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POPS6 Key Social Skills Obvious? Perhaps not - judging by how people often respond in social situations - where 'me' is the most important subject
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POPSdepression and dreaming link very interesting article, these are just quick snippets. even if you have never been seriously down it's good to know. stay preventative people!! :)
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POPSCould an Acid Trip Help to overcome anxiety ? This is an important article. I believe that psychedelic drugs not only have highly valuable therapeutic properties, but they can serve when responsibly used, to expand one's consciousness and boost intelligence and creativity in many aspects of life. The use of psychedelic drugs is one of those case where something which is highly beneficial to the individual is arbitrarily banned by the 'system' because the system do not want us too conscious, or too creative, not even too intelligence. All these threat the stability of the system while promoting independent thought. It is worth mentioning that the family of psychedelic drugs DO NOT contain dangerous addicting drugs such as opium, heroin, cocaine, crack, meth, etc.
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POPSHow Advertising Manipulates Our “Caveman” Brains (& How to Resist) Fortunately, there are ways to go about PROOFING YOUR BRAIN. 1. Change your mindset to “postmore” by challenging culture’s ingrained assumption that “more” of everything is automatically better. 2. Grow your gratitude. Our poor, starved, frozen ancestors would cry tears of joy if they suddenly landed in our culture of abundance. Fostering our appreciation of this bounty can also block the consumerist “cool” pressure to deride so many of our fine, workable possessions as “so last year”. 3. Be enough. We’re constantly told that we aren’t rich enough, glam enough, cool enough, networked enough, etc. This has a powerful insidious effect on our primitive, socially competitive brain circuits. It’s like a toxic substance that turns rational brains into needy toddlers wanting “more, more, more!
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POPSchildren lost the right to roam in 4 generations The article reflects our changing habits and our relationship with our environment. I agree completely about the necessity of outdoors, nature, plants, our good ol' earth. Ever been fishing? To a quiet golf course? A hike? How does it rejuvenate you? I am working on making my backyard a kind of restful, naturalist place for me to go and be refreshed.
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POPSNever Say Die: Why We Can't Imagine Death The common view of death as a great mystery usually is brushed aside as an emotionally fueled desire to believe that death isn’t the end of the road. And indeed, a prominent school of research in social psychology called terror management theory contends that afterlife beliefs, as well as less obvious beliefs, behaviors and attitudes, exist to assuage what would otherwise be crippling anxiety about the ego’s inexistence. Yet a small number of researchers, including me, are increasingly arguing that the evolution of self-consciousness has posed a different kind of problem altogether. This position holds that our ancestors suffered the unshakable illusion that their minds were immortal, and it’s this hiccup of gross irrationality that we have unmistakably inherited from them. Individual human beings, by virtue of their evolved cognitive architecture, had trouble conceptualizing their own psychological inexistence from the start.
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POPSThe Mind-Altering Role of Incense in Religion Under the influence of a good snoot full of incense, mice in scary situations, such as being put in a swimming pool, remain calm, anxiety-free. At the alter, too, people feel the same sense of peace that comes from either the comforting words of the clergy, or from the intoxicating, brain altering, smell of incense. In an age of endless anxiety, no wonder religion works; it is both cultural and biological. Karl Marx claimed that organized religion was the "opiate of the people," meaning it dulls us into complacency, but that might not be such a bad thing.
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POPSEmotional Problems of Gifted Children And they are so often shunned by the 'Normals' as weird etc so they have problems with relationships. They grow into adults who may be the great shapers of humanity, or succumb to the tragedy of their isolation. Education really should pay more than lip service to the 'gifted child'.
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POPSOffended Muslim Syndrome In order to guard against OMS, health officials warn individuals who are at risk to make sure that the objective reality they are exposed to does not: * Make them aware of the outside world * Trigger curiosity about the Western notions of "logic" or "rationality" * Make life more enjoyable * Cause them to question the need for martyrdom * Have side effects such as independent thinking and longing to live as a productive individual * Create an illusion that communication with infidels is possible without hostage-taking
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POPSIt's Okay To Be Afraid Don't let such fear rule your life. If I did, I would never ever be able to get on an aeroplane. To say I feel fear every single time I travel by air, would an understatement. I hope the desensitizing bit kicks in soon, because it never seems to be get any easier, "flooding" or not. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mX9-2xuyP8
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POPSYou Are What You Think Turning back the clock on the ultimate form of self-knowledge is neither possible nor desirable. We can live with the new challenges from brain science. But it will require setting aside childlike intuitions and traditional dogmas, and thinking afresh about what makes people better off and worse off.
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POPSFirst 'placebo gene' discovered 
To see if there were genetic differences between responders and non-responders, Furmark screened them for a variant of the gene for tryptophan hydroxylase-2, which makes the brain chemical, serotonin. Previous studies suggested that people with two copies of a particular "G" variant are less anxious in standard "fear" tests. Sure enough 8 of the 10 responders had two copies, while none of the non-responders did (Journal of Neuroscience (DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2534-08.2008). Furmark believes the effect of the gene may extend to other conditions where the amygdala is involved, such as phobias, pain disorders and even depression. However, he cautions that only further studies will reveal whether the gene influences the placebo effect more generally. Echoing Furmark's caution is Fabrizio Benedetti of the University of Turin, Italy. "We know that there's not a single placebo effect but many." Some may work through genetics, he adds, others through the expectation of a reward.
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POPSIt's Not All About You Most people are too busy worrying about their own personal problems to notice yours. In a 2000 study, Gilovich and colleagues reported that students also badly overestimated how well their own gaffes and clever arguments were noticed by others in discussion groups. "The fact is that others do not notice us nearly as much as we think they do," Gilovich said. Contrary to every instinct, our nervousness, our sadness, even our lies are largely lost on most observers, he said.
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POPSMourning a Way of Life Why “survival panic” is good. The greater opportunity of the downturn, Vaccaro said, is that it represents a chance to move away from “irrational” and “careless” consumerism toward “a more discerning consumer.”
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POPSThe Tyranny of Niceness Related to passive-aggression as a cultural descriptor rather than an individual pathology. Fear of authority, chronic anger, bitterness, and the masochistic self-disempowerment of submission (see Fromm).
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POPS Why We Can't Imagine Death? "This position holds that our ancestors suffered the unshakable illusion that their minds were immortal, and it’s this hiccup of gross irrationality that we have unmistakably inherited from them. Individual human beings, by virtue of their evolved cognitive architecture, had trouble conceptualizing their own psychological inexistence from the start."
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POPSLearning How Not To Be Afraid When Kandel's team used radiation to blunt the birth of new cells in the dentate gyrus, they discovered that their interventions both slowed safety learning and stunted the antidepressant effects of learned safety. Another study that points to the origin of fear as a biological entity. the glitch is it turning into anxiety.
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