Among all of the ways children can suffer in childhood, neglect is turning out to be equally as traumatic as physical and/or sexual abuse. To better understand how destructive neglect can be (and we are not talking only about lack of food, clothing, or shelter), here is some material from Bruce Perry, one of leaders in the study of how adversity challenges the developing brain in children.

The Neurodevelopmental Impact of Neglect in Childhood

Neglect is the absence of critical organizing experiences at key times during development. Despite its obvious importance in understanding child maltreatment, neglect has been understudied. Indeed, deprivation of critical experiences during development may be the most destructive yet the least understood area of child maltreatment. There are several reasons for this. The most obvious is that neglect is difficult to “see.” Unlike a broken bone, maldevelopment of neural systems mediating empathy, for example, resulting from emotional neglect during infancy is not readily observable.

***

[W]hat we do know about neglect during early childhood supports a neuroarcheological view of adverse childhood experience. The earlier and more pervasive the neglect is, the more devastating the developmental problems for the child. Indeed, chaotic, inattentive and ignorant caregiving can produce pervasive developmental delay (PDD; DSM IV-R) in a young child (Rutter et al., 1999). Yet the very same inattention for the same duration if the child is ten will have very different and less severe impact than inattention during the first years of life. (Perry, 2002, p. 88-89)

This new research suggests that neglected boys are more likely to display violence as adolescents, which makes perfect in that neglect can severely compromise affect regulation, allowing anger to escalate to violence very easily.

Here is a brief definition of affect regulation:

AFFECT is the behavioral expression of emotion and affect regulation is a set of processes individuals use to manage emotions and their expression to accomplish goals. However, structures involved in affect regulation are among the last to mature in the developing brain; therefore, many adolescents may not be adequately equipped to regulate their affect. Consequently, adolescents are at increased risk of adverse health outcomes associated with poor affect regulation. (Bell & McBride, 2010)

That should be enough foundation to contextualize this article (press release, actually).

Neglected boys may turn into violent adolescents

August 18, 2014
Written by Matt Swayne
Source: Penn State

Summary:
Parents who physically neglect their boys may increase the risk that they will raise violent adolescents, according to sociologists. Examples of physical neglect include not taking a sick or injured child to the doctor, improperly clothing a child and not feeding a child, according to the researchers. While physical abuse is a significant contributor to violent behavior, physical neglect alone is an even stronger predictor of male adolescent violence than physical abuse, they noted.

__________

Parents who physically neglect their boys may increase the risk that they will raise violent adolescents, according to Penn State sociologists.

In a study of currently incarcerated male adolescents, physical neglect during childhood arose as the strongest predictor of violent behavior, said William McGuigan, associate professor of human development and family studies at Penn State Shenango. Researchers are just beginning to acknowledge the powerful role of neglect in influencing adolescent violence, he added.

"One of the problems with studying neglect is that it is an act of omission, rather than one of commission. In other words, it is characterized as the absence of an act, rather than an actual act of mistreatment," said McGuigan. "However, now we have better measures and larger databases to document neglect."

Examples of physical neglect include not taking a sick or injured child to the doctor, improperly clothing a child and not feeding a child, according to the researchers who will present their findings today (Aug. 18) at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association in San Francisco.

The study indicated that while physical abuse is a significant contributor to violent behavior, physical neglect alone is an even stronger predictor of male adolescent violence than physical abuse, or even physical abuse and neglect combined.

"It sounds somewhat contrarian, but the physical abuse might at least show that parents are paying some type of attention to the child," said McGuigan, who worked with Roxanne Atterholt, instructor, and Jack A. Luchette, an undergraduate student, both in in human development and family studies at Penn State Shenango.

McGuigan said that understanding how neglect can influence violent behavior in adolescent males may lead to better education for caregivers and better care for at-risk youths.

"We have to look more into neglect and become more aware of how it may cause some of these violent behaviors," said McGuigan. "From that, we can build early preventative care programs than can help avoid these negative outcomes."

The research could also create assessments that, for example, might help protect people who care for adolescents by identifying youths who are more prone to violence.

The researchers analyzed data taken from a survey of 85 subjects, who are residents of a Pennsylvania detention center for delinquent males. In the survey, 25 of the participants, or 29.4 percent of the group, said that they experienced at least one incidence of childhood neglect. Acts of violence included fighting with students or parents, hitting teachers or instructors and using a weapon to scare, rob or injure another person.

Sexual abuse was not included in the survey. Only two subjects responded that they were sexually abused in the survey, which was not enough to provide conclusive findings, McGuigan said.


Story Source:
The above story is based on materials provided by Penn State. The original article was written by Matt Swayne. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

Joseph Gelfer - The Teetotal Consciousness Shift

I resonate pretty strongly with this post from Joseph Gelfer over at the Good Men Project. I used to enjoy alcohol, a lot. Moderation was not in my vocabulary - if three drinks felt good, then six would feel better, and then 12 would feel better than that. Unfortunately, I could do this without appearing to be out of control (my father was a dry drunk by the time I was born, but if there is a genetic component, I had it).

By the time I turned 30, and celebrated with a 3-day weekend I still don't remember, it was time to stop. Stopping seemed inconceivable, however. Alcohol was how I socialized; alcohol was my sleep aid; alcohol was the fuel to my writing; alcohol was a central part of my life.

But I did stop.

Aside from a few periods of deep depression, I have not had more than a drink or two in a sitting, and at this point it's often months between beers or glasses of wine - and then only with dinner on a night out.

I drank to self-medicate my social anxiety, my insecurities, my lack of self-awareness. I drank to be numb. When I stopped, there was no physical withdrawal, but there was a lot of psychological turmoil as I began to learn how to feel my feelings, to regulate my affect, to sit with the discomfort of my inner critic and my wounded inner children.

I credit Buddhism and therapy with giving me the tools and the inspiration to stop drinking. I credit sobriety with the ability to feel empathy and compassion for others, which started with feeling it for myself.

The Teetotal Consciousness Shift

MARCH 2, 2013
BY JOSEPH GELFER

Joseph Gelfer found that when he became a teetotaler, he became genuinely free to be who he wanted to be.

I used to enjoy alcohol, a lot. I was never one for moderation. I knew it was not really sustainable health-wise, but found it very difficult to imagine a life without booze: giving up right now rather than some hypothetical point in the future felt a bit like moving to Mars. From the age of 18 I had a maximum of five days off in a row without alcohol and this occurrence required being half way up the Himalayas. I managed to wind down the consumption in my early thirties to three days off, four days on, but four days on when you’re not so great at moderation is still not so good. I loved booze, but also resented being somewhat beholden to it, which for someone with delusions of superhuman grandeur felt like a significant compromise to my sense of self.

I found arguments about health, relationships and wasted money uncompelling as a path to giving up: not even having children and wanting to be better for them made a difference. Ultimately, for me, the path away from alcohol was a thinking exercise, which has lead me to believe that most problematic relationships with substances of any kind are not physical, rather existential.

The Lightbulb Moment

I came to this realization during a time when I was feeling rather sorry for myself. In particular, I had allowed myself to resent my domestic circumstances of being married with children and a mortgage. I felt that I should really be out doing wild and interesting things: instead of being at home watching TV I should be deep in the Amazon guzzling psychedelic brews with shamans. Then I started to unpack the constituent parts of that desire and concluded that what I really wanted was not something exotic, rather something extreme. I wanted to get out of my mind, which actually meant wanting to get out of my status quo consciousness.

I then asked myself, what was the most extreme thing I could do as a person that had been drinking alcohol for every week of his adult life? The answer, of course, is extreme sobriety. I framed this as the ultimate shift in consciousness: this was a trip from which you did not come down or return home; this was a trip that kept going forever.

Recalibration

On the evening of 6 December 2009 I sat with a glass of cheap red wine and decided that the next day was the beginning of the New Order. The first week was something of a challenge, inasmuch as it felt like a clock-watching exercise, chalking up days which were all populated with analysis of the exercise and the viability of its longevity. By the second week I was in unchartered territory (remember the previous five day record?) and this brought a certain amount of renewed energy. In the third week a tangible sense of grief set in. I knew by this point that there was indeed life after booze, but it didn’t look very appealing. I felt that the drinking me had died, and this brought with it a feeling of significant loss. The question then became: was it worth it?

I won’t lie to you, this sense of grief lasted for months. Whenever it was one of my historical on-days (Thursday-Sunday) I would think wistfully of the old times; whenever I walked by a bar and saw people enjoying themselves I had a pang of envy. But slowly that sense of grief began to recede. At some point I realized I was going for a day or more without the idea of alcohol even crossing my mind. And then some breakthrough moments occurred.

One of the things I used to enjoy about alcohol was that it felt like coming home. Whether in a foreign city or in my front room, having a drink brought a certain sense of union, a bit like Neo seeing the code. But once the recalibration phase had completed I began to get those moments of union quite randomly: on the train to work, strolling down the high street, sitting in a cafe. Indeed, one day it occurred to me that both qualitatively and quantitatively I was experiencing a greater sense of union than ever before.

Evangelization

One of the things that happens when you don’t drink is that everyone demands to know why when you turn down alcohol past 6pm. It’s possible to dance around the subject with excuses such as “I’m driving” or “just having a week off.” But I like to gently confront people with the truth stating with a smile, “I don’t drink: I’m not so good at moderation.” I initially thought this would make people feel uncomfortable, but it usually does the opposite. I have lost count of the amount of times people have launched into a story about their own troubles with moderation. I then usually tell them about the “thinking exercise” that brought us to the conversation at hand, and that is the only excuse they need to identify the existential issue that is causing those troubles.

In short, most people are drinking because they are petrified of being alone with their dreams and anxieties, as confronting both would often require a radical change in perspective and lifestyle. Indeed, it’s easy to become rather conspiratorial about all this and to start thinking that the reason why alcohol is so ubiquitous in society (a fact that becomes even more explicit after recalibration) is precisely so that people stay away from this realization, as addressing it usually requires unhooking oneself from many of the things that keep mainstream society operating in the way that it does. Indeed, I find that being teetotal can easily be framed as a significant countercultural gesture.

I therefore find it paradoxical when I see people consuming alcohol (and drugs) in the cause of freedom because I am left with the suspicion that such consumption is doing precisely the opposite. Do not hear me say here that people should stop consuming alcohol or taking drugs, but I would urge everyone to have a serious think about the true nature of freedom within the context of such consumption, and the many different shades of conformity and regulation.

It's Time to End the "Boy's Don't Cry" Model of Raising Our Kids

When I was small, maybe three or four, a man came around our neighborhood with a camera and a horse. For X dollars you could have your child's picture taken sitting on the back of the horse, dressed in western outfits (for the boys it was requisite hat, gun belt, chaps, and boots w/ spurs).

So my mother comes into the house and, of course, she wants me on the horse (my dad had the same picture taken of him around 40 years earlier). I look out the screen door at this enormous creature in our front yard (having NEVER seen a horse in person) and I want nothing to do with this adventure. Mother insists, I resist, more insistence, more resistance, and then I am crying. Someplace there is a picture of me in all the cowboy gear, crying - and I distinctly remember my mother telling me: "Boy's don't cry."

Looking back, I'm thinking, "Like hell, those were real tears. And that was real fear."

One might have thought that when the "Greatest Generation" stopped raising kids (my peers were children of Boomers, but not me), that those old masculine myths would die out. You would be wrong.

But they need to end, with this generation or the next. When we learn to block, stuff, or ignore our feelings, we set ourselves up for a lifetime of interpersonal failure, mood disorders, anger disorders, addictions, and a whole host of other issues, including heart disease and other stress-related disorders.

As boys age into their teen years, they will generally embrace the cultural hypermasculinity of being a teen male filled with testosterone, and any "soft" feelings will get stuffed so that they can fit with their peers. But if they received a foundation in which they could cry, allow the feeling to move through them and dissipate, which is what it will do, they will have this awareness in their bodies that emotions are not dangerous, they can be felt and tolerated.

Those boys who grow up with mothers like mine never learn that lesson until they are (sooner or later) seeing a therapist to help them keep relationships, control their temper, fight the depression, or kick an addiction. This need never happen.

More and more experts are weighing on this and saying, "Let the boy cry, it's good for him."

This article comes from Good Men Project.

Expert Says It’s Good to Let Boys Cry

May 28, 2012 By Joanna Schroeder 

 

There’s a tearing inside me when I see my older son well up with tears in front of his peers, or as a result of a loss or mistake. The internal war is between what I know and believe is best for him, which is to let him cry and comfort him and help guide him through the sadness to resolution, or to tell him to be strong and stop crying.

Now, I know it’s bad to tell him to stop crying, but as his mom, I want to make his life somewhat easier and I can’t help but worry about him being teased or even indulging his emotions too much. I would worry about the exact same thing if he were a girl—in fact I suspect I’d worry about it even more. Also, to me, it’s easier to become a person who is able to get over obstacles quickly. Funny thing is, as far as everything I understand, kids whose feelings are validated do tend to recover faster than those whose feelings are denied.

I think that my first instinct, that of allowing his feelings to be validated and consoled, wins out almost all the time, but there are times when it’s tough for me. In wanting to protect him from life’s pains and struggles, sometimes I run up against what society has taught me will be best for him. And I grew up in a very “tough it out” time and community, it can be hard to shake that voice in my head.
Today The Washington Post offers an excellent advice piece from clinical social worker Jennifer Kogan, who works with parents regarding their children. The piece, Why it’s Good to Let Boys Cry, explains recent studies indicating that  boys who are emotionally more in touch with their feelings are better able to handle feelings of depression later on.

Kogan explains the research like this:

A 2010 study followed 426 boys through middle school to investigate the extent to which boys favor stereotypically male qualities, such as emotional stoicism and physical toughness, over stereotypically feminine qualities, such as emotional openness and communication, and whether they have any influence on their mental well-being.

Results showed that as boys progressed through adolescence they tended to further embrace hyper-masculine stereotypes. But boys who remained close to their mothers did not act as tough and were more emotionally available. The research, conducted by Arizona State University professor Carlos Santos, showed that closeness to fathers did not seem to have the same effect.

This detail is important data to have because male suicide rates reportedly start to rise by age 16. In addition to combating depression it seems evident that boys who stay connected to their feelings will be able to express their anger in healthier, more productive ways.

Did the same thing catch your eye as did mine? That sons who were close to mothers were more emotionally available? Our first reaction to the statement that closeness with fathers didn’t seem to have the same results is to say that this discounts the role of fathers.

However, I think we have to remember that Kogan is talking specifically about emotional availability, not other important skills and traits that boys get from closeness with fathers. Also, the role of fathers is rapidly changing, and this generation may not be caught up with those changes. These kids were born 20 years ago, most likely, and while there were are always many different types of fathers, the “man up” model of fatherhood has reigned supreme for a long time. It’s really only recently that parents have started to understand the importance of letting boys cry, or express other “non-manly” emotions.

In our family, my husband is much more likely to be the one to rush to my kids’ side when they’re sad or hurt. Not that I’m cold, but as I said at the beginning, I do feel this need to make them feel strong and independent. I try to learn from my husband about how to let them be sad, and then guide them to a swift recovery—because that swift recovery is important, too. We try to ask, “are you okay?” or say, “it’s going to be okay,” as opposed to saying, “you’re okay” or “you’re fine.”
I believe the results of a study like this will be different in the future when the changing role of men and fathers catches up to the research.

Kogan offers 4 great pieces of advice in the Washington Post article, but this one stands out most to me as something I can learn from, and perhaps many other parents will relate to:

3. Be ready and available to listen to your son without asking questions or offering a lot of advice. Kids will often open up when parents say less and listen more.

What do you think of this research? How about Kogan’s advice? Does one strike you as particularly resonant in raising boys?

Safe Space Radio - Violence and Shame w/ Dr. Jim Gilligan

Good information - when children grow up with shame, when they become teens and adults, shame and disrespect become triggers for dysfunction. And if those kids grow up in a place where violence is endemic, then that dysfunction will often take violence as its form.

Dr. James Gillligan is the author of several books, including Violence: Reflections on a National Epidemic and Preventing Violence: Prospects for Tomorrow. He believes that punishment does not work - we must educate and raise mentally healthy children.

Violence and Shame

An interview with psychiatrist, Dr. Jim Gilligan, former mental health director for the prison system in Massachusetts, and the author of three books on violence.   Dr. Gilligan reports that many of his patients told him that they had committed murder and other acts of violence because they felt disrespected.  He reports that for these men, feeling treated as if they were one down, weak or inferior was intolerable, and that violence was their only means of reclaiming pride or self-esteem.  He also observes that punishment tends to generate violence, both in parenting and in our penal system.  Punishment relieves people of  the guilt (that inhibits violence), but increases their shame, which fuels violent acting out.  Under his tenure, the only prison program that successfully reduced recidivism to zero,  was offering course toward a college degree. In those men who completed the program, they now had non-violent means of reclaiming their self-esteem, and feeling less ashamed.

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This show aired on April 25th, 2012.

For a little added education, here is a lecture from Dr. Gilligan on education as a preventative for violence.

Dr. James Gilligan - Youth and violence The role of education inspiring solutions

Dr. James Gilligan is on the faculty of New York University where he is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry in the School of Medicine, Adjunct Professor in the School of Law, and Collegiate Professor in the School of Arts and Science. He is married to Carol Gilligan.

For 30 years, Dr. Gilligan was on the faculty of the Department of Psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School, where he directed the mental health and violence prevention services for the Massachusetts prison system. He has served as a consultant on violent crime and punishment, including war crimes, throughout the United States and around the world.

Dr. Gillligan is the author of several works, including Violence: Reflections on a National Epidemic and Preventing Violence: Prospects for Tomorrow. In his writings, Dr Gilligan argues that overwhelming feelings of shame and humiliation lie at the root of both individual and collective violence; violence in its many forms thus becomes a desperate and risky attempt to gain respect and recognition.

Dr. Gilligan has become one of the leading exponents of shifting our emphasis from punishing violence after it occurs to preventing it before it happens.

Hannah Tepper - The Scientific Argument for Being Emotional

Writing at Salon, Hannah Tepper examines some new research that suggests our emotions are more important to our health than previously recognized. Tepper speaks with neuroscientist (and Buddhist) Richard Davidson about his new book, written with Sharon Begley, The Emotional Life of Your Brain: How Its Unique Patterns Affect the Way You Think, Feel, and Live, and How You Can Change Them. 

In our culture, men have been traditionally taught to bury or stuff down our emotions, to show no weakness, no fear, no vulnerability. Repressing emotions causes stress, and stress has been linked to nearly every form of disease we suffer.

Early in the book he lays out a new theory that our brain patterns reveal a specific emotional style for each of us, and that style has six components:

One is Resilience, which refers to how quickly or slowly you recover from adversity. The second is Outlook; the duration that a person’s positive emotion persists. Then there is Context, and that is the extent to which we modulate our emotional responses in a context-appropriate way. So for example, when we are with our boss we know that it’s not permissible to discuss the same topics we might discuss with our spouse. That’s called context modulation. The fourth is Social Intuition, the sensitivity to social cues, the extent to which a person is sensitive to facial expressions or vocal expressions. The fifth is Self Awareness, the extent to which a person is aware of signals within their own body, which are important to emotion. Finally, Attention, how focused or scattered you are. Attention isn’t often thought of as part of emotional style, yet our work indicates that it significantly contributes to a person’s emotional makeup. Is your attention easily pulled by stimuli in the environment or are you able to more skillfully focus your attention on what it is you wish to attend to.

 This is a very informative article - and it's good info for us men.

Neuroscience

Saturday, Feb 25, 2012

The scientific argument for being emotional

New research shows that our feelings are more important to our health than we ever thought. An expert explains

By Hannah Tepper 

 

 (Credit: Salon/DG Strong)

At the end of his second year of Harvard graduate school, neuroscientist and bestselling author Richard Davidson did something his colleagues suspected would mark the end of his academic career: He skipped town and went to India and Sri Lanka for three months to “study meditation.” In the ’70s, just as today, people tended to lump meditation into the new-age category, along with things like astrology, crystals, tantra and herbal “remedies.” But contrary to what his skeptics presumed, not only did Davidson return to resume his studies at Harvard, his trip also marked the beginning of Davidson’s most spectacular body of work: neuroscientific research indicating that meditation (and other strictly mental activity) changes the neuroplasticity of the brain.

Thirty years later, Davidson is still researching and writing about the intersection of neuroscience and emotion — he currently teaches psychology and psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In his new book, written with Sharon Begley, The Emotional Life of Your Brain: How Its Unique Patterns Affect the Way You Think, Feel, and Live, and How You Can Change Them, Davidson lays out a fascinating theory that parses out emotional style into six dimensions, giving readers a better understanding of where they stand on this emotional plane and how emotional styles affect the qualities of their everyday lives.

Last week Salon spoke over the phone with Davidson about how Botox injections disrupt our ability to emote, the connection between happiness and health, and why emotion has been unfairly and historically underappreciated.

There’s been stigma around the study of emotion in the past. Some people still frame emotion as pointless metaphysical leftovers that result from physiological processes. I think that your work has really come to show that that’s not true. In your view, what are the evolutionary and practical purposes of emotion and does it have intrinsic value?
I think that emotions are such an important part of our experience and behavior.. They came about over the course of evolution for a reason; to promote survival — to facilitate the adaptation of organisms to their environment. Emotions evolved to solve specific kinds of problems that arose over the course of our history. They wouldn’t be such a robust part of our experience if they didn’t have this deep evolutionary origin. Having said that, it’s also the case that we now live in an environment that is vastly different from our evolutionary origins. So some of the emotions that played a very important role in our past can be maladaptive when they are triggered in response to stimuli in our current environment. This is why developing strategies to better regulate our emotions may be particularly important for us now.

In the book you talk about some really fascinating research suggesting that emotional outlook, happiness or depression, can have a direct influence on our health.
There is an intuition in the popular culture that our emotions have something to do with our physical health, but we are just beginning to explore this connection. In our own research, we examined both the brain activity and peripheral biology of a group of individuals by giving them flu shots. It turns out that people who have a more resilient brain profile are the ones who actually have a bigger boost in their immune response when they get a flu vaccine. What it suggests is that more resilient individuals, when exposed to the flu virus, are conferred much greater immunity than a person with a vulnerable emotional style. It suggests that these brain circuits directly communicate with peripheral biological processes, in this case certain features of the immune system, and directly regulate them in ways that are consequential for our health.

In the beginning of the book, you talk about a discovery that set the course of your career in motion — this distinction between people with more right prefrontal cortical activity and those with more activity in their left prefrontal cortex.
We had been doing research looking at the neural correlates of particular short-lived emotions. We were specifically looking at neural changes during different fleeting facial expressions. The idea that we could actually identify brain mechanisms that underlie different emotional styles was not in the lexicon of science in the past. At that time the neuroscientific study of emotion was conducted mostly in rats and focused on subcortical brain regions, regions below the cortex.

What we noticed was that this right versus left activation patterns of the prefrontal cortex varied more across people than it did within one person during different emotions. So we did further studies to demonstrate that these individual variations were actually consistent for a person over time and directly related to important features of their mood and emotional styles. That’s what really launched us into thinking about emotional style and its brain bases.

Was it surprising that the prefrontal cortex was involved in emotion?
Well many psychologists and neuroscientists at that time regarded the prefrontal cortex as exclusively involved in higher cognitive function because the prefrontal cortex is among the most recent to develop over the course of evolution. In many ways it was regarded as the seat of the highest form of reason in humans. This assumption that the prefrontal cortex could not possibly be involved in emotion is, I think, part of a historical anachronism that regarded thought and feeling as two completely separate realms.

Read the whole article.

Daily Om - Sitting with Feelings

This was the Daily Om from a couple of weeks back - I've been wanting to post it here because I think that learning to sit with our feelings (not stuff them down, not self-medicate them, not act them out in inappropriate ways) is something most of us - men and women - can be better at, especially when the feelings are challenging or we have little experience controlling our affect.

This piece talks about listening to our bodies and becoming more embodied can help us to know and accept our feelings more easily. Learning these skills, which are based around mindfulness, can help us increase our emotional intelligence.

As the Earth Allows the Rain: Sitting with Feelings
February 8, 2012

Taking the time now to sit with your feelings and acknowledge them will save you much distress down the road.

It can take great courage to really sit with our feelings, allowing ourselves to surrender to their powerful energies. All too often we set our feelings aside, thinking we will deal with them later. If we don’t deal with them, we end up storing them in our minds and bodies and this is when anxiety and other health issues can arise. Denying what our bodies want to feel can lead to trouble now or down the line, which is why being in the thick of our feelings, no matter how scary it seems, is really the best thing we can do for ourselves.

One of the reasons we tend to hide or push aside our feelings is that we live in a culture that has not traditionally supported emotional awareness. However, as the connection between mind and body--our emotions and our physical health-- becomes clearer, awareness of the importance of feeling our feelings has grown. There are many books, classes, workshops and retreats that can help us on our way to emotional intelligence. We can also trust in our own ability to process what comes up when it comes up. If sadness arises, we can notice its presence and welcome it, noting where in our bodies we feel it, and allowing ourselves to express it through tears or a quiet turning inward.

When we simply allow ourselves to fully feel our feelings as they come, we tend to let them go easily. This is all we are required to do; our feelings simply want to be felt. We often complicate the situation by applying mental energy in the form of analysis, when all we really need is to allow, as the earth allows the rain to fall upon it. As the rain falls, the earth responds in a multitude of ways, sometimes emptying out to form a great canyon, sometimes soaking it up to nourish an infinitude of plants. In the same way, the deeper purpose of our feelings is to transform the terrain of our inner world, sometimes creating space for more feelings to flow, sometimes providing sustenance for growth. All we need to do is allow the process by relaxing, opening, and receiving the bounty of our emotions.

What do you think?

Discuss this article and share your opinion

Leon F. Seltzer, Ph.D. - Why We Hide Emotional Pain

Hiding emotional pain - I know women do it, too, but men are taught to be experts at hiding our emotions in general, and our pain in particular. It's not healthy, and it causes infinite problems in relationships.

Dr. Leon Seltzer who blogs at Psychology Today - his blog is Evolution of the Self - recently posted a good article on why we hide emotional pain. Check it out.

Why We Hide Emotional Pain

Strong people won't let themselves cry, right?


Published on September 28, 2011 by Leon F. Seltzer, Ph.D. in Evolution of the Self


Who hasn't had the experience of asking someone whether anything is wrong--for it's blatantly obvious from their expression or tone of voice that they're upset--only to have them respond: "No, I'm fine."? In such instances, clearly they're not fine but retreating into themselves to avoid a dialogue they fear might end up making them feel worse.


Tendencies toward denial, withdrawal, and self-isolation are common in reaction to deeply felt emotional pain. In fact, one clue that a person is feeling distressed may be in their becoming unusually quiet or shut down. Such silence speaks volumes, and generally the message is: "I'm not going to risk your hurting me more than you already have . . . so I'm putting a wall between us." On the contrary, it's also possible that the individual might suddenly become fidgety, restless, or hyper--attempting through activity to distract themselves from the hurt your words or behavior (however inadvertently) have caused them. Or they might unexpectedly lose their appetite, or start eating voraciously to "stuff" their feelings or numb their pain. And so on. After all, we have at our disposal all sorts of defenses to protect us from hurting.

The Many Varieties of Emotional Pain

Before going further, let's summarize all the different experiences associated with keenly felt emotional pain. Though the list below doesn't aim to be exhaustive, it probably includes most of the self-referencing assumptions or interpretations that lead to emotional wounding. All of these items relate to feeling, or somehow being made to feel:

• Unworthy or worthless 
• Disapproved of, invalidated, or rejected
• Not listened to or understood
• Like a non-entity--or invisible
• Unloved, not cared about or wanted
• Insulted, disparaged, disrespected, distrusted, devalued, or discounted
• Aggressed against, taken advantage of; betrayed
• Inadequate, defective, incompetent, behind the curve, inferior or looked down upon, unacceptable
• Slow, stupid, foolish or silly; contemptible
• Dishonorable or cowardly
• Embarrassed or humiliated
• Weak, helpless, or defenseless
• Undeserving of time, attention, or recognition
• Like a failure; "loser"
• Guilty, shameful--or a bad person generally

If any of those look familiar to you from your own life, you might like to go read the rest of the post.

Mindfulness Meditation Increases Well-Being in Adolescent Boys

I can't imagine how much easier my life as an adolescent would have been if I had had a tool like mindfulness with which to work. It was during this period of my life that my social anxiety began, as I became often painfully self-conscious. Being able to intentionally monitor my physiological state and deal with my anxiety would have been a huge blessing.

The ability to regulate affect through mindfulness has been studied and described by Dan Siegel - giving this tool to young people, especially boys (who often seem to have more challenges with affect regulation as a result of socialization) is an excellent idea that will have an impact on their lives well into adulthood.

[This article looks at the development of risky behaviors when affect regulation is not well-developed - subscription required.]

Mindfulness Meditation Increases Well-Being in Adolescent Boys, Study Finds

ScienceDaily (Sep. 1, 2010) — 'Mindfulness', the process of learning to become more aware of our ongoing experiences, increases well-being in adolescent boys, a new study reports.

Researchers from the University of Cambridge analyzed 155 boys from two independent UK schools, Tonbridge and Hampton, before and after a four-week crash course in mindfulness. After the trial period, the 14 and 15 year-old boys were found to have increased well-being, defined as the combination of feeling good (including positive emotions such as happiness, contentment, interest and affection) and functioning well.

Professor Felicia Huppert of the Well-being Institute at the University of Cambridge said: "More and more we are realising the importance of supporting the overall mental health of children. Our study demonstrates that this type of training improves well-being in adolescents and that the more they practice, the greater the benefits. Importantly, many of the students genuinely enjoyed the exercises and said they intended to continue them -- a good sign that many children would be receptive to this type of intervention.

"Another significant aspect of this study is that adolescents who suffered from higher levels of anxiety were the ones who benefitted most from the training."

For the experiment, students in six classes were trained in mindful awareness -- mindfulness. Mindfulness is a 'way of paying attention. It means consciously bringing awareness to our experience, in the present moment, without making judgements about it'. Students in the five control classes attended their normal religious studies lessons.

The training consisted of four 40 minute classes, one per week, which presented the principles and practice of mindfulness. The classes covered the concepts of awareness and acceptance, and taught the schoolboys such things as how to practice bodily awareness by noticing where they were in contact with their chairs or the floor, paying attention to their breathing, and noticing all the sensations involved in walking.

The students were also asked to practice outside the classroom and were encouraged to listen to a CD or mp3 file for eight minutes a day. These exercises are intended to improve concentration and reduce stress.

All participants completed a short series of online questionnaires before and after the mindfulness project. The questionnaires measured the effect of the training on changes in mindful awareness, resilience (the ability to modify responses to changing situations) and psychological well-being.

The researchers found that although it was a short programme, the students who participated in the mindfulness training had increased levels of well-being which were proportional to the amount of time the students spent practicing their new skills.

Professor Huppert continued: "We believe that the effects of mindfulness training can enhance well-being in a number of ways. If you practice being in the present, you can increase positive feelings by savouring pleasurable on-going experiences. Additionally, calming the mind and observing experiences with curiosity and acceptance not only reduces stress but helps with attention control and emotion regulation -- skills which are valuable both inside and outside the classroom."

The success of this initial study has recently led to the creation of an exciting 8 week mindfulness curriculum for schools in both the state and private sectors. This new curriculum, which includes games and video clips, should have even greater benefits.

For further information, see http://mindfulnessinschools.org.

Journal Reference:

Felicia Huppert, Daniel Johnson. A controlled trial of mindfulness training in schools: The importance of practice for an impact on well-being. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 2010; 5 (4): 264 DOI: 10.1080/17439761003794148

Tags: boys, adolescence, psychology, meditation, affect regulation, mindfulness, well-being, adolescent boys, Felicia Huppert, Daniel Johnson, controlled trial, mindfulness training, schools, importance of practice, impact on well-being, The Journal of Positive Psychology, Science Daily

Suzanne Rosenwasser - Short-Circuited Boys

Great article from The Good Men Project on the ways our boys get short-changed and short-circuited by the ways adults treat them - especially parents, who give more attention and affection to female children than males, who respond faster to female babies who cry than males, who make more eye contact with female babies than males.

All of those behaviors I just named are crucial to attachment and the development of affect regulation (learning how to hold and manage feelings and emotions).

Short-Circuited Boys

July 6, 2010 By Suzanne Rosenwasser

If boys don’t get what they need as kids, can it be made up for in adolescence?

“The healthy development of young children in their early years of life literally does provide a foundation for just about all the challenging social problems our societies and other societies face today.”
—Jack P. Shonkoff, director of the Center for the Developing Child at Harvard.

At the school where I teach, many of the students are products of uncommunicative, insensitive, or entirely absent adults. Brain research reveals that stable and nurturing adult/child relationships are critical to a young person’s psychological development. Those relationships provide a pathway for more successful social interaction throughout their lives.

But if someone doesn’t get what they need as a kid, can it be made up for in adolescence? And can that happen in a school setting instead of a home? A team of educators at our school is trying to find out.

One of our first classes is about “norms,” a word the boys struggle to define as they sit on their desktops in a circle of various postures. Anel walks into the class late, and silence falls. The only seat available is next to the principal.

Anel has a choice to make: restrain himself in deference to authority, or win cred with the boys by flying in the face of it. Just as he is about to mouth off, the principal beckons Anel to stand beside him. The principal is well over 6-feet; Anel is just a few inches shorter. The boy is not the least bit intimidated. He believes he’s in charge of the moment.

“So, Anel,” the principal says, “we’re talking about norms today. You know, a norm—what is normal, what is expected. What we bet will happen. You with me?”

“I got you. Like the norm of the principal is to get all up in your face.” The boys laugh. Anel gives his shoulders a roll and smirks with a pleasing nod.

“Has that ever happened to you at our school?” the principal asks.

“It’s about to,” Anel retorts, riding on his control now.

“Ahh, but maybe not,” the principal says. “Have a seat.”

Surprised, Anel passively complies.

***

Then the principal asks the group what the expected norms are when someone challenges their behavior in front of other boys. Everybody answers at once. They know what is expected and universally agree the results will be confrontational.

“Okay,” the principal acknowledges. “That’s what happens. That’s what we do, but what is the custom or norm of behavior expected by the school community?”

They all know the answer to this question, too: “Be a wimp.” “Be a pussy.” “Stand down.”

“Now, say it like I would,” the principal says. “Say what I would expect with words I would use.”

They imitate adult voices and take pleasure in coming up with answers: “Be respectful.” “Be goodie goodies.” “Act civilized.” “Don’t lie.” “Say please and thank you.”

“How might you expect the outcome to be different?”

“You don’t get your face pushed in.” “You get A’s.” “You graduate.” “You get beat up after school.” “You don’t get in ISS.”

The discussion precedes a lesson designed to build relationships with the boys and other adults in our school community. We divide them into groups of three. They are instructed to introduce themselves to assigned staff members, from custodians to administrators, who have agreed to help out. The boys are expected to give reports about the experience when they return to class.

They’re all abuzz upon returning to class. We calm them down and ask for a volunteer to start off.

Anel commandeers the first opportunity and deliberately trips on the line he knows he isn’t supposed to cross just so he can maintain some of his reputation as a slacker. But it’s evident he learned something: “I met Miss Elena who cleans in the building. She’s Muslim and that’s why she has that tow—uh, uh… her… ” He looks at a note he wrote on his palm. “Birka, she called it, on her head. That’s a birka. She’s a teacher in her country that she came from but I don’t remember the country.”

Miguel says he met a Spanish teacher. He told her she was very beautiful and that he hoped he would have her for a teacher one day soon. Damontre says he asked the cafeteria guy, Eddie Calder, why the kids who got free lunch couldn’t have chicken fingers, and Eddie said to ask the principal.

Fernando reports that he introduced himself to the school policeman: “His name is Officer Schaeffer. The kids call him Robo-cop, right? I didn’t call him that. That’s what they call him. Anyway, he was cool. He said he was a real cop, I mean like a SWAT team cop. Is that true?”

We hear about Mrs. Ellis in the clinic whose son plays professional basketball in Europe, and Mr. Xian who volunteers with the ESL program helping non-English speaking students with their assignments. “That Asian is old,” Jonathan reports.

And then, Sadique, having a moment of revelation, chimes in. “Hold it,” he says, looking around the room. “I know what you teachers are up to. The more people who know us, the less likely we are to get away with stuff, right?”

Tags: boys, attachment, emotions, affect regulation, education, Suzanne Rosenwasser, Short-Circuited Boys, Good Men Project, norms, behavior, schools