Stress causes negative emotions – are you NUTS?
Stress has been defined in many ways – one conceptualization that I find powerful and useful is the NUTS framework developed by Dr. Sonia Lupien. As per it, stress results when one or more of the following four ingredients are present in a situation.
NOVELTY
Something new you have not experienced before
UNPREDICTABILITY
Something you had no way of knowing it would occur
THREAT TO THE EGO
Your competence as a person is called into question
SENSE OF CONTROL
You feel you have little or no control over the situation
English: Emotions Q-sort (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
These conditions need not be aversive for t...
Source: The Mouse Trap - January 5, 2017 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: sandygautam Tags: emotion Agreeableness appraisal emotions Extraversion and introversion Openness to experience Stress Source Type: podcasts
The different shades of Hope
Hope is one of the 24 character strengths as identified by VIA. Its also known as optimism, future-mindedness and future orientation. It is defined by VIA as ‘expecting the best in the future and working to achieve it; believing that a good future is something that can be brought about.’
There are three variants of this strength, as found in the psychological literature:
Optimism
Optimistic explanatory style
Hope
Is the glass half empty or half full? The pessimist would pick half empty, while the optimist would choose half full. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
(dispositional) Optimism is a general feeling that go...
Source: The Mouse Trap - January 4, 2017 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: sandygautam Tags: strengths hope Optimism Positive psychology VIA Source Type: podcasts
The Strengths Workout: Hope for the new year
I have always wanted to write a book; however I am very irregular with even my blog posts and think that I lack the self-discipline to write regularly or write for a longer project. I want to test both these assumptions.
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Moreover, I have been consciously moving away from theoretical stuff to more hands-on and applied issues. Writing a book typically appeared an intellectual pastime to me- where I could demonstrate my ostensibly expert/superior knowledge of a subject; lately however, I have started to veer more towards writing more of a book that is grounded in personal experience and uses theo...
Source: The Mouse Trap - January 1, 2017 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: sandygautam Tags: strengths book VIA Source Type: podcasts
A tale of two diseases
I have Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA). I am also bipolar.
Now which of the above statements shocked/ surprised you more? If I am guessing correctly the latter statement about my being bipolar came across as more of a shock/ surprise/ concern. Now what does that say about your own reactions to mental illness and your own involvement in perpetuating the stigma against mental illness?
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Both of the above are chronic diseases to an extent. My OSA (snoring in popular parlance) cannot be treated by surgery, so the only viable option I have is to use a CPAP machine while sleeping to get a good nightR...
Source: The Mouse Trap - December 27, 2016 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: sandygautam Tags: bipolar personal Bipolar disorder Mental disorder Mental health self-disclosure Source Type: podcasts
The books that shaped my 2016
‘Love of learning’ in VIA and ‘Learner’ in Gallup, is one of my top strengths, and it typically manifests as either participating in a lot of MOOC‘s or reading a lot of books. I’m trying to move more towards learning by doing, and moving more towards applied concerns, but I guess some reflection on the books I read in 2016 and which left a mark on me are in order.
I read a total of 16 books completely in 2016 as per goodreads, and I had set a challenge of reading at least 25 books in the year, so I did fall short of target.
Not all books I read made a lasting impact and here are the ones...
Source: The Mouse Trap - December 20, 2016 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: sandygautam Tags: Book review books coaching Positive psychology Source Type: podcasts
Memory and Reasoning: Insight from Apes
I have been reading the excellent book ‘The mind of an ape‘ by David and Ann Premack and also enrolled in a MOOC tiled ‘Origins of the human mind’ offered by Dr. Matsuzawa, so apes have been on top of my mind recently.
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Prof Matsuzawa describes an experimental procedure where numerals from 1 to 9 are very briefly displayed on the screen and then masked and the chimpanzee is required to touch the numerals, displayed randomly on the screen briefly, and now invisible as are masked, in ascending order. The chimpanzee is able to perform the task at 80% accuracy, a feat at whi...
Source: The Mouse Trap - December 6, 2016 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: sandygautam Tags: compartative psychology causal reasoning Chimpanzee memory Source Type: podcasts
The Four Major Goals of Life revisited
I wrote about the four major goals in life on my psychology today blog quite some time back and want to revisit it today in the light of reading Susan Wolf‘s ‘Meaning in life and why it matters’ which is a very accessible and engaging, as well as a short, read.
A Good Dog Can Bring Happiness to Your Life (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Susan Wolf claims that there are two usual suspects when it comes to explaining our major striving and actions. The reason why we do something may be to enhance our self-interest (the egoistic principle) or the reasons may lie in ethical and moral considerations (the altruistic p...
Source: The Mouse Trap - December 3, 2016 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: sandygautam Tags: happiness motivation goals meaning Morality motivations success Source Type: podcasts
Manic Depressive Leaders in a Time of Crisis
S. Nassir Ghaemi, in his book, A First Rate Madness: Uncovering the links between Leadership and Mental Illness, makes a case for the fact that while ‘normal’ leaders are good in times of stability and peace; in times of crisis, mentally ill or mentally abnormal people make for better leaders.
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He does this via historical analysis of leaders like Gandhi, Martin Luther King jr, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln etc. Some of these leaders he classifies as being predominantly depressive, others as manic while the rest as being of bipolar proclivity.
He lists f...
Source: The Mouse Trap - November 25, 2016 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: sandygautam Tags: bipolar creativity depression empathy mania realism resilience Source Type: podcasts
Finite nature of human control and the Existential Givens
In one of the earlier posts we looked at the four existential givens and linked them to the ABCD model. I also related them to personality and emotions here. To recap, the four existential givens, are:
Life (vs death): We all live, yet we also all know that one day we will die.
Freedom (vs determinism): We are in charge of (some of) our actions, and yet we are also driven by outside forces.
Community (vs isolation): Man is a social animal and yet one is alone in one’s personal private experiences.
Meaning (vs absurdity): Life seems to be endowed with meaning (and worth living), yet the universe seems incomprehen...
Source: The Mouse Trap - October 24, 2016 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: sandygautam Tags: Philosophy Albert Camus Douglas Adams existentialism Source Type: podcasts
Between the Stimulus and the Response: the four functions of the Mind
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” Victor E Frankl
Schematic of an idealized analytical instrument. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
In today’s post I will be drawing heavily from the spiritual traditions of India (Yoga etc), and interested readers are redirected to these excellent sources for more information about the same.
As per the spiritual tradition of India, Mind (or Antahkaran) is made up of four functions or parts. These are Manas, Chitta, Ahamkar and Buddhi. These are typically translated...
Source: The Mouse Trap - October 22, 2016 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: sandygautam Tags: behaviorism cognition consciousness Buddhism Hinduism Mind self Self-determination theory Source Type: podcasts
Happier @ Work
I maintain a separate blog at Flourish Mentoring, which is dedicated to positive psychology based leadership and educational engagement topics. There I recently posted a series of 10 blog posts that are designed as mini-lessons (between 600-800 word each), all focused on being happier @ work.
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I’m cross posting the links from that course here. Hope you enjoy reading the ten mini-lessons and are able to apply it to your work life.
Collected below are links to all the ten mini-lessons:
Why Happiness (at Work)
Helpful tips to be happier @ work
Creating a positive, gratitude filled culture
F...
Source: The Mouse Trap - October 22, 2016 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: sandygautam Tags: happiness Positive psychology work Source Type: podcasts
Emotions and Personality : take 7
Today I want to approach the question of emotions and personality from an existential lens. In my last post I alluded to the existential givens and you can read more about them here [pdf].
English: Emotions associated with sadness (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
To recap, here are the contradictions or tensions that these existential givens give rise to:
This paper considers four existential challenges:
1) Life (and death). We are alive but we will die, and we live a world that both supports and negates life.
2) Meaning (and absurdity). We have a conscious capacity and desire for
meaning, but we live in a confusing and sometime...
Source: The Mouse Trap - October 18, 2016 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: sandygautam Tags: emotion personality cloninger existentialism Temperament Source Type: podcasts
ABCD and the Existential Givens
Long-time readers of this blog will be familiar with my ABCD model of psychology whereby I parse phenomena along 4 dimensions- Affective, Behavioral, Cognitive and Drive/Dynamic in nature.
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I have also posted elsewhere about the four major goals of life. To recap, I believe that all humans are driven by these four major goals- Happiness, Success, Meaning and Integrity. If the parallels to ABCD are not obvious let me make it explicit.
The route to Happiness is via maximizing Positive Affect and minimizing negative Affect. Success is achieved by actively indulging in Behavior and by being engaged...
Source: The Mouse Trap - October 12, 2016 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: sandygautam Tags: happiness ABCD Existential therapy Life goals Positive psychology Source Type: podcasts
Measuring different types of Well-being
Well-being is a very broad construct. Any good measure of well-being is likely to be multi-dimensional and consist of many factors or scales. A recent review of well-being measures grouped the well-being measures into four broad groups of Hedonic, Eudiamonic, Quality of Life and Wellness measures.
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However, a better conceptualization of well-being is to consider it made of emotional/hedonic well-being, psychological well-being, social well being and vocational/economic well-being.
Emotional well-being is typically measured by presence of positive emotions, absence of negative emotions and life ...
Source: The Mouse Trap - August 30, 2016 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: sandygautam Tags: happiness emotional well-being Psychological well-being social well-being Source Type: podcasts
The BioPsychoSocioEnvironmental model
Most of us have heard about the BioPsychoSocial model of mental illnesses and have also heard about the stress-diathesis model. Today as I was contemplating the two, taking cue from my ABCD model of psychology, I tried combining the two and find quite some merit in that approach.
Schematic of diathesis–stress model. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
To recap, BioPsychoSocial model says that any disease is a result of multiple interacting factors- some of them biological in nature while others psychological and social. The mind affects the body and the body affects the mind and together they may lead to health or illness. This mo...
Source: The Mouse Trap - August 29, 2016 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: sandygautam Tags: mental illness ABCD ABCD model Disease Mental disorder Mental health Source Type: podcasts
