I read an article today about a UK study concerning rumination, or self-blame, and its relationship to anxiety and depression. While I think we all understand that depressed and anxious people tend to ruminate on the problems in their lives, I don't think that we usually consider that this kind of circular thinking might be causative. The study states; "We found that people who...
On a Saturday afternoon in late September, I almost drowned. On this warm fall afternoon, my friend Caroline and I had impulsively decided to swim across a lake. It’s a big enough body of water that we had to frantically wave at several speedboats to make sure that we didn’t get run over as we crossed. It’s one of those...
whirlpool take 2 from rumur on Vimeo.******* see note below **** I am like my daughter, or she is like me, in that I am less inclined to want to learn how to do things from others. Instead I want to figure it out for myself. Sometimes this is a good thing, because I can develop unique ways of looking...
The greatest conundrum for me in regards to coming to the understanding that stress (a very broad definition of stress) plays a profoundly more important role in our health than the vast majority of doctors (and thereby patients) acknowledge, is that armed with this knowledge I am still struggling mightily to get over my own problems with stress induced pain....
Yesterday I wrote a piece about stress and illness. In this article I focused on the role that stress plays in all areas of health. When my mother read it she astutely responded, “Some issues I would want to discuss -- the need to be careful not to go so far to one side that the complexity of mind-body gets...
For years we have been working on a film about the connection between stress and pain. Recently it has expanded to include the connection between stress and overall health. While the film is about the science of healthcare, it’s also about social science - how ideas move through the world - and it’s about framing. When a carpenter looks at...
I just saw this article on the front page of Yahoo. This piece outlines the 10 most common reasons for doctor visits, from an investor's perspective. Where some people see pain, others see opportunity. However, if one is looking through the mindbody frame the results signal an opportunity for relief. Here are the 10 most common reasons the Mayo Clinic listed...
For years I have had intermittent anxiety dreams about houses upstate that feel so real and connected that in the in between space that one encounters before fully waking they seem to slip from my alternate anxious reality into this one. I had one this morning and I was pulled in to this realm when I wondered out loud why...
Last week I wrote several pieces in response to the reaction to Jonah Lehrer's apology speech. I published one, the second that I wrote, on my blog last week. This is the first piece that I wrote. I was told by others that it was too related to our own work to post elsewhere. As such I combined parts of...
This morning before school, I was talking with some other parents about a funeral for an 8 year old 4th grader that’s taking place tonight. He died in a fire last week. I spend a lot of time at the school, and know a lot of kids by sight but not name. I think it’s pheromones, but when kids see...
Last week I heard on BBC radio that the National Health Service in England is instructing doctors to prescribe self-help books. The radio presenter seemed a little aghast at this idea and pressed a doctor by asking something along the lines of, “So you’re saying that you think that people will respond well to a doctor basically telling them that...
Pause for a moment and think about how you think about healthcare. Do you trust doctors in white coats more than doctors who dress more casually. When you hear the word "alternative practitioner," do you think of quacks or healers? Do you think about how your emotions affect your health? For the most part, we go through life without paying attention...