Date: 5/11/2009 2:00 PM UTC
Date / Time: 5/11/2009 3:10 AM UTC
Gratitude
As you probably know, there has been a real turn in psychology toward a positive psychology. Much research has been devoted to the question of happiness. Bob Emmons, a psychologist at the University of California, is engaged in research on gratitude which he calls the “forgotten factor” in happiness research. His studies have found that individuals who keep gratitude journals report fewer physical symptoms, feel better about their lives, are more optimistic, and make more progress toward important personal goals. This is true in adults, individuals with chronic diseases, and children. If you would like to complete their gratitude measure and assess your own level of gratitude, follow this link: http://www.psy.miami.edu/faculty/mmccullough/gratitude/GQ-6-scoring-interp.pdf
What the work of Bob Emmons and his colleagues does is essentially change the focus of people's attention. The psychologist, William James, long ago observed that "my experience is what I agreed to attend to". Inherent in that statement is the notion that we can actively choose where to allocate our attention. There is new rehabilitation research occurring with the goal of developing treatments for improving focused attention. In the meantime, what we can do to develop our own strategies to focus on what is most meaningful, what is most gratifying, and what is the source of happiness. When we focus on people, events, and experiences for which we are grateful we are highlighting the positive aspects of life.
I have had many patients tell me that things just happen to them. It is often a long time before they believe that they can make choices for their own happiness. I would encourage anyone reading this to run your own gratitude experiment. Try for a few days to notice what happens each day that makes you grateful and see what happens to your mood. Call us and tell us about it.
Mark G. Kiefner, Ph.D.
Date / Time: 5/5/2009 2:23 PM UTC
Seeking Balance: Memory of the Past, Memory for the Future
There is a beautiful book by a gentleman named Robert Gruden entitled "Time and the Art of Living". The notion of balance in today's discussion brought that book and its lessons back to me. Gruden makes the case that a balanced life, a well ordered life, involves living now with an awareness both of the lessons of the past and a vision of the future. What he is talking about is memory: what neuroscientists might call retrospective memory and prospective memory. Balance in our lives requires us to recall the past: it’s aches, it’s pains, and it's glory. It also requires us to use that retrospective memory and the information it contains to make the best possible decisions as we live in this moment. But, we are not making decisions typically just for this moment. Hopefully, we are making decisions that move us in a particular direction in our future. That ability to see into the future is affected by any neurologic event that has an effect on memory. There has been recent research demonstrating that injuries which affect a person's memory of the past also interfere with the ability to anticipate and plan for the future. That does not have to be an actual brain injury or stroke or a dementing process. Those of us who struggle with balance in our lives frequently experience significant stress. Stress causes the release of cortisol in the brain which also affects memory function. Loss of memory function causes us to lose sight of what's really important, i.e., to lose our vision of the future … which helps to balance and guide us in the present. Maybe stress management strategies are our next topic.
Original Air Date: 5/4/2009 2:00 PM UTC
Date / Time: 5/2/2009 3:15 PM UTC
A MINUTE ON THE MIND
4/27/2009
Anger and relationships
Anger is one of the seven basic emotions evident across all cultures. Anger is often displayed with the aim of altering the behavior of the person to whom the anger is addressed. Most of us perceive someone who is angry at us as a threat and that prompts us to respond… hopefully in some adaptive way. When we are exposed to someone who is angry, a wide set of regions in the brain including the anterior temporal lobe, the pre-motor cortex, and the pre-frontal cortex are activated. What this implies is that the threat of anger causes us to look for contextual information to evaluate the anger and make behavioral adjustments. We also have a type of neuron called mirror neurons. These neurons mirror or resonate with the emotional state of others. Thus, when someone else is angry, we are likely to be angry also. So, what we then have is a primitive anger/anger situation. That’s generally not a win/win situation! What we really need is a more evolved response. One way to get that is to remember that “anger always has a buddy”. Typically, the threats we experience are not life-threatening. We experience embarrassment, frustration, sadness, disappointment, and loss. If we can dampen our anger response and talk about anger's buddy, we have a much greater chance of having a productive and relationship building conversation. When we talk about our loss or sadness or disappointment it leads the other person’s mirror neurons to resonate with ours and to create an empathic emotional state. That is the point from which a productive discussion can occur.
Clinical Neuropsychologist
Clinical Director
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