Leslie Glass's Blog, page 248

Tips and Tricks On Making Fitness Fun!

Fitness can be a real drag to try and keep up. There’s a lot of exercise and discipline that goes into looking incredible all the time, and it’s easy to fall by the wayside. However, there’s a lot you can do to make fitness fun and easy, and these can include such things as:

Do Things With a Friend

Fitness is no fun when you’re all by yourself and feeling like you’re struggling. So it’s best to recruit a friend to help you out! When in doubt, ask someone you’re close to if they will join your fitness sessions from time to time. Maybe they will come with you and help you to remember what it means to enjoy exercising. Plus, it makes the whole thing a lot more fun when there’s someone to make jokes with and enjoy yourself with.

Make a Plan

When you exercise all the time, and you don’t see the results you want, or you feel like you’re not making any progress, you may need to get a new plan. If you know what you want to achieve with your physical fitness, then it’s much easier to plan an exercise regime which accommodates that. You can also pair it with dietary changes and lifestyle changes. If you find it’s too difficult to plan this out for yourself, you could always do something like hire out a personal trainer in Islington.

Remember to Reward Yourself

Something that you always need to make sure you do when it comes to physical fitness is to reward yourself when you do well. A lot of people know that physical fitness is a lifestyle change and something that people commit to for an extended period to see continuous results. However, if you don’t reward yourself for the milestones you have reached and the things you’ve managed to get done, you may struggle to maintain motivation. Maybe you take a day off exercise every once in a while, or treat yourself to a nice meal or spend some time with friends. Life is still to be enjoyed, you know.

Mix it Up

When you do the same mile run every day and the same gym routine every week, you can start to get very bored very quickly. Part of what makes exercise such an entertaining and appealing thing to do is that you can look into all kinds of different activities to keep yourself fit. Whether it’s a sport, martial arts, or a different type of gym routine, there are many things that you can do to mix it up a bit and stop your routine from getting monotonous. That’s when you start to quit because you don’t see the point, so you have to keep things interesting.

Join a Class

A fitness class is a perfect way to maintain a personal level of physical prowess, while at the same time enjoying what you do. Spending time with like-minded people can help you to find friends, new opportunities, at the same time, give you something different to do while maintaining physical fitness.

So as you can tell, there are a lot of things which you can do to keep fitness a unique and exciting activity. No one wants to go outside and run around, mainly, but a lot of people do it because they want to be fit and healthy, which is entirely understandable. However, apathy and boredom can be very powerful deterrents to exercise, which is why people need to make sure that they are looking at new and exciting ways to enjoy themselves. If you experiment with different forms of exercise and introducing friends into the equation, you may find that you enjoy physical fitness is a lot more.

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Take a Look at These Mental Health Tips If You Are Struggling with Depression

There’s no magic formula to get through the days and weeks when you’re battling a mental illness like depression.

Some days you’re the one ready and willing to give tips and other days, you’re in desperate need of some new coping mechanisms.

But whatever sort of day you’re having, #HowIFightDepression is here with some real, tested ways to help, so check it out.

12. Quiet resolve.

#HowIFightDepression I don’t fight it. I accept it. I have even learned to appreciate it. I don’t think I’d be where I am today had I never had depression. I study my depression. I know when it’s coming and what to do when it arrives. We’re strong even at our weakest. Bring it.

— Dan Bell (@thisisdanbell) June 19, 2019

11. Give yourself a break.

It’s okay if you don’t feel like getting out of bed. It’s okay if you can’t take a shower. It’s okay if you lied & cancelled all plans. Depression is mentally exhausting. It’s okay if all you did today was breathe. Mental illness is as real as physical one.#HowIFightDepression

— Komal Shahid (@ArmedWithWords) June 19, 2019

10. Remember that it lies.

#HowIFightDepression – no matter how you do it, fight it. Remember that Depression is a liar – it takes real concerns & blows them out of proportion, obscures ability to see or believe in solutions, tells you ur stupid for even trying. Depression is a liar. Tell it to Fuck off.

— Ed the Sock (@EdtheSock) June 19, 2019

9. Don’t wait until you feel like it.

#HowIFightDepression When you’re depressed, you feel so ugly inside,you don’t want to get out of bed, you don’t want to work out, you don’t wanna do anything. Guess what-DO IT ANYWAY

— Maurice Benard (@MauriceBenard) June 19, 2019

8. Don’t judge yourself by others standards.

#HowIFightDepression By reminding myself that little things ARE accomplishments to be proud of. It is a big deal for me to get some cleaning done, or answer emails, or SING. Just because those things are easy for others, doesn’t mean they aren’t things for me to celebrate

— Suzannah (@SuzannahCo) June 19, 2019

7. One small task. You’re not alone.

Medication. Therapy. Exercise. Give myself one small task, and complete it; repeat the next day. Remind myself tons of others are fighting it too. #HowIFightDepression

— Jeremy (@cinemasins) June 19, 2019

6. Asking for help is brave.

I felt like a loser at the time going to see a doctor. It saved my life.

Honestly, depression steals joy and makes you believe you are worthless.

You aren’t. I assure you. I’m glad I got adjusted.

I’m glad I found the courage for help. #HowIFightDepression

— Tony Posnanski (@tonyposnanski) June 19, 2019

5. It’s not a win/lose scenario.

#HowIFightDepression? I don’t. You can’t fight it, that implies you can just win and it’s over. Depression isn’t a combat scenario. It’s about developing tools to cope with it, live alongside it and not let it bring you down.

— adam koebel (@skinnyghost) June 19, 2019

4. Don’t stop.

Everytime I break down, I’d wipe my tears. Everytime I feel weak, I’d give myself strength. Everytime I get anxious, I’d fight to be in control. Everytime I give up, I’d remind myself why I shouldn’t stop. Everytime I feel lonely, I’d keep myself company. #HowIFightDepression

— Anna Khayalan (@thekhayalan15) June 19, 2019

3. Some days, kids help. Others…

I took a walk around town with my 7 month old daughter. No stroller, I just carried her around cuz she likes to reach for the leaves on trees and bushes.

She started to fight off sleep, then her head dropped to my neck & she was out. I’d never felt happier.#HowIFightDepression

— Chner (@Tadasco42) June 19, 2019

2. You’re worth it.

Everytime I break down, I’d wipe my tears. Everytime I feel weak, I’d give myself strength. Everytime I get anxious, I’d fight to be in control. Everytime I give up, I’d remind myself why I shouldn’t stop. Everytime I feel lonely, I’d keep myself company. #HowIFightDepression

— Anna Khayalan (@thekhayalan15) June 19, 2019

1. Any or all.

Get off social media.

Have lunch with another friend who gets it.

Exercise.

Get a good night sleep.

Listen to Funky Kingston by Toots and the Maytals.

Medicine and talk therapy. #HowIFightDepression

— John Ross Bowie (@JohnRossBowie) June 19, 2019

If you need to hear it today, you matter to people, so keep going.

Tomorrow might be better.

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Physical fitness may help prevent depression, anxiety

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Can physical fitness protect against mental health conditions?

Common mental health problems, such as depression and anxiety, are a growing global issue.

They reduce overall wellbeing and life satisfaction, but they may also increase the risk of cardiovascular disease and increase mortality risk.

Although talking therapies and medication can help in many instances, they do not help everyone.

An issue as substantial as mental health needs an effective public health strategy; stopping mental health issues before they begin would, of course, be ideal.

Researchers are focused on unraveling the myriad of factors that increase the risk of developing mental health conditions. Although it is not possible to alter some of these factors, such as genetics, it is possible to modify some lifestyle factors, including diet and physical activity.

Scientists are keen to identify which modifiable factors might have the most significant impact on mental health. Some researchers are looking to physical fitness.

Fitness and mental health

The authors of a recent study investigated whether cardiorespiratory fitness might be an effective intervention. Cardiorespiratory fitness is a measure of the cardiovascular and respiratory systems’ capacity to supply oxygen to the body during exercise.

They recently published the results of their analysis in the Journal of Affective Disorders.

The authors explain how previous studies “have found that low physical activity is associated with a greater incidence of common mental health disorders.” However, few studies have investigated whether cardiorespiratory fitness is directly related to mental health risk.

Medical News Today spoke with the lead author of the study Aaron Kandola, from University College London in the United Kingdom. We asked him why so few studies have looked at this question.

One reason, he said, is that cardiorespiratory fitness “can be expensive and impractical to measure, particularly in large groups of people.” He explains how it needs to be “measured with structured exercise tests that require the use of specialized equipment in a controlled environment.”

A small pool of studies

To investigate, the researchers hunted down studies that looked at how fitness interacts with mental health risk.

They only included papers that used a prospective study design. This means that at the beginning of the studies, none of the participants had mental health conditions, and researchers observed them for a time to see if any mental health issues arose.

All experiments assessed cardiorespiratory fitness and either depression or anxiety.

In total, the researchers only identified seven studies to include in their qualitative synthesis and four that they could enter into their meta-analysis.

Their analysis of the latter four studies — which included 27,733,154 person-years of data — produced significant results. The authors write:

“We found that low [cardiorespiratory fitness] and medium [cardiorespiratory fitness] are associated with a 47% and 23% greater risk of […] common mental health disorders, compared with high [cardiorespiratory fitness].”

They also found evidence of a dose-dependent relationship between fitness and common mental health conditions. The authors explain that “[i]ncremental increases in [the cardiorespiratory fitness] group were associated with proportional decreases in associated risk of new onset common mental health disorders.”

The results were in line with the researchers’ expectations. As Kandola told MNT, “exercise is the biggest determinant of cardiorespiratory fitness,” and scientists have already uncovered “the benefits of exercise for common mental health disorders.”

However, he explained that they “were surprised at the lack of research in this area.” He hopes that their study will “help to draw more attention to it.”

Kandola plans to continue exploring this avenue. He told MNT that the team is “currently working on several other studies to further investigate the impact of exercise and fitness on mental health across the lifespan, and to identify possible mechanisms that underlie this relationship.”

This content was originally published here.

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$47 million grant to explore how a healthy lifestyle changes the aging brain | Berkeley News

The new funding will add positron emission tomography (PET) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to the upcoming U.S. POINTER study, which will explore how lifestyle changes affect memory and thinking in older adults. (UC Berkeley photo by Malachi Tran)

UC Berkeley was awarded a five-year grant expected to total $47 million from the U.S. National Institute on Aging (NIA) to incorporate advanced brain imaging into an Alzheimer’s Association-led study to explore whether lifestyle changes can protect memory in those at risk of developing dementia.

The expanded study will be the first large-scale investigation of how lifestyle interventions, which include exercise, diet, cognitive stimulation and health coaching, affect well-known biological markers of Alzheimer’s and dementia in the brain.

“A healthy diet and lifestyle are generally recognized as good for health, but this study is the first large randomized controlled trial to look at whether lifestyle changes actually influence Alzheimer’s disease-related brain changes,” said Susan Landau, a research neuroscientist at Berkeley’s Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, and principal investigator of the add-on study.

The U.S. study to Protect brain health through lifestyle Intervention to Reduce risk (U.S. POINTER) is a two-year, $35 million Alzheimer’s Association-sponsored multisite clinical trial designed to test whether healthy diet, physical activity, and social and intellectual challenge can protect thinking and memory in older adults.

The new award of $47 million from the NIA, part of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, (NIH grant number R01AG062689) will support the U.S. POINTER Neuroimaging Ancillary Study, which will use advanced brain imaging techniques to assess how these lifestyle modifications can affect brain health.

As part of the ancillary study, researchers will use magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to monitor participants’ overall and regional brain shape, size and blood flow, and indicators of vascular disease that impacts the brain. It will also use positron emission tomography (PET) to track the presence of beta-amyloid and tau proteins in the brain.

Build up of beta-amyloid and tau proteins occur in Alzheimer’s dementia and are linked to memory decline that occurs as the disease progresses. These biological markers are also now considered essential in large-scale, late-stage therapy trials in Alzheimer’s.

“The U.S. POINTER study gives us an opportunity to ask whether diet and exercise can actually change the brain, and ultimately the risk of Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias,” Landau said. “We also plan to study whether these markers, when measured at the beginning of the study, can predict who will respond best to the intervention, which could inform future precision-medicine approaches to healthcare.”

Susan Landau, a research neuroscientist at UC Berkeley’s Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, is principal investigator of the add-on study. (UC Berkeley photo by Malachi Tran)

According to the Alzheimer’s Association 2019 Alzheimer’s Disease Facts and Figures report, an estimated 5.8 million Americans of all ages are living with Alzheimer’s dementia, and Alzheimer’s is the sixth-leading cause of death in the U.S. Barring the development of medical breakthroughs, the number may nearly triple to 13.8 million by 2050.

Previous results suggest that lifestyle changes may benefit the brain health of older adults more than pharmacological treatments. For example, the Finnish Geriatric Intervention Study to Prevent Cognitive Impairment and Disability (FINGER) showed that in at-risk adults, lifestyle intervention improved cognitive function by 25 percent relative to adults who only received health education.

U.S. POINTER is unique in its recruitment approach, which specifically aims to include a geographically and racially diverse population. This can help ensure the intervention will be applicable to a large proportion of older individuals. Four sites (Winston-Salem, NC; Houston, TX; Davis, CA, and Chicago, IL) have been chosen for U.S. POINTER, with one more site planning to come online later this year.

The study hopes to recruit around 2,000 participants, just over one-half of which will be assessed with PET imaging at the start of the study and at two years to measure the build up of amyloid and tau. They will also be assessed with MRI at baseline, one year, and two years to measure the size of brain regions, identify lesions related to strokes or other vascular changes, and observe changes in brain blood flow.

“This groundbreaking project is an unparalleled examination of how lifestyle ‘therapies’ may change our brain in ways that are related to Alzheimer’s disease, vascular dementia and overall brain health,” said Maria C. Carrillo, Ph.D., Chief Science Officer of the Alzheimer’s Association.

“U.S. POINTER is designed to determine what lifestyle interventions have a tangible impact on our brains. The addition of brain imaging is an important component that could provide the roadmap for brain health to reduce the risk of dementia before symptoms have a chance to appear,” Carrillo said.

This content was originally published here.

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Yoga improves brain health and function

Low impact exercises such as yoga have a number of benefits. Not only can it provide the physical benefits of exercise, yoga may also help lower stress, stave off cognitive decline by strengthening brain regions involved in working memory, improve overall brain function and neuroplasticity, reduce body image dissatisfaction and anxiety, and much more.

Mindful breathing exercises have many similar effects as well. Yoga can be viewed as a form of moving meditation that demands your full attention as you gently shift your body from one asana (yoga position) to another. As you learn new ways of moving, breathing and responding to your body’s cues, your mind and emotions start to shift as well.

Yoga may improve many psychiatric disorders

Indeed, yoga has been shown to help with a variety of common psychiatric disorders., A meta-analysis published in 2013, which reviewed more than 100 studies assessing the effect of yoga on mental health, found it had a positive effect on mild depression, sleep problems, (among patients using medication) and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (among patients using medication).

Some of the studies cited in this review suggest yoga can have an effect similar to that of antidepressants and psychotherapy, influencing neurotransmitters and boosting serotonin. Research has also found that yoga reduces anxiety and aggression among prison inmates.

After doing yoga once a week for 10 weeks, incarcerated participants reported feeling less stressed, and also scored better on tests of executive control, indicating a higher degree of thoughtfulness and attention to their surroundings.

Importantly, the practice also decreased impulsivity, which is known to contribute to prison violence. According to study author Miguel Farias, an Oxford psychologist, “With less anxiety and aggression, prisoners should be better able to reintegrate into society when they are released.”

The neuroprotective effects of yoga

Studies have repeatedly demonstrated that physical activity helps keep your mind sharp with age, and this goes for activities such as yoga as well. Overall, inactivity is enemy No. 1 if you seek to optimize your cognitive function. As reported in a 2015 study in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience:

“[T]he effects of long-term regular yoga practice on the central nervous system had not been explored until recently when it was shown that experienced yoga practitioners have greater GM [gray matter] volume than matched controls in several brain regions, …

Nevertheless, the cross-sectional nature of these studies does not permit attributing these group differences to yoga practice with certainty, since people with a given brain structure might, for some reason, be drawn to practice yoga.

In the current report, we revisit our data set to address whether the number of years of yoga experience, the amount of weekly yoga practice, and the different aspects of yoga practice impact specific brain regions …

We used magnetic resonance imaging to compare age-related gray matter (GM) decline in yogis and controls. We also examined the effect of increasing yoga experience and weekly practice on GM volume and assessed which aspects of weekly practice contributed most to brain size.

Controls displayed the well documented age-related global brain GM decline while yogis did not, suggesting that yoga contributes to protect the brain against age-related decline.

Years of yoga experience correlated mostly with GM volume differences in the left hemisphere (insula, frontal operculum, and orbitofrontal cortex) suggesting that yoga tunes the brain toward a parasympatically driven mode and positive states … Yoga’s potential neuroprotective effects may provide a neural basis for some of its beneficial effects.”

A more recent study, published in 2018, also found differences in the brain structure and function of yoga practitioners compared to controls. Here, magnetic resonance imaging was used “to assess gray matter volume and brain activation” during a working memory task. According to the authors:

“Gray matter volume differences were observed in the left hippocampus, showing greater volume in experienced yoga practitioners compared to controls … The functional MRI results revealed less activation in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in yoga practitioners compared to controls during the encoding phase of the Sternberg task … 

Our results suggest an association between regular long-term yoga practice and differential structure and function of specific brain regions involved in executive function, specifically working memory, which has previously shown to improve with yoga practice.”

Yoga improves neural connectivity

Another study,, published in 2016, explored the impact of yoga on cognitive decline and neural connectivity in older adults, compared to standard memory enhancement training (MET). Twenty-five participants over the age of 55 completed the study, 14 of which took part in a yoga intervention while 11 participated in standard MET for 12 weeks.

All had been diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment, a precursor to dementia. The MET group performed supervised mental exercises one hour a week, plus 15 minutes per day at home.

The yoga group participated in a Kundalini yoga class — chosen for its potential to improve memory, as it involves chanting and visualization — for one hour per week, and were taught Kirtan Kriya meditation, which involves the use of mantras and fluid hand movements, which they were asked to practice at home for 15 minutes a day.

Both groups also underwent cognitive testing and functional magnetic resonance imaging to track the communication or neural connectivity between different brain regions over time. While all participants improved to some degree, the yoga group saw larger improvements. As reported by the authors:

“The yoga group demonstrated a statistically significant improvement in depression and visuospatial memory. We observed improved verbal memory performance correlated with increased connectivity between the DMN [default mode networks] and frontal medial cortex, pregenual anterior cingulate cortex, right middle frontal cortex, posterior cingulate cortex, and left lateral occipital cortex.

Improved verbal memory performance positively correlated with increased connectivity between the language processing network and the left inferior frontal gyrus.

Improved visuospatial memory performance correlated inversely with connectivity between the superior parietal network and the medial parietal cortex … Yoga may be as effective as MET in improving functional connectivity in relation to verbal memory performance.”

Yoga ‘clears your head’

Other research, found yoga practice combined with other exercise, in this case running, resulted in a greater mood lift than either activity by itself. As reported in this paper:

“ Mental and physical (MAP) training is a novel clinical intervention that combines mental training through meditation and physical training through aerobic exercise. The intervention was translated from neuroscientific studies indicating that MAP training increases neurogenesis in the adult brain.”

Fifty-two participants first completed 30 minutes of focused-attention meditation, followed by 30 minutes of moderate-intensity jogging, twice a week for eight weeks. At the end of the study, those diagnosed with major depressive disorder (22 individuals) “reported significantly less depressive symptoms and ruminative thoughts.”

The remaining participants (30), which did not have a diagnosis of depression and were otherwise healthy, “also reported less depressive symptoms at follow-up.” According to the authors:

“Although previous research has supported the individual beneficial effects of aerobic exercise and meditation for depression, these findings indicate that a combination of the two may be particularly effective in increasing cognitive control processes and decreasing ruminative thought patterns.”

Neurophysiological effects of controlled breathing

Like yoga, meditation and controlled breathing are techniques known to improve focus. In a 2018 study,, investigating the neurophysiological effects of controlled breathing, the researchers identified the locus coeruleus — which is involved in both mental attention and involuntary respiration — as a key facilitator of this effect.

“One might suppose that the object of focus in meditation should be irrelevant, that it is the act of focusing attention and not the object of focus — in this case, the breath — that is important,” the authors write.

“But the Buddha states clearly, in the Ananda Sutra: ‘from the development, from the repeated practice, of respiration-mindfulness concentration, there comes to be neither wavering nor trembling of body, nor wavering nor trembling of mind.’

According to Svatmarama, in the Hatha Yoga Pradapika … ‘… when the breath wanders the mind is unsteady. But when the breath is calmed, the mind too will be still’ …

Patanjali, in the Yoga Sutras … instructs that ‘through these practices and processes of pranayama, which is the fourth of the eight steps, the mind acquires or develops the fitness, qualification, or capability for true concentration’ …

The focus upon the breath is of clear importance in traditional practice, but how might respiration and attention influence each other from a neurophysiological perspective? …

One interesting possibility is that the respiratory and attentional systems are coupled at the neural level, such that information transfer between the two systems occurs bidirectionally at an anatomical point where the respiratory and attentional systems overlap.

In this review, we describe respiration and attention as a coupled dynamical system. Specifically, we hypothesize that they can be described as autonomous oscillatory systems exhibiting coupling via information transfer through a third autonomous oscillator, the locus coeruleus (LC).”

Your breath and mind are linked

In other words, breath and focus are linked via synchronization — the coupling of two biological systems. The LC is a primary source of noradrenaline, a neurotransmitter that plays an important role in the regulation of brain function, including sleep-waking states. The authors also cite other research showing noradrenaline is a likely candidate to explain many of the effects of meditation. In the discussion section of this paper, the authors note:

“Given our knowledge of the involvement of the LC in attention, cognition, and arousal, its susceptibility to top-down control, its concurrent chemosensitive respiratory function, and the possible respiratory-induced vagal influence on LC firing, we hypothesize that the LC is a critical node in facilitating coupling between respiration and attentional state.

It is important to stress that this coupling is bidirectional … By introducing bottom-up respiratory influences on the LC into this picture, we can then imagine the LC as a nexus of information transfer between these two systems, and visualize the system as bidirectionally coupled.”

In plainer English, what they’re talking about here is the fact that more often than not, scattered focus and lack of attention tends to drive your respiration — i.e., “susceptibility to top-down control” — making your breath shallow and erratic, which creates a cycle of heightened anxiety, poorer focus and more dysregulated breathing.

The good news is you can control this by taking control of your breathing, as the two — your mental focus and respiration — are bidirectionally linked. By taking control of one you can control the other. It’s just that your mind tends to be less easily managed.

Proverbially sandwiched between these two functions (attention and breath), is the LC, which acts as a relay, transferring information back and forth between the two, so that as your breathing calms, your mind calms and vice versa.

Yoga eases trauma and reduces body-image dissatisfaction

Aside from generalized anxiety, yoga can also be a valuable aid in healing childhood trauma, known to be a source of not only poor mental health but also a contributor to chronic health problems.

The report,, in question, published by the Georgetown Center on Poverty and Inequality in 2017, reviewed over 40 studies assessing the mental health benefits of yoga, with a focus on female juvenile delinquents, whose trauma is disproportionally based on violence within relationships and sexual assault.

Not surprisingly, these girls are at increased risk of psychological problems; 80% have received at least one psychiatric diagnosis compared to 67% of male juvenile delinquents. As reported by NPR:

“The … report argues that, since the effects of trauma can be physical, ‘body-mind’ interventions, like yoga, may be able to uniquely address them. Regulated breathing, for example, calms the parasympathetic nervous system. Practicing staying in the moment counteracts some of the dissociative effects of trauma …

Yoga that is specifically designed for victims of trauma has modifications when compared with traditional yoga teaching … For example, says Missy Hart, ‘They always ask you if you want to be touched,’ for an adjustment in a pose.

‘I see now that really helped me. Other girls who have experienced sexual abuse, sexual trauma or are in there for prostitution at the age of 13, 14, they had their body image all mixed up.’”

The report concluded that trauma-informed yoga is a “cost-effective and sustainable” way to address and heal the physical and psychological trauma haunting so many young girls in the juvenile justice system.

Similarly, a 2019 study, published in the journal Sex Roles found yoga helped college-aged women struggling with body-image dissatisfaction feel better about their bodies. As reported by the authors:

“We evaluated the efficacy of yoga as a novel treatment for body-image dissatisfaction in otherwise healthy U.S. college-aged women. Female participants between the ages of 18–30 were randomly assigned to twice weekly yoga classes for 12 weeks or to a wait-listed control condition.

Compared to participants in the control condition, participants in the yoga condition reported significantly greater improvements in appearance evaluation and satisfaction with specific body areas at post-test.

Participants in the yoga condition also reported larger reductions in the amount of time and energy spent preoccupied with their appearance. The results of the current study suggest that yoga … could help college-aged women develop healthier relationships with their bodies.”

Is yoga for you?

Considering the many physical and psychological benefits of yoga, it’s certainly worth considering, and since there are many forms of yoga to choose from, you’re virtually guaranteed to find one that’s suitable for your particular situation.

The emergence of trauma-sensitive yoga is a testament to this, and may offer a way forward for many victims of physical and/or psychological abuse. You can find a quick outline of 11 different styles of yoga on MindBodyGreen.com. Additional variations can be explored on the Yoga Journal’s website.

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Take Ownership of your Life by Setting Boundaries

Boundaries are about your integrity, personal responsibility, and maturity.  There are a couple of reasons why people have difficulties with boundaries; these are usually (1) how you were raised; (2) fear.

There are three basic types of boundaries:

The goal, in general, would be to have strong, yet permeable boundaries. This means you know who you are and what your rights and responsibilities are, and you allow others to be uniquely who they are, without needing them to be something else to serve you.

How do you figure out what your boundaries are?

“Never make a decision when you are upset, jealous, or in love.” – Mario Teguh

Ultimately, you want to know yourself, your values, and your responsibilities. This exercise will help you identify what boundaries you do and do not have and where change is needed.

Remember this – boundaries are actions you take, not the other person. For instance, if you are tired of nagging your loved one to pick up his/her socks. Stop nagging and put his/her socks in a certain place like a basket, and move on. Don’t mention it; don’t act like a martyr; just take care of yourself and continue on with life.

How to set boundaries:

“What you do is your choice. What I put up with is mine.” – Cloud and Townsend

What to do when you know your boundaries, but aren’t ready to set them:

“The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure, the process is its own reward.” – Amelia Earhart

Sometimes you may know what boundaries you want to set, but for whatever reason you are simply not ready to enforce them yet.

If you find yourself struggling with setting a boundary you know is good for you, have patience and grace. Don’t berate yourself. Remind yourself there’s a reason you’re struggling and you will resolve the issue in due time.  In fact, to address this problem, set a boundary like this – “I will eliminate negative self-talk and will be patient with myself when making difficult decisions.”

You will become better at setting boundaries with practice. Keep in mind that boundaries are for you and you do not need to be a slave to them; nor do you need to be concerned with other people’s opinions about your boundaries. You have your own timing and needs, not anyone else’s. Part of the process of boundary setting is empowering yourself to decide what you will do and when you will do it, regardless of other people’s opinions.

“You are the author of your own life story. You have the leading role and get to determine how you interact with your supporting cast and other characters. Without realizing it, you may have allowed the events in your life to write your story for you rather than taking deliberate action to write it in your own voice. What will it take to love your life story to create the happy endings you desire?” – Susan C. Young

If you would like to receive a monthly copy of our free newsletter on the psychology of abuse, please sign up at: drshariestines.com.

References:

Cloud, H. & Townsend, J. (1992). Boundaries. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

Downing, K. (2013). Living and Thriving. Yorba Linda, CA: Changemyrelationship.com.

Take Ownership of your Life by Setting Boundaries

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How to Heal From Emotional Abuse (Video)

Have you ever felt terrified to tell the truth because you knew that your partner, friend, or parent would react very badly?

Have you felt smothered by your loved one’s controlling behaviors: jealous comments, constant monitoring, or manipulative stories?

Ever found yourself questioning your sanity around one particular person, alternating between waves of shame and feeling numb?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, you might very well have been in an emotionally abusive relationship.

Know that you’re not alone; dysfunctional relationships and substance abuse often go hand in hand.

Read on if you’ve ever thought that addiction and relationships might be connected in your life.

We dive into the true nature of emotional abuse and how to heal. You’ll discover:

Emotional Abuse: The Unrecognized Epidemic

Emotional abuse is a topic that until recently, our culture didn’t really acknowledge and fully understand. We had this understanding of physical abuse, of being hit, but we really didn’t have a firm grasp on the significance of abuse that happens with no bruises and no broken bones.

Dr. Marc Lewis’ book, The Biology of Desire: Why Addiction is Not a Disease has a chapter in which he talks about Natalie. She was a college student who had been a high achiever but ended up abusing heroin, going to jail, and all of this stuff. Her life really took a downward spiral. Dr. Lewis talked about her realizing that she’d been depressed for most of her life:

“She always thought that it wasn’t that bad because she couldn’t quite believe that emotional suffering is real suffering, and that it counts.“

Emotional abuse does count as real suffering, so it’s important that we talk about how to heal from it, how to move on and recover.

This is what we do: We work with the underlying core issues, which are the mental and emotional wounds, pains, and scars that people have been carrying around for years, unresolved.

What Is Emotional Abuse?

Emotional abuse is anything that’s harmful on the heart level, on the emotional level. Mental abuse is harmful on the mental level, physical abuse harmful on the physical level.

You might say, ‘Well, that’s completely subjective, though, because how would I know what hurts you on the heart level?’

Absolutely, it is a subjective definition.

Even so, we can look at a couple of behaviors that are recognized as emotionally hurtful to many people. Everyone is different, but there are certain behaviors that we know are shame-based and hurtful on the emotional level for many people.

Emotionally abusive behaviors include anything that constitutes psychological aggression, a behavior that’s used with the intent to harm.

If you make an offhand comment and then you realize, ‘Oh, that could have come off the wrong way,’ and, ‘I’m really sorry, and I didn’t mean it like that’ …. That’s very different from a long-term pattern of belittling, gaslighting, name calling, and infantilizing. Emotional abuse is typically repeated patterns of behavior that have a negative impact on you as a person at the heart level.

Emotional Abuse and Addiction

We now know that emotional and mental abuse can be more harmful to our mental health, to our psychology, than physical violence. There have been studies that connect emotional abuse with depression, anxiety, particularly with addiction.

As Leigh Stein noted in her Washington Post essay, He Didn’t Hit Me. It Was Still Abuse:

“Some studies have shown that abuse in the form of degradation, fear and humiliation is more psychologically debilitating in the long term than physical violence; psychological abuse can in fact sustain the relationship, as the victim becomes consumed with self-doubt, depression and low self-esteem.”

 When a person feels really hurt and powerless on the emotional level, they’re more likely to abuse drugs or alcohol in order to allow them to connect with something, to have some relief.

Dr. Lance Dodes, in his book The Sober Truth talks about this idea of addiction as a way out of helplessness. Often, we think of addiction as simply dysfunctional, or messed up.

To paraphrase, Dr. Dodes effectively says,

“No, actually, the action of using drugs is a fight against powerlessness, because it’s a response to a hurt. So someone mistreats you or you mistreat yourself, and then you go for your drug, not as an act of bizarre disconnection, but as this desire to do something about it. It’s misguided, maybe, but it’s actually proactive.”

How to Heal from Emotional Abuse

There are three main points to remember when healing from emotional abuse.

Work With Emotional Abuse on the Emotional Level

This sounds really basic, but how many times have you heard someone say, “I just can’t wrap my mind around it. How could he lie to me all the time?”

Or, “I can’t believe that this person I trusted has been gaslighting me for years. I can’t wrap my mind around it.”

That’s the idea. You can’t wrap your mind around it because it’s an emotional level hurt!

You may go to therapy.

You may be talking about it a lot.

You may hash over the details with friends, but until you actually work with that emotional level hurt, you’re not going to get to the root of the issue, because that’s where the injury occurred. You need to work with the injury on the level of which it occurred.

One key strategy that we use in our non 12-step rehab is called Gestalt. In Gestalt, you talk to a part yourself or to the other person by using an empty chair. In the process, you feel the feelings that are associated with that abuse.

The remarkable thing is when you’re in a safe space – when you have emotional support from other people, from a therapist or from a trusted person, from a counselor – then you’re able to feel the hurt and the pain, and apply compassion to that hurt and that pain.

Then, you’re able to move on.

Often it happens more quickly than you would think, because you’re giving the injury the correct medicine. The correct medicine for emotional hurt is compassion, love and care, and kindness. That can be so much more powerful than you ever could imagine.

Remember, work with emotional abuse on the emotional level. Sure, it’s important to intellectually understand it, but you’re not going to heal if that’s where you stop.

Learn How to Be In the Present Moment

The second point to remember when dealing with emotional abuse is to learn how to be in the present moment, and to stay in the present moment.

There’s a great quote from Dr. Bessel van der Kolk who’s an expert on healing from trauma. He writes, “Healing means bringing the person into the present moment where the danger is gone.”

If you’re able to stay in the present moment in your real life, right now, and not get stuck in the past where the abuse happened, then you have real potential to be able to heal.

What keeps us in danger is playing these old thought loops and keeping ourselves stuck in the past. The way to feel safe in the present moment is to apply love to the parts of yourself that hurt.

It’s Your Job to Take Care of You

One final point about healing emotional level abuse: It’s your job to take care of you.

It may be completely true that someone else consistently and systematically hurt you on an emotional level in the past. You were doing the best that you could at the time when you endured that abuse. But now, it’s your job to take good care of you.

It’s your job as the adult to make sure that you’re in safe situations. If you’re in a situation where you feel like this isn’t going in a good direction, it’s your job to take good care of yourself and to leave.

That is your right.

Be present.

The key point here is: don’t abandon yourself.

Often we think that the pain of emotional trauma is that this other person abandoned me, they hurt me, they did all of this. That may be completely true. Yet a lot of our pain actually comes from the ways in which we’ve abandoned ourselves; the ways in which we didn’t take good care of ourselves.

That person might have been the vehicle, but the real pain is, “Oh man, I really left myself. I abandoned myself. I let myself down here.”

The good news is though, that you can repair your relationship with yourself. It doesn’t matter what’s going on now in your relationship with that other person. They may have passed away. They may not be in your life anymore, but you can repair that relationship with yourself.

You can learn to apply love to the parts of yourself that hurt and repair that connection with yourself. And you don’t have to do it alone.

For more information, download our free eBook, “Healing Underlying Core Issues.” You can also call us to discuss your specific situation at 425-275-8600.

This content was originally published here.

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The Healing Power of Sound as Meditation | Psychology Today

As I witnessed the droning sounds of Tarek Atoui’s hybrid sculpture performance Organ Within at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, I noticed a family of four—two young parents with two young children—sitting quietly on the floor pillows of the rotunda. The younger child, no older than two or three years old, was preternaturally calm and focused in his mother’s lap. He looked on, captivated and mesmerized, as the musicians walked from station to station. The performers adjusted metal tubes, scattered balls, and bells onto a thin vibrating membrane, and reached inside different compartments of the modular instrument. 

Tarek Atoui’s Organ Within at the Guggenheim Museum, New York
Source: M Wei

Atoui’s work understands sound as more than simply an experience of hearing and explores sound as a tactile and visual experience. As I slowly climbed the sloping levels of the rotunda noticing the acoustic changes, I was struck by another way to experience this piece—as a mindful, walking sound meditation. 

In How Music Works, David Byrne describes the intimate relationship between architecture and music whose composition and experience is shaped by the space in which it is performed. The site-specific performance within the architecture of the spiral rotunda created a uniquely meditative experience of sound.

Sound has an ancient kinship with meditation and healing. Sound healing has ancient roots in cultures all over the world, including Australian aboriginal tribes who used the didgeridoo as a sound healing instrument for over 40,000 years to ancient such as Tibetan or Himalayan singing bowl spiritual ceremonies. Sound meditation is a form of focused awareness type of meditation. One kind that has become more popular is called “sound baths,” which uses Tibetan singing bowls, quartz bowls, and bells to guide the listener. These practices highlight themes of how the experience of sound manifests not only through hearing but through tactile physical vibrations and frequencies.

Science is still catching up to understanding how sound heals, but the current research is promising. A review of 400 published scientific articles on music as medicine found strong evidence that music has mental and physical health benefits in improving mood and reducing stress. In fact, rhythm in particular (over melody) can provide physical pain relief. 

One study published in the Journal of Evidence-Based Integrative Medicine found that an hourlong sound meditation helped people reduce tension, anger, fatigue, anxiety, and depression while increasing a sense of spiritual well-being. The sound meditation used a range of Tibetan singing bowls, crystal singing bowls, gongs, Ting-shas (tiny cymbals), dorges (bells), didgeridoos, and other small bells. The main instrument used was the singing bowls for 95% of the session. People who had never done sound meditation experienced significantly less tension and anxiety afterward, as well as those who had done it before. 

There are many different theories that attempt to explain why sound experiences can be linked with deep relaxation and physical pain relief.

One theory is that sound works through the vibrational tactile effects on the whole body. Sound could stimulate touch fibers that affect pain perception. One study of people with fibromyalgia found that ten treatments (twice per week for five weeks) of low-frequency sound stimulation improved sleep and decreased pain, allowing nearly three-fourths of participants to reduce pain medication. 

Sound-based vibration treatment has been shown to help people with pain from arthritis, menstrual pain, postoperative pain, knee replacement pain. Sound-based treatment has even been found to improve mobility, reduce muscle pain and stiffness, increase blood circulation, and lower blood pressure.

Another theory on the benefits of sound rests on the concept of “binaural beats” or “brain entrainment” which hypothesizes that listening to certain frequencies can synchronize and change one’s brainwaves. 

Electrical activity in the brain is displayed in the form of brainwaves, or rhythmic, repetitive frequencies. These rhythms can be measured using a device called electroencephalogram (EEG).  

There are four categories of brainwaves, which range from frequencies that occur during the most activity (beta) to the least activity (delta). Different states of alertness and consciousness in different part of the brain generate varying frequencies of brainwaves. 

The premise of binaural beats is that the brain synchronizes its brainwave frequency to the difference in hertz between tones played in each ear, which, depending on the frequency, can lead one to states of deep relaxation associated with beta waves or meditative trance-like theta waves.  

Researchers are still trying to determine the mechanism of the healing benefits of sound, but sound in the form of vibrational therapy or meditation offers potential therapeutic benefits with low to minimal side effects. Atoui’s piece shows us the joy of being in the active presence of sound, perceived in its full totality, visually, tactilely, and acoustically. 

This content was originally published here.

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Restructure Your Brain: Science Shows Meditation Cures Overthinking

Original article here:

Meditation is a simple and proven path to improve mental and physical health. Its effects have been seen for thousands of years and have been tested and proven in modern times.
There are many ways to meditate – you can always find one that suits you. It can be as easy as taking 2 to 5 seconds where you disengage from thoughts and clear your head; it can be coloring, running or mindful breathing. Find a way that resonates with you.

If you are of the anxious sort you should definitely consider meditation, as it is the best long term solution to stress and anxiety.

Research has shown that eight weeks ofmeditating less than 30 minutes a day can decrease perceived anxiety and stress. MR images show a link between perceived stress-reduction and a decrease in gray-matter density in a part of the brain called the amygdala. [1] Meditation changes your brain structure!

The amygdala is the fear center of your brain. It is an important component in the limbic system (old mammalian brain) and is partly responsible for your fight or flight-response. It mediates stress-hormone release, blood pressure elevation and facial expression of fear. [2]

This part of the brain gives us humans a negative bias that helped our ancestors survive life in a very threatening environment, with sabre-tooth tigers crouching behind our food-source-bushes. Today this high activity in the amygdala is not nearly as important for our survival – it can even hinder our quality of life and our inner peace.

A group of scientists at Stanford University found that meditating for as little as eight weeks resulted in the ability to turn down the reactivity in the amygdala. [3] This reduced activity lets you feel more at ease in situations where you previously reacted with stress and fear.

Numerous scientific studies have found meditation to be effective for treating anxiety. One group of researchers looked at how mindfulness had helped with anxiety management across various types of people: from those suffering with cancer, to those with social anxiety and eating disorders.

The amount of meditation per day has been found to be only mildly correlated with the improvement of stress:

“To assess whether the amount of individual meditation home practise predicted the improvement in stress, the number of minutes of meditation practise that participants reported on daily logs was correlated with the magnitude of their reduction in stress. […]  the amount of training was mildly correlated with the improvement in stress […]. [1]

Basicly, this means that the frequency of meditation seems to be more important than the duration of each session. In other words, five minutes of meditation every day is better than 2 hours once every two weeks. Good news if you were worried that you had to meditate for hours every day to reap the benefits!

Like in most things, the time to start is now. Set a timer to 5 minutes and begin.

The post Restructure Your Brain: Science Shows Meditation Cures Overthinking appeared first on Reach Out Recovery.

The Opposite Of Rape Culture Is Nurturance Culture | Dating Tips For The Feminist Man

The opposite of masculine rape culture is masculine nurturance culture: men* increasing their capacity to nurture, and becoming whole.

The Ghomeshi trial is back in the news, and it brings violent sexual assault back into people’s minds and daily conversations. Of course violence is wrong, even when the court system for handling it is a disaster. That part seems evident. Triggering, but evident.

But there is a bigger picture here. I am struggling to see the full shape emerging in the pencil rubbing, when only parts are visible at a time.

A meme going around says ‘Rape is about violence, not sex. If someone were to hit you with a spade, you wouldn’t call it gardening.’ And this is true. But it is just the surface of the truth. The depths say something more, something about violence.

Violence is nurturance turned backwards.

These things are connected, they must be connected. Violence and nurturance are two sides of the same coin. I struggle to understand this even as I write it.

Compassion for self and compassion for others grow together and are connected; this means that men finding and recuperating the lost parts of themselves will heal everyone. If a lot of men grow up learning not to love their true selves, learning that their own healthy attachment needs (emotional safety, nurturance, connection, love, trust) are weak and wrong – that anyone’s attachment, or emotional safety, needs are weak and wrong – this can lead to two things.

1. They may be less able to experience women as whole people with intelligible needs and feelings (for autonomy, for emotional safety, for attunement, for trust).

2. They may be less able to make sense of their own needs for connection, transmuting them instead into distorted but more socially mirrored forms.

To heal rape culture, then, men build masculine nurturance skills: nurturance and recuperation of their true selves, and nurturance of the people of all genders around them.

I am discovering a secret, slowly: the men I know who are exceptionally nurturing lovers, fathers, coworkers, close friends to their friends, who know how to make people feel safe, have almost no outlets through which to learn or share this hardwon skill with other men. They may have had a role model at home, if they are lucky, in the form of an exceptionally nurturing father, but if they do not have this model they have had to figure everything out through trial and error, alone, or by learning with women rather than men. This knowledge shapes everything: assumptions about the significance of needs, how one ought to respond to them, what closeness feels like, how to love your own soul, and what kind of nurturance is actually meant to happen in intimate space.

Meanwhile, the men I know who are kind, goodhearted people, but who are earlier on in growing into their own models for self-love and learning how to comfort and nurture others, have no men to ask. Growing entails growing pains, certainly, but the way can be smoothed when one does not have to learn everything alone.

Men do not talk to one another about nurturance skills: doing so feels too intimate, or the codes of masculinity make doing so too frightening. If they can’t ask and teach each other – if they can’t even find out which other men in their lives would welcome these conversations – then how do they learn?

Men have capacities to heal that are particularly masculine and particularly healing. They often are not fully aware of this deep gift and how helpful it can be for those close to them, whether family or close friends.

To completely transform this culture of misogyny, then, men must do more than ‘not assault.’ We must call on masculinity to become whole and nurturing of self and others, to recognize that attachment needs are healthy and normal and not ‘female,’ and thus to expect of men to heal themselves and others the same way we expect women to ‘be nurturers.’ It is time men recognize and nurture their own healing gifts.

In Ursula K. Leguin’s book Gifts, an entire culture lives by the rule of what they call ‘gifts’ – powers to do harm – possessed by certain of its members. Some families possess gifts of Unmaking, where they can turn a farmer’s field into a blackened waste or a puppy into a sack of dissolved flesh. Some possess the ability to create a wasting illness, or blindness, or the gift of calling animals to the hunt.

By the book’s end, the child at its centre has struggled, against all signs in his culture, to realize something profound and fundamental. The gift they call Unmaking is actually a gift of Making, turned backwards upon itself and rendered unthinkingly into a weapon. The gift of calling animals is turned into a way to hunt them, when it is meant to let humans understand animals and live in balance with them. The wasting disease is the backwards use of a gift of healing illness and old age. He finally asks his sister and closest confidant: what if we are using our gifts backwards? To harm instead of to help? What if they were meant to be used the other way around?

Nothing in the boy’s culture would tell him this is so. His entire society has been built around fear of these gifts used as weapons. Yet he has seen his father use the gift of Unmaking ‘in reverse’ to gently undo a knot or mend a creaking gate. His best friend’s gift of calling animals also gives her an aversion to hunting them, an aversion she must overrule in herself to meet her culture’s expectations. These images knock on the door of his mind until he makes sense of them; he has to struggle to see the truth without a single signpost or mentor to help him find this knowledge. Nothing in his world reflects this reality back to him, and yet it is real. He at first can hardly believe it or understand it.

Something odd happens when you google ‘man comforting a woman.’ Many of the top hits are about women comforting men. (try it.) The ‘suggested search’ terms too: ‘how to comfort a guy, how to comfort a man when he’s stressed, how to comfort a guy when he’s upset.’ Apparently lots and lots of people on planet earth are googling how to comfort men… and fewer are googling how to comfort women. Strange, isn’t it, since this culture views women as ‘the emotional ones’ and men as the strong ones. Perhaps something is a bit backwards here.

I tried to find an image that would capture the way men have actually comforted me, which for me is the most intimate image of holding me in their arms, skin on skin like a young baby, rocking or singing, letting me be at my most vulnerable, held safe. There when needed, when it matters. I could find only one image that looked remotely like the real thing.

Could it be that a lot of men have no models for how to nurture, comfort, soothe, and thus strengthen people they care about? If you happen to not have a highly nurturing model at home, where would you learn how to nurture? A top search hit is a bewildered humour piece about how utterly terrifying and confusing it is when a woman cries and about how men have no idea what to do. Could it be that the things that come naturally to many of us – hold the person, look at them with loving, accepting eyes, bring them food, hot tea, or medicine – that these are unfamiliar terrain for some, can’t even be imagined, let alone acted on consistently?

These things seem connected to me. And here is where my friend Rebekah, a drama therapist, comes in, who one day handed me the books Hold Me Tight and A General Theory of Love, and blew my mind. This is where attachment theory comes in. Bear with me, as this takes a little background knowledge – a quick summary of these books – before I can go on.

Attachment theory: cutting edge neuroscience

According to Hold Me Tight and A General Theory of Love, current advancements in neuroscience have completely transformed understandings of human relationships, from birth to death. What used to be called Freud’s ‘unconscious’ is actually located in the body, in a knowable place. Specific understandings of how the limbic brain work have replaced old ideas about love as a ‘mystery.’

Apparently about 50 percent of the population, people of all genders, have a secure attachment style: they were raised by responsive, attuned parents, who recognized their need to go out and explore as well as their need to come back and be comforted, and responded in a timely, attuned way to both. According to A General Theory of Love, this experience of attunement – having all their developmental needs met by attuned parents – literally shapes their limbic brain.

These folks as adults find closeness comfortable and enjoyable, they easily desire intimacy, and they know how to create a secure attachment bond in which autonomy naturally emerges and daily nurturance is the norm. This shapes the brain in material, physiological ways. This is how you build secure attachment: through daily attunement to the subtle cues of other people, and lavishing love and care while letting them come and go as needed. In this kind of connection, you know your home base is always there for you, so you feel comfortable going out into the world, taking risks, trying new or scary things, because you can return to safe arms when you need to.

Securely attached people know how to comfort and be there for one another when they need each other, and so they naturally know how to create healthy autonomy and healthy intimacy, which emerge in balance as they get comfortable with one another and create trust. Securely attached people are comfortable being vulnerable; they have had positive experiences of trust. There can be no joy of trust without the risk of vulnerability, letting your true self show and experiencing others catching you, mirroring you, liking you, and letting you go, when you are all there, visible, open.

Just like the first time you walk on ice or sit on a new chair, at first your muscles are clenched, waiting to see if the ground under you is secure or about to fall away. If the ice has always been solid, or you have never had a chair break under your weight, you may assume that you can relax quickly into your seat, or head out onto the ice and skate. You have no reason to think otherwise. If, however, you have had a chair break under you, you may think hard about sitting down again, and may take longer to relax into the secure base. If the chair has never been there for you at all, you may decide you simply don’t need chairs and prefer to stand. These are insecure attachment styles.

Secure, Anxious, Avoidant 

Attachment science also has learned that about 50% of the population has an insecure attachment style; this breaks down into about 23% anxious and 25% avoidant styles, which are apparently both physiologically insecure styles, but look and feel different on the surface. The avoidant style breaks down further, into anxious-avoidant and dismissive-avoidant styles. A very small percent of the population, around 3%, has a style called ‘disorganized‘ which is a mix of the other styles.

People with an anxious attachment style actively seek closeness and are afraid of losing it, and have a harder time trusting and knowing their partner will be there for them. The chair may have broken for them many times, or in a formative early relationship that was significant. Their limbic brains and entire autonomic nervous system is built differently than those with secure styles. They need extra reassurance and comfort to get secure and enjoy lots of closeness, especially with a new trust figure – though they have the same need for autonomy as anyone else, and it emerges as they become secure. They engage in ‘protest behaviour,’ i.e become upset, to try to seek closeness if they cannot receive it by asking directly. However, once they are secure and feel safe, they become exceptionally loyal and loving nurturers and feel immense gratitude and loyalty to those who give them this safety.

People with a preoccupied-avoidant style crave closeness but are afraid to show it, and will show it instead through sulking or silence, hoping their partner will guess. They can come to name their needs with a secure loving partner, but will struggle to do so.

People with a dismissive-avoidant attachment style also have a need for intimacy – every mammal has this need hardwired in our limbic brains – but at a very early age they complete a transition to a belief that they are autonomous and do not feel their need for intimacy. They decide if the chair isn’t going to be there, they will just stand, thank you very much. They can come to open up and become secure as they come to recognize their distorted beliefs about intimacy, but they need lots of time, space, and compassion about how difficult this is for them.

Having thoroughly repressed their attachment needs, these folks may have learned to act ‘fine’ at a very young age in order to keep a dismissive attachment figure close, or may have learned to create constant nonverbal barriers in order to keep an unattuned, invasive or dismissive attachment figure at arm’s length. They may feel suffocated or trapped when people get too close, and will unconsciously and involuntarily use ‘deactivating strategies’ – body language and facial expressions – to tell even their most intimate people to ‘back up’ even in the most intimate moments.

In other words, the nonverbal cues that other people use with strangers on the subway to maintain distance are the daily communication that dismissive-avoidant attachers use with their closest family members, often without even understanding they are doing it, which may feel very confusing both to them and to those close to them. They may feel that no matter how hard they try, those who depend on them never get reassured. They may blame this on the other person and call them ‘needy’ without ever realizing the nonverbal distancing cues preventing secure attachment that are leading to the signs of ‘neediness’ in the other person.

Nurturance, the literature teaches us, recognizes and responds appropriately, in an alive, moving dance, to the other person’s need for intimacy and need for space, learning how to engage in nonverbal limbic communication that comforts, reassures, and breathes. In addition to talking openly and honestly, the quality of care that creates a feeling of safety happens in a moment-by-moment way through mainly nonverbal cues. The limbic brain does not use language but reads the small muscles around the eyes, the set of shoulders, the breathing, the posture, of other people.

‘Earned Secure’ attachment: where nurturance creates growth

It is possible to change your attachment style by creating an ‘earned secure’ attachment as an adult. It is possible to create an ‘earned secure’ attachment between two insecure attachers, but it takes a lot more time, effort, and compassion: both have to recognize nurturance is entirely good and expected.

Of course, nothing can replace talking things over and calibrating with people you are close to. No one should be a mind reader. But it takes more than talking to change these patterns. The avoider has to risk opening up and letting their true self show in order to give and receive nurturance, and the anxious attacher has to trust and let go more, knowing the avoider will be back. Both of these changes are difficult; limbic responses happen very, very fast, below the conscious level and often outside of language.

The easiest way to form an ‘earned secure’ attachment is by being in a relationship with a secure attacher, and learning healthy intimacy from them, in which needs are responded to as they arise. However, secure attachers usually date a few people, then pick one and settle down early. They know how to create a big warm home bond. Avoidant attachers tend to prefer anxious attachers, and anxious attachers tend to be drawn to avoidant attachers, because each reinforces the early ‘rules’ about ‘reality’ – actually just haphazard chance, what happened to be going on between them and their caregivers at the time – laid down in their limbic brains before the age of three.

Shame and guilt over which kind of attachment style you have are completely not appropriate or called for, as one’s attachment style is wired in from an age when we are much too young to choose. It is no one’s fault. However, shame and guilt can be quite convincing even when completely uneccessary, as is the nature of shame. It can be incredibly convincing to the person experiencing it even when it is completely absurd.

What does all this have to do with assault?

That summary – above – is what the books say. But like the boy in Gifts, many of us are fumbling into an even bigger picture, trying to see a pattern that is just coming clear. Our culture does not give us many signposts. I’m trying to put things together.

Fundamentally, a healthy, secure attachment style is what lets people effectively protect and care for the wellbeing of others. It allows for the skill of attunement: recognizing when someone wants to come close and when they want space, not only by asking but also by reading subtle nonverbal cues.

Attachment styles can land in any gender, of course, and people can combine in any combination.

However, when attachment styles land in particularly gendered ways, we see certain patterns emerge that are all part of the bigger pattern, and, maybe, they can be understood as part of the ‘answer’ to the question of violence.

People with secure attachment styles are better at recognizing and being comfortable with this dance of approach-and-retreat, better at supporting others while letting others do what they need to do. They know deep down they are loved and loveable, and thus are more likely to be loving and nurturing towards others, both to be there for them when needed as sources of strength and solace, and to be able to recognize and honour when someone does or does not want to be touched. Shame prevents this skill from emerging.

We misunderstand shame

Attachment science tells us that human beings need mirroring and containers in others. Whatever is in us that does not get mirrored, or held in a larger container of acceptance by others, becomes a source of shame, simply for not being accepted. And if you have shamed something in yourself – like a normal need for intimacy – so early and so completely that you don’t even notice you are doing it, you will interpret that same need as shameful when you see it in others. Shame is entirely subjective, in this sense. This is all happening in the body, below the conscious level, not in a vague ‘unconscious’ but in a recognizable region of the brain: the limbic brain, which does not have language.

Shame and guilt unhealed and unaddressed remain powerful and, like a volcano, rise up in surprising ways. For instance, shame can lead men to shut down and run or blame women or act defensive instead of offering comfort and nurturance when someone they care about needs them. It can, alternately, lead men to ignore signs that someone does not want them close.

These are two sides of the same system, and must be understood together, because in a culture that does not expect men to show up for their own emotions, women get blamed for unaddressed male shame. 

In other words, it seems possible that shame and guilt, left subterranean, interrupt attunement, and can lead to an inability or unwillingness to properly respond to the needs of others, whether for nurturance or for space. I mean the really deep, structural kind of shame, that is so old and convincing, it doesn’t even appear as anything in particular. It just appears as ‘the way the world is,’ laid down in patterns in the limbic brain. This kind of shame hides, appears as nothing in particular, until questioned with compassion and curiosity, deeply, in safe company.

Anxious attachment styles and the mystery of human relating

In a patriarchal, misogynist culture, both of these imbalances (which are common to all humans), when they appear in men, are laid in women’s laps as blame and misogyny when men do not do their own emotional healing.

I am making sense of this, bit by bit, seeing the pattern emerge. For instance: men with anxious attachment styles may feel distress when an attachment figure seeks to back up a little, or a lot, and may not develop a healthy capacity to recognize and respond appropriately to someone’s nonverbal cues communicating the need for space.

They may come closer or become upset as the other person signals their need to disengage. If a man who happens to have an anxious attachment style does not know how to understand and accept his own needs for nurturance, he may attack a woman for rejecting him. The typical ‘hello, cutie,’ on the street followed almost instantly with ‘fine, be that way, bitch’ is an example many of us will be familiar with.

They may not notice or register or in extreme cases be concerned that someone they want to touch has frozen up, is giving off signals of paralysis or distress. Thus we sometimes find men who don’t think of themselves as ‘bad men’ who nonetheless rape and assault: their partners, girlfriends, wives, or women on a first or second date. (This is how the majority of assaults happen, of course: the ‘man jumping out of the bushes’ while more spectacular is much more rare.) They may resort to seeking power-over and dominance, because normal intimacy needs, when distorted and denied, come out in distorted ways. They are caught up in their own pain and can’t name it, or find appropriate avenues for it, and given the larger social norms that centre men’s experiences, this imbalance doesn’t get addressed as an imbalance but instead gets projected out into the world. A society that actively, financially, politically, socially, privileges traits it deems ‘masculine’ – nonemotionality, strength, independence – and actively disparages traits it deems ‘feminine’ – interdependence, nurturance – has few ways for these patterns to be openly loved, addressed, and changed.

In another example, those with a preocuppied-avoidant style – who feel the need for closeness but have a hard time asking and do not expect others to be there for them – may sulk if they feel rejected, putting silent pressure on women they are with to meet their demands. Perhaps the sulking partner who turns away in anger when sexual desires aren’t met may be having a limbic attachment experience that needs to be addressed as such, in a mature way, a way that takes ownership of the experience and works to heal it rather than project it outwards onto women.

Avoidant attachment styles: holding trust

Those with a dismissive-avoidant style may simply need to develop attunement in order to hold the trust they are given. They may want women to get close to them at first, and begin to build trust, but not actually know how to maintain trust once it begins, which can create destabilizing and confusing experiences for everyone involved.

When men happen to have a dismissive-avoidant attachment style, they may simply not know how nurturance and comfort looks and feels. They may have a very difficult time recognizing and loving their own deepest selves, and not even be aware of what they have lost. Thus they may blame women for being ‘too needy’ out of not recognizing their own needs for closeness and nurturance of self and others, having learned early that closeness is suffocating and that needs are to be denied.

They may not recognize their own body’s needs for comfort and connection, which result in elevated heart rate and changes in neurochemicals just as it does for anxious attachers, but in a way the avoidant attacher does not understand or recognize as they learned early on to repress these needs completely in themselves and others. They may not know how to meet their own and other people’s needs simultaneously, a highly developed nurturance capacity.

Even if they do not act in invasive ways, their style may inadvertently interrupt the creation of deep, honest, nurturing relationships, in which women they sleep with or get close to can feel emotionally safe with them.

In striving to be good people they may make ‘rules’ (like ‘a good man doesn’t touch,’) and have a very logical approach to checking if a woman wants to be touched, but have a harder time responding to her nonverbal cues or even sometimes responding to verbal cues for comfort and reassurance, creating an odd gap feeling.

The attachment needs are still there, but they may transmute into other more recognizeable things: instead of giving and receiving nurturance they may seek sexual connections while feeling utterly bewildered about how physical love relates to intimate or consummate love. They may experience immense, paralyzing guilt and shame when someone needs them to be comforting, and lash out, freeze up, or run. They may hurt people they care about by having sex with them in a strangely cold or distant way, without even knowing why they are doing it.

If a man with an avoidant attachment style experiences internal distress when someone he cares about expresses nurturance needs (such as the need for trust, reliability, availability, closeness, responsiveness, attunement) he may blame the woman for ‘being too needy’ instead of dealing with those intensely confusing feelings of shame.

Men with avoidant attachment styles may not notice the confusing nonverbal signalling they are actively doing very early on that prevents safety from happening with women they want to nurture and support, who may become more and more imbalanced towards them in response.

Since ‘absence of nurturance’ is just an absence, it can be hard to recognize early. When early avoidant responses to requests for closeness are not noticed as such, attachment science teaches us, ‘protest behaviour’ – the distress when needs aren’t met – may get louder over time, in ways both people are contributing to and neither understand. It becomes all too easy in a patriarchal culture that values rugged individualism over interdependence to call an anxiously-attached woman ‘crazy’ without noticing the parallel avoidant responses that are contributing, that are ‘crazymaking’. In other words, it takes two to enter into the avoidant-anxious trap, but patriarchal culture normalizes an avoidant style and stigmatizes an anxious style, wherever it appears.

None of this is worthy of shame; fundamentally, all of the insecure styles are based in an unquestioned belief that people will not be there for them and that nurturance is somehow a problem rather than wholly desireable and good. Avoidant attachers ‘know’ from an early age that the ice will break, the chair will collapse, best not to try. Insecure attachment styles are not chosen, are not conscious or intentional, and it is an understatement to say they are not easy to change. They deserve understanding, compassion, and empathy.

And yet living without loving, secure attachment bonds is the loneliest experience in the human repertoire.

Community care and cultural transformation

The solution to this is not to pile on more shame and guilt. This is really tricky, because insecure attachers have limbic brains structured by shame and guilt and may hear accusations where there are none. The solution is not to shame people for feeling shame. Instead, the solution is a complete transformation of social relations to allow wholeness back into our world. Yes, models of healthy interdependence exist if we know where to find them and how to recognize them. But no one stands in a shining circle of light and no one lives in the dark abyss; it is time we finally abandon these Eurocentric, western dichotomies.

What we need is a model for slow self-love that brings the shame up into the light, and reality checks with others who accept you unconditionally, hold you accountable, and aren’t going anywhere. We need a model of justice that recognizes the lived reality of interdependence and learns to do it well, not a justice of shame that frightens us all out of looking at our shadow sides or weakest selves in a world in which most men are expected to cut off parts of themselves from the time they are quite young.

The solution, in tangible terms, is community care and a great deal of awareness of how most of us did not get our needs met at key developmental stages, which means we did not move out of those stages and must do so now. Collective healing is possible. We can heal when we can finally be our whole, unguarded selves, in human community, without shields or guards, and be liked, accepted, seen, held. This is systemic change, spiritual change, at the core levels of our culture, lived each day.

Once shame can be reduced to more manageable levels, both personally and culturally, people can become more able to openly expose their raw spots trusting they will be accepted, and can respond to the needs of others rather than freeze and become defensive, invasive, or paralyzed.

Turning the gifts around: masculine nurturance culture

The answer to all of these difficulties is to openly discuss nurturance: how it looks, how it feels, how men can learn to practice it from the men who already know how in addition to communicating through women or fumbling around for years learning by trial and error.

Simplistic answers gleaned through this fumbling do not help: for instance, some men may actually avoid nurturing or protecting women out of fear of ‘white knighting.’ But ‘white knighting’ isn’t synonymous with ‘all forms of protection.’ White knighting means acting ‘protective’ in ways that aren’t attuned. Paternalistically telling her what she needs instead of listening to what she says is white knighting. To stop white knighting, don’t stop protecting; just protect while you also listen and believe. Protect her, actively, in the ways she actually wants protecting, and not in the ways she does not. Protecting people you care about – in ways that are attuned and responsive to their actual needs – is a normal, needed, and healthy part of nurturance. Only in the wasteland of guessing and fumbling alone would this confusion even be possible.

Why is there no high-profile institute for men teaching nurturance skills to men?

Men need to do this work with other men – not alone, not instead of doing it with women, but in addition, in accountable relationship with and to women. In other words, keep learning in the ways learning is happening now – but then share that learning with one another. Our institutions need to count this work as valuable, rewardable labour: fund it, give it high prestige, give it speaking tours and jobs in teaching nurturance. Read that line a few times. It sounds so impossible, doesn’t it?

The absurdity of that line suggests it may be a long time before a nurturing masculinity is recognized and rewarded socially the same way an abstract intellectual masculinity currently is.

In the meantime, men need to do this healing work every day, behind the scenes, reaping the rewards of having women and people of all genders feel safe with them, and of growing their own self-love and love of one another.

The wonderful reward of creating safe bonds is that in these places of trust, a warm glow of meaning and purpose emerges.  An inner circle of trust and vulnerability allows movement and rest: it lets the bees come and go from the hive. It creates shelters of chosen family and beloved community from which action, challenges to racism, sexism, institutional violence, can arise, a safety net to catch each other’s bodies and souls, the foundation that allows risk.

The opposite of masculine rape culture is masculine nurturance culture. This is men’s work to do, and yet it is needed by people of all genders who have men in their lives. The rewards are waiting.

Are you a nurturing man? Do the women in your life – partner, daughter, sister, friend, coworker, parent – tell you or show you that you make them feel unusually safe and close and cared for? If so, how did you learn? How do you open up spaces for men who want these conversations to begin to have them?

Every single man I asked this of said, “both men would need to want it.” Fear of closeness, masculine codes of interaction, the lower-level lizard-brain signals that men send one another, are real and are part of the picture. But many men are struggling with these questions, locked alone in their own little boxes.

Men have to do this with other men, despite the difficulties in doing so, for three reasons. For one, men understand what it is like to be a man much better than women do, and they can teach one another while understanding what it actually feels like and having compassion for one another. Men must also do this with other men because, frankly, women cannot be responsible for healing men while they also protect themselves from male violence and neglect, which is still endemic and thus a daily part of women’s lives. Finally, one of the great distortions of the human spirit in our culture is that each man lives in solitary confinement, thinking they can and should solve problems alone, that they shouldn’t need others. Jumping the barriers that keep men from talking about emotions with other men is itself a fundamental change, one that reduces shame and confusion.

So how do you know when men around you – the friend you just met for drinks, the colleague you have collaborated with on projects for years, the hockey buddy – may actually be quietly confused and thirsty for this kind of learning?

How can you signal your availability, to let men in your life know you are doing this yourself, so that those men who want to learn about nurturance can find each other? It’s as simple as starting a men’s discussion group based on this article.

It can be as simple as sharing this piece, and asking, “does this ever come up for you?”

It can be as simple as sending someone you know this piece, and saying “I’m available.”

It can be as simple as posting this piece, and saying “I’m here.”

Resources:

Hold me Tight, Sue Johnson

Wired for Love, Stan Tatkin

A General Theory of Love, Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini and Richard Lannon

Attached, Amir Levine and Rachel S.F. Heller

Bell Hooks, The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love

Find out your attachment style with this quiz.

“On whatever axes we experience oppression, our best qualities are fed back to us as weaknesses to disguise our own tremendous power and size from ourselves. Because of the nature of structural violence, which creates the conditions in which these acts land in our bodies, this undermining of reality does not need to be conscious or intentional in order to cause significant harm.”  Read: On Gaslighting

Want to dig deeper? To cultivate nurturance and build strong secure bonds, practice recognizing The Tricks of Shame and Hope

How can male allies empathize with the experiences of those they try to listen to and support? It helps to understand Five Ways Psychological Abuse Affects the Brain that Make it Difficult for Survivors to Speak 

I love hearing from readers! Reach the author at nora.samaran@gmail.com.

I apologize that I may not be able to respond to each request individually, but I read every email that comes in.