As some of us are more than halfway through those new year detox diets and rigorous fitness programs, its easy to argue its time for some treats. Amidst a busy January of workout classes, strict nutrition plans, spa treatments, reorganizing both closets and finances, practicing mindfulness and self help (the list goes on), lets call on our significant others and go-to gift givers to deliver us some pick-me-ups for our dedicated attempts to kick off this decade on a healthy foot.

In the spirit of a month widely dedicated to all things health, beauty (inner and outer of course) and wellness, this months extravagant gifts and special treats must supplement and benefit these laborious attempts to achieve the utmost wellness.

So, lets kick the last few days of the month into gear and put some pep into our nearly detoxed other halves to help them fully reset for a dynamic decade ahead.

Dear Boyfriend,

I know you care deeply for me, but it is that time of year for the both of us to care for me a little extra. Deferring from my usual suggestions of fancy gift requests, I am shifting the focus to treats that will benefit my health and beauty.

This list is a selection of thoughtful items that will encourage a journey of self care and catapult me to a the special nutrient filled, total inner peace, overflowing with endorphins level of wellness.

As January is often a month for workouts, it would be wise to give your shoe addict girlfriend a pair of fresh kicks to get those January workouts a fashionable boost.

At the end of the day, I will need to rest my precious feet, so you may as well consider this a two for one and throw in some of these fabulous fluffy slippers to give me the cloud-like comfort I deserve.

Couples activities are strong for a relationship right? What better way to bond than completing a detox program together. The Clean Program is a seven day cleanse full of supplements, herbal teas and protein shakes geared to give your body the rejuvenation it needs.

Water is the elixir of life as they say. This hydration reminder that sits on my water bottle and blinks when my sipping has slipped will save you the trouble of being my personal hydration butler.

This wouldnt be a true wellness wish list without a nod to the chic health mecca, Goop.

Because nutrition is paramount, and as a reward for making it though a week long detox chock full of fruits and vegetables, its appropriate to gift me my very own special piece of produce as a reward. This Big Apple pendant adorned with 63 rubies and three champagne diamonds from charming French jewelry designer Aurlie Bidermann is the perfect collision of style and nutrition.

This Irritability Treatmentfrom clean skincare guru Tata Harper will equip me to go forth into a year full of chaos as calm as a cucumber. The aromatherapy treatment is the ideal blend of essential oils designed to put the nerves at ease, restore optimism and promote wellness. Ill be just a dab away from ultimate wellness.

After all, who ever said a little self care couldnt be a little indulgent?

Sincerely Yours,

Your eccentric, almost detoxed and healthy girlfriend

Look for new Dear Boyfriend lists every month on PaperCity.

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Dear Boyfriend Great Health, Wellness and Pampering Presents That Show You Care - PaperCity Magazine

Learn how to use self-care strategies to help your colleagues in the workplace at this event by diversity education organization She Geeks Out. Monday, 6 to 8 p.m., WeWork, 745 Atlantic Ave., Boston. Free. Register online or go to the business agenda on bostonglobe.com.

Tuesday

CLASS

Back to the basics

Learn the fundementals of business networking at this workshop by consulting company AIMC Solutions. Tuesday, 6:30 to 8 p.m., Microsoft Store, 800 Boylston St., Boston. Free to attend. $25 for an additional 15-minute consultation. Register online or go to the business agenda on bostonglobe.com.

NETWORKING

Business night

Meet your peers, exchange ideas, and advance your career at Young Executive Networking Night hosted by Boston Young Professionals Association. Tuesday, 6 to 9 p.m., Troquet on South, 107 South St., Boston. $29 to $40. Register online or go to the business agenda on bostonglobe.com.

Wednesday

INFO SESSION

Using a shared workspace

Attend this informational session about LaunchedBy ROXBURY, a new shared workspace program from Venture Cafe New Englands Roxbury Innovation Center. Wednesday, 5 to 6:30 p.m., Roxbury Innovation Center, 2300 Washington St., second floor, Boston. Free. Register online or or go to the business agenda at bostonglobe.com.

POWER HOUR

Network and work

Get out of your home or office and work alongside others at this work hour hosted by local female professionals. Support local businesses in the Boston Public Market for breakfast and networking and then enjoy silent work time. Wednesday, 9 to 10:30 a.m., Boston Public Market, 100 Hanover St., Boston. Free. Register online or or go to the business agenda at bostonglobe.com.

Thursday

PANEL

Study overview

Discuss the findings of the 2019 Women in the Workplace study by McKinsey & Company and LeanIn.org at this event hosted by professional development organization Lean In Boston. The overview will be followed by a panel discussion with members from the Harvard Business Review. Thursday, 6 to 8 p.m., Hill Holliday, 53 State St., Boston. Free. Register online or go to the business agenda on bostonglobe.com.

LIVE EVENT

Make your pitch

Watch five companies take the hot seat with 99 seconds to pitch their company to a live audience at this competition from community organization Founders Live. Thursday, 6 to 8:30 p.m., CIC - Downtown, 50 Milk St., 20th floor, Boston. $10. Register online or go to the business agenda on bostonglobe.com.

Friday

NETWORKING

Coffee break

Join fellow entrepreneurs at this informal coffee meet-up hosted by community organization Female Millennial Entrepreneurs. Discuss goals and make connections with like-minded women. Friday, 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., Cafe Nero, 416 W. Broadway, Boston. Free. Register online or go to the business agenda on bostonglobe.com.

Events of note? E-mail us at agenda@globe.com. Contact Anissa Gardizy at anissa.gardizy@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @anissagardizy8.

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This week in business - The Boston Globe

First-person essays and interviews with unique perspectives on complicated issues.

I know Im getting older because my Kindle is turning into a self-help library, says comedian Ali Wong in her Netflix special Baby Cobra.

My own early-30s self-help library was brimming with advice: on how to get my finances in order, make relationships work, and get comfortable with uncertainty. When I was 33, a divorce and an up-and-down writing career had left me wondering what my personal and professional future held.

My friends and I all seemed to be taking stock considering having kids or feeling exhausted by new parenthood, searching for meaning in careers or seeking balance after working nonstop in our 20s and speculating all the while thanks to social media if others were enjoying happier relationships, better jobs, and fitter bodies.

This is expected, of course. You make a plan for your life, and then life gets in the way. What is new is that were less happy than our 30-something predecessors, possibly because this taking-stock moment is happening during a decade when adulthood milestones and lack of milestones are converging in a unique-to-this-cohort way.

Its true we already have the quarter-life crisis Id had that post-college what now? moment after quitting music school and backpacking abroad on a shoestring budget. But at 33, I was past the average age of this real world rude awakening. In my 30s, I knew who I was and what I wanted, but that didnt mean everything had gone according to plan. Not by a long shot. And I wasnt quite old enough for a midlife crisis (if it even exists). Maybe I was having a bit of both kinds of crises, another convergence of sorts.

In our 20s, living in New York City, my friends and I were focused on our careers. We thought we had plenty of time to marry and pop out a kid or two. In our 30s, though, something shifted. Suddenly we were discussing parental leave policies and the cost of preschools over brunch with the same horrified enthusiasm once reserved for retelling bad dates.

I was 25 when I married, an outlier given the age at first marriage has accelerated sharply, reaching a peak age of 29.1 for men and 27.8 for women in 2013, according to historical demographer Steven Ruggles. However, the average age for a first divorce is 30, so at least I was right on track there.

While the age at which someone has their first kid varies based on geography and education, in cities like New York and San Francisco, that age is 31 and 32 for women, respectively. For American men, its 30.9. So, its safe to say that more 30-somethings than ever before are newlyweds and new parents in their 30s.

There are upsides to waiting to marry and have kids, of course. In my early 30s, I wasnt sure if I wanted to have children. Even at 34, when I had my son, I was on the younger side of my soon-to-be-procreating NYC friends.

But for some, there can be complications to waiting. Clinical psychologist Caroline Fleck says she sees many patients who are dealing with fertility issues. The resources for supporting families through these physically, emotionally, and financially demanding treatments are lacking and she often sees men, women, and marriages hanging on by a thread.

Then add economic pressures to relationship and biology ones. The median age of a first-time home buyer is 32. (It was 29 in the 1970s and 80s.) That is, if you can afford to buy a home given student debt, the gig economy, and rising house prices. Tara Genovese, a counselor in Chicago, notes that for 30-somethings who came out of college during the recession, economic milestones have been pushed back.

And then there are the more nebulous anxieties of our 30s. Nearly every therapist I spoke with over email or phone talked about unmet expectations.

One of the main words I listen for in a session is should, said Megan Bearce, who sees many 30-somethings. I should have a child, I should be married by now, I should love my job.

If people are hoping to get married and start a family, or be at a particular place in their career, their 30s is usually when they imagine they will do so, says Los Angeles marriage and family therapist Saba Harouni Lurie. For those who achieved certain goals or benchmarks, they can be surprised if they are not as happy as they had anticipated.

Lurie gently framed this gap between expectations and reality as coming as a surprise. But I and many of my friends were often struggling with something more akin to failure when it came to feeling like we werent living up to our potential.

Happiness peaks at different ages, depending on the study. For instance, psychologists look at raw data, University of California, Riverside professor Sonja Lyubomirsky, who studies happiness, told me. Those studies show people get happier with age, she said. Economists would say its a U-shaped curve, with the lowest dip around 45-50. They are controlling for lots of variables, like wealth, for example.

Happiness itself is a slippery concept. In one of my favorite studies, people in their 30s and 70s were asked what age group was happier. Both groups answered the 30-somethings, but when the researchers asked each group about their own subjective well-being, the 70-somethings scored higher.

I find people to err systematically in predicting their life satisfaction over the life cycle, says economist Hannes Schwandt. They expect incorrectly increases in young adulthood and decreases during old age.

For Americans, happiness has become the ultimate self-help project, which only adds to the pressure of our 30s. Thanks to a wise therapist friend who suggested it, I spent a lot of introspective time in my early 30s focused on deconstructing various abstract happiness clichs (pursue your passion! never give up! fail forward!) and replacing them with more concrete and specific definitions of personal and professional fulfillment.

There are positives when it comes to being in your 30s. Its a more empowered age than your 20s, says psychotherapist Alyson Cohen. Were clearer about what we want and more equipped for the struggle, as Lurie eloquently put it.

I like how therapist and coach Shoshanna Hecht sums up being in your 30s: Whereas in the 20s, the cynicism for whats possible hasnt yet set in, and the I know who I am and so dont give a ____ of the 40s hasnt yet arrived.

So what to do? In our 30s, we are perhaps finally old enough to heed some good life advice. Dont compare yourself to others. Practice gratitude. Embrace the beautifully messy, ordinary adult lives most of us lead. Dont adhere too rigidly to any one vision for your life. Be flexible and adaptable. Figure out what you want versus what you think you want and adjust accordingly.

But we need to go beyond self-actualization solutions for this overwhelming decade. We are living in an era of what journalist Barbara Ehrenreich calls relentless optimism. Ehrenreich dismantles the self-help premise that The real problems in our lives are never discrimination or poverty, bad relationships or unfair bosses ... but our own failure to ... think positive or practice mindfulness, to take personal responsibility or count our blessings. She argues instead that many of the problems we face require policy solutions, not positive psychology.

We also need to intervene earlier to teach our kids that failure is a necessary and valuable part of growing up, because by our 30s we will inevitably have faced some setbacks. Ive realized that how we handle those moments whether we choose to see failure as evidence that we are screw-ups rather than as natural, or even admirable, consequences of taking risks makes all the difference in being mostly dissatisfied versus mostly fulfilled. I admit I have no idea how we tackle the social media nonstop comparison problem, but we all know weve got one.

Im 38 now, and there have been more plot twists in the last five years than I could have ever imagined: both significant failures and substantive successes. Maybe its because my (hopefully) dont give a shit 40s are looming, but I take it more in stride now than I did in the earlier part of this decade.

Welcome to middle age! a friend recently emailed me in response to some of these 30-something musings. Isnt it nice to realize that the stakes arent quite as high as they once seemed?

Nice, indeed.

This essay is inspired by the authors new book, And Then We Grew Up: On Creativity, Potential, and the Imperfect Art of Adulthood.

Rachel Friedman is also the author of The Good Girls Guide to Getting Lost: A Memoir of Three Continents, Two Friends, and One Unexpected Adventure. Find her on Twitter @RachelFriedman.

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The thirtysomething life crisis - Vox.com

MEADVILLE, Pa. (PRWEB) January 27, 2020

Journal to Your Power: a therapeutic tool that will help a person prioritize what is needed and also handle emotional and mental barricades through allowing spaces for self-reflection and self-expression. Journal to Your Power is the creation of published author Trish Moore, an entrepreneur and a licensed massage therapist of over 18 years who has studied Life Coaching, Personal Training, Nutrition, and EFT. She is a single parent and an only child raised by her mother. Her passion is to be a blessing to people who come into her life whether it's through massage, listening, nutritional advice, or coaching in a positive direction of empowerment.

Moore shares, The purpose of this book is to bring out your power that you already have within. Journal to Your Power is a positive book that you are going to write in daily, journaling your answers to each chapter. This book will encourage you to help you feel good about yourself and great about helping others. It will give you inner power and help you find out the power locked inside of your heart, deep within, a power you never knew you had.

This book will help you know who you are and what you can achieve as you follow each chapter.

Journal to Your Power is great for everyone, male or female; adults or teenagers, as well as a great teaching source for a classroom setting. This book will empower you to do things you never thought about, but willing to try for a fulfilling purpose or just for fun. You can read this book over and over, and I promise it will be different each time you start at the beginning. Go, Do, Be.

Published by Christian Faith Publishing, Trish Moores new book is a thought-provoking manuscript that carries hope, self-help, courage, happiness, and peace of mind which will lead to bringing out the power that is within an individual.

View a synopsis of Journal to Your Power on YouTube.

Consumers can purchase Journal to Your Power at traditional brick & mortar bookstores, or online at Amazon.com, Apple iTunes store, or Barnes and Noble.

For additional information or inquiries about Journal to Your Power, contact the Christian Faith Publishing media department at 866-554-0919.

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Trish Moore's Newly Released Journal to Your Power Is a Brilliant Way of Understanding Oneself and Reorganizing One's Thoughts and Plans to Allow...

Ms. Williamson, a self-help author who dropped out of the Democratic presidential race this month, said she was not endorsing Mr. Yang per se, but wanted to help him get through the early primaries.

Marianne Williamson, the self-help author and spiritual adviser who exited the Democratic presidential race this month, said Thursday that she would support a fellow political outsider, Andrew Yang, in the upcoming Iowa caucuses to try to help him stay in the race beyond February.

In a three-part Instagram announcement in which she shared her opinions about the candidates still in the race, Ms. Williamson who delivered a campaign message centered around healing praised Mr. Yang for the breadth of his intellect and the expansiveness of his heart.

Andrews personality is like a tuning fork realigning us with something we need to retrieve, taking us back to a more innocent time, making us remember to chuckle, she said.

And while she noted that she was not endorsing anyone, she wrote: Im lending my support to Andrew in Iowa, hopefully to help him get past the early primaries & remind us not to take ourselves too seriously. We need that this year.

In a tweet later Thursday, Mr. Yang, who peppers his stump speech with jokes and has played basketball and crowd-surfed on the campaign trail, thanked Ms. Williamson and praised her approach. She is expected to appear with him and speak at a town hall event in Fairfield, Iowa, on Friday, his campaign said.

I have learned a lot from Marianne and continue to do so, tweeted Mr. Yang, who became friends with Ms. Williamson during their months on the campaign trail, sometimes exchanging phone calls and texts. She answers questions that many of us havent even thought to ask. Very grateful for her friendship and support in this important time.

In a statement provided to The New York Times on Thursday afternoon, Ms. Williamson emphasized she was not endorsing any presidential candidate at this time, adding that she supports all the progressive candidates.

Im appearing with Andrew Yang in Fairfield because I know the institutional obstructions to his candidacy and I want to see him continue in the race past Iowa, she said in the statement.

After a modest but steady rise in the polls, Mr. Yang has struggled to get beyond the mid-single digits in both national surveys and polls of the critical early voting states. Those struggles kept him off the debate stage this month in Iowa, a first for his campaign. He remains two qualifying polls short of making the cut for Februarys Democratic debate in New Hampshire, a state that he has said he believes he can do particularly well in and from which he will need to gain momentum to fuel his campaign into later stages of the race.

On Thursday, the billionaire Tom Steyer, whom Mr. Yang publicly supported at an earlier debate, argued for Mr. Yangs inclusion in the February contest.

You know who should be on the next debate stage with the rest of us? This guy, Mr. Steyer wrote on Twitter, adding a photo of himself and Mr. Yang.

Though Mr. Yang must earn just 5 percent support in forthcoming qualifying polls to make the February debate, he will need to amass 15 percent support in a congressional district to earn delegates that count toward winning the partys nomination a steep climb so close to the first nominating contests.

Aside from expressing her support for Mr. Yang, Ms. Williamson also used her Instagram posts to outline her views on the remaining field of Democratic candidates and on issues and characteristics that are important to her. The most important one now is a psychological issue, she said, one about which candidate will make the strongest emotional connection with the American electorate.

She mentioned Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders by name, calling them both political treasures who would make spectacular presidents. She specifically noted that she related to Elizabeth, as I related to Hillary, because I come from the same generation of women as they do.

But she also called Ms. Warren and Mr. Sanders transactional politicians who come from a political school of thought dominated by a 20th-century perspective which holds that who a candidate is, isnt nearly as significant as what they say theyll do.

Thats a huge mistake, because the part of the brain that rationally analyzes an issue isnt always the part of the brain that decides who to vote for, she said, adding later: Its not a transactional politics, but a relational one, that will win in 2020.

Asked to clarify her stance on the two candidates, Ms. Williamson reiterated in an additional statement that she was a huge fan of Ms. Warren and Mr. Sanders, but said they did not need my help at this point.

Im highly critical of how certain candidates have been pushed to the side, and I want to support the leveling of the playing field, she said.

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Marianne Williamson Says Shell Support Andrew Yang in Iowa - The New York Times

About one in six people in England report experiencing anxiety or depression in any given week, and depression is a major cause of disability worldwide.

Some people have experienced very adverse experiences over their lives, leading to low self-esteem and other vulnerabilities which can make people susceptible to depression. Difficult life circumstances, such as financial problems, loneliness, stresses at work, among family or in relationships, poor physical health and genetic vulnerabilities also contribute. Even long-term depression can be treated, but the lifetime risk that the depression returns has been reported as about 50% for those experiencing one episode of major depression, with the likelihood increasing with further episodes.

Greater numbers of people experiencing mental health problems, and greater awareness of effective treatments, has increased demand for services. In recent years this has led to investment through the Improving Access to Psychological Therapies programme, but because of huge demand, waiting times can still be a problem and its important that we develop new ways of helping people manage and overcome their mental health problems to prevent problems occurring in the first place, and to prevent them returning. A lot of this comes down to teaching people to help themselves more effectively.

To some extent this is already happening, for example with increases in self-help support within mental health services, and the use of self-help websites, online support and apps. Working with NHS staff, we have developed the Self-Management after Therapy intervention, or SMArT, designed to help people to stay well after they have recovered from an episode of depression.

Like other relapse-prevention approaches, it assumes that many people continue to remain vulnerable to depression. Recovery is seen as a process that continues after the end of therapy that has its ups and downs. This approach helps prevent someone from feeling they are back to square one if they have a setback, a frame of mind that can increase the likelihood of a return to more severe depression.

The approach, first developed by psychologist Peter Gollwitzer in the 1990s, has been found to support changes in behaviour, such as quitting smoking or doing more physical activity, through what are called implementation intentions. It is designed to help people turn an intention to act into a habitual behaviour. We know how hard it can be to make good intentions a reality (such as practically every New Years resolution), and when someones mood and motivation are low it can be even harder. As one mental health service user said during our research: I know what to do, but when Im down I just dont do it.

Implementation intentions work by linking a specific situation to a specific response. For example: Every evening between 7pm and 9pm I will write down all the positive things that have happened that day, or Every Thursday evening I will go to the pub quiz with my friend Katy. They often take the form of if , then statements, such as: If I feel down, then I will talk to my partner about why this might be.

When the situation comes up, the learned response is brought to mind, and is therefore more likely to be acted out. Using our SMArT intervention, people are encouraged to identify up to five of these implementation intentions. Its important that they are realistic and that they will have an impact on the persons wellbeing. The best way of thinking about them is to consider five things you do on a regular basis that are important to you. Then, imagine how you would feel if you didnt do them. That is what tends to happen in depression, or when a person is at risk of a relapse.

The use of the SMArT intervention is supported in mental health services by psychological wellbeing practitioners, and patients are encouraged to share their intentions with friends or family who can support them.

SMArT is just one of a number of ways of helping people who are prone to depression to stay well and were carrying out more research to see how effective it is. It provides a bridge between the end of therapy and life without therapy and helps people see the importance of setting plans and having routine in their lives. It also emphasises that recovery is a process that includes learning about oneself and self-management strategies. It is something for the long-term not just for all-too-soon-abandoned New Years resolutions.

Originally posted here:
How five short intentions can help people recovering from depression stay on track - The Conversation UK

I opened it on the morning of my 24th birthday; Id slept with the envelope beside the bed so it would be the first thing I saw upon waking. I made my boyfriend leave the room, so I could read it alone. It felt the way Christmas morning feels when youre 6: deeply magical and filled with potential. When I unfolded the pages, though, I couldnt believe what I read. My 24-year-old self was horrified. It turns out I was an absolute fool at the age of 14. My 14-year-old self had two main concerns for her future self: 1) that she not be fat, and 2) that she had found love. The language was flowery; I beseeched myself to be a good (and thin) person.

Now the letter seems mostly funny and endearing to me. It makes me sad that I was so concerned with the shape of my body and how I might someday deserve the love of a man, but I also understand (and have the proof in writing) that we are all fools, in one way or another, at the age of 14. But my 24-year-old self was disgusted and disappointed. Id waited a decade, for what? My younger self had let my older self down. When my boyfriend read the loopy handwritten pages, he laughed out loud, and I glowered. I wrote a letter to my 34-year-old self later that day; I wanted to prove that I was more than Id shown earlier. That I wasnt silly or boy-obsessed. If these letters were a blueprint for who I was becoming, I wanted to make clear that I was becoming a person of substance.

The letter I wrote that day breaks my heart a little when I read it now. The 24-year old who wrote it is deeply worried about the next 10 years. She believes that the stakes are so high, that if she fails during this period, she will be a failure. She is scared she wont measure up, although its unclear to what standard, or who set the bar. She is specific about what she expects during those 10 years: that she will marry her college boyfriend, that they will have a child, that she will finish and publish the Gigi novel she is working on. That she will find a job either in publishing or as a high school teacher, to pay the bills while she writes.

Part of the reason I feel badly for her is because none of those plans came to fruition. I paid my bills by working as a personal assistant, first for a self-help writer and then for a rock musician. My college boyfriend and I became engaged after nearly a decade together, and then three months before our wedding he decided he wasnt ready to get married. All I can remember saying to him during that awful time was that he wasnt getting married, he was marrying me. I felt the distinction was key, but he didnt. We broke up, and for almost a year I felt so much pain that my skin ached while I walked. My Gigi novel was rejected by 80 agents, and I put it in a drawer. I wrote another novel, and although I found an agent for that book, it went unpublished, too. In my early 30s, I would fall in love again, with an Englishman who made me laugh, and who is now my husband. And at the start of our relationship, I sold my third novel to a publisher.

There were surprises during that decade, too. My parents after years of battle announced they were getting divorced, and then changed their minds inside of a month. I met and started a relationship with a half sister Id never known about. My 24-year-old self wasnt wrong about the stakes being high during that decade; thats why I feel sadness for the stressed girl writing down her futile plans while her boyfriend waited in the next room. The decade ahead would be filled with uncertainty and hard work and hope and crying alone in bed where no one could see.

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Dear Me: A Novelist Writes to Her Future Self - The New York Times

As a teenager in Queens, New York, Vladimir Sainte often didn't want to go home after school. So he didn't. His parents, Haitian immigrants, worked several jobs, and Sainte had become a defiant and anxious boy.

When his parents decided they could no longer manage him, they shipped him to Kansas City to live with his uncle. He was 16 then. But now, years later in his career as a social worker, he sees he could have been taught to manage his emotions better.

Children, he notes, don't have the "verbal literacy" of adults.

"Their brains are not fully developed. It's our job slash our mandate as adults to teach them those emotional skills for self-regulation, for communication," he says.

One way he teaches kids the ideas of self-worth and self-soothing is bibliotherapy reading books that show a character dealing with similar issues.

During sessions with one particular African American boy, however, no book seemed to fit the situation. That was largely because there aren't many children of color depicted in books that deal with mental health. Like Sainte as a child, the boy literally was not comfortable in his own skin.

"I remember just feeling that way, and what really hit home for me was working with this kiddo who was not okay with his skin tone to the point where he wanted to take sandpaper, and he thought he could rub it off," Sainte says.

He decided to write and illustrate a series of children's books.

"I love art, I know mental health," he recalls thinking. "If I want to see this, then I need to be the change and do it myself."

The first book, "Just Like a Hero," is about an African American boy who powers his way to good self-esteem.

The second in the series, recently released, is called "It Will be Okay." It's about Alma, a Latina girl who learns to combat fear and anxiety.

For that one, Sainte created an antagonist, a fear monster named Mr. Limbo, who watches Alma on monitors as she huddles in a corner and as she texts that no one likes her.

As in "Just Like a Hero," the child character learns tools to care for herself. She creates a "hope shield" with the help of therapist named Mr. Dave.

The shield, Sainte writes, is the "source of her powers on learning ways to conquer her fears. The shield helped remind her of all the things she had learned in therapy."

Things like breathing deeply, taking breaks when needed, and how to tell bullies she's not scared.

Thanks to the shield, Alma is even able to help her friends feel more positive about themselves.

Sainte is a married father of two, and at home he tries to speak openly about how he feels and what he'll do with those emotions. But he recognizes not every parent knows to try that.

"If I was a dad and I didnt have this clinical background, how can I understand this, digest it, and regurgitate it back to my child?" Sainte says. "I wanted to make the writing simplistic and easy and transferable, so anyone can read it."

He hopes his books will raise awareness about kids who behave the way he once did.

"Just remember that there's more going on to a child than what we're seeing on the outside," he says.

"So if we can take the time to be compassionate and understanding, it will go a long way to helping the individual."

Vladimir Sainte spoke with KCUR on a recent edition of Central Standard. Listen to the full episode here.

Follow KCUR contributor Anne Kniggendorf on Twitter, @AnneKniggendorf.

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Kansas City Children's Book Author Gives Kids 'Hope Shields' And Other Emotional Super-Hero Tools - KCUR

The hypocrisies of Lets Talk Day have been well documented. Bell employees have come forward with horrifying stories about stressful work conditions, low pay and lack of benefits, and pressure on call centre staff to behave unethically to meet aggressive sales targets.

Many people who identify as experiencing mental illness openly dislike the campaign and find it superficial, unhelpful, even triggering.

It is important to recognize that the main beneficiary of Lets Talk is the corporation itself. True, Bell raises around $7 million per year for mental health initiatives through the campaign (while presumably receiving a charitable tax write-off). However, this is roughly $3 million less than the annual amount paid to George Cope, the companys former CEO and one of the highest-paid executives in Canada before he was replaced by Mirko Bibic in January 2020.

In turn, Bell gets over 100 million interactions from their campaign and trends on Twitter in Canada each year. Since Cope founded Lets Talk in 2010, Bells corporate profits have tripled to $3 billion per year and its stock price rose 37 per cent (the campaign may also have aided in Bells merger with Astral Media in 2013).

It would seem that Lets Talk is little more than feel-good advertising for a telecommunications company accused of exploiting customers and contributing to Canadians having some of the most expensive cell phone bills in the world.

It is well known that inequality has been steadily increasing for the past four decades both within Canada and globally. So yes, lets talk about mental health.

Lets talk about how between three and five million Canadians live in poverty, while the nations billionaires collectively hoard over $150 billion.

Lets talk about how the average worker in Canada earns roughly $56,000 per year, while top CEOs pocket over 175 times that amount, and millionaire bank executives whine about "bleak" bonuses.

Lets talk about how it is in the interests of all those who hold disproportionate wealth and power in our capitalist economy to promote the idea that mental illness should be attributed to individual instead of societal factors, and therefore is best responded to with market-friendly individualist solutions such as psychiatric medication, apps, self-help books, consumptive self-care, or, if one is fortunate enough to afford it, therapy.

Lets talk about all of this, because there is only one effective way for us to address the crisis of mental illness and addiction:

We must reverse the trend toward greater inequality by increasing taxes on corporations and the ultra-rich.

In The Inner Level, epidemiology professors Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson make a strong case for the damaging impacts of inequality on mental health, analyzing data from hundreds of studies from across the globe. They describe three typical responses to the status insecurity and multiple anxieties triggered by unequal societies. Some people become demoralized and depressed. Others become narcissistic and self-aggrandizing. And nearly everyone "becomes more likely to self-medicate with drugs and alcohol and falls prey to consumerism to improve their self-presentation."

Notably, they found that "although [inequalitys] severest effects are on those nearer the bottom of the social ladder, the vast majority are also affected to a lesser extent." Rates of mental illness are higher in societies with bigger income differences, with more unequal developed countries reporting up to three times the rate of mental illness than more equitable ones. Community life is weaker; people are less likely to be involved in local groups, voluntary organizations, and civic associations, and people are less likely to feel like they can trust each other and are less willing to help one another.

"Taken together, as of course they must be, both the quantitative and qualitative studies show how income inequality increases the strain on family life, and how things replace relationships and time spent together. The stories reinforce the statistics and vice versa. Parental experience of adversity is passed on to children through pathways that include parental mental distress, longer working hours, higher levels of debt and domestic conflict," the authors write.

There have been many criticisms of Western psychiatry and the "disease model" of mental illness from within the medical, psychological, and therapeutic communities. The rapidly growing field of epigenetics lends strong support to the idea that mental health struggles and addictions in adulthood are often a consequence of adverse childhood experiences. Our early experiences have profound impacts on our development and can change the expression of our genes. This particularly impacts the prefrontal cortex the area of the brain most responsible for executive functioning, personality development, and social behaviours which does not finish maturing in humans until their mid-twenties and thus is more susceptible to socioenvironmental influences.

The recent revision of the APAs official diagnostic manual, the DSM, was particularly controversial. Prominent critics included Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, a leading trauma theorist and author of The Body Keeps the Score, who criticized the exclusion of developmental trauma, lamenting "psychiatrys obtuse refusal to make connection between psychic suffering and social conditions," and Dr. Allen Frances, who had served as the chair of the task force for the fourth revision of the DSM.

In 2013, Frances published a book warning about the out-of-control "medicalization of ordinary life" and how the changes to the DSM feed pharmaceutical profits. Another interpretation of Frances claim here could be that people are being prescribed medication to help them cope with the increasingly stressful realities of late-stage free-market capitalism.

Quite simply, the more unequal a society, the higher the rates of stress, materialism, drug and alcohol abuse, dysfunctional and abusive relationships of all kinds, and the more likely children will be neglected during their critical years of development (in the United States, neglect is the most prevalent form of child maltreatment).

For the majority of families who lack access to wealth and resources child neglect is at least partially the result of lack of time, inadequate access to maternal care, lack of affordable counselling services for parents and children with addictions and/or mental illness, underfunded public education and community services, and lack of affordable daycare (our foster care system is cruel and unjust because it punishes parents for lacking the resources they need to care for their children, instead of helping them). In wealthy families, on the other hand, neglect and abuse is most often because of parental narcissism and workaholism. Even if a childs physical needs are met and they are not being abused, emotional neglect can damage a childs development and lead to attachment disorders and other mental health problems.

There are higher rates of school bullying in societies with greater inequality, and research on bullying has consistently found that many victims experience long-term adverse psychological effects well into adulthood. While bullies are found in all socioeconomic classes, victims disproportionately come from lower-income families. One can assume from the endless stream of articles coming primarily out of the U.S. about "toxic bosses," "toxic work environments," "toxic friends," and "toxic relationships" that these patterns continue into adulthood. In fact, Pickett and Wilkinson report that unequal societies damage well-being through toxic power relationships even if no one is living in poverty: "in terms of predicting mental distress, rank trumped absolute income."

A good example of the impact of status insecurity comes from Dr. Rhea Boyd of Harvards School of Public Heath. In January 2020, she published an article discussing a book by Jonathan Metzl called Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing Americas Heartland, arguing as summarized in a Twitter thread (Boyd has since locked her account) that "Despair isnt killing white Americans. The armed defense of structural whiteness is."

As I grew up in a wealthy household, I am ill-equipped to write on the adverse effects of poverty I strongly encourage everyone to read work by writers, journalists, and academics from marginalized communities, in particular Black and Indigenous women, as everything discussed here is inextricable from the legacies of colonialism, slavery, imperial war, misogyny, and environmental destruction and so I am going to shift focus here to the impact high inequality has on those who were born at (or clawed their way up to) the very top of the hierarchal ladder. This is because I believe that in order to achieve a better world, we would be wise to dispassionately study the behaviour of oppressors and listen to the experiences of the oppressed, instead of the other way around.

The relevant academic and policy question is not "Why do some people have so much less than others?" but rather "Why do some people insist on having so much more at the expense of other people?" One answer: Because some are narcissists in an economy that rewards narcissistic traits. "Narcissism is the sharp end of the struggle for social survival against self-doubt and a sense of inferiority," Pickett and Wilkinson write. "The connection between inequality and narcissism is supported by research on how growing up poor is associated with status-seeking and growing up wealthy with narcissism."

"Outward wealth is so often seen as if it was a measure of inner worth. And as greater inequality makes social position more visible, we come to judge each other more by status. With more social evaluation anxieties, problems of self-esteem, self-confidence and status insecurity become fraught."

Narcissistic people are more likely to hyper-competitively seek status, power, and wealth, and they are more likely to obtain it in our current economic system (just Google "narcissists" and "money"). Or as Nathan J. Robinson put it in Current Affairs: "This, for the most part, is what the extremely rich have in common: They are the ones who wanted money the most." These are the people who desire to dominate and control the world around them (while many cases of anxiety, depression, and demoralization can be attributed to a desire not to be subordinated, but also as characterizing a reluctance to harm others for personal gain). It is generally well accepted that many business leaders and investment bankers are psychopathic or narcissistic and a growing body of research supports this.

Children of psychologically abusive, narcissistic parents grow up into adults with chronic feelings of emptiness and are prone to self-destructive behaviours. On reddit, the "Raised by Narcissists" forum currently has over half a million members, who share stories of everything from being pitted against their siblings to financial abuse.

In addition, as Dr. Ramani Durvasula points out in her new book, a childhood characterized by the combination of emotional deprivation (as in neglect and abuse) and material overindulgence creates conditions for narcissism to flourish; people who have more opportunity to dominate and impress others are more likely to be rewarded for narcissistic traits. The narcissistic personality overlaps with the concept of "toxic masculinity" and research has found that "externalizing disorders, mania proneness, and narcissistic traits are related to heightened dominance motivation and behaviours." Tellingly, research suggests men are up to three or four times as likely to be narcissistic (the gap is widest for entitlement), while the majority of self-help books and articles on healing from narcissistic abuse are written by women.

Abuse, contempt, and victim blaming are typically directed down in hierarchies, while admiration, jealousy, and acquiescence is directed upward. Research in primatology, anthropology, and early childhood development indicates that human beings are wired for fairness; however there have always been people usually young men who desire to dominate and to have more than others. This has two important implications. Not only does inequality stress people out, but the more unequal a society, the greater the rationalizations as to why this is meritocratic or natural.

"The anthropological evidence suggests that equality in early human societies was maintained by what have been called 'counter dominance strategies': people who behaved in domineering ways were put in their place fairly systematically by being ignored, teased or ostracized, as others tried to maintain their autonomy," Pickett and Wilkinson explain.

In the abstract to Saving Normal, Dr. Allen Frances warns that "all of these newly invented conditions will worsen the cruel paradox of the mental health industry: those who desperately need psychiatric help are left shamefully neglected, while the "worried well" are given the bulk of the treatment, often at their own detriment." It is revealing that Bells "four pillars" toward "moving mental health forward" state that stigma is "one of the biggest hurdles for anyone suffering from mental illness," but does not say the same for the second pillar care and access which is a far bigger barrier for the many people with mental illness or addictions who are low-income or live in poverty.

A friend and business partner of former Bell CEO George Cope (who received the Order of Canada for Lets Talk) described him this way:"I dont know anyone more competitive than George George really loves to win." Cope has reaped great personal prestige, power and wealth in a society that is organized to reward those obsessed with winning and keeps raising the bar for victory.

Many of those winners are motivated by conflict, and some are willing to inflict intolerable amounts of stress upon the rest of the population with little to no remorse. It is time for what A.T. Kingsmith referred to a few weeks ago in this publication as "anxious solidarity," because unless we collaborate to stop them, these vampires will drain the world. Vampires are an oft-used metaphor for both narcissistic and rich people. The label is apt in cases where people are addicted to money, competition, and power; they will not stop hoarding on their own. As Robert Sapolsky says in his multidisciplinary tome, Behave, "Our frequent human tragedy is that the more we consume, the hungrier we get."

Im not calling for a boycott of Bell or the Lets Talk campaign, but rather for us to make good use of the platform they have so "generously" provided.

I think we can safely assume that most of us are aware of mental illnesses at this point, and so it is time to shift the conversation to how to enact meaningful change and I suggest doing so using their hashtag, #BellLetsTalk.

We could share ideas for how Bell could improve the health of their employees (e.g. paying them better, or not firing them when they ask for mental-health leave.) We could suggest ways Bell could enhance the mental well-being of their customers by lowering the cost of cellular data, or maybe not exploiting prison inmates who wish to speak to their families.

We could explain how raising corporate taxes could fund a Green New Deal (as many suffer from climate despair), and social programs and public education reforms that provide support to families and improve the lives of all Canadians.

We could say how a universal basic income could lift millions out of poverty and empower workers to quit abusive workplaces and what David Graeber refers to as the "bullshit jobs" of capitalism, or how adding therapy and pharmacare to our health plan could be a lifesaver for hundreds of thousands of people who need but cannot afford help.

After all, talk is cheap. But, as this years slogan proclaims, "When it comes to mental health, every action counts."

Note: The author is not related to the founders of Bell Canada.

Read the original:
Talk Is Cheap: On Capitalism, Mental Health and Taxing the Rich - TheTyee.ca

A few months ago, my three-year-old threw a tantrum. I no longer remember what caused it. Probably I sliced his apple into pieces that were the wrong size or inadvertently threw away the scrap of bubble wrap he wasnt done popping, or some similar toddler-dictated infraction. He balled up his fists and shouted GRRRRR! But then, instead of flinging himself onto the floor in a distressed heap, his usual go-to move, he calmly announced: I need my guitar.

He walked over to his tiny instrument and hauled it and himself up onto the couch. He positioned a pick between his thumb and first finger and started strumming. Weve been playing guitar together since he could hold one, but this was the first time hed made up a song on the spot. The lyrics: Sometimes youll be angry, or sad, or mad, or you play guitar, like me...More harmonica!

Oh, my God. Hes a musical prodigy, I couldnt help thinking. My brain flashed immediately to private lessons and performing arts camps and sold-out concert halls. At the same time, I wondered why I was even considering setting him up for the potential distress I experienced in college over not making it doing what I loved.

Hard work + ambition = success? (Getty/iStock)

I spent much of my childhood playing music: piano, guitar and viola. By middle school, I was focused exclusively on the viola. I had a good amount of natural ability, but I was also driven. I didnt have to be persuaded to practise. I loved playing and I was determined to make it as a professional musician.

I quit viola after a miserable freshman year of music school, where the intense pressure of performances and auditions sucked all the joy from playing. I was so sure back then that the only route to happiness was music that quitting at 19 left me feeling completely lost, not to mention like a total failure.

I was raised to believe in the meritocratic promise that hard work + ambition = success. There will always be people who are better than you, but there should never be anyone who has worked as hard, my dad used to say. Hes a recently retired film professor who loved what he did for a living and believed that ones job and passion could and should be aligned. I believed it, too.

Even more than when I was a kid in the Eighties and Nineties, we now live in a self-help you can do anything culture. Were told to put in our 10,000 hours and cultivate grit and never, ever give up. When we do have setbacks, were urged to rebrand them as opportunities instead of feeling disappointed. Fail up, fail smart, fail forward. Get your vision board. Get your gratitude journal. Get your can-do attitude and mantras and wash your face, girl.

But in the midst of all this well-meaning encouragement to follow our dreams, I think we often neglect to give kids the skills to deal with what happens when things dont go according to plan. So many of us the vast majority hit a ceiling for one reason or another when trying to professionalise our passions. Sometimes we get what we want only to then realise it isnt going to make us happy, so we quit later on in the journey. This is totally normal, yet my peers and I are so hard on ourselves when it comes to moments we feel like we failed. We are constantly measuring ourselves against what we think our lives should look like. And its not getting any easier for younger cohorts.

I often contemplate how to encourage my kids burgeoning talents and interests in a way that also leaves room for him to healthily quit or change course when its the right time to move on. Is my job as a parent to tell him to dream big? To give him a sobering reality check? How do I convey the nuanced message: Work hard for as long as it takes to see a project through in a way that feels satisfying, keep going after that if you still feel driven and fulfilled, and quit if you dont?

I want my son to be able to quit something gracefully without feeling the deep failure I experienced in college. I want him to be ambitious and goal-oriented, but also to be somewhat detached from the outcome of his hard work because there is no simple formula for success despite what the internet tells us. Making it, if there even is such a thing, depends not only on putting in your 10,000 hours and having grit but on trickier variables such as talent, ambition, money, luck and personality.

Created with Sketch. Created with Sketch.

During a 2011 Interview with Vogue, actor Emma Watson opened about her failures. 'I dont want the fear of failure to stop me from doing what I really care about,' she told the publication.

Getty

In a 2006 Nike commercial titled 'Failure', basketball star Michael Jordan shared his low moments during his sporting career. 'I have missed more than 9,000 shots in my career,' the sportsman said in the clip. 'I have lost almost 300 games. On 26 occasions I have been entrusted to take the game winning shot, and I missed. I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.'

Getty Images

TV presenter and philanthropist Oprah Winfrey talked about failure in her 2013 Harvard Commencement address. 'There is no such thing as failure,' she told the audience. 'Failure is just life trying to move us in another direction.'

Getty Images

Singer Taylor Swift spoke to her audiences during her 2013-14 'Red Tour' about how to have the confidence to keep fighting for succcess. 'Fearless is getting back up and fighting for what you want over and over again even though every time youve tried before youve lost.' she told her fans.

Getty Images for NARAS

Womens education activist Malala Yousafzai spoke about the importance of standing up for what you believe in during an ABC interview in 2013. The 22-year-old said: 'I think life is dangerous. Some people get afraid of it. Some people dont go forward. But some people, if they want to achieve their goal, they have to go, they have to move.'

Getty Images

In Self-titled: Part 2. Imperfection, a mini-documentary posted by the singer on YouTube in 2013, Beyonc opened up about the importance of failing in life. 'The reality is, sometimes you lose,' she said. 'And youre never too good to lose, youre never too big to lose, youre never too smart to lose, it happens. And it happens when it needs to happen. And you have to embrace those things.'

Getty Images for Coachella

In a 2008 Harvard Commencement address about the benefits of failure and the importance of imagination, author J.K Rowling stated: 'It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all in which case, you fail by default. Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations.'

Getty Images

Ending her 2008 campaign for US President, former Senator and Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton reflected on her journey. 'Always aim high, work hard, and care deeply about what you believe in,' she said. 'And, when you stumble, keep faith. And, when youre knocked down, get right back up and never listen to anyone who says you cant or shouldnt go on.'

Getty Images

The late American poet is widely believed to have once stated: 'Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.'

Getty Images

Actor Sandra Bullock shared her reflections on her fears in an interview with the Express in 2013. 'I was afraid of being a failure, of not having the best time or of being chicken,' she told the publication. 'But every year I get older I think, "what was I fearing last year?" you forget. And then you move on.'

Getty Images

During a 2011 Interview with Vogue, actor Emma Watson opened about her failures. 'I dont want the fear of failure to stop me from doing what I really care about,' she told the publication.

Getty

In a 2006 Nike commercial titled 'Failure', basketball star Michael Jordan shared his low moments during his sporting career. 'I have missed more than 9,000 shots in my career,' the sportsman said in the clip. 'I have lost almost 300 games. On 26 occasions I have been entrusted to take the game winning shot, and I missed. I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.'

Getty Images

TV presenter and philanthropist Oprah Winfrey talked about failure in her 2013 Harvard Commencement address. 'There is no such thing as failure,' she told the audience. 'Failure is just life trying to move us in another direction.'

Getty Images

Singer Taylor Swift spoke to her audiences during her 2013-14 'Red Tour' about how to have the confidence to keep fighting for succcess. 'Fearless is getting back up and fighting for what you want over and over again even though every time youve tried before youve lost.' she told her fans.

Getty Images for NARAS

Womens education activist Malala Yousafzai spoke about the importance of standing up for what you believe in during an ABC interview in 2013. The 22-year-old said: 'I think life is dangerous. Some people get afraid of it. Some people dont go forward. But some people, if they want to achieve their goal, they have to go, they have to move.'

Getty Images

In Self-titled: Part 2. Imperfection, a mini-documentary posted by the singer on YouTube in 2013, Beyonc opened up about the importance of failing in life. 'The reality is, sometimes you lose,' she said. 'And youre never too good to lose, youre never too big to lose, youre never too smart to lose, it happens. And it happens when it needs to happen. And you have to embrace those things.'

Getty Images for Coachella

In a 2008 Harvard Commencement address about the benefits of failure and the importance of imagination, author J.K Rowling stated: 'It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all in which case, you fail by default. Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations.'

Getty Images

Ending her 2008 campaign for US President, former Senator and Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton reflected on her journey. 'Always aim high, work hard, and care deeply about what you believe in,' she said. 'And, when you stumble, keep faith. And, when youre knocked down, get right back up and never listen to anyone who says you cant or shouldnt go on.'

Getty Images

The late American poet is widely believed to have once stated: 'Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.'

Getty Images

Actor Sandra Bullock shared her reflections on her fears in an interview with the Express in 2013. 'I was afraid of being a failure, of not having the best time or of being chicken,' she told the publication. 'But every year I get older I think, "what was I fearing last year?" you forget. And then you move on.'

Getty Images

The psychology professor Carsten Wrosch has found that people who are better able to let go when they experience unattainable goals have less depressive symptoms, less negative affect over time. They also have lower cortisol levels, and they have lower levels of systemic inflammation, which is a marker of immune functioning. And they develop fewer physical health problems over time, he adds.

Give time to let a childs interests unfold organically (Getty/iStock)

We have countless articles and books on hacking our productivity and achieving our potential. We are all greatness in waiting, according to the self-help section. How about some books focused on gracefully giving up on something? Or books that celebrate the freedom of letting go of our dreams and moving on to something else where we wont have to beat our heads against the wall? Or books that say its natural sometimes to hit the limits of our ambition, talent or desire? How about we stop telling people that they failed because they werent determined enough or didnt believe in themselves enough? Sure, sometimes thats true. But not all the time. Probably not even most of the time.

Were obsessedwith progress and growth and linear success. But the truth is there are plenty of moments in our lives when we will be better served by quitting than persevering. I sometimes give my music school days the romantic gloss of the suffering artist, but the reality is I was literally sick to my stomach most of the time. My shoulders and back ached constantly. My entire body was screaming at me to quit. There has got to be some distinction between the kind of resistance you can persevere through as part of your tale of triumph and the kind that indicates youve had enough and its time to head in another direction.

More and more Ive come to believe that true grit and resilience are defined by flexibility and adaptability, by not holding on too tightly to any one storyline about who you are or what your life should look like.

For now, Ive vowed not to get ahead of myself in terms of my childs potential abilities, musical or otherwise no small feat in the intense Brooklyn parenting wilds. There is time, I tell myself, to let my childs interests and desires unfold organically, to figure out as a parent when to push and when to pull back.

In the meantime, as my son would say: more harmonica!

And Then We Grew Up: On Creativity, Potential, and the Imperfect Art of Adulthood by Rachel Friedman is published by Penguin

Go here to read the rest:
Why Im going to teach my child how and when to quit - The Independent