humanity
Mental health is a fundamental right; the future of humanity depends on it.
My Year with Fear
I'm one week away from 28 and a few days ago, I started thinking about what sort of "gift" I could give myself this year. I hadn't gifted myself anything before in honor of a birthday, but after this past year, I thought maybe it was time to start a new tradition to celebrate.
By Lexie Robbins4 years ago in Psyche
Break The Chains
Imagine being fifteen years old, attending a predominantly African American school when you’re the same as they are but your skin color is pale in tone due to albinism. Imagine everyone complementing one another and you’re the sheep surrounded by wolves.Your parents do their best to instill confidence in you and shelter you with love and kindness because they know that people in this world can be cruel and insensitive about your condition. Relentless bullying and mistreatment eventually leads to you believing everything that you’re told about yourself. Imagine with all the mistreatment and lack of confidence and self awareness, you’re not dressed the best but only in what your parents can afford at the time. To everyone else your clothing is considered rags but to you it’s a blessing because the year before, you and your parents were living in a car.
By Laydee B Writes4 years ago in Psyche
And
[Content Warning: abuse, assault, suicide] I don’t remember how old I was, three or four or five—does it really matter anyway?—when I was first abused, when I was first assaulted, when I was first hurt. I don’t remember everything that happened, only bits and pieces, and fear—I remember the fear.
By L. J. Knight 4 years ago in Psyche
When You're Stressed Out and Almost Broke, Turn to This Helpful Mindfulness Website
*** Several years ago I felt like I’d hit the jackpot when I found the website DailyOM.com. This is just an awesome website I want you to know about. I swear I’m not hawking QVC-style inspirational website content. I’m not an affiliate.
By Aimee Gramblin4 years ago in Psyche
What Means To Be Human?
As humans we have a high capacity for love, but we also can hate very well too. I don't know if I will ever understand why others hate so much. What does it teach us in the end? In early 2021, there was an overthrow of the US government not that I am surprised. If history has taught us anything there will always be strong racism, and hate. But how do we overcome it? How does it end?
By Emily Curry (Rising Phoenix)4 years ago in Psyche
Social phobia in the sixties
Giana Anguissola (Travo, Piacenza 1906 — Milan 1966) begins writing at the age of sixteen, collaborating with the Corriere dei Piccoli on which she publishes novels and short stories. Her most famous novel is “Violetta la Timida” from 1963, which wins the Bancarellino prize.
By Patrizia Poli4 years ago in Psyche
In the life of mental health
In this day and age is mental health as recognised as it’s said to be? Do people still get failed by the mental health system? Mental health in the olden days was not spoken about nor had the help we have today? Do we really have that help these days?
By aurelia curmi4 years ago in Psyche
Introverted Intuition
What is Intuition (In general)? Your intuition is your brain's unconscious thoughts that do not use logic. Instead, intuition relies on your instincts. For example, there are days when you feel as if you can lay out all the possibilities in front of you, or you may have a hunch on one particular outcome.
By Lovely Lucia4 years ago in Psyche
How To Know If You’re Growing As A Person
Growth. We all want to experience it and feel the glow of changing for the better. We want to shed out of our ways like an old skin to reveal the beautiful butterfly that lies within. But, growth can be hard. With our busy lives that never seem to allow enough time for ourselves, working on ourself can feel like an impossible task. And how can we even know if we’re growing as a person anyway?
By Soha Sherwani4 years ago in Psyche
What Is Sexuality?
What is sexuality? This, it appears, is the multi-million dollar question. It is said the subject is too complex for one consistent definition. And despite all the books I have read, I could not find one clear model that I could use to understand my sexuality, let alone discuss the concept with my children. Without a simple visual model and a common language, I feel the opportunity to have full and frank conversations with my kids is lost. But I have developed a solution that seems to be working, and here it is. Perhaps it could be helpful for you too?
By Belinda Tobin4 years ago in Psyche
Brain imaging, Consciousness, Jaynes and Wittgenstein
Your brain represents only 2% of your body weight. However, it is estimated that it consumes 20% of more of your body’s energy, even at rest. Modern Brain imaging techniques like fMRI or PET scans purport to associate particular states of consciousness with increased activity in specific areas of the brain. In the most basic of terms increased “activity” as measured by fMRI or PET or other techniques correlates with increased “activity” in a particular state of consciousness. So so far so good. It certainly makes cognitive sense to connect the two. It turns out that one of the founders of modern brain imaging techniques, Robert G. Shulman has begun to question this supposed link. In a fascinating new (not so new anymore but very much underappreciated still) work he suggests and describes in detail the weaknesses of this approach to cognitive neuroscience and modern neurophilosophy. It turns out that many imaging studies actually show a decrease in brain activity related to rest as measured by modern technologies in response to a given cognitive task. Modern interpretations of this data suggest that the decrease is attributable to increases in activity in areas related to self reflection and social reasoning. In other words it’s not really a decrease at all but simply an increase in other non-related areas of the brain. Shulman argues that every area of the brain is active at rest not just the specific areas attributed by modern researchers. So far I have relied (and cribbed) extensively from Colin Klein’s excellent review of Shulman’s book. I highly recommend you read it if you are at all interested in this area of research/philosophy/neuroscience.
By Everyday Junglist4 years ago in Psyche
Julian Jaynes is the Bizarro Descartes
With the opening of Batman v. Superman this weekend (not exactly, it was a summer weekend way back in 2016) it seemed an appropriate time comment on an all-star clash of two superstars of psychology and philosophy, Julian Jaynes and Rene Descartes. At the moment I happen to be brain-deep in a first, and much belated read, of Jaynes’ seminal work, The Origin of Consciousness in the Break Down of the Bicameral Mind. There is a fascinating section in chapter three, The Causes of Consciousness, in which Jaynes appears to stake a decidedly un-descartian position. He suggests that the breakdown of authority and the gods resulted in a state of panic and hesitation in man. He reminds us that, according to his hypothesis, early man was not truly conscious, at least not in the subjective way we judge conscious man to be today. Instead the bicameral man turned to the Gods (who revealed themselves in auditory and visual hallucinations originating in the brain’s right temporal-parietal region) when navigating any particular difficult choice in action that might be required at any point in these early human’s lifetimes. In any forced violent intermingling of these early people they would seem to each other as coming from totally different nations, as having different Gods. Thus the observation “that strangers, even though looking like oneself, spoke differently, had opposite opinions, and behaved differently might lead to the supposition that something inside of them was different.” Jaynes points out, correctly in my view, that this exact opinion “has come down to us in the traditions of philosophy, namely that thoughts, opinions, and delusions are subjective phenomena inside a person because there is no room for them in the ‘real,’ ‘objective’ world.” Connecting the dots Jaynes then argues that before any individual man had objective thoughts he first “posited it in others, particularly contradictory strangers, as the thing that caused their different and bewildering behavior. In other words, the tradition in philosophy that phrases the problem as the logic of inferring other minds from one’s own self has it the wrong way around. We may first unconsciously suppose other consciousnesses, and then infer our own by generalization.” Descarte’s cogito ergo sum (I think, therefore I am, becomes he thinks, therefore I do (am).
By Everyday Junglist4 years ago in Psyche
