Recommended readings

[IrmaJean]

All of us are different for sure. I hope you find what works best for you, mts.

http://psychcentral....ortions/0002153

I found this too.

http://www.communicationandconflict.com/i-statements.html

[Guest]

Music helps me a lot peaceful music that allows me to drift away from myself...

[IrmaJean]

I'm glad you are able to let go when you listen to music. I like peaceful too. :-) I feel things in the opposite way, though. When I listen, it feels self-connective. I'm a very emotional and sensitive person and (being open here) listening feels almost like a caress of my senses. Definitely very soothing for me. I bet I could find an article...

[Resolute]

I'm glad you are able to let go when you listen to music. I like peaceful too. :-) I feel things in the opposite way, though. When I listen, it feels self-connective. I'm a very emotional and sensitive person and (being open here) listening feels almost like a caress of my senses. Definitely very soothing for me. I bet I could find an article...

i bet you could too.

[IrmaJean]

http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2014/09/30/how-to-sit-with-painful-emotions/

[mts]

http://www.all-about-psychology.com/psychology-books.html

Recommendations with descriptions, seems to be some good books here.

https://psychology.stanford.edu/suggestedreadings

More informal recommendations from psychologists.

[mts]

http://www.amazon.co...e/dp/1846041031

I think it's an important subject. I haven't read the book but it has good reviews.

(Edit: after reading, this book has much gory subject matter, don't read unless you have no *triggers* whatsoever. Seriously.)

In The Lucifer Effect, the award-winning and internationally respected psychologist, Philip Zimbardo, examines how the human mind has the capacity to be infinitely caring or selfish, kind or cruel, creative or destructive. He challenges our conceptions of who we think we are, what we believe we will never do - and how and why almost any of us could be initiated into the ranks of evil doers.

At the same time he describes the safeguards we can put in place to prevent ourselves from corrupting - or being corrupted by - others, and what sets some people apart as heroes and heroines, able to resist powerful pressures to go along with the group, and to refuse to be team players when personal integrity is at stake.

Here's a bit a stole from one of the reviewers:

The reason why I bought this book is that I started to work in a very repressive environment. I had never worked in such an environment before, and I could not understand why, as in previous places I was able to pin such a negative vibe on an individual. At this place I could not. It seemed to me that the system was at play, but no-one was trying to challenge it.

This book answered that question - almost all people will comply or enforce negative behaviours. Very senior management, who set the tone and the rules, will also let the negative behaviour occur and do nothing. Very very few people will ever challenge it. And the reason for this : people want to belong and they fear rejection.

[mts]

From the book: "The Secret Life of Pronouns".

IN SEARCH OF A THEORY TO EXPLAIN THE POWER OF WRITING

Why does writing work? Some scientists suggest that repeatedly confronting painful emotions eventually lessens their impact—we adapt to them. Another group points to the unhealthy effects of rumination and unfinished business. Many people who have a traumatic experience keep replaying the events in their minds in a futile attempt to make sense of their suffering. The never-ending thoughts about their emotional upheavals can disrupt their sleep and make it impossible to focus on their jobs and their relationships. Writing about the trauma, according to this view, allows people to find meaning or understanding in these events and helps to resolve their emotional turmoil.

The answer isn’t simple. I’m now convinced that when people write about traumatic events, several healthy changes occur simultaneously, including changes in people’s thinking patterns, emotional responses, brain activity, sleep and health behaviors, and so forth. Discovering why writing is effective for one person may not explain why it works for someone else.

THE IMPORTANCE OF POSITIVE EMOTIONS

A rough measure of people’s emotional state can be found by counting words in their trauma essays that signify positive emotion (e.g., love, care, happy) and negative emotion (e.g., sad, pain, anger). The results from the six writing studies were somewhat unexpected. Overall, the more people used positive emotions while writing about emotional upheavals, the more their physical and mental health improved in the weeks and months after the experiment.

Negative emotion words showed a different pattern. People whose physical health improved the most from writing used a moderate number of negative emotion words. That is, people who expressed negative emotion language at very high rates did not benefit from writing—almost as if they were awash in their unhappiness. By the same token, those who used very few negative emotion words did not benefit—perhaps a sign that they were not acknowledging the emotional impact of their topic. The emotional findings, then, suggest that to gain the most benefit from writing about life’s traumas, acknowledge the negative but celebrate the positive.

THE IMPORTANCE OF CONSTRUCTING A STORY

One of the exciting aspects of the LIWC program was that we were able to identify word categories that reflected the degree to which people were actively thinking. Two of the cognitive dimensions included insight or self-reflection words (such as think, realize, believe) and another made up of causal words (such as because, effect, rationale). The people whose health improved the most started out using fairly low rates of cognitive words but increased in their use over the four days of writing. It wasn’t the level of cognitive words that was important but the increase from the first to last day. In some ways, use of insight and causal words was necessary for people to construct a coherent story of their trauma. On the first writing session, people would often spill out their experience in a disorganized way. However, as they wrote about it day after day, they began to make sense of it. This greater understanding was partially reflected in the ways they used cognitive words.

These findings suggested that having a coherent story to explain a painful experience was not necessarily as useful as constructing a coherent story.

[LaLa]

"Is schizophrenia a ‘real’ illness?"

http://theconversati...l-illness-31818

"Should people with acute mental suffering be allowed to die?"

http://theconversati...ed-to-die-34233

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BTW, Philip Zimbardo, quoted/mentioned above by mts, gave some interesting TED talks, too:

(trigger warning for the 1st one - better don't look at the images he shows...)

https://www.ted.com/...philip_zimbardo

[mts]

Nvm

[Resolute]

i love aristotle.

[IrmaJean]

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/07/22/how-nature-changes-the-brain/?smid=tw-share&_r=0

[mts]

Free college or university lectures on youtube. There is one college professor with a playlist called "philosophy and anger" which I'm watching at the moment. It's good to get accessible information when you can't be bothered reading through complex or ancient texts.

[LaLa]

The biology of happiness. EMBO Reports, 2012

http://www.ncbi.nlm....mbor201226a.pdf

[IrmaJean]

I found this article about coping and healing from loss. I think everyone is different and needs to find their own path during grief, but this fits very well for me.

http://blogs.psychcentral.com/healing-together/2012/01/grieving-as-a-path-to-connection-and-meaning-a-new-perspective/

[LaLa]

Books About Finding Your Hidden Biases

Here are some of the best books we know of to help you begin climbing out of your hidden biases:

·        On Being Certain, by Robert Burton.

·        Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts, by Carol Tavris.

·        Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People, by Mahzarin R. Banaji.

·        Pathological Altruism, edited by Barbara Oakley, Ariel Knafo, Guruprasad Madhavan, and David Sloan Wilson. (It’s your own thoughts that you know what’s best to help others that can surprisingly often lead you astray.)

[IrmaJean]

The second book was required reading for a course I took a few years ago. It's all about cognitive dissonance. 

[IrmaJean]

http://www.newsweek.com/5-scientifically-proven-benefits-gratitude-398582

This is a link to an article, but I didn’t want to start a new thread for just this one article. It's about the benefits of gratitude.

[LaLa]

Journal article about research about suicide: 

Understanding why some people take their lives – and some don’t

http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2016/04/10/scientists-getting-closer-to-understanding-suicide.html

__________

I noticed that some chapters of the book Pathological altruism are available on-line as pdf - easy to google.

 

Quote

Without an understanding of all aspects of altruism, misguided activities are perpetuated, and horrific acts can result. It is vital to understand how attempts to do good can inadvertently worsen the very situation they were meant to solve, or create other problems, either anticipated or unanticipated. 

A scientific paper about it:

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1969627

And there's also a short "review" of the book here: 

http://www.barbaraoakley.com/pdf/bramstedt_review_of_pathological_altruism.pdf

Quote

pathological altruism happens when there is the “absence of an internal compass of what is beneficial for self” and others’ needs are given preference over one’s own. [...] Clearly, “pathological altruism” is not really altruism at all because it cannot be—it focuses on the self, whereas altruism focuses on the empathic concern for others. 

 

 

[LaLa]

And something very different:

How a TV Sitcom Triggered the Downfall of Western Civilization

https://medium.com/@thatdavidhopkins/how-a-tv-sitcom-triggered-the-downfall-of-western-civilization-336e8ccf7dd0#.kg06li6j9

[Victimorthecrime]

Interesting and thought provoking article. I agree that people that show a little ambition are often targeted by lesser minds. 

[IrmaJean]

Books are wonderful, I think in part because they allow us to see the world through the perspective of others, which may help us to accept others.

I do enjoy a good film too, though.

I think the point with stuff is that material things ultimately won't fulfill our inner needs. We'll just need more and more and more...

[IrmaJean]

I do enjoy some classics, yes. Favorite films? There are many, though not many come to mind off the top of my head...  It's a Wonderful Life. On Golden Pond. I like movies that are character studies about people, their lives, and their relationships.

What are some of your favorite films, Klingsor?

[LaLa]

Some interesting research that's under way (I hope I haven't posted it yet...):

Understanding why some people take their lives – and some don’t

http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2016/04/10/scientists-getting-closer-to-understanding-suicide.html

 

 

[LaLa]

The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom (Haidt, Jonathan)

Quote

 

[...] from one perspective it really wouldn’t matter if I killed myself tomorrow. Very well, then everything beyond tomorrow is a gift with no strings and no expectations. There is no test to hand in at the end of life, so there is no way to fail. If this really is all there is, why not embrace it, rather than throw it away? I don’t know whether this realization lifted my mood or whether an improving mood helped me to reframe the problem with hope; but my existential depression lifted and I enjoyed the last months of high school.

[...] my adolescent existentialism, I conflated the two sub-questions. Because I embraced the scientific

[...] answer to the question of the purpose of life, I thought it precluded finding purpose within life. It was an easy mistake to make because many religions teach that the two questions are inseparable.