BLOG – Illuminated Education

MINDFULNESS TOOLS: HELPING CHILDREN AND TEENS STRESS LESS AND CONNECT MORE – July 20, 2019

Come discover creative, fun and meaningful tools for incorporating mindfulness into everyday activities with children and teens! For mental health professionals, educators, and youth program leaders. Learn creative, fun and meaningful tools and exercises to support the effective use of mindfulness in school, after school, and in therapy. Presenter: Dr. Melissa Johnson When: Saturday, July 20, 2019, 9:30am – 3:30pm (Sign in and light breakfast 9:00 – 9:30) Exciting current research in the fields of psychology, education, and neuroscience indicate that mindfulness practices can help children and teens improve attention and focus, manage stress, enjoy more positive relationships, and increase optimism! Whether you work in an educational or clinical setting or an after-school program, mindfulness tools can be an asset to the youth with whom you work. This presentation will provide participants with current research, practical tools, and experiential exercises to support the effective use of mindfulness with children and…

Trump’s Great Healthcare Insurance Idea

Here is Trump’s latest suggestion about the health care debacle: “If Republican Senators are unable to pass what they are working on now, they should immediately REPEAL, and then REPLACE at a later date!” Now, first off, if you can’t get 50 Senators to vote on a reduction in publicly funded health care for low-income and elderly people (which most of us think is to harsh), how on Earth do you expect to get a majority to vote for pretty much no publicly funded health care for these folks. And what do you have in mind as that “later date!”? Many of the replies to the above Tweet were what I would expect. Things like: “They should repeal you.” “Then replace you at a later date.” That was my particular favorite. As you can see I loved it! But then there are people who agree with the Trumpster. Like this…

Addictive internet games

The Washington Post online had an interesting piece today about teens addicted to onliine games and the havoc such an addiction or obsession can cause in a person’s life. There is, of course, a lot of research and concern about this issue. The author, Caitlin Gibson, quotes psychologist Kimberly Young, founder of the Center for Internet Addiction. As saying the number of kids affected by such an addiction might (modestly) be estimated at “… 5 percent. But 5 percent of American kids is a lot.” The article points to some resources, such as sthe Center for Internet Addiction and a residential facility called reSTART. reSTART, the article states is “…the nation’s first therapeutic retreat devoted specifically to Internet addiction.” Last month reSTART :…launched a new adolescent program…after receiving a barrage of calls from parents desperate to separate their children from video games, consoles, computers and smartphones..” Here in Pasadena, CA…

Emotions are Like Dogs

Emotions are Like Dogs: On the Difference Between Emotional Regulation and Stuffing It When I think about emotions and emotional regulation, I often think about a dog who was my friend. Her name was Tasha and she was half Siberian Husky and half German Shepherd. She and I shared a living space for sixteen years and she was just about the best possible companion. She loved to run outdoors and at the time we lived in the woods in a small town so she could range wherever she wanted. She would always come home after a good play in the woods, check her bowl, and plop down in front of the fireplace for a good nap. This ability to run and wear herself out, I think, helped her to be as mellow as she was at home. The local kids could pull her ears and her tail and she would…

American Horrible Health Care Act: The Mandate

What we hear from Republicans is that the Affordable Care Act is “a disaster” or “broken,” and that the new House version will provide more access to health care without that nasty mandate that everyone buy insurance, and that it will cost far, far less. Pie in the sky. That is NOT what the current bill passed by the House is about. We also hear people like Paul Ryan talking about the mandate that everyone buy health insurance: “We are not going to make an American do what they don’t want to do.” (Quote from an interview on Face the Nation, 3/12/17). This is reiterated frequently by Speaker Ryan, other Republican members of Congress, and Republican policy makers: “I like for Americans to choose the benefits they want… I’m not in the business of telling people what benefits they should and shouldn’t have.” (Quote from Lanhee Chen of the the…

Cooking Slowly – A Tale of Ever-Changing Times

NOTE: If you find this interesting, click on the link at the end to find an expanded version for which you may be able to obtain Continuing Education credit. There is an old adage that if you put a live frog in a pot of water and heated it gradually, that frog would just sit in the water and not jump away (even though it could) until the water boils and it is thoroughly cooked. It may or may not be true (no one has really tried it since the late 1880s), but either way it is an excellent metaphor for certain things. Some authors have been concerned about the replacement of people with robots, automatic tellers, and other types of automation in the workplace because of the associated loss of jobs (1). This is one concern, but I want to focus on another. It is about humanity and interpersonal…

My Brain Made Me Do It? And Other Questions About Neuroscience

REVIEW: Brainwashed: The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuroscience, Sally Satel and Scott O. Lilienfeld, NY: Basic Books, 2013. This book is short (156 pages of text) and easy to read while being well researched and documented (61 pages of interesting, helpful notes and citations – in a point size enough smaller than the text to make one believe that in the original draft there was as much space, time and effort devoted to this endeavor as there was to the writing of the text) The authors make it clear that they are nether opposed to or over-archingly critical of brain science in general or neuroimaging in specific. They do, however, take the positions that (1) Neuroscience is a brilliant development, but still young and at the very early stages of discovering what it has to discover. (2) Some authors, enthusiasts and members of the media take small discoveries…

Giving Guns to People with Mental Health Disabilities

There is news from Capitol Hill which underscores the notion that there is more to fear in Washington, DC than just the the White House. According to an article in the NY Times on February 15, 2017. Congress has acted to reverse and Obama administration rule requiring the Social Security Administration to add about 75,000 people, currently on disability support, to the national background check database and deny them gun purchases. These individuals suffer schizophrenia, psychotic disorders and other problems to such an extent that they are unable to manage their financial affairs and other basic tasks without help. An article from The Hill reports a statement from House Speaker Paul Ryan after the shootings in Orlando. Ryan stated “that many of the shooters are mentally ill and therefore a reform of the mental health system is the right response.”I don’t want to keep saying the same thing over and…

Chronic Politics Stress Disorder (CPSD)

As I talk to colleagues I hear virtually all of them saying that they themselves have been highly stressed by recent political events, and that their clients are all talking about the presidential election and politics in an unprecedented way. People talk about old, terrible feelings being stirred up which relate to past experiences of being marginalized or hurt by bigotry and prejudice — or harassed, raped or abused. People talk about anxiety, fear and anger — and a determination to “not let things go back to the way they were before.” People talk about feeling more stressed than usual, or more shaky, or having more headaches, or feeling kind of out of focus or overwhelmed. Some of these friends, colleagues and clients are from immigrant families or are part of the first generation of their families to be born in the United States. Some are Muslem or part of…

Review: The Expressiveness of the Body and the Divergence of Greek and Chinese Medicine.

The Expressiveness of the Body and the Divergence of Greek and Chinese Medicine. Shigehisa Kuriyama. NY: Zone Books, 2002. (Winner of the 2001 Welch Medal from the American Association for the History of Medicine) First of all this is a beautiful book. One does not often say that about academic paperbacks, but this book – from cover art to type face to book design – communicates that same care and effort that is evident also in the writing. This is a scholarly work, well researched and documented, which presents a wealth of information and understanding in a succinct and distilled manner. Dr. Kuriyama begins with one of those images we see in beginning psychology texts used to illustrate the foible of perception: that one image may be viewed in very different ways depending on our internal stance or point of view (as in the image to the left). This is…