Why we should place more value on the company of elders. "It's callous to expect people to work their entire lives, only to be shunted away in old age. But there is another way. " Photo: Beatrix Boros An elderly woman calls her country's emergency hotline. Her 95-year-old husband is suffering from "complications", she informs the operator. But when police show up on her doorstep, they discover the man was not in need of medical attention at all. This true story out of the UK is a bittersweet tale that betrays a widespread but largely hidden social tragedy; we are failing our elderly. A 2013 survey by Australian community care franchise Just Better Care found that loneliness and social isolation was the primary concern of elderly people living at home, eclipsing financial worries, lack of independence, and loss of mobility.
Advertisement With many living some distance from their families, isolation can creep up slowly, as ageing bodies succumb to arthritis or they slowly lose the ability to perform everyday functions they once took for granted. The Cognitive Burden of Poverty - The Psych Report. Photo Credit: Eric Pouhier Nobody is perfect. At times we have difficulty managing our finances, we don’t always take our medications as planned, and sometimes we don’t perform up to par at work. However, research shows that people experience these problems to different degrees.
Across financial strata, research reveals that the financially less well-off engage in these behaviors more often than those who are financially stable (1). These behaviors are particularly concerning, because, for those with limited financial resources, they can lead to poverty as well as perpetuate it. In their article, “Poverty Impedes Cognitive Function,” which appears in the latest issue of Science, University of Warwick Professor Anandi Mani and several other social scientists (2) suggest poverty, and the ever-present concerns that come with it, places an undue burden on an individual’s limited mental resources. “Your car is having some trouble and requires $X to be fixed. “Scarcity captures the mind. Understanding the Victim Archetype : Susanna Barlow. Understanding the Victim Archetype There are few archetypes as pervasive and deeply entrenched into our cultural identities than the Victim. Many books and movies use the Victim as a protagonist to great effect.
Everyone can relate to the Victim and we love to root for the underdog, the downtrodden and the disadvantaged. There is nothing wrong with this because hidden within the Victim is the Victor. I believe part of our fascination with this archetype and our cultural attachment to it, is the desire for transformation and personal empowerment that comes from the Victim becoming the Victor. The root of the Victim archetype is a fear that you cannot survive or will not survive. All victims are entitled. The Victim and the Villain It is impossible to be a Victim without there also being a Villain. Motherhood or fatherhood; feeling like a victim to your children and their care as though you have no choice. Insomnia and allergies are two more common villains that many people must deal with. The Bravery of Being Seen. Dear Dreamer, I wanted to share a meaningful experience with you that I had recently, when I was invited to teach in a small community of like-hearted women, who not only live on a remote island, off-the-grid, but for whom sharing dreams is a way of life.
Imagine if you can a small village of people who depend on each other for fresh food, emotional and physical support, a shared economy, and all the ordeals between birth and death. But then who also meet every week, to share their dreams! I was moved by how really brave it is to live with such transparency. When the most intimate material of your inner life is allowed into a trusted circle, you become able to live inclusively of your shadows and weaknesses, your aches and longings. And by extension, how inclusive you learn to be with others. Because of the intimacy of this work, so often I experience the quiet terror most people feel in being seen, being heard. With love, Toko-pa. The Yew Mysteries and Sacred Yew Institute. Discussing Past Suicide Attempts, Cincinnati President Aims to Lessen Stigma.
Lisa Ventre Santa Ono, president of the U. of Cincinnati: "I felt a great weight lifting off of my shoulders in, for the first time, really talking about my own battles with mental illness and my own suicide attempts. It was not planned; it was very spontaneous. " Santa J. Ono, president of the University of Cincinnati, made some strikingly candid remarks at a mental-health fund-raising event on Saturday night, telling an audience that he had attempted suicide on two separate occasions, first in his teens and again in his late 20s. Mr. Ono spoke to about 200 people at the event, which was organized by 1N5, a group named to denote the one in five teenagers with mental-health conditions. Concerns about suicide, which permeate college campuses across the nation, have been particularly pronounced at Cincinnati, where a student hanged himself in 2014. Mr. Q. A. Q. A. Q. A. If anyone can speak about struggles, it should be someone like myself who is coming from a position of strength.
Q. A. Q. Human brain hard-wired for rural tranquillity | Science. Humans may be hard-wired to feel at peace in the countryside and confused in cities – even if they were born and raised in an urban area. According to preliminary results of a study by scientists at Exeter University, an area of the brain associated with being in a calm, meditative state lit up when people were shown pictures of rural settings.
But images of urban environments resulted in a significant delay in reaction, before a part of the brain involved in processing visual complexity swung into action as the viewer tried to work out what they were seeing. The study, which used an MRI scanner to monitor brain activity, adds to a growing body of evidence that natural environments are good for humans, affecting mental and physical health and even levels of aggression. Dr Ian Frampton, an Exeter University psychologist, stressed the researchers still had more work to do, but said they may have hit upon something significant.
Reuse content. Truth – Mike Kuplevatsky. A man is measured by the quality of his friends and the choices that he makes when all hope seems to be lost. When I was a kid, I had this silly idea that adults were perfect and that they always made the right choices. As I grew older, though, I realized that this notion was wrong. I realize now more than ever that the past has a direct influence on the present. We can’t do anything about that, of course, except try to understand it and learn from the lessons that pain brings about.
Learning from pain is the biggest lesson life has to offer, because it ultimately shapes us and makes us stronger. Growing up, I often told myself “if something doesn’t challenge you, it won’t change you.” Depression starts when you’re disappointed in yourself. What subconsciously drives people is not that they want the truth, but that there is no indefinite truth. We all want answers, but what we don’t realize is that we often don’t ask the right questions. So, what should you do? Like this: Like Loading... I've been sexually abused - an anonymous story - RRRepeat. This will be an extensive series of posts about sexual exploitation to create awareness around the subject, but most important, discussion. I invite you to share your opinions and experiences on the comments or through e-mail.
For the record, I’m not the author of this story. I’d like to thank Timeless Wheel for her courage and inspiring words. The series will be divided into four sections: I. Identifying the Problem, II. Why do I start with a story? I don’t know if you ever worked with Trello, but I’m including it as a tool for our tribe. Now: shhh!.. I was in boarding school. I don’t remember the exact day (or night) that it began, or ‘continued’. But, despite everything, I couldn’t get myself to stop him. Every time he’d sit next to me in a car or any other place, I would (and still, after all these years) feel heady and get all hot in the face. Finally, the day came where he had to go away to college and in his absence, I gained my power. I was sick. Of course, he was manipulative. Truth – Mike Kuplevatsky. Survival – Mike Kuplevatsky. Success and fear and stuff « Cristian Mihai. Most people like to believe talent, hard work, and luck are among the determining factors of success.
For a long time I thought you only need two of them. But, actually, if you want to be successful, and it doesn’t matter if all you want is to become a great dancer or actor or writer, or whether you want to pick up pretty girls in bars, you just have to be willing to make a fool out of yourself. Let me tell you why. Making a fool out of yourself is even worse than failing, because our freedom is ultimately limited by what others think about us. For some, seeing their own failure reflected in the eyes of those around them is worse than the death penalty. Because we’re social creatures disgrace feels like the most terrible of punishments. Some try to play it safe. In order to succeed you have to be willing to fail, and I could leave it at that, go back to writing my stories, and you’d feel like you know something. You know that really famous quote from Hemingway’s The Old Man and The Sea?
Where to Find Wisdom in the Body. Many cultures consider the human heart to be the seat of wisdom. Now scientists are finding some evidence for this, though the reality may be more complicated than it seems. Previous research has suggested that higher heart rate variability (HRV)—the variability in the time between our heartbeats, which is a measure of heart health—is associated with better cognitive and emotional functioning. For example, higher HRV has been linked to better working memory and attention, higher levels of empathy and social functioning, and better emotional self-control. Could heart rate variability be linked to better moral judgments, as well? Researcher Igor Grossmann from the University of Waterloo, Ontario, and his colleagues at the University of Western Sydney in Australia, looked at how HRV interacts with moral reasoning and judgment—or wisdom—in a series of experiments. “The efficient processing of information or a lot of prefrontal cortex activity alone does not necessarily make you wiser.
‘Wisdom From a Life of Boxing and Other Violences,... | The Lifted Brow. ‘Wisdom From a Life of Boxing and Other Violences, by George Hannibal Washington, Former Heavyweight Champion and Great Magician of Combat, Part One: Advice’, by Jack Vening This is part one of three of a serial fiction piece by Jack Vening, with accompanying illustrations by Mike Baylis. Your first great mistake is not realising that you’re always fighting for your life. For example: we are taught as children to fear slime in all its forms.
TV teaches us this; scary books do, and campfire stories about ghouls. But when it comes down to it the human body produces nothing but slime one way or another, and so we are being taught to fear ourselves. At the height of my career I was, even to cynical observers, uncomfortably good at punching trained men into comas. I was so proficient in quantum-level violence that my presence in any given city usually resulted in its hospitals’ brain-health departments going bankrupt. There are no fights greater than self-acceptance. Human brain hard-wired for rural tranquillity | Science. Mutiny of the Soul. Depression, anxiety, and fatigue are an essential part of a process of metamorphosis that is unfolding on the planet today, and highly significant for the light they shed on the transition from an old world to a new.
When a growing fatigue or depression becomes serious, and we get a diagnosis of Epstein-Barr or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome or hypothyroid or low serotonin, we typically feel relief and alarm. Alarm: something is wrong with me. Relief: at least I know I’m not imagining things; now that I have a diagnosis, I can be cured, and life can go back to normal. But of course, a cure for these conditions is elusive. Depression, anxiety, and fatigue The Question The notion of a cure starts with the question, “What has gone wrong?” The answer is staring us in the face. Does the world as it is presented me merit my full participation? What if there is something so fundamentally wrong with the world, the lives, and the way of being offered us, that withdrawal is the only sane response? Indigenous people see land as inseparable from spirituality. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission has opened a lot of Canadians’ eyes to the realities of historical and contemporary life for indigenous Canadians.
Yet even before that seminal — and hopefully nation-altering — process and report Canadians were deeply impacted by a primary value of this land’s original inhabitants. As you read this, Rev. Ray Aldred is probably unpacking boxes, making the move from Calgary to Vancouver, where he’ll be the director of the indigenous studies program at the Vancouver School of Theology (VST). Aldred, a status Cree from northern Alberta and a United Church minister, thinks something uniquely Canadian — which most of us probably intuitively know but do not properly attribute — comes from our indigenous fellow Canadians. “I think in Canada people intuitively want to believe that the land is special,” Aldred told me by phone while preparing to put his Calgary house on the market. “It permeates all of life,” he says. They’re treaty people too. @Pat604Johnson. Researchers Map Body Areas Linked to Specific Emotions. In the Absence of the Village, Mothers Struggle Most - Free Range Child — Over Grow The System.
Now? We’re being forced to create all of that for ourselves within a society that has physically and energetically restructured itself around a whole new set of priorities. It’s a profits before people model, which threatens the wellbeing of nearly everything we mothers are wired to protect. Though I’m optimistic and hopeful by nature, this dilemma has left me discouraged many times over the years.
How does an entire nation of mothers shift a storyline this massive while individually and collectively weakened by the absence of the very thing we so desperately need? Major cultural shifts in prioritization, structure, and power are clearly in order (and I do believe they’re happening, however chaotically). We can buy into, make peace with, and conform to the way things are, or exercise the freedoms our foremothers and fathers won for us and commit to doing our unique and essential part in creating change, starting within us and working our way out.
I’ve tasted village life: “Tits” - Sociological Images. Assigned: Life with Gender is a new anthology featuring blog posts by a wide range of sociologists writing at The Society Pages and elsewhere. To celebrate, we’re re-posting four of the essays as this month’s “flashback Fridays.” Enjoy! And to learn more about this anthology, a companion to Wade and Ferree’s Gender: Ideas, Interactions, Institutions, please click here. “Tits,” by Matt Cornell Of the many nicknames I’ve acquired over the years, there’s one I’m reminded of today. The name was given to me by a bully shortly after I entered the sixth grade. I had been a fat kid since elementary school, but as puberty began to kick in, parts of me started growing differently than expected. But my bully simply called them “tits.” I was Tits. He would pass me in the hall and catcall “Hey Tits!” As direct as this bullying was, growing up with gynecomastia was characterized by smaller insults.
When wearing shirts, it was crucial that they be loose fitting. So I lost weight. I was nineteen. Future - Can we sense invisible magnetic fields? Abusive parents: What do grown children owe the mothers and fathers who made their childhood a living hell? Mind - When Parents Are Too Toxic to Tolerate. A Toast to All the Brave Kids Who Broke Up with Their Toxic Moms.