 Fall 2013 |
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 Our Bodies, Not Ourselves?
Dan Livney, Psy.D.
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The popular book on women's reproductive health, Our Bodies, Ourselves, was published quietly in 1971, and quickly became a best seller, claiming no fewer than 9 domestic and 26 foreign editions. The book sought to encourage women to get in touch with the sexual and reproductive parts of themselves; parts that in that era, and perhaps still now, are, as the book points out, often more unfamiliar to women than other parts of themselves.
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 Surprising Secrets to a Long and Healthy Life
Anne T. Murphy, Ph.D.
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Do you wish to know how best to avoid disease and enjoy a long and healthy life? While genetic predispositions and random events are out of our control, choices about our behavior that affect health and longevity are very much under our influence. Good nutrition, regular exercise, maintaining social connections, and managing stress effectively are some of the top practices associated with aging well.
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 Eight Tips for Transitioning Back To School
David. J. Palmiter, Jr., Ph.D., ABPP
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Well, it's that time of the parenting year when many of us start overseeing the transition back to school. Whether this is a joyful time for you or a time of ambivalence, here are eight tips to help.
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 Psychology for Everyone
Nicole P. Quinlan, Ph.D.
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At the Pennsylvania Psychological Association Convention in June, PPA members presented free workshops to the public on a variety of topics. In these "Psychology for Everyone" workshops, psychologists provided information and tips and answered audience questions. Some of these ideas and tips are summarized here:
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Written by PPA psychologists for everyone interested in how psychology impacts their everyday life.
Topics include issues related to business, parenting, education, mental health treatments, forensic information, addictions, prison concerns, legislative events, and much more! Quick Links:
Psychologically Healthy Workplace
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Welcome to the Fall issue
of our e-Newsletter.
"Spring passes and one remembers one's innocence
Summer passes and one remembers one's exuberance
Autumn passes and one remembers one's reverence
Winter passes and one remembers one's perseverance."
-Yoko Ono, Season of Glass
We hope this finds you warmed by the summer sun and ready for the cooler days of autumn. If you enjoy these wonderful articles, please share them with others and encourage those around you to click on the link to subscribe.
Christina Carson-Sacco, Psy.D.
Licensed Psychologist
 Creative Director The Pennsylvania Psychological Association's purpose is to advance psychology in Pennsylvania as a means of promoting human welfare, and to educate, update and inform the public and our membership on current psychological theory and ethical practice through training activities and public policy initiatives.
Pennsylvania Psychological Association
416 Forster St.
Harrisburg, PA 17102
Phone: 717-232-3817
Fax: 717-232-7294
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Our Bodies, Not Ourselves? Continued  The important message of this book came to my mind recently because it seems to raise some interesting questions about our relationships to our bodies. When I say "our," I speak of both men and women. Let me start with the possibly odd-sounding suggestion that our bodies are not ourselves. True, legally speaking, if you commit a crime they will take a mug shot of you. That photo is intended to identify you, the person who committed the crime, and so from a legal standpoint we and our bodies are one. On the other hand, if you think about the point of the book: that we can go through life not knowing about our own basic feelings and biologies, then perhaps we can also say that "we" - let's for the sake of simplicity call this entity our minds - our minds are in a constant state of relationship with our bodies. We learn about bodies, we discover them, we enjoy them when they give us pleasure, and we lament them when they give us pain. It is also true that our minds are in a special kind of relationship with our bodies, different the kind of relationship we have with other people - precisely because our bodies are always there (even here there are exceptions, sleep being one). But still, just because our minds and our bodies are not one and the same, it is also possible for us to have quite complicated relationships with them. Let me give you some examples of what I mean. When our bodies give us pain, we actually have a range of emotions and options with which we can react. We can tense up, angry that the pain is there. This often leads to more tension and therefore more pain. Or we can relax and accept, and the pain becomes more tolerable. We can make decisions about the pain: how do we know to enjoy the pain of a strenuous workout, but not the pain of a toothache? It turns out these are not simple decisions. For some people the idea of pain from a workout can be just as painful as a toothache and may be part of why it is so hard for many of us to start an exercise routine. That is also an example of our mind making a decision or a judgment about the feelings our bodies are giving us.
Now what happens when our bodies are sick? Let's use for our example just an everyday cold. For some people that can be quite stressful, others take it in stride. What's the difference? Maybe just in personality type, but maybe also in the difference between someone who has sick days they can enjoy (and the kind of job where taking them is minimally intrusive), and someone else, for whom staying at home means lost wages and complicated child care arrangements. In both cases what we often find is that the ways our bodies react to illness (or pain) is in part based on all of these thoughts and feelings which our minds have about what is going on with our bodies. Depending on what we think, the pain in our body can feel worse; the illness can feel more oppressive.
Most importantly, this means that our way to health, or at least improvement, is also affected by the thoughts and feelings our minds produce about the experiences of our bodies. The same kinds of injuries or illness conditions in two different people - or even in the same person under different circumstances, can have wildly different outcomes. One researcher found that back surgery done to relieve chronic lower back pain is predominantly unsuccessful for people with a history of abuse and trauma in their lives; while the exact same type of surgery is far more likely to eliminate pain in people without such a history1.
Next time you are sick, or under stress, or even when you're not, take heed of the messages your mind is having about your body. As it turns out, an important part of taking care of our bodies involves getting to know our minds, and most importantly, nourishing the relationship between them.
Dr. Dan Livney is a clinical psychologist in private practice with offices in Chestnut Hill and Center City. He works with individuals and with couples, and has a special interest in working with illness, depression, anxiety and chronic pain conditions. He can be reached at dan.livney@gmail.com or (484) 534-8830, or find out more about him at www.danlivney.com.
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Surprising Secrets to a Long and Healthy Life. Continued
Most of the studies on aging well look at what people report at a given point in time. For example, research has shown that people who report maintaining social connections in later life have better outcomes than people who report becoming isolated. Another way to study aging is to look at the same set of people over time. One such study revealed some surprising findings for us about aging longevity and health.
In 1921 Dr. Lewis Terman began studying about 1,500 children. Building upon his work, Dr. Howard Friedman and Dr. Leslie Martin continued to follow these same individuals in a study later called the Longevity Project. While this large group was not diverse in every way, they went on to experience a wide variety of outcomes in their lives. Friedman and Martin were able to compare people who enjoyed long and healthy lives with people who struggled with disease, and in some cases premature death.
One surprising finding was seen in the area of work and career. We tend to assume that working hard and devoting long hours to work is bad for us, leading to higher levels of stress and disease. While this may be true for those who are trapped in dead end jobs with no way out, it does not appear to be true for individuals who are able to pursue careers of interest. Friedman and Martin found that hard-working, successful, and accomplished people lived the longest. For individuals in the Longevity Project, the drive to succeed in one's career actually carried health benefits.
We also tend to assume a carefree and relaxed approach to life will lead to better health. Another surprising finding in the Longevity Project is that prudent and persistent people tend to thrive more than carefree individuals. Friedman and Martin explained that conscientious people may tend to engage in practices that protect their health, avoid risky and reckless behavior, and make good choices in their family and work lives, such as the selection of a good marital partner.
Perhaps the most important secret to a long and healthy life suggested by this landmark study is that you are more likely to engage in health promoting behaviors when you are highly motivated to do so. Simply following recommendations about what to eat and how much to exercise to do weekly may not work as well as identifying what you love and developing healthy practices based on your own interests.
The good news to take away from the Longevity Project is that you don't need to run on the treadmill if you can't stand running. Rather, finding exercise and healthy foods that you like, and keeping social connections with others you enjoy will more likely set you on a course for a long and healthy life.
For further reading on this topic, please find The Longevity Project: Surprising Discoveries for Health and Long Life from the Landmark Eight-Decade Study by Howard S. Friedman, Ph.D., and Leslie R. Martin, Ph.D. (published in 2011).
Anne T. Murphy, Ph.D., is a licensed psychologist in Washington County, PA. She specializes in divorce and co-parenting counseling, neurodevelopmental disabilities, and psychological services to older adults. Her website is www.annemurphyphd.com.
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Eight Tips for Transitioning Back To School. Continued
Tip #1: Start transitioning your child's sleep routine to approximate the school day. Many kids develop a vampire sleep schedule during the summer, especially teenagers. Getting your kid onto a sleep schedule that will approximate the school year, a week or two in advance, will ease everyone's transition. (For guidelines on how much sleep your child needs, click here.)
Tip #2:
Set as a goal an hour a day of sweating and breathing hard for your progeny. It can be less stressful to begin this widely recommended behavior now than once the craziness of the school year kicks in. (Hint: it's a lot easier to establish routine physical activity if it's fun and part of scheduled and structured commitments.)
Tip #3: I bet you see this next one coming: establish a balanced diet to give your child a wonderful gift. It is very easy to get free online help. (As a child psychologist, I wonder how many mental health problems in youth would go away if all kids got enough sleep, got a reasonable amount of physical activity, and ate a balanced diet.)
Tip #4:
Plan a fun activity for the family a week or two into the school year. This gives everyone something to look forward to, which can ease the transition back to school.
Tip #5: If your child has a history of struggles with his or her academics, establish a minimum amount of time to be spent on homework each school night. An evidence-based guideline is 10 minutes per grade (e.g., a 5th grader would spend 50 minutes). If the amount of time your child needs to spend on homework each night far exceeds this 10-minute guideline, I would initiate a discussion with the teacher(s) or a good child psychologist regarding what might be going on.
Tip #6:
Discuss with your child the amount of extracurricular activities that you find to be adaptive. Having no extracurricular involvements can hamper opportunities for advancing important developmental outcomes. However, too much extracurricular activity can compromise academics or wellness. As is the case across many parenting topics, the middle ground is usually in order.
Tip #7:
Avoid stressing your finances needlessly with back-to-school expenses. There can be a conscious or unconscious pressure to doll our kids up with expensive new clothes and bountiful office supplies when such isn't needed. If you have the money and inclination, go for it. But, I would try to avoid creating burdens on myself that will later tax my ability to parent with intention.
Tip #8:
Don't beat yourself up for unrealized summer dreams. In the spring many of us parents imagine spending the summer frolicking through fields of meaning and joy with our children. Of course, this never happens (i.e., another version of the Clark Griswold syndrome). Try instead to give yourself credit for your efforts and what went well.
Good luck, my parent colleagues!
David Palmiter, Ph.D., ABPP, is Past President of the Pennsylvania Psychological Association and Professor of Psychology at Marywood University. His parenting book, Working Parents, Thriving Families, focuses on practical strategies hectic parents can use to promote resilience in their children. His blog is at
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Psychology for Everyone. Continued
In the experienced-based workshop, "How to Take a Quick Mental 'Vacation" from Your Screen-Driven World," Dr. Dawn Moeller had participants consider the following question: "We're constantly distracted and stimulated, but are we happy?" Participants observed what happens when we stop feeding our minds screen-based junk food, and provide something nourishing instead, like actively listening to classical music, meditating, and engaging in some good old-fashioned communication. They rated their level of tension, happiness, hopefulness, and distraction before and after each exercise and developed a personal "take-home message" to apply what they learned to their everyday life. In "Speak Up!," Dr. Catherine S. Spayd discussed assertiveness. Being assertive is the skill of speaking up to get your needs met, without intentionally offending others. It is more beneficial than other communication styles including being passive, aggressive or passive-aggressive. Assertive communication helps people improve self-esteem, guards against or decreases depression, and improves positive relationships with significant others. Assertive strategies include saying "no" to unreasonable requests, using an "I message" to convey how you feel about others' specific behaviors and describing alternate specific behaviors you would like them to demonstrate, and planning ahead to communicate your concerns, express your requests, and reinforce others' attempts to comply. (www.DrSpayd.com)
In the"Courage to Be Imperfect," Dr. Rachel Daltry and Dr. Kristin Mehr guided participants in discussing their experiences with perfectionism. They explored the benefits and costs of perfectionism - and how to start finding a better balance and healthy way to deal with perfectionism. Perfectionism is a vicious cycle in that setting unrealistic goals can lead to disappointment and negative feelings about oneself, which we try to manage by setting further unrealistic goals. Remedies to address and reduce perfectionism include kindness, compassion, forgiveness, acceptance, and humility toward others as well as oneself.
Stress manifests in the body in physical, emotional, and behavioral ways. Stress can lead to an increase in blood pressure, the release of adrenaline in a "fight or flight" response, sweating, dry mouth, shallow breathing, headaches, fatigue, depression, and irritability. In "Stress: Why Your Coping Efforts Don't Work (and What Will)," Dr. Diane Menango, Kathleen Devine, and Kendal Beck reviewed that while we cannot avoid everything that is stressful, we can find healthy coping techniques to manage our stress. Diaphragmatic breathing is a basic and effective way to reduce stress by increasing oxygen. Other simple tactics include: positive self-talk, making time for yourself every day, exercising, living in the moment, and laughing.
Dr. Michelle Herrigel and Dr. Patricia Fox discussed a topic of increasing importance to families in
"Cyberbullying 101: What Every Parent Should Know." Participants learned to recognize behaviors that may indicate a child is a victim of cyberbullying. These include using alcohol or drugs, skipping school, being bullied in-person, worsening grades, increased report of illness or pains, and low-self-esteem. Participants also learned tips to prevent cyberbullying including being aware of what their children are doing online, asking for passwords, "friending" or "following" teens online, encouraging kids to talk, and not taking away technology completely. Parents were also encouraged to establish rules about technology, including appropriate use, helping children understand the impact of what they post, reminding them to keep passwords safe, and reviewing their school's policy about online behavior.
In "Celebrate Your Body - A 'How To' for Today's Society" participants learned that many of the images we see in media are computer-manipulated and are not real images of how real people look. They also learned strategies to help "celebrate" their real bodies including appreciating all your body can do and/or keeping a top 10 list of what you like about yourself. Dr. Fauve Young-Morrison and Gemma Boyd led participants in a mindfulness eating exercise to demonstrate how to incorporate mindfulness strategies into everyday experiences with food. Mindful eating can include taking a deep breath before eating, or truly focusing on the taste sensations you have with each bite.
While the media and press portray individuals diagnosed with mental illness as dangerous members to today's society, statistics show that mental illness is not a significant factor in predicting violence. In the workshop,
"Mental Health & Violence," Dr. Michael Crabtree and Mr. Jeff Stange reviewed these facts and discussed that individuals with mental illness are generally the victims of violence, not the perpetrators. Instead, we find that distressful situations are the best predictors towards finding individuals that are likely to engage in violent behavior. In order to help prevent these acts from occurring, the best thing we can do is speak up when we see someone in distress and offer them help.
In "Designer Drugs: More Dangerous than Marijuana," Dr. Robert Chupella and Amanda Sellers discussed the increase in designer drug use among our nation's youth. Eleven percent of high school seniors report that they have abused synthetic marijuana in the past year. In addition, in 2011, over 6,000 calls were made to poison control centers regarding the abuse of "bath salts," a substance similar to cocaine. These substances are inexpensive and quite easy to obtain. They cause more intense "highs" than "traditional" drugs, but are much more addictive and dangerous, with side effects including: aggressive behaviors, hallucinations, delusions, permanent brain damage, heart attacks, stroke, and sudden death.
Nicole Quinlan, Ph.D., is a psychologist at Geisinger Medical Center in Danville, PA. She is also the chair of the Public Education Committee.
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Thank you again to these PPA members for sharing their expertise with our public audience
and again with us in this e-Newsletter!
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Copyright © 2013. All Rights Reserved.
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