front and center, right on the money
Just got back from the family homestead in south central PA and" oh, oh what a night, oh what a garden of delight, even now that sweet memory lingers." yeah. somehow I just got into this weird Paul Simon song k-hole. that is a lyric from a song called "Lincoln Dunkin" off of his self-titled debut solo album, early 70's. I find myself quoting songs from that album a lot, probably more than any other Paul album, and usually completely out of context, to the bemusement of the other conversational party. sadly, not many people I know have gotten into Paul, and have not discovered his absolute genius for words, melody, rhythm, smooth natural vocals. To all of my readers, buy "Paul Simon" now, preferably on vinyl.
preaching done.
one of the more important things I have learned about this past year is perception. perception has been staring me in the face, daring me to take a look at it, understand it, realize its power. Little things keep popping up here and there, mentioning its importance, its power over who we are and why we are that way. of course, I am also in psychology, and work in clinical psych at that, so I get to hear a lot about individual differences in reactions to traumatic events specifically (in my work, parents of sick babies, adolescents with chronic pain syndromes and their parents). for instance, at a conference for pain research, an epidemiological study was reported on that examined people in the NY, NJ area pre- and post-9/11, looking at fibromyalgia symptoms (a pain syndrome with unknown cause) and depression in this population that had been affected by a major terrorist attack. they saw NO statistical increase overall in pain symptoms for the population they surveyed. HOWEVER, when they looked at people who reported being deeply traumatized by the attacks, vs. those who thought that they hadn't been, the people who said they were affected had a higher rate of the pain symptoms than people who said they had not been affected. this was regardless of the reality of the individual situations for the people (like if they lost a loved one, close friend, were close the the trade centers, worked in them, etc). the same pattern was seen in depressive symptoms. that would point towards the idea that the perceived impact of the event was more important than the actual impact of the event.
Some of my professional work is in adolescent chronic pain, and the severity of the pain varies from patient to patient. HOWEVER, if you study two adolescents with comparable pain, you might find one in school, doing all of their activities, fully functional, with the parent not encouraging illness behavior, while the other is on homebound education, which means they are receiving tutoring at home, has no friends and has basically crawled back into the shell of family life that teens normally would do anything to flee from. so what is the difference between the two patients? perception of disability. perception of ability. ability of the parents to push them to work through the pain, while still being sympathetic and helping them find ways to be more comfortable. illness behavior enables one to escape from the situations in life one finds uncomfortable. we might act sickly because we don't want others to pick on us, might get a stomach ache before a big, stressful event and not be able to leave the house. adults do it, they probably started as kids.
but I am becoming a bit tangental. peception. that's what makes these kids' pain problems so disabling. that's what makes people sick. the mind tells the body that some kind of stress/danger situation is at hand, and the body reacts accordingly.
one small tidbit. researchers have found that depressed people actually have a more realistic view of the world, and a more realistic view of their place in it, and their abilities. constantly cheerful people are selecting positive ways of perceiving things, creating their reality around what they choose to attend to. depressed people are just peering down the rabbit hole of the human existance and can not get on with the oblivion.
so where is the middle ground?
I need to cut this blog off, so I am going to throw down logic and observation as a means to creating a view of reality based on what is really going on.
how do you achieve that? there are ways, but they are not being taught to everyone.
all for now,
H
preaching done.
one of the more important things I have learned about this past year is perception. perception has been staring me in the face, daring me to take a look at it, understand it, realize its power. Little things keep popping up here and there, mentioning its importance, its power over who we are and why we are that way. of course, I am also in psychology, and work in clinical psych at that, so I get to hear a lot about individual differences in reactions to traumatic events specifically (in my work, parents of sick babies, adolescents with chronic pain syndromes and their parents). for instance, at a conference for pain research, an epidemiological study was reported on that examined people in the NY, NJ area pre- and post-9/11, looking at fibromyalgia symptoms (a pain syndrome with unknown cause) and depression in this population that had been affected by a major terrorist attack. they saw NO statistical increase overall in pain symptoms for the population they surveyed. HOWEVER, when they looked at people who reported being deeply traumatized by the attacks, vs. those who thought that they hadn't been, the people who said they were affected had a higher rate of the pain symptoms than people who said they had not been affected. this was regardless of the reality of the individual situations for the people (like if they lost a loved one, close friend, were close the the trade centers, worked in them, etc). the same pattern was seen in depressive symptoms. that would point towards the idea that the perceived impact of the event was more important than the actual impact of the event.
Some of my professional work is in adolescent chronic pain, and the severity of the pain varies from patient to patient. HOWEVER, if you study two adolescents with comparable pain, you might find one in school, doing all of their activities, fully functional, with the parent not encouraging illness behavior, while the other is on homebound education, which means they are receiving tutoring at home, has no friends and has basically crawled back into the shell of family life that teens normally would do anything to flee from. so what is the difference between the two patients? perception of disability. perception of ability. ability of the parents to push them to work through the pain, while still being sympathetic and helping them find ways to be more comfortable. illness behavior enables one to escape from the situations in life one finds uncomfortable. we might act sickly because we don't want others to pick on us, might get a stomach ache before a big, stressful event and not be able to leave the house. adults do it, they probably started as kids.
but I am becoming a bit tangental. peception. that's what makes these kids' pain problems so disabling. that's what makes people sick. the mind tells the body that some kind of stress/danger situation is at hand, and the body reacts accordingly.
one small tidbit. researchers have found that depressed people actually have a more realistic view of the world, and a more realistic view of their place in it, and their abilities. constantly cheerful people are selecting positive ways of perceiving things, creating their reality around what they choose to attend to. depressed people are just peering down the rabbit hole of the human existance and can not get on with the oblivion.
so where is the middle ground?
I need to cut this blog off, so I am going to throw down logic and observation as a means to creating a view of reality based on what is really going on.
how do you achieve that? there are ways, but they are not being taught to everyone.
all for now,
H
posted by H at 8:22 PM
1 Comments:
HC,
very nice blog. I've been thinking about this exact topic for a long time now too, and have come to realize that pereption is the lynchpin of human interaction. If you know how someone sees things, you can tailor them to be perceived on their wavelength. Trying to incorporate this into my writing, torturous. love it. JP
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