by admin | Jun 4, 2022 | Mental Health
Do I Need Mental Health Help?
It’s easy to decide whether we should see a therapist with extreme emotional problems; however, when we’re slightly uncomfortable, or having a few rough days, it’s harder to make that decision. Don’t wait until you truly can’t deal with it if you believe you have that problem and are getting overwhelmed. Being proactive also results in better outcomes. Prevention is always the best form of medicine.
Ask yourself the following questions and truthfully answer yes or no.
- How do you feel about simple pleasures? Do you get genuine satisfaction from them?
- Are you respectful of yourself?
- How do you cope with your own mistakes? Can you laugh at them?
- What are your experiences with handling situations that come your way? Do you feel prepared to deal with them?
- How well do you handle showing your own emotions, such as fear, anger, jealousy, guilt, and worry? Are you comfortable with them?
- Do you have personal relationships that are satisfying and lasting?
- Do you trust others and assume that others will trust you?
- Are you tolerant of differences in viewpoints?
- Do you refuse to be pushed around and refuse satisfaction from it?
- Do you feel connected to others?
- Are you able to love somebody?
- Are you accepting as much responsibility as you are given?
- Do you make your own decisions?
- Are you quick to resolve your problems when they arise?
- Do you shape your environment whenever possible and adjust to it whenever necessary?
Now if you are very honest you will get a good idea of where you are at. Think about the question a little, but not too long, and be natural in your reply, if it’s a no put no, if it’s yes, then write yes. Do not try to make it something it is not, there is no right or wrong reply, there is simply where you are at right now.
Count up the number of no answers. If you don’t have any, you are exceptional. Well done you !! A couple of no answers is normal and is absolutely nothing to be concerned about. If, however, you answered no to more than five questions, there is a good chance you could benefit from some type of counselling to help get you back on track.
The fact you are able to take this test is a good indicator that, with proper counselling, you will be just fine. Just don’t let it go until more answers turn to no. You deserve to enjoy the best mental health possible. Don’t neglect it.
And P.s – let’s not forget, that if you answered NO to taking responsibility for yourself, and yet you do this test and decide to get help, you have already taken responsibility and already turned a NO into a YES! You see, you are a hero and can do anything!
by admin | Jun 4, 2022 | Technology
Digital Minimalism
Your Mental Capacity And You
We tend to overestimate the ratio between our time and our mental capacity. We are spending more and more time in front of screens and devices, which is changing how we think, concentrate, and process information. People are becoming more and more mindful of our society’s limited attention span and an overabundance of information caused by the age of the internet.
The solution to this might be introducing some kind of digital hygiene to combat the bombardment of information that we see day in and day out. And this is exactly what we refer to as “digital minimalism,” so allow us to take you through this fairly new yet exciting concept!
What Is Digital Minimalism
You can find many different approaches and meanings for Digital Minimalism, but the baseline is this: you’re limiting your informational intake on your digital devices.
You’re clearing all the clutter. You’re deleting all those just-in-case apps that keep sending you notifications. If you’re an extremist, you get off of social media completely. Digital Minimalism is the effort to gain back control over your attention span and spend more time on the things that matter.
Social Media and Informational Abundance
News, gossip, images, video, and carefully curated portrayals of people living the best of their lives. This is social media, and chances are you’re on it. And all of it is tailored just for you.
Notice how conveniently the next video or the next article are laid out for you – It’s right there. The algorithm knows what you want, and it wants to give it to you. Now.
‘’No information technology ever had this depth of knowledge of its consumers – or greater capacity to tweak their synapse to keep them engaged.’’
- Andrew Sullivan, ‘’I Used To Be A Human Being’’
Apart from social media, more and more people have the tendency to hoard information nowadays. Today, when you see something beautiful, your instinct is to pull out your phone and photograph it. Somehow, just enjoying the moment doesn’t cut it anymore.
We need it saved. And we need it validated by other users.
Why Become a Digital Minimalist
The number one reason might be that you’re… suffering. Studies have shown that social media use is linked to depression, poor sleep, anxiety, and low self-esteem. Researchers also show that the internet is essentially hijacking our ability to be analytical and to concentrate.
If you’ve caught yourself mindlessly scrolling, looking for nothing in particular then you might want to consider giving Digital Minimalism a try.
How To Embrace Digital Minimalism
In order to embrace Digital Minimalism, we need to become mindful of our digital habits. An investigation into your own habits is in order. Try and measure for yourself how much time you’re spending on social media or on your phone.
The time that is not linked to any goal in particular. How often do you check email and social media? Most probably as soon as you get the notification or just habitually every few minutes. You can give Digital Minimalism a try with these introductory ideas:
Batch Your Digital Tasks & Schedule Them
Chances are your business, or your job won’t burn down if you check your email once a day. Some jobs like Customer Support don’t allow this, but if your job or business does, give it a try and you might even experience a boost in productivity.
Simply keep track of all your digital tasks like emailing, batch them up and schedule them to be completed at a certain time each day.
Limit Social Media
Take notice of how often you end up on social media just by habit. Try and mindfully enforce a daily limit to social media. Allow your dopamine receptors to regain back their sensitivity. In doing this, you will notice how you don’t really miss out on much, BUT you get a load of time to invest in things that truly matter.
Limit Streaming And Entertainment
Entertainment, infotainment it’s all around the corner. It’s not even around the corner, it’s in your house, in your pocket. Readily available. That doesn’t mean that you should be taking advantage of it every time you feel a bit of boredom.
To sometimes be bored is human. But truth be told, we are now addicted to constantly chasing the dragon, always looking for the next series to binge or the next game to play.
Unlike us, YouTube won’t disappear.
Slow down, look around and spend some time with people you cherish because, unlike the informational overabundance that will only keep growing, the people you love won’t be there forever. Again – Pay attention to what matters, and when it comes to giving your time and attention, choose wisely!
Final Thoughts
So, what does this have to do with digital minimalism? Minimalism is all about paring down your possessions and focusing on the essentials. Applied to our digital lives, it means getting rid of everything that doesn’t add value and only keeping the tools and apps that we need to be productive and connected.
For most people, this process starts with decluttering their desktops, email inboxes, and social media feeds. It can be a challenge at first, but once you get into the habit of regularly purging your devices of unnecessary clutter, you’ll find that you’re more focused and productive when you use them.
So if you’ve caught yourself spending more time in front of the screen, take up on this idea and try it out!
by admin | Jun 4, 2022 | Mind
Breakthroughs In Neuropsychology
4 Interesting Revelations About Our Brain
Psychology is one of the fields of science which is developed the fastest in recent years. With the growing interest in figuring out how our brains work, we have come to discover some very curious conditions, anomalies, and patterns.
Neuropsychology deals specifically with the physical part of the brain and is one of the most complex fields of study. Here we have listed some of the more curious studies and revelations in the course of the last year that prove how far we have advanced in this field.
New Brain Interface Systems
Using modern technology to map the way our brain works has always been difficult because of the complexity of the brain itself and the current limits of tech. In previous years science has used one or two sensors to sample up to a few hundred neurons. However, science has now developed a way to use up to 50 microsensors called “neurogranin’s”.
The challenge in building this interface came in two parts, one being the shrinking of the technology itself to reach more regions of the brain simultaneously, while the other was developing a complex reader receiving the information from the neurograins themselves.
The device itself is a thin patch no bigger than a thumbprint that attaches to the outside of the skull and works as a phone tower of sorts for the neurogranin’s, each of which has its own network address.
The study has a long way to go, with researchers hoping to be able to connect hundreds of microsensors and thus provide a seamless picture of the way our brains function in the moment.
How The Brain Understands Sign Language
Speech is one of the core ways humans differ from animals, and as such, we have done a lot of studies regarding its origin, development, and uses. Sign language, however, has been somewhat difficult to examine, and some essential revelations were made just recently.
Those revelations are namely regarding which regions of the brain are responsible for processing it as opposed to speaking or reading. Researchers concluded that Broca’s area in the left hemisphere of the brain is used for understanding sign language the same way it is for speech.
The difference between the two in the brain is that spoken language is processed only by this area, while sign language adds the right side of the brain to the equation.
It was previously believed that Broca’s area could only process written and spoken language, and this study proves that it’s connected to every sort of communication, maybe even body language.
Early Identification Of Alzheimer’s
Recent study focuses on the connection between Alzheimer’s disease and amyloid plaque. The latter is an insoluble accumulation of wrongly configured or misfolded proteins in the brain that leads to memory loss and is detrimental to cognitive functions.
The critical part here is that the researcher in question found that 42% of those without the amyloid plaque showed no signs of cognitive decline at all, while people with Alzheimer’s are sure to have it. This gives a new direction for identifying Alzheimer’s before it reaches a clinical state when it’s usually already too late.
The idea here is for people to start searching for accumulations of the amyloid plaques themselves instead of the visible symptoms because the latter is often found too late in development.
Computer Games And Memory
Video games have had their fair share of controversy ever since they gained popularity. Recently, however, science has proven that they can be positive in more ways than one, most notably their connection to our memory.
One specific study tests the brain’s cognitive functions, including reaction times, attention span, problem-solving, and memory before playing games, following the sessions themselves, and 15 days after playing every day.
The researchers concluded that although the short-term effects are minor, people who have played computer games as kids (both people who have and who have not been a part of the study) performed better with all memory tasks.
Different studies back up the fact that video games positively affect cognitive functions even years after they have stopped playing, most likely because of the functions your brain does while playing and turns into habits.
So, You See…
Neuropsychology as a field is incredibly interesting on all levels. It shows our understanding of ourselves and how our physical traits affect our mental state. Being on top of the news about neuropsychology is synonymous with seeing our species evolve step by step.
Although we have a long way to go before we can confidently say we understand our brains entirely, each step in the right direction counts and is captivating for its merits.
by admin | Jun 3, 2022 | Health
Brief Introduction To Rheumatoid Arthritis
This is according to the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases.
You might not know it, but you could be suffering from rheumatoid arthritis. Although rheumatoid arthritis is commonly associated with the older generation (people over the age of 65), the disease is found in younger generations – even including children. How could you tell if you have it?
Well, if you’re experiencing morning stiffness for no apparent reason (feeling like you had done a lot of strenuous exercise the night before, for example), you might be suffering from one of it’s symptoms. As mild as you might think morning stiffness is, you really ought to give it some serious thought and consult with your doctor because if that morning stiffness is related to rheumatoid arthritis, you can work to prevent it from disabling or crippling you later on down the road to a point where you can barely function. But rheumatoid arthritis isn’t just a physical condition. It has the propensity to tax your mental and emotional state of well-being too.
This is because arthritis can change the way you work, the way you interact with your family, and the way you entertain yourself with recreational activities. You might even know someone with rheumatoid arthritis and have observed how this disease changed not only his or her mobility, but also his or her outlook on life. Those of us without rheumatoid arthritis tend to take our ability to move anyway we want for granted, but when that ability slowly disappears right before our eyes, it’s no surprise that we get depressed about it.
But it doesn’t necessarily have to be that way. With proper diet, medications, education, support, and prescribed exercises, you could work to prevent the most severe forms of the disease – or at least prolong the worst case symptoms.
Arthritis works in two ways. First, it inflames the muscles, ligaments, and cartilage that sit in-between joints. And it’s this inflammation that causes the pain, swelling, and heat. Those are symptoms that are typical indications of an injury and they’re vital to understanding more about this disease. Second, arthritis works by releasing enzymes that basically consume or otherwise destroy the muscles, ligaments, and cartilage that have become inflamed to a point where they’re not very useful and don’t allow for easy movement. In the worse cases, cartilage disappears completely and as you can guess, this is extremely crippling and uncomfortable.
That’s why we call rheumatoid arthritis a disease. Typically, inflamed muscles, ligaments, and cartilage are the result of an injury, like falling on the knees for example. But with arthritis, no injury has to occur. In fact, arthritis is a type of autoimmune disease and the cartilage inside joints is one of the things that it destroys. And any joint can be affected – one, two, maybe even more but most of the time, the disease targets fingers, hips, feet, and knees.
by admin | Jun 3, 2022 | Mind
Carl Jung’s Ideology in a Nutshell
Carl Jung first used the expression “collective unconscious.” The notion that a part of the innermost unconscious mind is biologically transmitted and not modified by human experience is oftentimes described as an “objective psyche.”
The collective unconscious, as per Jung’s theories, is shared by all humans and is essential to numerous well-established beliefs and impulses, including sexual activity, spirituality, and life-and-death impulses.
The Jung’s Idea of the Collective Unconscious
The collective unconscious, according to Carl Jung, is a set of information and images that every human is birthed with and that is inherited by all humans owing to hereditary experience. Although people might not have been aware of their collective unconscious mind’s contents, it is believed that at times of crisis, the mind may access the unconscious.
Instincts and Archetypes
The collective unconscious, according to Jung, is conveyed via timeless notions known as archetypes. Archetypes are hereditary signals, metaphors, or thought patterns and acting from our forefathers and mothers.
These mythical pictures or cultural signifiers, according to Carl Jung, are not set or unchanging; rather, several distinct archetypes can intersect or merge at any particular moment. Some of the archetypes postulated by Jung involve:
- Death
- Birth
- Rebirth
- Power
- The child
- The anima
- The mother
- The hero
The maternal archetype, according to Jung, is by far the most significant. He believed the archetype might take the actual form of a real grandmother, mother, mother-in-law, stepmother, or caregiver, but it could also take the metaphorical shape of a mother, such as:
- Cultivated field
- Garden
- Country
- Spring or a well
- Earth
- Church
- God’s Mother
- Forests
- Seas
The maternal archetype, according to Jung, might have either good or negative characteristics, such as maternal warmth and love, or unpleasant attributes, like the goddess of fate or the cruel mother.
Complicated Beliefs
Well-established spiritual and religious ideas are partly described as a result of the collective unconscious. The universality and homogeneity of global faiths, according to Jung, led to religion as an expression of the collective unconscious.
Ethics, morals, and notions of justice or wrong and right, for example, might be understood in the very same manner, with the collective unconscious playing a role.
Phobias
The collective unconscious theory was used to illustrate why toddlers and grownups might develop anxieties and social phobias and anxieties for no obvious cause. Fear of darkness, loud noises, heights, and blood are all thought to be based on this collective unconscious that has been postulated as a hereditary attribute.
Researches revealed that one-third of youngsters are terrified of serpents by the age of 6, although these reptiles are uncommon in the British Isles. Even though the youngsters had never been in a horrific encounter with a serpent, serpents nevertheless caused anxiety.
Dreams
Dreams were considered to reveal important information about the collective unconscious. Because of the archetypes depicted, Jung felt that certain patterns in dreams are ubiquitous. To put it another way, the same patterns have various meanings for diverse persons.
Unlike his colleague Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung thought that dreams are extremely individualized, and that dream meaning necessitates a thorough understanding of the dreamer. In contrast, Freud frequently stated that certain symbols reflect particular unconscious ideas.
Is It a Scientific Theory?
The collective unconscious needs a symbolic or literal understanding, and that has been a point of contention in the past. A to-the-letter interpretation of the collective unconscious is considered a pseudo-scientific idea in the scientific community. This is because empirically proving that mythological and other traditional symbolism is transmitted and existent at birth is problematic.
Rather, since all persons have some behavioral tendencies, a metaphorical explanation of the collective unconscious is believed to have a touch of pure science.
Interested to learn more about Jung’s ideology? Grab a book of his!
