Urstadt

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Urstadt last won the day on October 18 2015

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  1. Thank you, everyone, for your replies. I have taken note (literally) of them. This is something I have been contemplating for some time now. It seems to me that the more I know, the greater my responsibility to be silent. This connects well with zil's comment about active silence being a virtue. Also, I really liked Traveler's comment about people who refuse to accept truth: "Correct a wise person and they will thank you for it; correct a fool and they will hate you for it." "When the truth walks away, everybody stays." It just isn't worth it: "The lion does not lose sleep over the opinion of sheep." Sometimes, it is so difficult to watch others, or large groups of people, proceed with their lives for days/weeks on end at a time while knowing that the entire ideology underpinning their way of life/career philosophy is so completely impoverished, ill-informed, or just downright wrong.
  2. Large context: church, meetings, shooting the bull in social circles, work, bowling with friends, social gatherings on Sunday. We could also add: "What are great reasons to be silent?"
  3. I apologize for the repeat posts. Each time that I click the submit button I didn't get any feedback or anything from the page or the button itself. So I just assumed my browser was glitching.
  4. I was wondering what all y'all's thoughts are on this: why are people silent significantly more often than not? To be clear, I am not asking about why the average person chooses to be silent from time to time. I am asking your thoughts about why people are silent the vast majority of the time. Thank you.
  5. My wife, a recent convert to the church, and I were sealed today to each other and to our 4-month old son. She was still a recent convert when we were married in 2013, so after prayerful consideration, we decided on a civil wedding. 22 months later now, the eternal marriage is complete. I love the gospel so much. The beauty and truthfulness of the gospel serves as protection to us in such a polarized world. I am grateful for the guidance and protection the gospel and Priesthood authority provides us, both temporally and eternally. I just wanted to share something positive and testimonial on here. Thank you for the opportunity to share it.
  6. Can I please get a mod to delete my duplicate post. My sincere apologies and gratitude for you help.
  7. My bad. I didn't mean to imply that it was a psychiatric condition: it's not. Individualism is a cultural value, one that greatly informs all human behavior, motivation, and responses. Psychiatry wouldn't even be interested in looking at individualism because it is only concerned with the biology of the brain as it pertains to mental health. However, as counselors, we need to be aware of what informs human behavior and motivation so we can dialogue with our clients about it. Thank you for checking in about that. I am sure you weren't the only one who had a similar impression. I think you have some valid points here. I even agree with you regarding the moderate-to-extreme half of the spectrum, which is what you are likely referring to in your post above. To be sure, though, there is a milder end of the spectrum for every disorder and so it would stand to reason that there is one for Hikikomori. My understanding is that the milder end would include Japanese individuals who are still quite functional but attitudinally cut off from the collective values of their culture. In other words, they put there own interests above those of the community: the utter definition of individualism. But, no one is saying it's the only cause, or the definitive cause. In mental health, almost all phenomenon we observe has more than one cause. Typically, it's a catalyst. Individualistic values permeating Japanese culture co-concurrently with the rise of Hikikomori is curious, though. I don't know that I agree with you that it's an overstatement, but I do agree that we don't know enough to definitively say one way or another. But, now that I've said this, I would be interested in any additional thoughts you have. Thank you, for your comment. I had feared no one would respond, which would've been a bummer for me because I find these philosophical issues intriguing and curious to discuss. That's the entire problem with the Trauma Informed Care movement! EMDR, TF-CBT, Trauma-based counseling all promote an inner child that has been victimized and then we wonder why we see so many less-mature adults with 1,001 and excuses for why they can't fulfill their responsibilities. To answer your initial question: Originally, I said yes, but after more thought I am revising it to: more than likely. The affective neurosciences are discovering that emotions are a form of proto-cognition. In other words, emotions are stimulated in the brain 250-500 miliseconds after a stimulus, with cognition following at about 500-700 miliseconds post-stimulus. This means that the emotion is coming before the thought and is a form of "affective awareness." It is from this awareness that our thoughts attempt to make sense of what we are feeling in effort to understand what we are experiencing. My edits: I re-worded a couple sentences in my responses to reflect further consideration.
  8. I am coming pretty late to this thread so if this has been said already, I apologize. But I did want to throw in my bid. Sociologists, psychologists, and philosophers have been tracking the increasing phenomenon known as individualism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individualism To be sure, it's "exaggerated," "liberal," and "self-contained" individualism that are causing all these problems. Japan has actually added a "mental health" disorder to their list known as Hikikomori (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikikomori). Psychology researchers, such as Jerome Kagan*, have traced one possible cause of this back to Western values of individualism pervading Japan's collectivistic culture. As an aside, Japanese scholars attribute, in part, break down of the family unit to this "disorder" as well. *Kagan, J. (2007). What is emotion? History, measures, and meanings. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. p. 207
  9. Excellent! Thank you so much. This is the one I will use. I am paraphrasing several paragraphs from the book On Truth by Harry G. Frankfurt. So, that's why I am asking. But, it also means that there is no preceding or succeeding sentence. I agree. That's why I was a little suprised that this scholar from Princeton referred to our society as a democracy instead of a Constitutional Republic. I think it's because our society is democratic even though our government is a republic. But, I can't confirm that: my scope of practice in clinical mental health counseling, not political science.
  10. Which is the right way to state the following sentence: or, ? Also, are there any grammar experts in here who can explain why one is correct and the other isn't? Thank you, everybody!
  11. The World Health Organization The Cochran Collaboration Recognition of Psychotherapy Effectiveness by the American Psychological Association. Chambless, D. L. & Ollendick, T. H. (2001). Empirically supported psychological interventions: Controversies and evidence. Annual Review of Psychology, 52, 685-716. Seligman, M. E. P., Steen, T. A., Park, N., & Peterson, C. (2005). Positive psychology progress: Empirical validation of interventions. American Psychologist, 60(5), 410-421. Baardseth, T. P., Goldberg, S. B., Pace, B. T., Wislocki, A. P., Frost, N. D., et. al. (2013). Cognitive-behavioral therapy versus other therapies: Redux. Clinical Psychology Review, 33, 395-405. Shedler, J. (2010). The efficacy of psychodynamic psychotherapy. American Psychologist, 65(2), 98-109. Glenn, C. R., Franklin, J. C., & Nock, M. K. (2014). Evidence-based psychosocial treatments for self-injurious thoughts and behaviors in youth. Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, 0(0), 1-29. Weston, D., Novotny, C.M., & Thompson-Brenner, H. (2004). The empirical status of empirically supported psychotherapies: Assumptions, finding, and reporting in controlled clinical trials. Psychological Bulletin, 130(4), 631-663. James, A. C., Winmill, L., Anderson, C., Alfoadari, K. (2011). A preliminary study of an extension of a community dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT) programme to adolescents in the looked after care system. Child & Adolescent Mental Health, 16(1), 9-13: 10.1111/j.1475-3588.2010.00571.x Gross, J. J. (Ed.). (2014). Handbook of emotional regulation (2nd Ed). New York: The Guilford Press. Yeah, they do suggest that as a possibility. But, it really is that clients are losing faith in it, as the authors of the article also suggests. CBT is just better as a secondary theory, not a primary one.
  12. Eovyn, There is other research proving therapeutic interventions for anxiety and depression: dialectical behavioral therapy, psychodynamic psychotherapy, transference-based psychotherapy, positive psychotherapy, rational-emotive behavioral therapy, solution-focused therapy. Over 85% of practicing clinicians are eclectic anyway (sadly). Regarding CBT for depression: an article* was posted this year about how the effect of CBT is failing, and has been steadily since 1978. It only has a success rate of about 25-38% (depending on which meta-analysis you read). So, look at it as an option to see if you're drawn to it, but it's not the only game in town and you may find something else that works better for you. But, for marital family, you will want to consider Structured Family Therapy, Imago Therapy (my favorite of these types), Adlerian therapy, Object Relations Therapy- basically the therapies designed for marital and family therapy. And how long it takes will actually depend on you (or whoever you're asking for), and what it is you're (or they're) going through. Any therapist with any kind of worthwhile experience will tell you, and a vast majority of literature from multiple disciplines supports this, that true change takes time and is very painful in the beginning. So be ready for that but don't get discouraged; it's part of the process. Let me know if I can help any other way. *Johnsen, T. J., & Friborg, O. (2015, May 11). The Effects of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy as an Anti-Depressive Treatment is Falling: A Meta-Analysis. Psychological Bulletin. DOI: 10.1037/bul0000015
  13. Metal for me: alternative metal, nu metal, melodic metal, metalcore, and industrial metal. But I also really like post-grunge.
  14. Urstadt

    ADD

    That's exactly why I went with a therapy, other than the mainstream popular ones, that can actually speak to the agency and accountability of the individual. If you look at the popular ones, Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT), Trauma Informed Care (TIC), Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), Rational-Emotive Behavioral Therapy (REBT), and eclecticism, everything is deterministic. Meaning, the individual is not accountable for their actions: in DBT, their emotions made them do it; in CBT, their thoughts made them do it; in REBT, their beliefs made them do it; in EMDR and TIC, their trauma history made them do it. Those therapies are about finding the "causal relation" or "causal mechanism" that took away their agency and made them do it. It's all a load of crap and I refuse to practice any of those therapies. A really good book about this is http://www.amazon.com/Whats-Behind-Research-Discovering-Assumptions/dp/0803958633/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1438579657&sr=1-1&keywords=what%27s+behind+the+research It's written by two authors who have served on the editorial board for The Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology. The first author has served as a president within the APA and currently teaches at BYU with a private practice. These two know what they're talking about.
  15. A comrade on a popular Linux forum was able to explain to me, canonically and intellectually, how this problem truly works out. He said: "It's a question of operator precedence so it really boils down to the order of the multiplication and division. The 'raise to the power of 2' is done first and the 'plus 4' is done last. So there's no question about those. That means the question really is what '36 / 2 * 3' evaluates to. And since multiplication and division are the same priority, languages are going to go left to right. Meaning the division is first." He added, "It is helpful to treat division as multiplication by the reciprocal (multiplicative inverse) and subtraction as addition of the opposite (additive inverse). Which would turn the math in question to, '36 * (1/2) * 3 -OR- 36 * 0.5 * 3.' This can now easily be worked out to 58." ----> 36 * 0.5 * 3 + 4 = 58 (Moving left to right)