By Margie Nichols, Ph.D. In Part 1 (posted 4/27), I described myths about meditation – that you have to do it for a pretty long time, that you should have a blank mind, and so on. Here’s why meditating – any form you want – helps you, and a little about which type helps with what issue: • Relaxation: Meditation is deeply relaxing, with a type of relaxation that often renews you afterwards. It slows down the chattering mind a bit as well as the body. It’s useful just for this. If your main purpose is relaxation, I recommend guided visualization audios, or even just lying down and focusing your attention on meditation music. It has also been shown that after even brief periods of meditation, the “relaxation response” tends to last for hours, fading gradually. This “inoculates” you against stress and emotional over-reaction. • Improving Concentration: most of the meditation being taught today is a variation of ‘one-pointed focus,’ it involves focusing your attention on a sensation – the sensation of the breath entering and leaving the body is classic, but it could be a visual point, a sound, tactile sensations, a mantra, a candle flame, or counting. You… Read more »

By Margie Nichols, Ph.D. There is a Buddhist story about a man steering a boat on a river in the early dawn when the river is shrouded in mist. Another boat collides with him, and the driver of the first boat rails at the second boat and its driver, who is obscured by the fog. In a few moments, the mist dissipates….and the second boat is seen to be empty, adrift in the river alone. This story is used as a metaphor for human relationships. We rail at ghosts in the mists, ghosts of our own making. Every day I see the evidence in my office: a man describes his road rage, and slowly what emerges is that the rudeness of the other driver triggered the same fear and anger he experienced as a child being berated by a contemptuous father. A woman cowers when her husband scowls, because his facial expression mimics the look that was on her mother’s face just before mom used to terrorize her as a child. I’m not really analytic in my therapy approach- but I am a fan of neuroscience, which increasingly gives us explanations for our behavior based in biology, not theory. The… Read more »

By Margie Nichols, Ph.D.  There’s a word for constant, unmitigated happiness about your life: denial. Barbara Ehrenreich skewers the positive psychology field in her new book “Bright Sided.“ It’s about time. First of all, it’s become a veritable industry, with top motivational speakers making tens of thousands of dollars and books on ‘happiness research’ flying off the shelves. The message of this research, some of which is quite solid and interesting, has become diluted down to: smile, be happy, and you’ll be healthier and have your dream life. But the research itself is more nuanced and ambiguous- for example, some ‘negative’ people are actually healthier than optimists. Let’s face it, at times pessimism is a more appropriate view of life. The skill is to learn to cope with life’s curve balls without melting down, not to look the other way in ignorance. More support for the nuanced view of ‘positive thinking’ comes from research reported in this month’s issue of Psychology Today (sorry folks, the actual paper magazine, not online yet). This study correlated scores on a test measuring trust in people with household income. Turns out there’s an optimal level of trust: too little and you miss opportunities because… Read more »

By Margie Nichols, PH.D. Our colleague James Cantor, Ph.D., published a CNN article showing physiological evidence that gay men are not pedophiles. He pointed to differences in brain structure, and differences in “phallometric” response (that’s right, a ‘peter meter’). Gay men’s brains look like those of straight men; both differ from the pedophiles brain in some distinct ways. And straight and gay men alike have very little phallometric response to images of children, in contrast with child molesters. Cantor wrote this article at the request of CNN and of course because the Catholic Church is trying to blame gays for the horrible child abuse perpetrated by its priests. But what saddens me about this is that we still have to refute such claims. Images of sleazy men in raincoats lurking around school yards were what came to mind when you thought about homosexuality – in the 50’s. Sixty years later, we have science to argue against this belief, not just Cantor’s research but a ton of research documenting very clearly that are pedophiles aren’t gay and vice versa. I’m glad we have a mountain of research. I’m sorry we still need it.