Nuggets from Psychology Today’s “Essential Reads”

From the thousands of articles on PsychologyToday.com published this year, the editors selected approximately 300 as “Essential Reads.” I have reviewed them all and here are my favorite nuggets, quoted essentially verbatim. I’ve divided them into categories: self-help, mental health, relationships, parenting, materialism, and aging.

SELF-HELP

From A Secret to Keeping Your New Year’s Resolutions. Say to your partner, "I'd like your help with keeping my New Year's resolutions this year. I’ll write down what I see as ideal a year from now, share it with you, and then think of the first step toward it, starting today. Then, every night before I go to bed, I’ll write what I can get done by the end of tomorrow to stay on track…If you're willing, I'd like you to send me a text or email on the last day of each month asking me how I’m doing.”

From The Surprising Psychology of Smiling. People respond to and evaluate those who smile more positively than those who do not... Smiling (also) has specific biological consequence... Smiling self medicates and heals.

From The Only Way to Make a Change for the Better. When an action is easy to do, you are more likely to do it regularly. (Think of a way to make the task easier.) Create habit chains.Try scheduling (your procrastinated task) around consistent parts of your day: In lieu of, “I will keep a cleaner house,” aim for, “If it is 7 pm, I will shut down work and clean my house.”

From “I’m Tired of Self-Improvement.” Just as you can’t turn a black and white TV into a color one, might it be wise to accept your basic self and focus on fine-tuning? After all, do you know many people who transformed from phlegmatic to ebullient, flighty to efficient, emotion-centered to intellectual?

From Fanaticism Is a Disease Like Alcoholism. Fanatics, ideologues and absolutists are humanity’s greatest scourge. Whether they’re leaders or followers, fanatics indulge in a heady, intoxicating and toxic concoction of self-affirming, know-it-all confidence that they have unique access to absolute truths, truths so perfect that they have to impose them on everyone.

From The Power of Moral Complexity. It can be tempting to oversimplify our understanding of the issues, our beliefs and the beliefs of our opponents. In these times of Red state and Blue state hyperbole, of Fox News versus MSNBC, when our government is divided and often unable to address our more serious problems effectively, the first step toward remedies must be a recognition of the complex times in which we live. This is essentially what community organizations like Public Conversations Project, National Issues Forum, and Search for Common Ground do.

MENTAL HEALTH

From 13 Small Decisions That Will Ease Anxiety. It may be helpful to view excess worry as a result of your automatic brain chemistry and not as a personal weakness…When you start to feel anxious,…take at least one deep abdominal breath… When you catch yourself engaged in anxiety-provoking thinking, tell yourself, “Self! Stop it!” …"Download” your worries to a list, leaving your mind free for other thoughts.

From New Insights Into the Genetics of Schizophrenia. Last month, a veil was lifted from the mysterious and devastating disease of schizophrenia in this article in the American Journal of Psychiatry. The whole September issue is also filled with interesting new information about schizophrenia

To anyone working in the field, it has been obvious all along that the diagnosis of schizophrenia is a conglomeration of symptoms that seems to encompass several distinct disorders. In fact, researchers often call it “the schizophrenias.” … Schizophrenia is about 80% inherited, but the rest is due to environmental factors, perhaps exposure to cannabis at a critical time period in adolescent brain development, or maternal exposure to certain infections while pregnant, paternal age, or even choline or omega 3 deficiency.

From Psychiatry Celebrates Its Top-Ten Hits. Here are three of that Top 10:

• The “decline and fall” of psychoanalysis. Roger that! It is astonishing how the entire medical field of psychiatry was bamboozled by psychoanalysis from about the 1920s to the 1970s. Psychiatrists actually asked patients about their toilet training when taking histories, and dreams were earnestly recounted. This is like introducing Tarot cards to cardiology.

• The introduction of the Prozac-style “antidepressants” since the late 1980s…While the SSRIs may have been adequate for garden-variety dysphoria (not feeling well in your skin), they have not treated melancholia effectively, and melancholia is the illness where patients commit suicide. And (b) the SSRIs are loaded with side effects, possibly inducing alcoholism and certainly inducing impotence.

By the way, virtually nobody mentioned as a victory for the field the increasing acceptance today of electroconvulsive therapy. It’s a big triumph, widely ignored because people can’t get “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” out of their minds.

• The de-pathologizing of homosexuality…All the other moralizing sex diagnoses remain even today intact (in the DSM:) consensual role-playing and fetishism are still ranked up there with bestiality and rape. Psychiatry needs to get out of the bedroom tout court, not just out of the gay bedroom.

RELATIONSHIPS

From Conversational Neurochemistry. In a fraction of a second, we can activate an extreme trigger (fear, defensiveness) and when we do, we cannot act intelligently—we are in a state of protection. (Instead, we:)

• Reveal less than what we know or what is helpful to move forward

• Expect more than what is possible

• Assume the worst in others

• Look at situations with caution

• Interpret communications with fear

• Tell secrets we promised not to tell

• Yes people to avoid confronting truth

That’s why it’s so critical for all of us—especially managers and leaders—to be more mindful about our interactions.

From How To Get People To Do What You Want. Show a story of someone achieving the thing you hope/want them to achieve…Let people know how many other people are doing what you want them to do: "Did you know that 70 percent of the people in our organization have signed up for the extra training program"? …Get them to make a small commitment first.

From 6 Ways to Win Any Argument. Stepping into the mental set of those you argue with allows you to figure out what’s influencing them. Perhaps they’re feeling threatened, anxious, or annoyed. Perhaps they know something that you don’t. In any case, showing empathy will lower the temperature of the debate… If you can’t be open-minded, at least seem that way.

From Sometimes a Little Help From Our Friends Hurts. There are several reasons why (emotional) support may not be effective. Sometimes the people supporting us aren’t that good at providing the right kind of support. Another possibility is that receiving support makes the recipient feel indebted to the provider, leading to negative feelings. And finally receiving help could be a blow to self-esteem.

From How to Deal With Someone Who's Always Looking for a Crisis. Whether at work or in relationships, the crisis-prone benefit from …helping to distinguish a real crisis from a manufactured one, and finding rewards from equanimity rather than upheaval.

From 12 Signs You’re Giving Too Much. Here are two of the 12 signs: 1. It’s increasingly obvious that your help and giving fosters dependence, irresponsibility, incompetence, or poor character. 2. The other person has violated numerous agreements, required many bailouts, and hasn’t used the help to do as promised.

From 4 Essential Marital Bed Death Questions. Sex is not that sacred or inextricably tethered to intimacy and eroticism, unless we tell ourselves it is. I suspect marital bed death is rising because humans are evolving and developing spiritually. More evolved minds and developed spirits would naturally be disinclined and less dependent on overlapping biologic reproductive function, intimacy and eroticism to achieve ultimate satisfaction. In essence, that would define higher human evolutionary status: residing in the trade winds of the present, opposed to the doldrums of evolutionary reproductive biology.

From 6 Reasons Not to Forgive, Not Yet. James K. McNulty found that partners who forgave their partners easily were almost twice as likely to be mistreated soon afterwards…Confronting your offender may not only make your life better, it can also make the world safer for others.

PARENTING

From How Much Do Parents Determine Their Children’s Success? The effect of parenting on kids is much larger in the short-run than the long-run. Since the short-run is very visible, parents naturally imagine they’re putting their kids on the right course for life, when the reality is that they’re just temporarily moving kids off their long-run trajectories…Accept that your child’s future depends chiefly on him or her. Focus instead on enjoying today and building a loving relationship with your child.

From Parenting and the Use of Corrective Violence. Corrective violence (corporal punishment) is an abuse of parental power. The laying on of angry parental hands in punishment can do lasting harm: the child's basic trust in safety with that parent can be lost.

From Does Your Child Need Stimulants? Notwithstanding the alarmist concerns of many parents, the stimulants have few serious side effects when used responsibly. And the stimulants help many raise their grades in the short-run and arguably in the long-run. Given that grades are, in fact, the proxy most used by colleges for who you are and what you know, the reasoning of these parents is understandable.

From Murder Mentors. Instead of denouncing our culture’s violence-filled media (which will have little impact), or singling out fictional depictions for blame, we should more closely supervise vulnerable individuals who express an obsession with such fiction.

WORK

From Why Working Together Doesn't Always Work. At times, it’s the collaboration itself that diminishes the quality of our work…:

• Collaboration breeds false confidence. A study in Psychological Science found that when we work with others to reach a decision, we become overly confident in the accuracy of our collective thinking.

• Collaboration introduces pressures to conform. Within many team collaborations, we face an impossible choice between the quality of our work and the quality of our workplace relationships. Studies show that social pressures make group members tend to conform toward the majority view, even in cases when they believe the majority view is wrong.

• Collaboration promotes laziness. Ever been to a meeting where you’re the only one prepared? Then you’ve experienced social loafing—people’s tendency to invest less effort when they’re part of a team. When others are present, it’s easy for everyone to assume someone else will take the lead.

• Opportunity cost. Attached to every meeting, conference call, and mass email is an invisible price tag. Economists call it opportunity cost, and it refers to all the tasks you’re not getting done while you’re busy “collaborating.”…

It’s easy to feel productive when we’re part of a group…Too bad the progress is often illusory.

From The Upside of Discovering Your Incompetencies. First, decide objectively where you think you might be incompetent. Give those kinds of tasks and responsibilities to another member of your team. Next, look at the areas where you are merely competent and assign these actions to other members of your team to supplement your own competency. Then find the areas where you are masterful and choose a member of your team whom you can train as your understudy in those tasks. Finally, determine the areas in which you are unique--your one-of-a-kind gifts or skills.

MATERIALISM

From Are You Vulnerable to the Hipster Effect?. If a thousand hipsters start oiling their beards with organic beeswax, how long will it take for a million hipsters to do the same?... We move from one fashion to the next, like birds to the next grassy field of worms—until the group signals us to move on…and on…and on….

From How to Avoid Bargain-Brained Holiday Shopping Pitfalls. Sales cause Fear-of-Missing-Out Fever and feel like exciting opportunities to get more for less...The antidote (to “bargain brain”) is: mental calmness, laser focus on the value and cost of a product rather than simply the reduced price of a tempting sale “opportunity,” and staying loyal to your gift list and budget.

From Why Diamonds Aren't Forever. Navigating the wedding industry can be frustrating, in part because of the relentless pressure to spend fantastic amounts of money on anything and everything involved… Many of their pitches boil down to the idea that couples in love should want expensive weddings. Vendors will argue that if you truly love your partner, you should be willing to go to any lengths (at least monetarily) to properly celebrate that love on your “special day."…

To what extent do high levels of spending actually predict marital bliss?... (Study results) did not lend support to the wedding industry’s mantra. In fact, any reliable associations that the researchers found were in the opposite direction from what the marketing would suggest.

From The High Cost of Vanity. It’s worth taking stock of your own motivations before your next sizeable purchase of a brand-name item. Who are you trying to please? Do you feel that you need to look better than other people, and that’s why you need that validation of your worth? Is it part of a larger pattern in which you think you’re better-looking than everyone else and “deserve” to treat yourself? It’s possible that the high-priced item is of better quality, and that your investment will prove worth the financial sacrifice. Nevertheless, by understanding your own motivations, your budget and your self-image can both benefit.

AGING

From My Father is Dying. In the face of a painful life that is soon to end anyway, they (dying people) want to assert their autonomy, their sense of control over themselves, and be able to decide not only that life is no longer worth living but also how and when they want it to stop. I believe now, as I believed then, that we should do more than respect this; we should support it.