Human Intelligence

Every once in a while, I read something that knocks my socks off. This time it was Annie Murphy Paul’s piece on Intelligence in the New York Times, “How to Think Outside Your Brain.”

If I understood correctly, the rough idea is that the human brain has developed as much intelligence as it can, so intelligence is going backwards now. WOW.

Just when I thought I was getting smarter, I find out we’re all pretty much getting dumber. I.Q. scores have stopped rising or are dropping in Finland, Norway, Denmark, Germany, France and Britain. Interestingly, not in the United States. Yet.

What blew me away about this article, though, is how well researched it was. I also love when authors set things in evolutionary context, which she does, as she explains how human activities of daily living became more and more mental over the course of our development.

She also tells us that The Flynn Effect, named after the philosopher who discovered it, is the 100-year climb in I.Q. and that The Reverse Flynn Effect refers to the dropping off of I.Q. scores that is happening now.

I.Q. Test Pros and Cons

Anticipating objections, I did a little digging and found another piece that does a good job of addressing the objections about the meaning and usefulness of I.Q. tests altogether, e.g., that poverty and cultural differences are not taken into account. Evan Horowitz raises the objections and the research that refutes them. He also says:

People are getting dumber. That’s not a judgment; it’s a global fact. In a host of leading nations, IQ scores have started to decline…. current IQ tests are designed to measure core skills such as short-term memory, problem-solving speed and visual processing.

It’s a problem for humanity if, as our problems grow, our ability to solve them does not keep up. So why then is I.Q. falling anyway? And here’s where it really got interesting for me.

Is the Brain Working Too Hard or Not Hard Enough?

Both authors went into much greater detail on the whys and wherefores of falling intelligence than I will here. That said, Horowitz seemed to think we’d gotten lazy given our reliance on technology and weren’t working the brain muscle hard enough—while Paul seemed to be saying we are working the brain muscle much harder than it was built for and need to rely on technology and other resources outside of the brain more.

Maybe it’s a bit of both. But I just had an experience of my own that got me really excited about this idea that the brain has had enough.

A Solution That Created The Problem

I just finished a project, just about every aspect of which I had never done before. All day long  for weeks I lived in “I have no idea what I am doing.” It felt largely awful. But I mustered my grit, told myself the learning was great for my brain, got it done, felt proud of myself for doing it—and decided that for the agony of it all I deserved a reward.

The brain likes rewards. Yeah, not this one, not this fancy piece of technology with a learning curve—read demands on the brain, mine and the brains of the set up providers—almost as steep as the project that preceded it.

So, even though Paul recommends that we let technology do more for the brain, this little adventure, had I known it would be such an adventure, could have and probably should have waited. All muscles need a rest, including, and maybe especially, the brain.

Breaks for the Brain

In addition to technology, Paul includes the body, physical space, and social interaction as “extraneural resources…mental extensions” to give the brain a break and help the brain accomplish more than it could by itself. She unpacks these in the article, so if you are interested do have a look.

Regarding social interaction, click here for a Science Daily piece on social interruptions, while we are working, being better for health, happiness, and productivity than we may think. And reading fiction, if you’d like to do that, is supposed to be good for the social aspect of human intelligence, as I’ve written before here.

And, one more thing. I noticed that the longer the set-up of the new technology took (2 full days on the phone), the crankier I started to feel, which I decided to chalk up to a very tired brain.

So, whenever I began to feel impatient, and at risk for saying something not good to the people on the phone who were trying their best, I converted mindfully to gratitude instead. Gratitude to them for trying. Gratitude to the people who asked me to do the initial project in the first place. Gratitude to me for getting it done. Gratitude to the people who believed in me enough to convince me that I could do this project no matter how new, awkward, scary, and exhausting it was. I could go on…

In other words, just because we may feel bad, doesn’t necessarily mean anyone or anything is bad. May just mean the brain is overworked and needs a break. And, by the way, now that my new toy is all set up and my brain has recovered, the brain loves novelty in proper doses and really loves the new thing.

Now see what happens for you the next time you may have worked your brain too hard, and let us know.

Warm wishes,

Madelaine

Study Finds Up To 77% Productivity Increase for Hybrid Workers

So It’s not just about the What, Why, How, and with Whom — but now more than ever, it’s about Where we work too.

Environmental Fitness

As per the first line of Getting to G.R.E.A.T.:

“A Great Life Depends on a Great Fit Between Who We Are and the Environments in which we Work and Live.”

When we say environments, we mean both internal and external environments. So that includes the quality of your headspace, the voice in your head, and externally, the industry you work in and the kinds of activities and people that surrounds you with.

But what I mean to be talking about here is the actual physical environment. Hybrid Workers. Where they work when.

After all, when Darwin taught us that the world belongs to those best adapted to their environments, he very much meant the physical environment. And yet, up until now I really don’t think we gave the actual physical environment that much weight.

Mismatch Theory

Environmental and Evolutionary Psychologists say that we humans long for our ancestral home, let’s say around 2 million years ago, the lush landscapes on the Savanna.

No wonder when my last employer turned a broom closet with no windows into an office for me, the first think I did, without even thinking much about it, was to hang a big picture of a park bench in a lush and lovely garden on the wall.

Studies show that connection to nature can be a really good stress buster and blood pressure reducer for us. One 30-minute romp in the park per week has been associated with benefits for heart disease, stress, anxiety and depression: “If everyone visited their local parks for half an hour each week there would be seven per cent fewer cases of depression and nine percent fewer cases of high blood pressure.” Nature being part of our nature from so long ago.

How Far Back Hybrid?

At some point, however—researchers believe around 400,000 years ago—hominins (modern humans and our immediate ancestors) were enjoying semipermanent, more-indoor versions of “home.” Since we had by then taken control of fire, we were able to ward off dangerous animals so we could sleep and eat together in a single space.

From there we began to use closed-in spaces for more than just shelter. As communities grew larger, communal spaces were built for toolmaking, and so people could congregate, not just to make decisions affecting them all, but also to share stories and catch up on the news of the day.

Fast-forward to today, and we have bleak and barren concrete spaces where people convene, when we can, for all of these same things. This should matter to us more than we let it, because there actually are benefits to correcting the mismatch between who we are and how we live. And negative health and well-being consequences if  we don’t.

Tips for Better Hybrid Spaces and Places

Research shows that we can decrease environmental mismatch and increase the health, well-being, job satisfaction, and productivity of employees, as well as the company’s bottom line.

A number of savanna-like steps include sunlight, greenery—for when we return to the office— do we always have to meet or work inside, haven’t we learned how to be outside more.

I know numbers of people who moved to houses they loved, with beautiful gardens they grew to enhance their spaces and cheer themselves us.

So, what if we made office spaces more like home, and home spaces more like the office.

Why not create physical spaces at the office that support napping, meditation, breaks, exercise. Covid gave us more space for all of these health promoting things. And why not creating better boundaries and rituals at home, more conducive to getting work done.

What modifications are you making in your spaces and places to enhance your own work and life. No better time than now. Let us know!

Warm wishes,

Madelaine

Photo by Lisa H on Unsplash

High Stress Situation

Not even counting all of the other pandemic stress, we have this unbelievably testy election coming up. A lot of people are really cranky with anyone who sees anything different from what they see and believe themselves. 

How did we get so incredibly polarized, so intolerant of the “Other.” For sure, this didn’t start with the current president but, I agree, whoa, it’s gotten really bad. And I’m scratching my head trying to figure out what the heck is going on.

What’s Going On?

For one thing, back in the day when our modern human brains were being formed, it is likely that those who stuck with their own, and were wary of others who were different, had better chances of survival. And those who survived got their genes into the next generation and the next and so on ‘til here we are. So the idea that we are hardwired with radar for “Other” makes sense.

Then again, we have a higher cortex now that allows us to override our primitive nature, and where is that when we need it, like now.

I, for one, do not expect the polarization to weaken no matter who wins. It might even get worse when the election is over, if it is ever over.

Take a look at this Duke University study that crossed my desk, “Desire to Be in a Group Leads to Harsher Judgment of Others.” It’s only one study, but what they found was that it was not the strength of one’s political views—but the desire to be ‘groupy’ itself—that made people more likely to discriminate against people outside of their group.

Out, Out damned two party system. But what is the alternative to the tribal ‘I’m good; you’re bad. I’m right; you’re wrong’ that we are so locked into now?

What Would Help?

I actually do not know what would be a better alternative. The Danish multi-party Parliament, as depicted in Season 1 of Borgen on Netflix, does not appear to be it. But I do believe that when we find it — when we are able to transcend party in some constructive way — the extremes of each party will weaken. Then we can all start to live in a world that feels a little more sane than the one in which we live now.

And wouldn’t that be nice. Keep on doin’ what we are doin’, keep on getting what we get. So please let us know what you think could work better than the way we are doing things now.

Warm wishes,

Madelaine

Humans are wired to strive for status—and to have a keen eye for who does and doesn’t have it—because back in the day when the modern human brain was forming, status was a matter of life and death. 

Those with status had more access to survival resources, mates and, therefore, longer lives and bloodlines too. The ones with bad reputations were largely ostracized and left for dead. 

What’s really nice about the findings of this new University of Texas study, of  2,751 men and women in 14 countries, is that intelligence and honesty were universally associated with higher status. Meanwhile, characteristics such as mean, nasty, dishonest, dirty, and diseased pulled one’s status way down. Works for me. Intelligence and honesty two great big favorites of mine.

But the abstract on this study doesn’t get into whether the United States was part of this study. So I don’t know for sure whether this applies here. And I also don’t know if and how they controlled for any respondents saying what they thought sounded good (status seeking), rather than what they may have really thought that could have made them look bad. 

What I do know is that there are lots of status symbols that are not as noble sounding as the words honesty and intelligence. And, I also know that, for a lot of people, no matter how many symbols of status an individual may possess, status seeking can take on such a life of its own, that no matter how much one has it can feel like never good enough.

Good enough for what? Good enough so you matter enough to not be left behind to be eaten by a saber-toothe tiger? I can pretty much promise you that’s not going to happen, and that you are more likely to suffer serious consequences to your health and well-being by unconsciously worrying that it will. 

Especially now, when more and more people may be tightening their belts for an uncertain future, and even for those who are not, or maybe especially for those who are not—please remember that, even if it feels like life and death, it’s not. We are not on the Savannah anymore and will probably be fine. Hope this helps. Let us know.

Whether it be for the environment, one’s health, or other important causes, convincing people to adopt new or uncommon behaviors can be difficult. One reason is that societal norms powerfully reinforce the status quo….

Other people are, of course, a big part of what leads us to overturn a status quo. But the researchers found an interesting twist. So, for example, it was not only being told that some other people are trying to eat less meat these days that influenced participants to eat less meat themselves. Participants ate even less meat themselves if they were told that it’s because other people are changing that they are eating less meat.

That people are changing makes it sound like eating less meat could morph naturally into a norm and, if you don’t fit in with that, then where will you be. Left out, left behind or “counternormative”* as the reference suggests.

Okay, so we like to think we are special. Introverts** I know are great examples of people who may be more comfortable on the edges but don’t exactly want to feel left out. None of us wants to feel so far out that we don’t matter to anyone anymore. Back in the day, many thousands of years ago when our social brains were formed, in what we call the environment of evolutionary adaptation, too far out socially meant no food, no care…we died.

This is why we may feel bad when we don’t get invited to that party or meeting that we didn’t even want to go to. Hardwiring. Alarm goes off when we begin to feel socially left out. Wait. We can use this!

All we have to do is surround ourselves with enough people who live and breathe the ‘me’ we want to be that it feels normal enough to be whatever that is. Affinity grouping. Back to the meat, why not surround oneself with people who for environmental, health, or other reasons also want to eat less meat. Unless you happen to want to eat meat. Then that sense of normalcy and belonging would be provided by eating with some people who also eat meat.

Or the gym. Or spending habits. Or environmental foot-printing. Want to – on purpose – overturn your own status quo. Embed with others who already have. People are everywhere. Meetups. Community or professional organizations… Go where the norm is, or is becoming, the norm you want to be. Opportunities abound. Practice, Practice, Practice…and See What Happens.

For help with this or something else, or to let me know what you think, Contact Me at:

Email:  Madelaine Weiss

Phone:   202-617-0821

* “Change behaviors by changing perception of normal” October 6, 2017    https://medicalxpress.com/news/2017-10-behaviors-perception.html. Citing Gregg Sparkman et al. “Dynamic Norms Promote Sustainable Behavior, Even if It Is Counternormative,” Psychological Science (2017). DOI: 10.1177/0956797617719950  Provided by Stanford University.

** Examples and illustrations are fictional composites inspired by but not depicting nor referring to any actual specific person in my practice or life experience.

Copyright © 2017. Madelaine Claire Weiss. All rights reserved.

There it is, folks. This could be what we are up against when we wonder why, why, why, after all this time, in this day and age, inter-group hatred still rears its ugly head. Some would say, like it or not, we are hardwired to huddle with our own against the ones we think are not us. Us versus Them. That’s the bad news.

Here’s the good news. Two things:

• The human brain (aka the “social brain”) got bigger and smarter over time due to living in – and allowing us to live in – larger and larger communities. The social brain is now considered flexible and therefore shaped, not just by our genes, but by the environment in which it lives as well.
• New research suggests that xenophobia, (or fear/disgust of people who are different), can be reduced and altruism increased by oxytocin and social pressure.

So it’s not hopeless. And we are not helpless. We can change. And it appears that oxytocin + social pressure can help us to do just that. Social interaction increases Oxytocin, which then brings pleasure and trust to that interaction. Cause and Effect. So let’s just hang out – with more and more people different from the ones our primitive brain picks out for us. And let’s be sure to do it out and about to create the social pressure that interaction with people who do not look exactly like us is how it is and how it is going to be more and more over time. Period.

But I am talking to and about adults here. Because infants don’t need to be told that we are all one. As per Obama’s tweet of Mandela’s quote: “No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin or his background or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.” Maybe love is not even more natural than hate. But it is natural enough, and every single one of us can do something to help knit us together, one stitch at a time.

As only one example, one client,** a black man, told me he fought back the urge to pick someone who looked more like him to work with, and picked me instead because I am white. We have worked boldly on racial identity issues together, in ways he tells me would have been less possible and less fruitful for him had we both been black. Each and every one of us can catch it and counter it, just as he did, to choose someone different instead of too often someone who is same, for the sake of same and same alone. If this is your tendency…try something different. Try someone different. You might like it. And the world will thank you for it. Practice, Practice, Practice…and See What Happens.

For help with this or something else, or to let me know what you think, Contact Me at:

Email:  Madelaine Weiss

Phone:   202-617-0821

* Universität Bonn. “Oxytocin and social norms reduce xenophobia.” ScienceDaily, 14 August 2017, www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/08/170814162334.htm>.https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/08/170814162334.htm

** Examples and illustrations are fictional composites inspired by but not depicting nor referring to any actual specific person in my practice or life experience.

Copyright © 2017. Madelaine Claire Weiss. All rights reserved.

Disappointing isn’t it. Not like we didn’t know. Still it’s unsettling to think about how much pleasure humans can take in feeling better than everyone else. Why all the hate? Here are two broad ideas on that:

• Social Dominance: In animals, including humans, social dominance gives greater access to and control of life sustaining resources for the individual and kin group. Makes sense that we would be wired to take pleasure in the idea that we rank higher somehow, for how it has helped us to survive and to thrive as a species.
• Social Bonding: Strength in numbers, i.e., individuals bonded together in a group had a better chance of overcoming natural and social threats than individuals who stood alone. Makes sense we would be wired for that to feel good too.

Short of it is that humans appear to be both competitive and cooperative and even cooperation can morph into hate. As the study suggests, people go to Facebook to bond – over 2 billion of them monthly* – but bonding is not all that’s going on there. Just as in the offline world of people, there is shunning, sneering, you name it… And some of it is pretty hateful in that ‘I’m better than you’ or ‘We’re better than you’ kind of way. My children, my social life, my vacations, my political party, my ethnic group, my gender group, my sexual preference group – better than yours. In its extreme, witness the violent protests in our streets. We are together – and better than you.

Here’s an individual example.** Let’s call him David. David, a successful attorney, has been widowed for years. Nice man. Attractive man. Pretty good catch for some good woman looking for love, as he is himself. When asked why this hasn’t happened for him, he said that he meets seemingly lovely women online, but when he tells the woman whom he voted for that’s the end of that. One woman’s family threatened to disown her if she brought him anywhere near them. How hateful is that.

Spiritual teachers tell us that these boundaries we create between ourselves and others are foolish and destructive falsehoods. From Ken Wilbur’s No Boundary: A Union of Opposites:

The war of opposites is a symptom of a boundary taken to be real, and to cure the symptoms we must go to the root of the matter itself: our illusory boundaries….When the opposites are realized to be one, discord melts into concord, battles become dances, and old enemies become lovers. We are then in a position to make friends with all of our universe, and not just one half of it.

Differences as dances. I do love that. And, if “life is what our thoughts make it” (Marcus Aurelius), why can’t we think of the world as, for the most part, a world full of many different kinds of friends with as much right to exist as we do ourselves. The more we hate, no matter how justified we feel in it, the more hate there is in the world, and the more polarized and extreme the hateful behavior becomes.

So the next time we find ourselves feeling “I’m better than you,” how about those 3 breaths, belly out on the in-breath, belly in on the out-breath…with a reminder “there goes human hate,” served us once, can hurt us now, letting it come and letting it go like a cloud in the sky, returning to love wherever, however, and as much as we can. Practice, Practice, Practice…and See What Happens.

For help with this or something else, or to let me know what you think, Contact Me at:

Email:  Madelaine Weiss

Phone:   202-617-0821

* The real reason you can’t quit Facebook? Maybe it’s because you can judge your friends.July 13, 2017 by Philip Seargeant And Caroline Tagg, The Conversation https://phys.org/news/2017-07-real-facebook-friends.html#jCp

** Examples and illustrations are fictional composites inspired by but not depicting nor referring to any actual specific person in my practice or life experience.

Copyright © 2017. Madelaine Claire Weiss. All rights reserved.

How being hunter-gatherers boosted human brainpower and taught us to love exercise….New research suggests that the link between exercise and the brain is a product of our evolutionary history and our past as hunter-gatherers, and the same parts of the brain that are taxed during complex tasks such as foraging also benefit from exercise.*

It’s called the Adaptive Capacity Model to mean that when we were hunter-gatherers, 2 million years ago, we were multitasking all the time. We used our memories to make decisions about where to go for food and how to get back home, at the same time we had to manage our bodies over challenging terrain.

If this physical/mental complexity of foraging fortified the brain then, as with any other organ – Use it or Lose it. No surprise researchers are now thinking of the aging brain’s cognitive decline as a loss in capacity (neurons and their connections) associated with diminished use.

But even more interesting than this inextricable mind/body connection is how the mind can actually think the body into the exercise that is so good for the body and mind.

• Prisoners found their post-prison golf scores actually improved via visualization of improved swings during prison time.
• Hotel maids showed positive physical impact on a variety of health measures when told that their work was physical exercise.
• People who thought they were less active physically than others had shorter lives.
• People who think life is good lead healthier, longer lives.

Life is what our thoughts make it (Marcus Aurelius). And although it appears the brain can sometimes impact the body without moving a thing, it is good to work the body to keep the “thinking thing” (Descartes) strong enough to do all of its magic for us.

In other words, Get Moving, any way you like. I take dripping wet Latin dancing fitness classes at the gym. What gets me there, more than telling myself how good it is for me, is that my dear departed parents were Latin dancing trophy winners. It’s in the blood. Brings me, and in the way them, alive.

Another woman I know** got going, not as much by telling herself how good it was for her, as by reconnecting with how much she loved and missed the fiercely competitive soccer player she once was. If there is anything to the studies above, she and I both might:

• Visualize ourselves at it and into it, when we can’t or don’t feel like exercising.
• Tell our minds that we are exercising, when we are.
• Think of ourselves as Exercisers as part of who we are.
• Remember that being able to exercise at all means in no small way that life is good.

And for those who are not yet The Exerciser our brains and bodies need us to be, you too can take a mental magic carpet ride back to a time and place when physical was fun. Then you can graft that delicious memory onto whatever form of exercise best helps you to be The Exerciser researchers believe we were all meant to be. Practice, practice, practice…and See What Happens.

For help with this or something else, or to let me know what you think, Contact Me at:

Email:  Madelaine Weiss

Phone:   202-617-0821

* Borkhataria, C. “How being hunter-gatherers boosted human brainpower and taught us to love exercise.” DailyMail, June 30, 2017 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4655218/How-hunter-gatherers-taught-love-exercise.html#ixzz4oE8w2uzi

** Examples and illustrations are fictional composites inspired by but not depicting nor referring to any actual specific person in my practice or life experience.

Copyright © 2017. Madelaine Claire Weiss. All rights reserved.

Evolutionary Psychology’s Mismatch Hypothesis that behavior traits formed in the Environment of Evolutionary Adaptation (EEA) about 125,000 years ago do not always serve us well – is not without its critique. Arguments against, most notably from the late paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould, center on the difficulty in disentangling biology and culture, particularly given the paucity of direct observational data on which the assumptions of the hypothesis are based, and the abundance of studies on American college students as somehow representative of Homo Sapiens all.

Skeptics of the Mismatch Hypothesis talk about evolutionary psychology’s explanations on why we are the way we are as “Just So” stories, from Rudyard Kipling’s seductively simplistic ‘Just So” stories or myths about, for example, how the leopard got its spots. But seduce they do for many of us, including yours truly and a long list of evolutionary psychologists, many of whose work I know and have really enjoyed. As a lot, they are smart and very funny on how ridiculous we as humans can sometimes be and behave.

It’s not all funny though. Indeed, the ‘mismatch’ idea is that our biological priming to respond to an environment that no longer exists can really hurt us, if we let it. Maybe you’ve already heard about our famine related preferences for sugar and fat. Once upon a time, we had no idea where our next meal would come from. Now sugar and fat are everywhere, too much of a good thing, but tell that to the anxious brain primed to store up as much sugar and fat as possible because, well, you never know. Here’s another example: Way back when, we were all nomads with bodies accustomed to being on the go. Look at us now, with our Sitting Disease, and associated heart disease, diabetes, blood clots, and other inactivity related ailments. And another: In the ancestral environment, we were never far from kin. Now we are, on purpose, spread all over the place, away from our biological kin, with little to no consideration of the deleterious effects to our mental health.

The “Mismatch Hypothesis” holds that we were not built for these demands on our minds and bodies built at an earlier time for other things. Mismatches are everywhere. Even at, especially at, work. In “Evolution in the Office: How Evolutionary Psychology Can Increase Employee Health, Happiness, and Productivity,” the authors talk about how dramatically different our modern day office environment is from the savannah type environment for which our brains may be adapted. Their premise is that the modern day office causes “biophilia – an appreciation and longing for our natural environment.” So, for example, they recommend windows for sunlight, actual greenery, or images of greenery, napping times and places, and both exercise and socialization opportunities.

Now some would say, oh please…those office windows have nothing at all to do with our love of and yearning for sunlight. It’s cultural not biological. An office with a window is all about prestige. Well, guess what, some would say that prestige, or status seeking, is biologically programmed into who we are too. Let’s hear from one of my favorites, Robert Wright, who taught evolutionary psychology at Princeton, and wrote the book I cut my teeth on after hearing him speak at a small seminar I attended back in the 90’s. From his book, The Moral Animal: Why We Are the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology:

“The stakes are very real. Resources are allotted in rough accordance with status….The genes may work by instilling drives that, in humans, get labeled “ambition” or “competitiveness”; or by instilling feelings such as “shame” (along with an aversion to it and a tendency to feel it after conspicuous failure); or “pride” (along with an attraction to it and a tendency to feel it after doing impressive things. But whatever the exact feelings, if they raise fitness, they will become part of the species’ psychology….Whether we know it or not, we tend naturally to rank one another, and we signify that rank through patterns of attention, agreement, and deference – whom we pay attention to, whom we agree with, whose jokes we laugh at, whose suggestions we take (pp. 245, 257).”

Status matters, more than we think it should, and my clients tell the tale.** Otherwise wonderfully attractive and talented men and women, restricted in work and love, by their own condemnation of the very human nature Wright just described. Whether we know it or not, whether we think we like it or not, the best of us can experience ambition, competitiveness, shame, pride, envy, jealously… These are human qualities that may have helped us to survive and to thrive as a species, why they are here, even if they are at times overblown, overdone, overused in our present day environment.

So no, if someone else appears to have more status than we do ourselves, we will not be deprived of food and drink and left to die. And it is a serious case of “mismatch” to respond as if we will. We may be programmed to feel crummy if we have tried in work or love and missed our mark. We are wired for this, from a long, long, time ago when the stakes were a whole lot higher than in reality they currently are. Okay fine, we may even want to lay low for a limited period of time so no further shame nor harm will come our way until we feel better enough to try again, but we will not die. And breathing – in through the nose count of 6, out through the nose count of 6, belly out on the in breath, belly in on the out breath – is the best and most immediate way I know to calm the anxious mind when the mismatches come crashing in to bring us down. Practice, practice, practice…and see what happens.

For help with this or something else, Contact Me at:

Email:  Madelaine Weiss

Phone:   202-617-0821

* A Critique of Evolutionary Psychology, Kirk Honda, Psy.D., LMFT, October 7, 2014. https://psychologyinseattle.squarespace.com/a-critique-of-evolutionary-psychology/

** Examples and illustrations are fictional composites inspired by but not depicting nor referring to any actual specific person in my practice or life experience.

Copyright © 2017. Madelaine Claire Weiss. All rights reserved.