What is "Normal"?

"The real hopeless victims of mental illness are to be found among those who appear to be most normal. Many of them are normal because they are so well adjusted to our mode of existence, because their human voice has been silenced so early in their lives, that they do not even struggle or suffer or develop symptoms as the neurotic does." They are normal not in what may be called the absolute sense of the word; they are normal only in relation to a profoundly abnormal society. Their perfect adjustment to that abnormal society is a measure of their mental sickness. These millions of abnormally normal people, living without fuss in a society to which, if they were fully human beings, they ought not to be adjusted."
— Aldous Huxley

A Short Video on the Effectiveness of Intentionally Changing Your Thought Patterns

Our brain is a bunch of plastic ... with lots of ridges, or neural circuits. To read more and comment, go directly to 'Beyond Blue' at http://www.beliefnet.com/beyondblue.

Living with Traumatic Brain Injury

People with traumatic brain injuries may experience physical, cognitive or personality changes that affect their work and relationships. In this program from the University of Washington, hear stories of people who are rebuilding their lives and readjusting to family, careers and everyday life.




Via: University of Washington

How to Block a Distressing, Recurring Thought Pattern with Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP)

A distressing and recurring pattern of thought is often difficult to block if you do not have the right strategies. However, with this simple mental conditioning technique from neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), you may be able to eliminate a distressing thought pattern permanently.  Click anywhere in this sentence to continue reading...

Via:  wikiHow

Rumination Lullaby: Mind River is Self-Cleaning-By Pavel G. Somov, Ph.D. October 12, 2009

“You must realize that thoughts are temporary, changing appearances, and neither seize on them or hate them, just let them occur and cease of themselves.” Bankei

Mind is an information-processing system. As such, it is in the business of digestion – and, not unlike your stomach, sometimes it chokes up on spice of life…Say, something happened – and now it is eating you as you are trying to digest it. The informational tug-of-war is on. No crisis here: same ol’ evolutionary game of the survival of the best-informed.  Look: if you are alive and reading this, you’ve won this contest every time – you’ve eventually swallowed every information byte reality has served you.
Information-processing – like food-processing – is a metabolic process. It has its own pace and rate of...Click anywhere in this sentence to continue reading. . .

Via:  Psych Central

How to Stop Comparing Yourself to Others

We are all different yet we have a tendency to compare ourselves to others. Why? Because the marketing business makes money, because others compare us to themselves or other people, because some people get a boost out of putting us down, and from all these experiences we start feeling not good enough. Comparing yourself to others is unhealthy and unnecessary. Here's how to stop.  Click anywhere in this sentence to continue reading...

Via:  wikiHow

UCLA Newsroom: Can Thinking of a Loved One Reduce Your Pain?

Yes, according to a new study by UCLA psychologists that underscores the importance of social relationships and staying socially connected.

The study, which asked whether simply looking at a photograph of your significant other can reduce pain, involved 25 women, mostly UCLA students, who had boyfriends with whom they had been in a good relationship for more than six months.  Click anywhere in this sentence to continue reading...

Via:  UCLA Newsroom

Google Personal Growth Series: Mindsight:

This interactive talk will examine two major questions: What is the mind? and How can we create a healthy mind? We'll examine the interactions among the mind, the brain, and human relationships and explore ways to create a healthy mind, an integrated brain, and mindful, empathic relationships. Here is one surprising finding: the vast majority (about 95%) of mental health practitioners around the globe, and even many scientists and philosophers focusing on the mind, do not have a definition of what the mind is! In this talk, well offer a working definition of the mind and practical implications for how to perceive and strengthen the mind itself—a learnable skill called mindsight. Then well build on this perspective to explore ways that the mind, the brain, and our relationships are influenced by digital information flow and also how they can be moved toward healthy functioning.



Presented by Daniel J. Siegel, M.D.

Via:  Google Tech Talks

Racing Thoughts by Paul David

Racing thoughts is the one symptom with anxiety that can bother people the most; they do not understand how they can have such thoughts that seem so scary and come with such impact. I have heard people say they fear the beginning of O.C.D or that they have awful thoughts about those closest to them, feel that they are ‘going mad’ and that they cannot control these disturbing thoughts, they seem to come without them even thinking them. Well these do have an explanation and these worrying, disturbing thoughts really are just an off-shoot of anxiety Click anywhere in this sentence to continue reading...

Via:  HealthandGoodness.com

Being an Aware Mental Health Consumer

The Ever Elucidating Engaging Eloquent Carl Sagan on the Human Brain

 

On The Interesting Human Phenomenon of Magical Thinking

In anthropology, psychology, and cognitive science, magical thinking is nonscientific causal reasoning that often includes such ideas as the ability of the mind to affect the physical world (see the philosophical problem of mental causation), and correlation mistaken for causation. Associative thinking may be brought into play, as well as the power of magical symbols, metaphor and metonym, and synchronicity. Since, in both theory and practice, magic does not conform to Western and modern canons of causality it is therefore appropriate to ask if it is rational to practice or believe in magic. For most theorists these questions turn on the matter of the practitioner’s thought processes, intentions, and the efficacy of their practice. Click anywhere in this sentence to continue reading via Wikipedia

• 1 Associative thinking
• 2 Other forms of magical thinking
• 3 Symbolic approach to magic
• 4 Psychological functions of magic
• 5 Phenomenological approach
• 6 Idiomatic difference
• 7 Substantive difference
• 8 References
• 9 Further reading
• 10 External links