NLPhilia Blog

I can tell you that there are people who tell me they’ve noticed a difference in me since my heart attack almost two years ago. I have noticed it myself. Even though there’s nothing structurally wrong with my heart that hasn’t been wrong with it since before I was born (according to two separate stress tests, the heart attack caused zero damage), I’m a different guy for having experienced it. Those changes are coming to a head now, and I am looking for ways to make myself more like what I was before. I’m getting some guidance from people close to me: one is an NLP Practitioner, and the other is a psychologist who specializes in trauma. I need this guidance because it’s so easy for a person to kid themselves.

The economy is stressing lots of people to the point of strain now, and because strain is a leading cause of various illnesses, the opportunity for we people-helpers to help the physically ill with their emotional and mental challenges is likely to present itself more and more often. You never know when you might have a friend, relative, or co-worker who’s suddenly faced with something bigger than they’re equipped to handle alone.

The Psych Central blog has featured several “coping with illness” articles over the past couple of months. I’d like to draw your attention to three of them.

Breast Cancer Coping Styles refers to a Temple University study on responses to a diagnosis of breast cancer.

Ericksen set out to explore how women respond to a diagnosis of breast cancer shortly after receiving her own diagnosis. She discovered there are four types of responders, including the “take charge” type, each valuable for different women.

And, because breasts are one of the most important Western symbols of femininity and breast cancer receives more attention in the media than other forms of cancer, Ericksen also investigated how the cultural messages women receive about breast cancer inform their journeys.

PTSD Among ICU Survivors references an article from HBNS which reports that one in five ICU survivors experiences PTSD Symptoms.

PTSD can occur in people who have experienced or witnessed life-threatening events, such as serious accidents, violent personal assaults or natural disasters. Symptoms — which include nightmares and problems sleeping, flashbacks, irritability, anger and feelings of emotional detachment or numbness — often extend for months or years after the traumatic event, and affect about 6.8 percent of the general U.S. population, according to National Center for PTSD figures.

The trauma of an ICU stay triggers PTSD symptoms in many survivors and negatively can affect a person’s quality of life after leaving the hospital, the authors discovered.

Family Members Experience PTSD highlights a University of Pittsburgh study on how families of ICU survivors also experience PTSD.

Researchers found that symptoms of anxiety and depression in family members of ICU patients diminished over time, but high rates of post-traumatic stress and complicated grief remained.

“Our findings suggest that family members of patients in the intensive care unit are at risk for serious psychological disorders that may require treatment,” said Cindy L. Bryce, Ph.D., associate professor of medicine and health policy and management at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

One more thing I want to mention is a book which forever changed the way I think about working with people who are facing life-changing events: When Bad Things Happen to Good People, by Harold S. Kushner. If you haven’t read it yet, believe me, it’s worth the time and effort. I keep having to buy new copies because whenever I loan mine, it doesn’t come back.

So keep your eyes, ears, and heart open to those in pain, and remember those close to them as well.

If you or someone you care about is deaf, or if you love language, take note. This week’s edition of Randy Cassingham’s excellent newsletter, This Is True, reports the death of renowned linguist Edward Klima:

A linguist at the University of California, San Diego, Klima got interested in a languages that other linguists had dismissed because they were not spoken: sign languages used by the deaf. Signing was thought to be simple gesturing of spoken language concepts, but…

Read the rest at Edward Klima — an Honorary Unsubscribe, and read Edward Klima’s obituary in the New York Times.

Wow. Thorazine is magic!

Hate parenting? Here ya go!

Ladies, can’t make your man happy? Now you can!

Too healthy? Medicine has the answer!

And here’s scientific proof that money can buy happiness.

(I’m delighted to have found the Bonkers Institute for Nearly Genuine Research.)

An August 19 article in The Guardian, written by psychotherapist Andrew Feldmár, talks about the benefits of using hallucinogenic drugs alongside conventional treatment:

After three LSD sessions, a patient emerged from what was labelled chronic psychotic depression (she had attempted suicide three times, had been hospitalised, and given several courses of ECT, major antipsychotics and antidepressants), and was able to hold a job, derive pleasure from her days, and look forward to cultivating a varied garden of delights. She moved from cursing me for not letting her die to blessing me for the surprising freedom that opened up for her as a result of her LSD experiences. Psychotherapy, without LSD, would not have been enough, I’m afraid.

I’ve been curious about such methods ever since reading Aldous Huxley‘s book, The Doors of Perception. (Not curious enough to try the stuff, though.) I’m wondering what it is, exactly, that helps the mentally ill get better so much faster with such drugs than without them. If we could determine that, we could determine how to duplicate the results more safely and consistently… perhaps even without the drugs.

Go read Psychedelic Drugs Could Heal Thousands.

(Thanks, BoingBoing, for the pointer.)

Once again, we find Milton Erickson was ahead of his time:

A new study adds an unexpected method to the list of ways to spur memories about our past: body position. That’s right: just holding your body in the right position means you’ll have faster, more accurate access to certain memories. If you stand as if holding a golf club, you’re quicker to remember an event that happened while you were golfing than if you position your body in a non-golfing pose.

Cognitive Daily: Body position affects memory for events

Is the research being better refined, or are we becoming more forgetful? This Lifehacker article points to this article on Live Science:

Researchers have often debated the maximum amount of items we can store in our conscious mind, in what’s called our working memory, and a new study puts the limit at three or four.

More goodies I remembered to post about:

• Harry Lorayne is a prolific author and an expert on the subject of memory improvement.
• George Miller’s article, “The Magical Number Seven…”

A recent article in discovery News indicates that there are neurological differences between the experience of dyslexia in native readers of Chinese and native readers of English:

Dyslexia affects different parts of children’s brains depending on whether they are raised reading English or Chinese. That finding, reported in Monday’s online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, means that therapists may need to seek different methods of assisting dyslexic children from different cultures.

Read the rest at Discovery News from the Discovery Channel.

(Hat tip to BoingBoing!)

Additional note: I read an interesting book by a former dyslexic. It is called “The Gift of Dyslexia”. Check the author’s Web site for more information.

Over at Interesting Thing of the Day there’s a nice article on Synesthesia:

There are at least 50 different types of synesthesia, involving various combinations of senses both as the triggering stimulus and the secondary response. Some forms of synesthesia are experienced as multiple modalities of a single physical sense. For example, seeing a number might evoke a certain color for one synesthete, while in another person the same number might cause a different visual sensation, such as a pattern or shape. One sense may also trigger another, as in a tactile sensation that has a taste. But not all synesthetic experiences are restricted to the five senses. In some synesthetes, a word or sound might evoke a sensation of motion, or even a kinesthetic response, inducing the person to assume a particular physical position. There are also cases in which abstract concepts, such as days of the week or months of the year, cause the sensation of shapes, colors, or other experiences.

Go read the article or listen to the podcast (9:26, 8.64 MB, mp3).

The New York Times reports on a study that shows that training your memory improves your overall intelligence:

Until now, it had been widely assumed that the kind of mental ability that allows us to solve new problems without having any relevant previous experience — what psychologists call fluid intelligence — is innate and cannot be taught though people can raise their grades on tests of it by practicing.

But in the new study, researchers describe a method for improving this skill, along with experiments to prove it works.

Go read the full article.

(Thanks for the heads-up, honey.)

Wow. LSD inventor Albert Hoffman died recently. He was a hundred and two years old.

Albert Hofmann, LSD inventor, RIP – Boing Boing