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A major misconception involving addiction is the idea that certain substances are, all by themselves, addicting. That a drug can captivate an unwary victim is an idea popularized in the 1936 film Reefer Madness. In that movie, it took just a few puffs of marijuana to turn a gentleman into a slobbering dope fiend; his health shattered; his life ruined. While such heavy-handed propaganda might be met with less credulity today, the fact remains that most Americans still believe the basic message – Just Say No or you’ll wind up hooked. What makes this truly odd is that, according to numerous national surveys, most Americans have tried marijuana and didn’t become dope fiends. Indeed, several years ago, a group of US congressmen attempted to come forward, admit their prior pot use and put an end to a draconian system that confiscates property and puts people in prison for years. But the electorate clearly wasn’t ready for any such reappraisal of the drug laws and the movement quickly died. But how is it, you ask, that all those congressmen that were candid about their drug use didn’t get hooked Reefer Madness style? The reason is because addiction depends, first and foremost, upon having an addictive personality. Such people, estimated at perhaps 10 of the population, simply don’t know when to stop. Do you enjoy a glass or two of wine with dinner? If so, why not have ten or twenty? Did you ever buy a lottery ticket on your birthday? If so, why not sell your house and buy 100,000? How about going to church on Sunday? Does it make you feel good? If so, why not go every day twice a day? The point here is simple: Too much of a good thing can be bad. And yet people with addictive personalities will get hooked on alcohol and gambling and religion. Believe it or not, being addicted is nothing more than an out-of-control habit. The difference between that 10 and everyone else is the difference between using and abusing. During the Vietnam War, drug use was endemic among troops serving in Southeast Asia. And yet, returning veterans suffered addiction rates that were no higher than those found in the general population. It would be difficult to think of a more perfectly designed experiment to show, once and for all, that dependence is mostly a matter of personality. And yet, when it comes to winning hearts and minds, the War in Vietnam was as nothing when compared to the War on Drugs. Although this second battle has completely failed in reducing illegal drug use, it has succeeded brilliantly in convincing Americans that they need to be saved from themselves. It’s a belief that was sold so well that hardly anyone noticed that Drug Czar Bill Bennett was an addictive personality hooked on both food and gambling. Look At It This Way The problem with the War on Drugs is that it creates far more harm than it eliminates. If drugs can’t be kept out of prisons, how can you possibly keep them out of a mostly free society? The “War” won’t go away because by now it’s become a major industry. It creates jobs on one side of the law and provides the opportunity for huge financial rewards on the other. But, like Prohibition before, making a law that can’t be enforced does little more than erode the public’s respect for the law. When alcohol was illegal, the upper classes had theirs imported while the common folk drank it from bathtubs. No one so inclined went without. And nothing has changed. Bush turned (supposedly) from drugs and alcohol to religion, thus substituting one addiction for another. Clinton told us, with a straight face, that he never inhaled. So here’s a simple question: Would either of these gentlemen be better off today if they had been sentenced to long prison terms? If so, why not provide them with a belated opportunity to serve time? If not, then why should the kid down the street be put away for doing the same thing? Asking such simple questions should make it plain to anyone with any common sense that the truth regarding drugs and addiction is concealed behind so many layers of ignorance and emotion, deception and special interests that it will remain a major problem for a long time to come.      

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The Addictive Personality

When asked “What do most people do on a date?” Martin (age 10) replied: “On the first date, they just tell each other lies, and that usually gets them interested enough to go for a second date.” I doubt that Martin realized just how accurate he was. There is more deception in dating than in any other social context in our culture. So the obvious question would have to be something like this: “If deception runs rampant when I am in the dating scene, how can I know whether I am dating a jerk? How can I tell whether this is someone who is going to tilt the nice-to-nasty ratio so that I end up with more nasty than I had bargained for?” I would like to offer the following litmus test. [By the way, next week I will offer a litmus test for discerning a jerkett.] One day in class a young woman remarked: “I just can’t understand why men don’t want to get intimate — why won’t you get close?” To this, a man in the back of the room piped up (obviously without thinking a whole lot before speaking): “We do too want to get close, but you women just won’t put out.” For a moment, I thought a fight was going to break out right there on the spot, but in the end, we had a lively, engaging, and fruitful discussion. The bottom line is this: Men are inclined to use intimacy to get sex. The problem is not that we men don’t know how to be intimate — in other words, how to show fondness and affectionate, how to be warm and romantic, how to touch and hug, how to listen to what is going on in your life. We know how — we have done it many times in the past and we will do it many more times in the future. The problem is that we typically only do these things when there is a pay-off. We were talking about this phenomenon one day in a different class and a female student had a flash of insight as she suddenly blurted out: “Just last week, my partner and I were having this great conversation and in the middle of it, he said, ‘Have we talked enough yet?’ I didn’t get it at the time, but now I know just what he was saying!” She was angry. (This couple is no longer together.) So here is the litmus test. Is he capable of touch that is not a part of foreplay? Is he capable of simply holding you without it leading to a pay-off for him? Does he express his affection for you even when he doesn’t have his sights set on getting you into bed? Does he spend time listening to you / talking with you even when sex is not going to be an outcome? This gets somewhat complicated because of the fact that women are inclined to use sex to get intimacy. So we man have grown rather accustomed to this tit-for-tat arrangement. But if you want to know whether he is a prince or whether he is a toad hidden behind a prince’s mask, see if he is capable of intimacy — is he capable of warmth, fondness, touch, affection, romance, sincere give-and-take conversation — without sex being an expected part of the package? If he is, then there is a pretty good chance that the nice-to-nasty ratio will not unexpectantly be flipped over, adding to the scar tissue on your heart.       Using Intimacy To Get Sex Custom Teaser When asked “What do most people do on a date?” Martin (age 10) replied: “On the first date, they just tell each other lies, and that usually gets them interested enough to go for a second date.” Teaser Image SexIntimacy.jpg Love Bytes Editors Pick:  0Editors Pick

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Using Initmacy To Get Sex

Cognitive therapy is a generic term that refers to diverse cognitive approaches to modifying human experiences and activities. This critique focuses on cognitive therapy that focuses on altering negative self concepts. This approach is based on the theories developed by A. Beck and A. Ellis. The self-focused cognitive approach assumes that it is irrational or negative cognitive beliefs about the self, rather than negative activating experiences, that lead to negative emotional states (e.g., depression or anxiety) and dysfunctional behavior. The behavior includes a sense of defeat and the withdrawal of investment in people and in conventional goals, as well as an intensified sense of vulnerability. The purpose of cognitive therapy is to restructure the client’s irrational/negative beliefs into rational or positive ones. Although the self-focused cognitive therapy has been shown to be superior to medication treatment for the symptoms of depression and anxiety, it also suffers at least the following weaknesses: First, this model appears to confuse the symptoms (i.e., negative self concepts) of depression with its causes. Examples of the negative cognition include low self-esteem, self-blame and self-criticism, negative predictions, unpleasant memories, erroneous interpretations of experiences, all-or-nothing thinking (dichotomous thinking), jumping to conclusions, selective abstraction, overgeneralization or exaggeration of negative experiences, the presence of a negative cognitive shift (i.e., positive information relevant to the individual is filtered or blocked out, whereas negative self-relevant information is readily admitted). In short, for those individuals, negative cognitions permeate internal conversations about self-evaluation, attributions, expectancies, inferences and recall. Are they the cognitive causes or they are the symptoms? Second, this cognitive therapy uses such terminology as negative self-concepts, irrational belief about the self, dysfunctional self-concept, and biased cognitions about the self, as if they are synonymous and interchangeable. In fact, they have diverse meanings. Research has shown that the valence of evaluations (e.g., being positive or negative) is independent and separate from the accuracy of evaluations. In many cases, clients’ appraisals and reports of their negative or distressful experiences are quite rational, realistic, and accurate. For example, their experiences of sexual or physical abuse at the hands of another or the tragedies of their loved ones have left enormous scars in their life. In such circumstances, cognitive-restructuring exercises, with their emphasis on reframing reality and not on changing it, do not deal with the true problem. Third, research has shown that positive self-evaluations may be dysfunctional and maladaptive. It is the positive, rather than the negative self-assessment that is characterized by inaccuracy and bias in the fields of health, education and the workplace. Fourth, the self-focused cognitive model puts a strong emphasis on examining the association between negative thoughts and mental dysfunction, but it has not answered the question of why individuals choose to focus on their negative attributes when the positive evaluation of the self is more accurate. Neither the cognitive model adequately reconciles the two types of finding: (1) self-blame bias and (2) self-serving bias. Research has shown that people have the motivation to see the self positively and avoid a negative self-concept, exhibiting a self-serving bias (including blaming failures on the situation while taking credit for success).   Four Drawbacks of Cognitive Therapy Teaser Image cogntive therapy.jpg The Justice and Responsibility League

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Four Drawbacks of Cognitive Therapy

We have a burning instinct for life and yet we know, ultimately, that we will die. We fear the one thing we cannot escape. The question ‘why live?’ has preoccupied thinkers from the alpha to the omega of human history, but only relatively recently have we considered the question of ‘how’ – how do we live with this fear, this knowledge of our own demise? We recognise love as our companion and protector and we now think that it may even shield us from death itself, at least while we’re alive. ‘Terror management theory’ sounds oddly militaristic to the modern ear, but it was never intended to makes us think of politics. It was developed by psychologist Sheldon Solomon and his colleagues to help explain how we live with existential angst. The theory suggests we have various ways of keeping the fear of death out of our conscious mind, and of understanding what makes our life meaningful. Traditionally, researchers have focused on the effect of a social element – how we feel we fit in to our culture’s ideas about what makes a meaningful life, and a personal element – how we feel about ourselves, but more recently psychologists have been focusing on love as one of the most important ways of managing our existential fears. Love beyond life is a constant poetic theme, and yet these are not simply poetic theories, they have been drawn from empirical research. Never afraid to strip the poetry from the profound, cognitive scientists have labelled their most important existential paradigm ‘mortality salience’. It involves reminding people of death – an experimental memento mori – and numerous studies have found that simply focusing people on their time-limited lives changes how they think and behave. One of the most reliable effects, is that being reminded of death makes us more socially minded – more likely to want to be physically close to others, more likely to want to have children , but also more likely to support the norms and stereotypes of your own social group. A group of Israeli psychologists were inspired to wonder whether love might protect us against our fear of death, and whether our anxieties motivate us to seek out love. In an ingenious 2002 study , they found that reminding people of their demise increased their self-professed romantic commitment, that thinking about a committed relationship reduced the effects of morality salience on harsh social judgements, and that thinking about the end of a relationship increased thoughts of death. A year later, they reviewed research on love and death and came to the conclusion that close relationships help us manage the anxiety of mortality, partly through the strength of the bond, but partly through the fact that romantic partnerships give us a symbolic way of transcending death – as families provide a way for our contribution to ‘live on’ after the final curtain. These studies are some of the first on what has been called ‘experimental existential psychology’ that seek to understand how we manage our lives in the face of the unknown. But the fact remains that we will die, and hopefully, we will love. Perhaps we have no profounder response. Link to ‘The existential function of close relationships: introducing death into the science of love’. Link to PubMed entry for same.

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Love and immortality

Stuck in the airport returning home from an emotionally exhausting day, tired and fighting an awful chest cold, my flight delayed to the wee hours of the morning, I stretched out on the seats in the waiting area with Randy Pausch’s book, "The Last Lecture." His lecture, his life, has some important messages regarding our goal pursuit. I had seen Randy’s lecture on YouTube , but not read the book. By the time I finished the book on the plane, I was in tears of course. I too am the father of very young children, and I’m older than Randy. His story touched on some of my deepest fears of loss. His story clearly speaks of time as a limited resource, something that 20-somethings rarely grasp, but by middle-age becomes painfully obvious to many people. As Randy puts it, "Time is all you have. And you may find one day that you have less than you think" (p. 111). Randy, a self-admitted intensely focused person, understood the importance of time management long before his terminal cancer diagnosis. It is, as he called it, "one of my most appropriate fixations" (p. 108). He also was good at it, so he offered up advice from his experience that is worth sharing on this "Don’t Delay" blog. I have quoted each of his main tips below with an explanatory comment or example in parentheses after each, as necessary. Time must be explicitly managed, like money. You can always change your plan, but only if you have one. (Make manageable, concrete task lists and take one step after another.) Ask yourself: Are you spending your time on the right things? (Make sure your to-do-list tasks, your goals, are really worth pursuing.) Develop a good filing system. (Organization saves time in the long run.) Rethink the telephone. (Don’t waste time on "hold" – be prepared to do other things as you wait.) Delegate. (Many hands make light work, and everyone needs autonomy.) Take time out. (Everyone needs a break, and not all delay is procrastination.) Randy concludes his advice by writing, "Some of my time management tips are dead-on serious and some are a bit tongue-in-cheek. But I believe all of them are worth considering" (p. 111). So do I, particularly where he begins, "time must be explicitly managed" and where he ends, "Time is all you have. And you may find one day that you have less than you think." Are you spending your time on the right things? Procrastination is the thief of time.   © 2009 Psychology Today. This RSS Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact blogs@psychologytoday.com so we can take legal action immediately.

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The last lecture: Wisdom about time management

You’re deadlocked. He thinks it’s your problem; you think it’s his. You’ve been going over what happened, how it started, and who started it. But you aren’t budging. So forget the past. Move on to right now. Right now you’re upset. But then, he says he is too. You feel really put out; but then, he claims he does too. Well, OK, forget right now. The point is to figure out what to do about it. You tell him that with a small gesture he could solve it. He tells you it would be far easier for you to solve it. You say he’s stubborn. He says you are. Past, present, future-you’ve covered it all, and you’re still nowhere. Is there anything left to talk about? Anything you haven’t taken into consideration? There is. And it could be decisive, though it’s no wonder you haven’t talked about it. Call it your reserves. Imagine an indicator level on your self-esteem-your dignity meter, your egometer, your self-worth gauge. Everyone has one. The needle fluctuates through the day. Get an enthusiastic e-mail from someone you respect, and it goes up. Waste fifteen minutes looking for your lost keys, and it goes down. Take a tease to heart, and it goes down. Make ‘em laugh, and it goes up. Little things, big things. Over the day, but over the years too, the readings change. You may deny you’ve got one; you may ignore it; it may be operating completely in your unconscious; but something in you monitors it. And if your reserves get low, there’s a visceral warning, a sense that you can’t really take another hit to them. In a fight, the unspoken issue may be simply that one or both of you can’t, or won’t, take any more disappointment with yourself. No way. You can’t afford it. We act as though a debate is on the presenting issue and that issue alone, as though all we’re ever doing is looking for what’s right, what’s accurate, what’s honest. But we can’t be. Below the surface of all exchanges, there are potential threats to our dignity, some of which come at very bad times. There are costs to acknowledging that we’re all monitoring our dignity meters, but there are benefits to acknowledging this too. She’s irritated about some software program your company makes. She has finally gotten through to you in tech support and doesn’t mind letting you know that she’s frustrated. This software is making her feel like a chump, and that’s the last thing she needs right now. In a way, though, she’s lucky, because she can justify her frustration without ever admitting that it’s not just the software-it’s that her reserves are low too. She doesn’t think about her reserves or yours, but just blasts you. But you, this is your first day back at work following a week of mourning after the biggest trauma in your life. You’re fragile as can be. Sure, she’s annoyed about the software, but if she knew the state of your reserves she’d be much kinder. Self-esteem reserves aren’t the only ones. There are optimism reserves too. If you’ve been through a lot, you can’t really afford more dashed expectations, more terrible news, more stories with downer endings. Friends and I are going to see a movie together and are deciding which one. There’s one I’ve been wanting to see, but it’s a little gory. My friend is squeamish, and I tease her. Why is she such a wimp? Why isn’t she brave, like me? Well, actually she’s braver than me. If I knew what she has been through, I wouldn’t ask, and I sure wouldn’t tease. Ignoring her history and the reserves she’s left with, I look braver. Heck, I’ve had it so easy, I don’t even know that trauma can thoroughly satiate one’s appetite for downers. She suggests that we go see some Bollywood import. I scoff at Bollywood movies with their supersaccharine endings. How can people go for such hokey crap? I’m a sophisticate. I want to see movies that deliver the harsh truths. Yeah, well, if I dealt with harsh truths all day like much of Bollywood’s developing-world audiences, maybe I wouldn’t have as much of an unrequited appetite for harsh truths. I’d want an escape. As it is, ignoring our respective reserves, I escape into a sense that I’m the one brave enough to stand harsh truths. Religion too. I’m so over such pie-in-the-sky malarkey. God the merciful, happy endings-I’m way too realistic and tough to believe in that stuff, right? Those who buy into religion must be real wimps, so in need of comfort that they’ll allow themselves to be suckered into believing stories that make no sense. Again, this is true only if I compare myself to believers out of context. If my life were anything like the life many believers suffer through, I’d crave hope the way they do. Ignoring reserves, I’m tougher. Factoring in reserves, I’m weaker. Reserves are overlooked and yet are often decisive in the choices we make and the fights we fight. Why don’t we factor them in more? The short answer is that they’re very hard to factor in accurately. The long answer, in another article. © 2009 Psychology Today. This RSS Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact blogs@psychologytoday.com so we can take legal action immediately.

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Emotional Reserves: What lurks below that tip-of-the-iceberg coldness

One cannot fully assess the nature of depression without addressing the context (cultural, communal, familial) within which it occurs, any more than one could fully understand the growth of a bacterium without understanding the medium within which it grows. To focus the analogy even further, we might say that we cannot fully understand the growth of the phenomenon of depression, the rising incidence and prevalence, without understanding the medium within which this phenomenon is growing. That medium is the western culture, the community one lives in, the schools and groups one belongs to, and the family. Much has been written about the influence of marital status, marital satisfaction, early parental loss, and early developmental trauma on the vulnerability to depression. However, much less information has found its way into the mainstream psychosocial literature in regards to the influences of both the community and the larger western culture on the growing incidence of depression. What is this culture of depression? Families, communities, and farms have been broken apart as a result of the industrial revolution, economic swings, technology, and the pursuit of work. Two income families have become much more prevalent as personal income in the US became flat in 1973, and then has been declining since 1980. With both parents working, and grandparents in another city, most children are spending their critical attachment years in pre-school or a series of day care centers. Western culture, according to Richard Tarnas, author of: The Passion of the Western Mind & Cosmos and Psyche , has evolved over the last few millennia in such a manner that modern humankind is now alienated, disoriented, and unconscious. Despite the very significant advances afforded by the current world view, we are seeing the darker aspects of that world view come to the fore in the form of world wars, holocausts, the threat of nuclear annihilation, and now global warming and ecologic disequilibrium. Furthermore, the western world-view is that we live in an inanimate universe, with other life forms, which are essentially unconscious. We consider ourselves to be unique in the universe, and as a corollary to that, we are superior, and we are, by definition, alone. Additionally, we believe that science is the only valid way of knowing. In a neuroanatomical sense, we have over-privileged the functions of the prefrontal cortex and left hemisphere, over the rest of our brain. Logic rules, and instinct and tradition have become stepchildren. More and more, if we think about it, we grapple with what seems to be an inescapable conclusion: we live in an essentially meaningless, purely physical, random world, in which we are essentially alone, separate from others, separate from nature, and separate from (if we even believe in) a creator. We wonder if we may be nothing more than meaning-seeking specks of dust in an infinite, uncaring, and unconscious universe. We are here. The creator, if there is one, is out/up there. This then, is the world-view and the culture, within which depression (not to mention greed and corruption) has grown in incidence and prevalence. If world-views create worlds, as the leading psychotherapy of depression, cognitive therapy, asserts, then we must wonder what it is about the assumptions of the western world view that have created a new reality in which depression is rapidly becoming the second leading cause of disability in the world. Could the assumptions (outlined above) be mistaken, or harmful? Adapted from Depression: Advancing the Treatment Paradigm. © 2009 Psychology Today. This RSS Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact blogs@psychologytoday.com so we can take legal action immediately.

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The Cultural Context of Depression

Aside from being a psychologist in nursing homes, I also had the pleasure of being a caregiver to my own aging parents–as a consumer of the same services I provide, the personal meets the professional. I work both sides of the streets. My father spent the last years of his life in a nursing home descending into deeper and deeper dementia. It’s time for the quarterly care plan meeting at Dad’s nursing home. My father, who has a right to be there, is not there. He wouldn’t have a clue. I’m sitting at a table squeezed into an office not meant for conferences, fiddling with my cell phone. My brother, Robert, attends via speakerphone. I chat up a nurse about her golf game. This is the functional equivalent of a parent-teacher conference. We’re going over the functional equivalent of a report card. The golfing nurse–the care plan coordinator–chairs the meeting. Every three months, each of the departments files a report for Dad’s chart. Usually the staff moves along the agenda along minus the impediment of family, like my brother and me. First up, the dietitian. But before she begins, we hear an impediment from Robert on the speaker. "I was in town from Boston last weekend, and there was a banana on my dad’s lunch tray." Dad’s kidney has been slowly failing for most of his adult life–slowly enough so something else will likely kill him first. But bananas and other high potassium foods are poison. He loves bananas. "Sorry, I’ll look into it," says the dietitian. I’m personally not at the top of the charts when it comes to caregiving time; I’m not spending hours a day or even every week with Dad, but I worry about the bad kidneys of residents whose families never show up. The doctor never attends care planning. Unlike the nurse, he might be actually golfing. A nurse drones on about Dad’s vital signs and the ups and downs of his meds. There’s no physical therapist, either. My dad has "plateaued." There is no hope of additional progress for his fractured hips. Medicare won’t pay for plateaus. Exercise would still be good for his hips, but he’ll have to get someone other than Medicare to pay for him to walk across a plateau. Pushing ninety, he’s a Medicare orphan. My brother and I pester the recreational therapist and the social worker about exercise, having the aides walk him. This is when we get the lines about staffing shortages, and how he doesn’t want to go on walks, anyway. Neither does he want to go to recreation. "Forget about his rights and just wheel him down to the damn sing-along!" I implore. They write that down. Reminds me of the patient who asked, "Do you write down everything I say?" "What do you think?" I ask, as I write that down. For those who remember Lawrence of Arabia, "Everything is written." Maktub in Arabic. You may think you’re in something like a home, but you’re a 24/7 patient for the rest of your life. It is written. Maktub . To mix metaphors. Sysiphus has nothing on me. *                                           *                                            * This post was adapted from my forthcoming book, Nasty, Brutish, and Long:Adventures in Old Age and the World of Eldercare (Avery/Penguine, March 2009). © 2009 Psychology Today. This RSS Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact blogs@psychologytoday.com so we can take legal action immediately.

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Maktub: It is Written

    On January 11, 2009 Mickey Rourke won the Golden Globe Award for best actor for his performance in Darren Aronofsky’s "The Wrestler." When actors give acceptance speeches for such awards it is quite common for them to thank God and their family for the win, but Mickey Rourke thanked his dogs. If it had not been for the therapeutic effects of his relationship with his dogs, Mickey Rourke might not have been alive to accept this award.    In the film, "The Wrestler," Rourke plays the part of Randy "The Ram" Robinson, a professional wrestler who is now well past his prime, holding on to the remains of a once-famous career, and presented with the opportunity for a comeback. These are circumstances that run more than little parallel to the actor’s own life story.     Rourke seemed destined to be a superstar in the 1980′s. Most critics agreed that his performances in "Diner" (1982), "Rumble Fish" (1983) "9 ½ Weeks" (1986), and "Angel Heart" (1987) seemed to contain signs that the world was witnessing the appearance of another James Dean or even Robert De Niro.    Unfortunately Rourke’s acting career eventually became overshadowed by his personal life and some seemingly eccentric career decisions. Directors such as Alan Parker found it difficult to work with him. Parker stated that "working with Mickey is a nightmare. He is very dangerous on the set because you never know what he is going to do". In addition Rourke began to show the effects of substance abuse. He associated with motorcycle gang members and was involved in several aggressive instances including a charge of spousal abuse (later dropped). Ultimately he virtually disappeared from the cinematic world.     Rourke’s career was revived when director Robert Rodriguez cast him in the role of a sinister hit man in "Once Upon a Time in Mexico" (2003). Two years later Rodriguez again called upon him, this time to play Marv, one of the antiheroes from writer-artist Frank Miller’s crime noir comic book series "Sin City" (2005). In that film Rourke delivered a unforgettable performance, alternately chilling and amusing, that reminded any doubters that he was still a force to be reckoned with. However to get to this stage in his life Rourke required the intervention of a dog.    The possibility that dogs can produce major psychological and health benefits for their human companions has been a subject of much recent serious psychological research. Scientific evidence about the health benefits of a relationship with a dog was first published about 30 years ago by a psychologist, Alan Beck of Purdue University and a psychiatrist, Aaron Katcher of the University of Pennsylvania. These researchers measured what happens physically when a person pets a friendly and familiar dog. They found that the person’s blood pressure lowered, his heart rate slowed, breathing became more regular and muscle tension relaxed-all of which are signs of reduced stress.    A recent study published in the Journal of Psychosomatic Medicine not only confirmed these effects, but showed changes in blood chemistry demonstrating a lower amount of stress-related hormones such as cortisol. These effects seem to be automatic, they do not require any conscious efforts or training on the part of the stressed individual. Perhaps most amazingly, these positive psychological effects are achieved faster-after only five to 24 minutes of interacting with a dog-than the result from taking most stress-relieving drugs. Compare this to some of the Prozac or Xanax-type drugs used to deal with stress and depression. Such drugs alter the levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin in the body and can take weeks to show any positive effects. Furthermore, the benefits that build up over this long course of medication can be lost with only few missed doses of the drug. Petting a dog has a virtually immediate effect and can be done at any time. Recently, researchers extended this research by looking at a group of people aged 60 and older, living alone, except for a pet. Non-pet owners were four times more likely to be diagnosed as clinically depressed than pet owners of the same age. The evidence also showed that pet owners required fewer medical services and were more satisfied with their lives.    Depression was, indeed, Mickey Rourke’s problem in the 1990′s. In his case when all friends left him he was left with only his dog, for solace. Rourke admits that things had gotten bad enough so that went into a closet with his beloved dog Beau Jack, locking the door and planning to commit suicide with a drug overdose. In the end he just couldn’t go through with it because of his relationship to his little Chihuahua-cross dog. Rourke describes the scene saying, "(I was) doing some crazy s**t, but I saw a look in Beau Jack’s eyes, and I put the s**t down. That dog saved my life."    Rourke’s life took a major turn after these events. He became active in animal welfare issues, including an involvement with PETA and its spay and neutering campaign. He increased the number of dogs in his house, first by adding Beau Jack’s daughter, Loki. The depth of his bond to his dogs became obvious when Beau Jack died in 2002. He recalls, "I gave him mouth-to-mouth for 45 minutes before they peeled me off. Depressed? He died at my home, and I didn’t go back for two weeks."    Rourke’s canine family has continued to grow. He says "I have five now – Loki, Jaws, Ruby Baby, La Negra and Bella Loca–but Loki is my number one." In describing his relationship to Loki he added, "My dog [Loki] is very old, she is 16 and she is not going to be around for long so I want to spend every moment with her. When I was filming "Stormbreaker" in England, I had to have her flown over because I missed her so much. I had to get her from New York to Paris and Paris to England, and also pay for someone to come with her. The whole thing cost about $5,400."    Rourke seems to understand the therapeutic value of dogs. He says of Loki, "She’s like a giant Xanax, you know? I’m not going to get religious on your ass, but I truly believe God created dogs for a cause. They are the greatest companions a man could ever have."    So it was that following his remarkable comeback to a successful acting career, and following his rise from the depth of depression, that Mickey Rourke was able to stand in front of colleagues to accept his Golden Globe award. However his speech was different from the others. It not only included references to the contributions and the support of colleagues and professional associates, but also contained the lines, "I’d like to thank all my dogs, the ones that are here, the ones that aren’t here anymore, because sometimes when a man’s alone that’s all you got is your dog, and they meant the world to me."     © 2009 Psychology Today. This RSS Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact blogs@psychologytoday.com so we can take legal action immediately.

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Dogs as Therapists: The Case of Mickey Rourke

I don’t know about you, but no one ever taught me how to fail successfully. There was no course in college called, "Failure 101". I’m not sure if they would grade you as Pass/Fail in such a course, but that course wasn’t offered. But as we all know, failure is an inevitable part of our lives-and no one has gone out of his or her way to get us prepared. We’ve heard unhelpful ideas such as, "Winning is everything" and "How to win and never lose" and "There are winners and losers". It’s a lot of hype. Everyone loses sometime. Even the people we admire most have had big losses. Whether it’s sports, finance, relationships, academics, medicine, law, construction, or business—we all have to face some losses. We are not "winners" or "losers". But we do have some experiences, some moments, when we lose and some when we win. You worry in order to avoid failure Your worry may be driven by your perfectionistic idea that you should never fail or that failure is horrible or that failure is humiliating. You worry to "be sure" you don’t fail. You think that if you worry you will avoid any failure. But what is so bad about a failure—now and then? I’ll give you an example of someone I know. Let’s call him Larry. Now, Larry got his PhD in psychology and took the licensing exam. Much to his surprise he didn’t pass the exam. Larry thought he was stupid, a failure, and that everyone who knew him would think he was loser. But, much to his credit, he actually decided to study really hard before he took it the next time. He passed. Years later, he is very successful, with a large practice. Larry was able to bounce back from an experience of failure, try harder, learn more and finally have a successful experience. Larry overcame an obstacle. Larry was a student of mine years ago and his experience encourages me every time I think about how we need to face failure. His experience with failing at the exam taught me something. The question for you, when you think about the possibility of failing, is, "What about failure is so bad?" What’s so bad about failing? If you think that FAILURE IS A CATASTROPHE then you will be reluctant to try new things, you will avoid any risks, and you will worry about failing in the future. Do any of the following sound like you? • I can’t stand failing • If I fail at something, I think that "I AM A FAILURE" • People will think I’m a loser if I fail. • I shouldn’t try something unless I am sure I won’t fail • If I fail, I might as well give up   Twenty ways to overcome your fear of failing We could go on, but you get the point. You just "can’t stand" failing. But that intolerance of difficulty–your inability to fall down and get back up— keeps you stuck in your worrisome mind. But what if you no longer feared failure? What if you accepted the idea that sometimes you will fall down-only to get back up? What if you thought you could learn from failing, try harder, be proud of overcoming an obstacle? What then? Your fear of failure has kept you trapped. The good news is that you can change it. I’ve developed twenty coping ideas that you might use to help you confront your fear of failure. In fact, you can think about confronting failure as an opportunity to let go with your worry. Let’s see if any of the following twenty coping statements could help you. 1. I didn’t fail, my behavior failed 2. I can learn from my failure 3. I can be challenged by my failure 4. I can try harder 5. Maybe it wasn’t a failure 6. I can focus on other behaviors that will succeed 7. I can focus on what I can control 8. It wasn’t essential to succeed at that 9. There were some behaviors that did pay off 10. Everyone fails at something 11. Maybe no one noticed 12. Did I have the right goal? 13. Failure is not fatal 14. Were my standards too high? 15. Did I do better than before? 16. I can still do everything I always did, even though this failed 17. Failing at something means I tried. Not trying is worse. 18. I’ve just begun 19. Tomorrow is another success 20. Tomorrow is today Think about something you are worried about. Perhaps you are worried that you won’t do well on a test, or that someone might not like you, or that you might lose some money, or…whatever. Then go through the coping ideas listed above and think about how you could use these. Let us know. Let us know about what you think is so bad about failing. Let us know how you have learned to cope with that fear. And , let’s learn from failing. This is FAILURE 101. I discuss these coping ideas in my book, The Worry Cure: Seven Steps to Stop Worry from Stopping You . More later. © 2009 Psychology Today. This RSS Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact blogs@psychologytoday.com so we can take legal action immediately.

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Fifth Week: Overcome Your Worry by Overcoming Your Fear of Failure