The Kids Can’t Stop: Is Internet Addiction Real?

-Matthew J. Edlund, MD

Continually connecting can make you deeply disconnected.

Is This Addiction?

Can you get addicted to internet use? A new Chinese study argues that it certainly happens; that it clearly changes brain and behavior; and that the brain changes seen are in many ways similar to what happens with drug addiction and gambling.

Kids Who Can’t Stop

The adolescents – aged 14 to 21 – studied in Shanghai and Wuhan were a rather special group. Their preoccupation with the Internet was encompassing. They took more and more time on the Net; tried to cut back but could not; felt restless and irritable when they did; stayed on longer than they should. Many also lied to their families about their use of the Net, and jeopardized school or job performance.
They really couldn’t stop.

But they were not depressed. Previous researchers had argued that kids addicted to the internet were simply depressed, drug addicted or psychotic, or suffering severe anxiety disorders – their compulsive Net use was just an outlet for other problems. The Shanghai adolescents were clinically excluded from having such problems. They were then matched with a control group age and sex matched kids – and sent off to be tested in the MRI machine.

Were the compulsive internet users truly comparable to the controls? No. On at least one questionnaire the unstoppable internet users were more anxious than the control group. Yet anxiety was certainly implied in their inability to stop using the Net – and in its deleterious social results.

Different Brains

The compulsive internet users certainly looked different from the control group. Previous work had shown decreased grey matter in the cingulated cortex, insula and lingual gyrus – areas involved with emotion and executive decision making. Other studies argued poor information processing and lower impulse control. The Shanghai-Wuhan researchers were interested in white matter – the connections between different brain areas.

And they were different.

Major changes were seen in the corpus callosum – which connects hemispheres – and areas like the internal capsule and precentral gyrus. The authors argued that white matter was disrupted in a host of areas involving emotion, decision making, and repetitive behaviors. The results were fairly similar to what was seen in people who frequently used alcohol, marijuana, and cocaine.

Implications
1. There are kids using the Net who truly can’t stop. Though clinicians argue about whether they’re behavior is “compulsive” as opposed to addictive, it really messes up their lives.
2. Though the adolescents looked at in this study were truly extreme – and overall may be few in number – their brains were distinctly different in unhealthy ways.
3. Internet use is probably like most behaviorally defined actions – a continuous variable – not a dichotomous, yes or no one. Lots of adolescents may not be as compulsive as these Chinese kids, but fear being disconnected from the Net and deeply dislike having to focus their attention elsewhere. Many kids may be able to get away from the Net much of the time – but not all the time.
4. As noted by Dr. Henrietta Bowden-Jones in an interview with BBC News, behavioral “addictions” lead to the same brain changes as pharmacological ones.
5. China is advancing rapidly in biological and medical research, as it has in other arenas. Problems with plagiarism and overzealous publishing should not obscure excellent scientific work.

Bottom Line:
What you do changes your brain function and anatomy – rather quickly. Compulsive internet use can appear as functionally destructive as compulsive drug use or gambling.

And compulsive internet use may become a preferred outlet for much of the society suffering from depression and anxiety disorders.

In this case, continuous connection may ultimately create disruptive disconnection – social, psychological, and emotional.

What we do is what we become. The Net continues to change human brains, as Nicholas Carr pointed out in his book “The Shallows.” The changes will most probably become more profound as virtual reality technologically improves.

Will kids appearance on their Facebook page become more important to them than their real appearance?

We may soon find out.

Why You Can’t Eat (or Can’t Stop Eating) After a Breakup

-Debby Herbenick, PhD, MPH

Investigating the gut-brain response

We often find what we need when we’re not looking for it. That’s how it was for me today, spending a lazy Sunday searching the scientific literature for research related to “communication about feelings” (isn’t that what everyone does on Sundays?).

Instead of finding research related to how people talk or avoid talking about their feelings, I found myself taken in by the first result: a 2011 article published in Nature titled “Gut feelings: the emerging biology of gut-brain communication.”

I was intrigued for two reasons: (1) one of my good friends, a neuroscientist, often talks about gut decisions (they are not always the “right” decisions to make but they deserve attention for various reasons); and (2) I had recently talked with another friend about some of my own gut-brain responses and it left me with a nagging question.

What happened is this: I had shared a story about how, when I was 19, I lost my appetite for a week. I was healthy and happy with life except that I had ended a relationship with someone who I liked, but didn’t want to be with anymore, and I felt badly about it. The pain of hurting another person was, for me, so painful that my stomach hurt and I couldn’t eat, a result of my overly sensitive and overly empathic nature in which I took in his perceived pain and made it my own (in reality, I’m sure he was just fine).

So there I was, relatively unable to eat normally except for the lucky fact that my body was adaptive enough to crave a specific food each day. For the first few days, the only food I could bare to eat was watermelon. Then, some specific muffins from a specific bakery. After about a week, time healed, my appetite returned, and I mostly forgot about this odd gut-brain reaction.

That is, until the next time I found myself ending a relationship and once again losing my appetite. This came to be a cycle that repeated itself during times when I was ready to break up with someone, had already broken up with someone, or was experiencing sufficient relationship distress. I didn’t lose my appetite for days at a time due to any other type of stress, I told my friend; just relationship distress. And it was annoying.

“What about drinking?” he asked, as I sipped from a tasty lavendar drink at a favorite bar. “Did you ever lose your appetite for certain drinks?”

And it occurred to me that I hadn’t. Yet the scientist in me couldn’t figure out why I would so routinely and consistently lose my appetite for food in the face of relationship issues but never any type of alcohol.

Reading the Nature piece today has provided me with some sense of my own gut-brain connection, and perhaps—if you’ve experienced appetite issues in response to relationship distress, it may for you too. It seems that there’s a growing and (for me) fascinating area of research related to interactions between our gut (e.g., appetite, GI function, etc) and our brain (e.g., thoughts, memories, decision making, and emotions).

The article reviewed scientific findings related to the gut/brain that lead me to believe that the following—at least for me—may have happened:

1. When I was 19 and had my first significant breakup, I had a fairly typical stress response of changes to eating patterns.

2. Relationship-related distress is rare enough for me—and I am a highly sensitive/empathic person—and thus “memories of body states associated with previous feeling states” (this, from the article) perhaps became linked. That is, relationship distress is, for me, connected with loss of appetite going back to my first significant breakup.

3. Because I wasn’t really drinking alcohol very often at age 18 or 19, it wouldn’t have crossed my mind to want a drink, let alone to lose my appetite for a drink. Thus, I had no alcohol-related appetite loss in relation to relationship distress at the time, and it’s consequently never become part of how I deal with this now. It never became imprinted.

I mention this because, in a recent class discussion about love, breakups, and communication, my students talked a bit about their own changes to eating patterns when faced with heartbreak. Some students talked about drinking more alcohol, or taking various drugs or pain medications, after a breakup. Other students talked about eating more than usual or less than usual when going through difficult relationship issues.

It’s common to experience changes related to eating (and to sleep) in response to relationship issues, including breakups. However, we have idiosyncratic patterns and the Nature article helped me to understand the numerous pathways that may be possible in creating these connections and establishing individuals’ patterns related to appetite, eating behaviors and their memories and emotions. I liked this part of the article:

“…body loops, or their meta-representations in the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), may play a part not only in how somebody feels at a given moment but may also influence future planning and intuitive decision making. For example, according to Damasio, somatic markers may covertly result in ‘undeliberated inhibition of a response learned previously … [or] the introduction of a bias in the selection of an aversive or appetitive mode of behavior.’”

My pattern of appetite loss is specific to me—and because it’s so predictable, when it happens at all I experience it as an annoyance since I like to eat and just want to get the whole “appetite loss” thing over with. I know that I’m fine; I just want to eat again. I’ve also found that, for me, the appetite loss is linked specifically with feeling bad about hurting another person. I can manage relationship distress. I can manage breakups. But, going back to childhood, I’ve always found it painful to do things that break another person’s heart—and it’s that pain that seems to be linked with finding it too painful to eat. [Fortunately these days, I am eating 100 percent normally and happily.]

There’s nothing to “do” here; meaning, this isn’t a “5 Tips” or “10 Steps” piece. But if you find yourself interested in the topic, and have a science-y background, you may find the article to be an interesting read. And if you experience gut-related symptoms in response to relationship or sexuality issues, you might look for patterns in your own past, and memories, to see how a gut-brain reaction may have developed for you. It may even give you some insights in terms of how you might be able to care for yourself going forward.

Grief Isn’t Something to Get Over

-Mary C Lamia, PhD

The notion that one gets over it is a myth.

Grief Isn’t Something to Get Over

The emotion of grief may be triggered by the loss of a loved one or the result of a life circumstance. Many people believe that if you have effectively mourned a loss you will then achieve closure. The notion that one mourns a loss and then gets over it, to the extent that emotions about the loss are not triggered in the future, is a myth.

Similarly, children have such expectations about getting over loss. They seem to believe that one needs to do something in particular in order to achieve that goal. Several years ago, as host of a radio talk show for kids, I asked listeners about the issue of loss. An 8-year old boy told me that his grandfather had died two weeks before and he wanted to know how to get over it-he thinks about him all the time and can’t concentrate on anything else. A 12-year old boy explained that his dog had died and he wanted to know what to do since he couldn’t say good-bye to her and didn’t think that he could ever “fill [his] heart with anything else.” I didn’t ask what he meant by his choice of words, however, I felt its meaning. A 13-year old girl said that she asks her brother about what clothes look good on her because she doesn’t have a mom. Ever since her mother died several years before, her dad, she claimed, tries to be both a mom and dad. But it always feels like something is missing. She asked, “How do I get over my mom dying?”

The misguided notion that grief is a process that allows a final working through of a loss is likely the fault of my own profession–mental health professionals who have promoted this notion in their work with grieving individuals. Clinical data makes it clear that any significant loss, later and repeatedly, brings up longing and sadness. Is it because these people have not achieved closure by traversing prescribed stages of mourning or because they have not “worked through the loss” as some therapists boldly claim? No. It’s because you never get over loss. As time passes, the intensity of feelings about the loss will lessen, you might also find ways to sooth or distract yourself, or you can partially bury grief-related feelings by creating new memories. But you’re not going to get over it because that’s impossible: you cannot erase emotional memory. Besides, it’s not about achieving closure. Instead you have to figure out what you are going to do when your emotional memories are later triggered.

Emotions that have to do with loss are triggered throughout our lives and you will live with them. Usually they are in the form of anniversary reactions, such as the birthday or death day of the lost loved one or any significant holiday in which you might want to be with the person who is gone. Reminders, such as visiting a place you’ve been with the person you lost, will trigger a similar response. In episodes of depression and high anxiety in patients, I always look for anniversary reactions and situation-matching reactions, such as when emotions are triggered and people just can’t understand why they would be anxious or depressed.

Grief can also be triggered by an age-matching anniversary reaction, which is when a person’s age matches the age of a parent when they died. The remarkable power of age-matching anniversary reactions arising from the loss of a parent in childhood was demonstrated to me when I began training as a psychologist over 30 years ago. I had been treating a severely depressed man who, for many months, was not responsive to intensive psychotherapy or medication. Upon discovering with the patient that his depression began at a time in which his age matched his father’s age of death, the depression miraculously lifted. Beneath his depression lay a myriad of fears that he would be like his father, which included dying at the same age of his father as well as guilt that he was not like his father and could live a full life. Although he had been unaware of the age factor, his painful feelings seemed to recreate the trauma of his father’s death, which was too overwhelming for him to feel when he was ten years old.

One of the reasons that grief happens to be triggered by external reminders, such as in anniversary reactions, is because grief is an emotion that sends a vague alert to help you to remember, rather than to forget. Even so, what most people do with grief is attempt to forget–to get over it-which is quite contrary to the purpose of the emotion. Rather than try to forget, one must attempt to remember and cooperate with what your emotion is trying to convey. There are many ways to remember. You can remember what you learned from the person you lost, remember what you enjoyed, and you can cry if you feel like crying. Even if your grief is about a relationship gone bad, there is always something that you can learn by remembering it.

There are related themes of loss that people express, and later grief responses related to those losses, such as the many women and men who have given up a child for adoption. The child’s birth date does not pass by without an emotional reaction, whether or not they recognize it at the time. Similarly, the date a child would have been born for a childless woman who has had a miscarriage can trigger grief. The experience of loss when a relationship ends can be triggered on the former partner’s birthday, on the anniversary of when you met, or on any holiday.

Whenever I am bothered by the thought of just how misguided the notion of stages of grieving can be, I remember one patient in particular who wanted help with the depression she had every summer, which at the time she told me was when her 12-year old child had died 25 years before. She sought therapy because she was convinced that something was wrong with her. Every June, for 25 years, she had experienced a grief response. Simply knowing that she wasn’t crazy because of the intense affect that came up for her made it a bit easier the next time June arrived. And, rather than try to get rid of her painful feelings at the time, instead she learned to think about exactly what she would do to remember her son.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow sums up the lifelong experience of grief in the first 3 lines of his poem, Secret Anniversaries Of The Heart:
The holiest of all holidays are those
Kept by ourselves in silence and apart;
The secret anniversaries of the heart.

Why Many Men Have Difficulty Compromising

-Janice Wood

New research from Boston College finds that compromise always occurs among two decision-makers when a woman is involved, but hardly ever when the pair of decision-makers are men.

“When men are in the presence of other men, they feel the need to prove their masculinity,” said co-researcher Dr. Hristina Nikolova, the Coughlin Sesquicentennial Assistant Professor of Marketing with the Carroll School of Management at Boston College.

“Both tend to push away from the compromise option because the compromise option is consistent with feminine norms. On the other hand, extremism is a more masculine trait, so that’s why both male partners tend to prefer an extreme option when making decisions together.”

While previous research has examined the compromise effect — the tendency to choose the middle, compromise option in a set of choices — using individuals, the new study examines joint decision-making.

“The decisions we make in pairs may be very different than those we make alone, depending on who we make them with,” the researchers said in the study, which was published in the Journal of Consumer Research. “Classic compromise effects, AKA the ‘goldilocks effect’ or ‘extremeness aversion,’ may not emerge in all joint consumption decisions.”

Nikolova and co-author Dr. Cati Lamberton, an associate professor of marketing with the Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business at the University of Pittsburgh, conducted four experiments with 1,204 students at two U.S universities, and a fifth experiment using 673 online participants.

The studies involved different pairs of a man and woman, two women, and two men making decisions on such things as buying printers, toothpaste, flashlights, tires, hotels, headphones, different sizes and shapes of grills, what prizes to seek in a lottery, and whether to buy risky or safe stocks with corresponding high and low returns.

“No matter what the product is, we see the same effects,” Nikolova said. “The compromise effect basically emerges in any pair when there is a woman. However, surprisingly, when you have men choosing together, they actually tend to push away from the compromise option and select one of the extreme options.”

“Say two men are choosing a car and the cars they are considering differ on safety and fuel efficiency — they will either go for the safest car or the one that offers them the most fuel efficiency, but they won’t choose an option that offers a little of both,” she explained.

In contrast, individuals and mixed-gender and female-female pairs will likely go for the middle option since it seems reasonable and is easily justified.

“In contrast to men, women act the same together as they would alone because they don’t need to prove anything in front of other women,” she said. “Womanhood is not precarious and does not need the same level of public defense as manhood. That’s why we observe the compromise effect in the joint decisions of two female partners.”

Interestingly, the research found that compromise is criticized among other men, but embraced by women.

“Only men judge other men very harshly when they suggest the compromise option to a male partner,” Nikolova said. “It doesn’t happen when a man suggests the compromise option to a female partner or when women suggest the compromise option, so it’s really specific to men dealing with other men.”

Nikolova says the findings are something corporate American will want to pay attention to and gear campaigns around since the compromise effect is a phenomenon often used to position products and drive sales. The study’s findings suggest that retailers and marketers should be aware of the gender composition of the joint decision-making pairs they might be targeting.

“For instance, marketers should be aware of the fact that when two men make decisions together, they are more likely to choose one of the extreme options,” she said. “So if a company wants to push sales toward a particular option, and they expect their target customers to primarily be men making decisions together, then it’s better to make the particular option an extreme option rather than a middle alternative.”

The findings can easily be applied by car sales people, she noted. When offering different cars, sales people need to pay attention to the gender composition of the decision-making pairs.

If a father and a son are purchasing the first car for the son together, it would be better for the sales person to make the particular car which he or she wants to sell (usually the most profitable one) an extreme option in the offered choices — the one with the most fuel efficiency, the best interior design, or the highest horsepower.

In contrast, if a male/female couple or a mother and a daughter are shopping together, it would be best to make that option a middle alternative by adding other alternatives that offer less or more of the particular attribute.

Nikolova added if an organization wants more middle ground decisions made, it’s critical to include a woman in the decision-making pair. In contrast, if a manager wants to “nudge” more all-or-nothing decisions, it is better to entrust them to two men.

As for consumers, it’s important for men to know that what they might buy themselves is different from what they would choose with another man.

“What we’re finding is when men have to choose alone, most select the compromise option,” she said. “But when they have to make the decision with another man, they tend to choose one of the extreme options, which is not something they would prefer if they were alone.

“It’s important for male consumers to be aware of this when making decisions with other people since the drive to prove their masculinity might lead them to make decisions that they might not enjoy later.”

Source: Boston College

7 Phrases That Will Help You Get Over a Breakup

-Jen Kim

How to want to get over a breakup, part II: Say these things out loud. Repeat. Heal.

Part of me can hardly remember the pain and agony that I suffered during my worst breakup. It’s only now that my best friend and I can finally giggle about our outrageous grieving mechanisms and the torture we put ourselves through for boys that didn’t deserve it.

The other part of me remembers every excruciating detail of feeling lonely and crying myself to sleep. And of course that awful fatalistic feeling that it was always going to be like this…forever.

I wrote a guide on “how to want to get over a breakup” about a year ago, and I was overwhelmed by the emails and comments I got from many of my readers who empathized with me. So many of you have personally written to me and shared with me your own stories of heartache and pain. I have been absolutely touched and thankful to you all.

As I read through your letters, I recognize that there is still so much pain and regret that overcomes us during a breakup – and we mistakenly try to rush the healing process. But keep in mind that there is no time limit. And the amount of time it takes to get back to feeling normal varies from person to person – yes, you are a special little butterfly.

And while, I do hope that my breakup survival tips are helping, I also want to share with you a few more insights that may help keep you sane throughout your recovery.

If you are ever going through a breakup, a rough time, or just need a pick me up, these are 7 phrases you must tell yourself on repeat:

1. “I love myself” – Cheeseball. I know. But it works, especially if you believe it. And by now, you probably know, I am pretty much a giant cheeseball. According to Mastin Kipp of The Daily Love, self-love is important, “because ultimately we are the ones responsible for our actions, choices, and the outcome of those actions and choices. We cannot give to someone else what we don’t have, and likewise we cannot get from someone else what he or she doesn’t have.” I couldn’t agree more. If you love yourself, you will be the master of your feelings, not some idiot that broke your heart through a text message.

2. “I want to be happy” – Seriously, do you? This seems like a dumb question – of course, I want to be happy, who doesn’t? The problem is, a lot of the time, I actually don’t. I let small things frustrate me. I have an extremely short temper, and I get mad at the most trivial matters. Why? It’s because I forget (or maybe don’t want) to be happy in that moment. Maybe I want to be angry or upset, so I have to remind myself that I want to be happy, and then I will force a fake smile, until it turns into a real one. It even turns out that a fake smile is better than no smile. Researchers at the University of Kansas recently discovered that holding your mouth in a smiling position could help lower a person’s heart rate after stressful situations.

3. “F*ck him/her” – I’m not a big fan of cussing, especially since I joined the No Cussing Club back in 2008, but bad language can actually be good for you, according to a study published in NeuroReport, which “found that swearing may serve an important function in relieving pain.” Say it, whisper it, scream it – let it all out. Not only do you end up soothing the pain, you are also telling yourself that you are not going to be a victim.

4. “I always hated his dumb hair cut” – Remember that annoying thing about him that always bothered you, but you never admitted it to yourself, because you were madly in love? Well, it’s time to spill all the dirt. Take off your love goggles and tell yourself what you really saw in him. Even if it’s something as tiny as – I hated his toe nails – embrace it. Doing so will help you realize that your ex wasn’t as fabulous or perfect as they seemed and it will help you heal faster. In fact, a study in Cognition and Emotions found that those who “indicated strong negative feelings about their ex in the immediate aftermath of the breakup were less likely to be depressed.”

5. “I am better off without him or her, because…” – Quick! Finish the sentence. For me, it was: I am better off without him because now I can finally eat blueberries! At the time, my ex had a terrible allergy to the fruit (which just happened to be one of my favorites). He wouldn’t kiss me or come near me if I had eaten anything blueberry flavored, so eventually, I stopped eating them too. The first thing I did after our breakup was devour a pint of blueberries. Obviously, my heart still hurt, but I let myself enjoy something that I hadn’t been able to do when we were together. And while that was something little, it kind of felt pretty good. And during a breakup, that’s the one feeling you should be constantly striving for.

6. “It has been x days since we broke up, and I feel…” Here’s another fill in the blank for you. You can say whatever you like – just be truthful. If you’d rather write it down in a journal, that’s okay too. The reason I like this phrase is that it keeps you present in the current moment and lets you feel whatever it is you need to feel. Eventually, one day will turn into 30 days, and you will notice a difference. You may still be sad and heartbroken, but the degree to which you feel it will change and you will be able to recognize your progress. Life Coach Patrick Schriel writes: “I use my feelings, my intuition, as a guiding system. If something doesn’t feel right to me I won’t do it. If the feeling is right, I will.” He says feelings are often truer than thoughts or beliefs and can often lead to “real moments of insight and can be the beginning of change.”

7. “I will find someone better” – These words may be the most difficult to utter, especially if you believed that your ex was “the one” or your soul mate. Trust me, we’ve all been there. And because this phrase is so hard to say, it is, in fact, the most crucial. Let me tell you something that you may not want to hear: You will meet someone better – it is inevitable. You will meet someone else who will treat you well, be kind to you, love you, and most important of all, not break your heart.

How to Want to Get Over a Breakup

-Jen Kim

Cry. Wallow. Repeat. Now, change your life.

Before I even begin to address this topic, I should tell you that there are more than 3.19 million results for this search, according to Google–and a lot of them are written by psychological professionals, not valley girls with alleged brains. I’ve read multiple help guides, but sometimes, it seems like these so-called experts have no idea what mourning a relationship is like. You’re not just dealing with grief about the demise or the romance, but you are also sometimes grappling with pretty awful feelings of self-pity, loathing and helplessness.

I’ve decided to write my own step-by-step healing process, featuring steps that I (or close friends) have personally followed, with successful results. Keep in mind that nothing changes and nothing gets better in life, unless you want it to get better, which means you’re going to have to make some active changes. This guide explains these changes and why you need to make them.

Just a warning: You will cry, a lot. Especially, if you’re the one being dumped. Sorry. That’s life. Now, let’s begin.

1. Cry. Cry until your face turns tomato red and you can’t breathe or you start hyperventilating. Cry until your stomach hurts and you and the supermarket have run out of Kleenex. Get the tears out of your system, as soon as possible. You don’t need those repressed feelings to erupt later on the day of your wedding.

2. Listen to a really good breakup mix. It’s a scientific fact that music has therapeutic effects, including lowering your heart rate, reducing pain and relieving stress. Plus, listening to music is a great way to spend your time not talking. I recommend Chiara Atik’s “Get Over Your Breakup in 47 Minutes With Our Play List” play list on How About We.

3. Feel numb. This isn’t really a suggestion, but something that I should tell you is inevitable. You’ll actually say this to your friends a lot: “I feel numb.” Other variations include, “I feel dead,” “I don’t feel anything anymore,” or “I’m broken.” It’s okay. Feel numb. But realize that deep down, you will feel a swift kick in the ass. I’m just saying.

4. Talk it out. Your friends will try to console you and be there to listen. Do it. In fact, I’d be surprised if you even have any other conversation topics at the moment, right? Complain, cry again, feel sorry for yourself, be angry, be sad, be whoever and whatever you want. According to UCLA researchers, even though we may feel like we don’t discover any new brilliant insights, verbalizing your feelings still does mitigate sadness and anger.

5. Set a time limit to wallow. This doesn’t mean you have 10 minutes to grieve, but you should think about wanting to feel better with your life, which means eventually moving on with it. Some people calculate the appropriate mourning period as ½ the length of the relationship. It depends on you, so make sure you are comfortable with your decision. Do not change the date, no matter what. Even if you’re miserable on that day, you must still commit to making positive changes in your life-think of it as Maury sending you to boot camp.

6. Assess the relationship. If you were victim of a drive-by dumping, as so many of us are, think about the reasons your partner cited for ending the relationship. Do you agree? Are they legitimate? Was he/she blaming you? This is the tough part, where you have to think about–and sadly–acknowledge that your partner wasn’t happy. (Were you?)

7. Try to reconcile (if you want to). This may be a surprising suggestion, since most experts will tell you to cut him or her out (Joey Gladstone style), completely, which means no texts, no wall posts, no tweets, and definitely no late-night stalking. Still, I believe in trying to reconcile–but only once. So make sure you come up with and execute a really good plan. Reconciling means that both of you are going to give the relationship another shot; this does not mean one last sexual tryst or a booty call. In my own experience, 99 percent of the time, reconciling doesn’t work. Instead, it leads to more confusion, anger and hurt, which is why you only get one chance to make a fool out of yourself.

8. Stop staring at the phone. All I do after a breakup is stare at the phone. When I’m not staring at it, I’m throwing it against the wall, because the ex isn’t calling. Sometimes I hear my phone ringing and run in a frenzy to pick up, only to find that it is my mom telling me that I should wear a jacket today, because it’s cold. What I do to remedy my phone addiction is delete the number and shut off or keep the phone on silent. People always say that they need to keep their phones on, in case of an emergency. What about your mental health and sanity–isn’t keeping those in check also an emergency?

9. End the virtual stalking too. Don’t tell me checking your ex’s Facebook profile is totally harmless, because it’s not. It harms you, especially when you notice that your ex has changed his status from “in a relationship” to “single” in the amount of time it took you to log on the site. Don’t delete him as a friend (it’s petty and makes him think that you’re a mess, which even if you are, you don’t want him to know, right?). Instead, just block his profile, so none of his updates show up on your feed. Also, block him on Gchat, iChat, Skype and any other communication network. Talking to someone who doesn’t reciprocate your romantic feelings is agonizing, especially when it seems that the ex has moved on before you. So if you contact him or he contacts you, you are only torturing yourself and basically saying that you don’t want to feel better. One day, you and your ex may able to become friends again, but not now. Sorry.

10. Remember the bad times. Think about that time he took the last bite of pizza, even though you were starving. Or recall those shady text messages you found in his phone. And don’t forget about that time he threw up all over your bed and made you clean the sheets. Now, think about your future–10 or 20 years from now, imagine yourself in those same awful situations. How does it make you feel? Be thankful that you will never have to experience those moments again.

11. Go outside. When I’m depressed, the last thing I want to do is exercise. In fact, I hate moving from my bed at all. Still, studies show, that nothing reduces stress as well as Mother Nature does. Walk your pets, go jogging, dig a hole to China. Whatever you do, make sure you’re getting fresh air and experiencing some sunlight.

12. Go out. Okay. This can be a difficult step, but once you get here, it means that you’re ready to return to your normal self. Channel that person you were before you were in a committed relationship. You were cool, attractive, funny and outgoing. Be that person or fake being that person, it really doesn’t matter. But you do have to eventually make your way back into society. You’re scared. I’ve been there too. But the really nice thing is, that for the most part, society hasn’t changed much. And neither have you.

13. Love yourself. Just because someone has stopped loving you or doesn’t love you enough, it doesn’t mean that you are not deserving of finding love. One of my favorite quotes is by Lucille Ball: “Love yourself first and everything else falls into line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world.” (It’s no wonder why we loved her.) And by loving yourself, I mean being good and kind to your body and your mind. As an acting teacher always used to say, “Don’t beat yourself up.”

14. Take a trip. Whether it’s to the beach, the mountains, on a road trip or a day at Disneyland, get away from your current environment. Go solo, take a friend–it doesn’t matter. You may not feel better right away, but you will have a different frame of mind. Just being outside of your home or apartment may improve your health, according to a UCLA psychology study: “Environmental factors are also reliably related to sustained depression, anxiety, and anger

15. Want something better. This is the cheesiest, but most important and most difficult step of all. Acknowledge that you are a wonderful person and no one has the right to hurt you or make you feel bad. Expect to be treated well, instead of always accommodating others. Trust that your ideal match is someone who will love you and accept you for who you are, no strings attached. Realize that your ex was not that person, but now that he’s out of your life, you are that much closer to finding your true soul mate.

Watching Too Much Television Can Be Deadly

-Rick Nauert, PhD

Being a couch potato and bingeing on TV series can literally be hazardous to your health.

So says the American Heart Association as a new study found that watching a lot of television every day may increase your risk of dying from a blood clot in the lung.

A lung blood clot, known medically as a pulmonary embolism, usually begins as a clot in the leg or pelvis as a result of inactivity and slowed blood flow. If the clot breaks free, it can travel to a lung and become lodged in a small blood vessel, where it is especially dangerous.

In the study, from 1988-1990, Japanese researchers asked 86,024 participants, age 40-79, how many hours they spent watching TV. Over the next 19 years, 59 participants died of a pulmonary embolism.

Researchers found that compared to participants who watched TV less than 2.5 hours each day, deaths from a pulmonary embolism increased by:

70 percent among those who watched TV from 2.5 to 4.9 hours;
40 percent for each additional two hours of daily TV watching; and
2.5 times among those who watched TV five or more hours.

“Pulmonary embolism occurs at a lower rate in Japan than it does in Western countries, but it may be on the rise,” said Hiroyasu Iso, M.D., Ph.D., professor of public health at Osaka University Graduate School of Medicine and study corresponding author.

“The Japanese people are increasingly adopting sedentary lifestyles, which we believe is putting them at increased risk.”

Authors noted that the risk is likely greater than the findings suggest.

Deaths from pulmonary embolism are believed to be underreported because diagnosis is difficult. The most common symptoms of pulmonary embolism — chest pain and shortness of breath — are the same as other life-threatening conditions, and diagnosis requires imaging that many hospitals are not equipped to provide.

Researchers accounted for several factors that might have influenced findings, including obesity, diabetes, cigarette smoking, and hypertension. After the number of hours spent watching TV, obesity appeared to have the next strongest link to pulmonary embolism.

Toru Shirakawa, M.D., study first author and a research fellow in public health at Osaka University Graduate School of Medicine, said the findings may be particularly relevant to Americans. Other studies indicate U.S. adults watch more television than Japanese adults.

“Nowadays, with online video streaming, the term ‘binge-watching’ to describe viewing multiple episodes of television programs in one sitting has become popular,” Shirakawa said. “This popularity may reflect a rapidly growing habit.”

Authors said people who watch a lot of TV can take several easy steps to reduce their risk of developing blood clots in their legs that may then move to their lungs.

“After an hour or so, stand up, stretch, walk around, or while you’re watching TV, tense and relax your leg muscles for five minutes,” said Iso, noting this advice is similar to that given to travelers on long plane flights. He added that drinking water may also help and, in the long run, shedding pounds if overweight is likely to reduce risk.

The study, published in the journal Circulation, recorded participants’ viewing habits before computers, tablets and smartphones became popular sources of information and entertainment.

Sadly, the new technologies have probably increased the risk of pulmonary embolism although additional studies are needed.

Source: American Heart Association

26 Questions To Help You Know Yourself Better

-Sharon Martin, LCSW

Do you have a clear sense of who you are?

Developmentally, we wrestle with “finding ourselves” as teens and young adults. Then we often revisit these questions in middle age. It’s both normal and essential to seek self-understanding. In order to accept ourselves and establish a sense of belonging, we need to understand who we are. A strong sense of self helps us navigate life and brings meaning to our experiences. Without it, we feel “lost.”

Why do we experience a loss of identity?

We put everyone else’s needs before our own. When we focus on others and neglect ourselves, we fail to recognize and value ourselves and our needs. We minimize who we are and what we need.
We’re disconnected from our thoughts and feelings. We commonly keep ourselves so distracted and numb with alcohol, food, and electronics that we miss important information about who we are. How often do you reach for your phone or a snack whenever you get even slightly uncomfortable? These things keep us from knowing ourselves because we don’t allow ourselves to be curious and ask ourselves how we’re really feeling.
We experience life transitions and changes in our roles. Experience like a divorce, retirement, job loss, death of a loved one, or other traumatic events can also result in losing our sense of self, especially the parts associated with our roles.
We feel ashamed and unworthy, and consequently bury parts of ourselves. We were told that we’re bad, strange, ugly, stupid, or unworthy. We were criticized or teased. Maybe you loved to play chess as a kid, but were told that it’s not cool to join the chess club. So you quit. Or perhaps you were shamed for your sexual orientation and tried to deny it. We’re told we have to fit a certain mold if we’re to fit in. So, we squish our square peg selves into round holes and try to be something we’re not. After years of doing this, we lose track of who we really are.

I’ve created some questions and journaling prompts that will help you rediscover yourself.

Questions to help you know yourself better:

What are my strengths?
What are my short-term goals? Long-term goals?
Who matters most to me? Who are my support people?
What am I ashamed of?
What do I like to do for fun?
What new activities am I interested in or willing to try?
What am I worried about?
What are my values? What do I believe in? (consider politics, religion, social issues)
If I could have one wish, it would be ___________
Where do I feel safest?
What or who gives me comfort?
If I wasn’t afraid, I would ___________
What is my proudest accomplishment?
What is my biggest failure?
Am I a night owl or an early bird? How can I arrange my life to better suit this part of my nature?
What do I like about my job? What do I dislike?
What does my inner critic tell me?
What do I do to show myself self-compassion and self-care?
Am I an introvert or an extrovert? Am I energized being around others or being by myself?
What am I passionate about?
What is my happiest memory?
What do my dreams tell me?
What is my favorite book? Movie? Band? Food? Color? Animal?
What am I grateful for?
When I’m feeling down I like to ___________________
I know I’m stressed when I ______________________

I’ve given you a lot of questions. I suggest answering only one or two per day so you can explore them in depth. Work at your own pace. Perhaps one per week is more realistic for you. There is no judgment and this isn’t a race. Rediscovering yourself is a process. It will take thinking, talking, writing, and doing.

How to Start Loving Yourself (Even When You Think There’s Nothing to Love)

-Sharon Martin, LCSW

We talk to ourselves all day long. We comment, critique, and chastise our every move. From the big to the small – every decision and action gets scrutinized by our inner critic. For most of us, it’s harsh. Much harsher than what we say to anyone else.

Where does this negative self talk come from? Sometimes people tell me it’s very clearly their mother’s or father’s voice internalized. Other times it’s less clear. It might be a compilation of negative messages that you’ve heard — a dance teacher who called you fat, a boss who made fun of you when he thought you were out of earshot, a teacher who returned every essay completely covered in red corrections, your father who never gave a damn about you, or your grandma who blamed you for her anxiety.

We hear these messages as: There’s something wrong with me. People don’t like me. I don’t fit in. I suck. I’m stupid. I’m fat. I’m simply not good enough. Everyone else is succeeding and happy and I’m not. Obviously, I’m the problem. I’m the one that can’t keep up or live up to expectations.

There are plenty of ways to show yourself some love. In fact, I wrote a popular list of 22 ways to love yourself more. Often, the challenge is getting started. When you don’t feel lovable or good enough, how are you going to write yourself a love letter or forgive your mistakes? Before you can do any of those things, you have to find just one tiny little piece of you that’s worthwhile.

This means you have to muck through all the garbage people (including yourself) have been telling you, sort through it, come to your own conclusions about who you are, and throw out the false beliefs, inaccurate conclusions, and other toxic waste.

Start by noticing when this beast, that we like to call the inner critic, is rising up. Tell it to shut up. Go ahead and say it out loud, say it to yourself, tell a friend, write it down. This belittling beastly voice isn’t your pet cat. Stop letting it out and feeding it. It will eventually grow weak, shrink, and die. Don’t lose hope. It takes time to starve a giant beast.

You need to be firm and direct. You need to vigilantly watch for attempted escapes. This alone takes practice. Notice when the belittling beastly voice is out. Tell it you’re done with its lying, conniving ways. Lock it back up. Repeat. And repeat again and again.

At the same time that you’re starving out the belittling beastly voice, I want you to do four things for yourself every day.

Ask yourself: “What do I really think?”

It’s time to start thinking for yourself instead of believing what others have told you. Absorbing and believing negative messages about yourself started when you were young, which is why you don’t question them or realize many are simply false. These beliefs also have a tendency to become self-fulfilling. When you’re told you’re stupid, you unconsciously act in ways to make this your reality. It doesn’t have to be this way. Positive beliefs about yourself can be self-fulfilling in exactly the same way.

It helps to slow down, so you can turn inward and explore what you’re really thinking and feeling. If you’re not used to doing this, it can feel quite strange. You may find “negative” feelings that are hard to deal with or you may initially find no feelings at all. Keep looking. A good therapist can help you differentiate your feelings/thoughts from those of your parents (or others).

The point is that you get to decide how you feel about yourself. You no longer have to take the labels that have been thrown at you. Be selective. Really challenge those old stories that continue to tell you that you’re stupid, weak, troubled, or the cause of other people’s problems.

Write down one thing that you did right today, that you’re proud of, that you like about yourself. One thing every single day. If this is hard, start small – I took a shower so I didn’t offend my coworkers with my b.o., or I put in a solid 20 minutes of work before I started surfing the web. Just start somewhere. If you’re stuck, think of something nice that a friend has said. If you do this consistently every day, you’ll start to notice things that really matter. Focus on the things that you like about yourself. Work on improving the parts of yourself that you don’t like.

Keep negative people at a distance. This is challenging for sure. But it’s actually easier than tackling your own negative self-talk. If others refuse to treat you with respect, you can choose to separate yourself. But you have to learn to respect and love yourself. Of course, the challenge is that it’s hard to leave unhealthy relationships when your self-esteem is in the toilet and you think you just may deserve this lousy treatment from others. This is why you have to work on both the inner and outer critics at the same time.

Forgive yourself. Yes, do it every day for the big things and the little things. Make it a practice because self-forgiveness is the opposite of self-criticism. It can be as simple as saying, “I forgive myself for ___________. I’m doing the best I can. I don’t have to be perfect to be lovable.” You can be happily imperfect.

There isn’t a quick fix for building self-esteem, self-worth, or self-love. It’s a daily practice. The more you work at, the better you’ll feel about yourself.

Dopamine Returns to Normal 3 Months After Quitting Smoking

-Traci Pedersen

Three months after quitting smoking, levels of dopamine in the brain return to normal, according to a new study published in the journal Biological Psychiatry. The findings suggest that dopamine deficits found in smokers are due to the smoking itself and are not necessarily a pre-existing risk factor.

A major challenge in understanding substance-related disorders lies in discovering the reasons why only some individuals become addicted, according to first author Dr. Lena Rademacher, postdoctoral fellow at the University of Lübeck in Germany.

Researchers believe that some individuals possess certain traits making them more vulnerable to addiction. They also suspect that brain circuits involving dopamine may be involved. Drugs of abuse release dopamine, and addiction to nicotine is connected to abnormalities in the dopamine system.

But it is still unknown whether smoking induces those abnormalities or if they already exist and contribute to risk of nicotine addiction.

For the study, senior author Dr. Ingo Vernaleken, Professor at RWTH Aachen University in Germany, led a team of researchers to examine dopamine function in chronic smokers before and after long-term cessation.

Using a brain imaging technique called positron emission tomography, the researchers measured the capacity for dopamine production in 30 men who were nicotine-dependent smokers as well as in 15 nonsmokers. After performing an initial scan on all participants, 15 smokers who successfully quit were scanned again after three months of abstinence from smoking and nicotine replacement.

The first scan showed a 15-20 percent reduction in the capacity for dopamine production in smokers compared with nonsmokers. The researchers expected this deficit to remain even after quitting, which would suggest it could be a marker of vulnerability for nicotine addiction. But they discovered that dopamine functioning returned to normal as time went on.

“Surprisingly, the alterations in dopamine synthesis capacity normalized through abstinence,” said Rademacher.

While the role of dopamine in vulnerability toward nicotine addiction cannot be excluded, the findings suggest that altered dopamine function of smokers is a consequence of nicotine consumption rather than the cause.

The findings raise the possibility that treatments might be developed that could help normalize the dopamine system in smokers.

“This study suggests that the first three months after one stops smoking may be a particularly vulnerable time for relapse, in part, because of persisting dopamine deficits. This observation raises the possibility that one might target these deficits with new treatments,” said Dr. John Krystal, editor of Biological Psychiatry.

Source: Elsevier