The Caring Catalyst

Who Cares - What Matters

The WE of US

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W H Y
just see the
WE in US
when it’s way past time for us to start consistently
B E I N G
The WE in US

Just Thinking About Cooperation Can Make You Less Prejudiced

A new study suggests that imagining we’ll be cooperating with people outside our social groups reduces bias.  .  .

 JILL SUTTIE a freelance journalist for Greater Good Science Center pulls back the curtain to help us take a look at the good WE can do by being more about an US than a YOU or a mere ME. . .

As human beings, we tend to favor people we think are like us or have something in common with us—and we’re often wary of people who are different. 

Evolution made us this way so that we could find allies against outside threats. The problem comes when this old instinct to prefer our “in-group” leads us to discriminate, dehumanize, or act violently toward others we perceive as “the other” or members of the “out-group.”

Surprisingly, it doesn’t take much for us to create or expand in-groups. Studies have shown that even minimal similarities—like wearing the same-colored shirt—can prime us to prefer members of our in-group in relation to out-group members.

What allows us to get past that tendency to be so easily biased for and against people? A new study suggests one step: focus on the need to cooperate. 

Measuring the impact of anticipation

In this study, researchers Antonia Misch of Ludwig Maximilian University and Yarrow Dunham of Yale University formed artificial in-groups and out-groups in American and German children by randomly assigning them to wear an orange- or green-colored scarf. Then, they asked the children to look at sets of photos featuring two children (each with a different scarf color) and to rate their likability and niceness. The difference in likability scores between members of the child’s in-group and out-group provided a measure of favoritism.

The children were then told they’d be playing a cooperative game with their group members via computer. But, while half of the children (in the control group) connected to their own group without problems, the other half experienced a bad connection—and were told they’d instead be playing with the group wearing the other color scarf.

Before any actual play took place, however, the researchers measured in-group favoritism again, using the same method. When they compared the results, they found that children who’d been told they’d be playing with the out-group showed reduced favoritism toward their own group and less bias against the other group than children in the control group. 

“Just looking at the anticipation of cooperation triggers more positivity towards an out-group,” says Misch. “This could be a first, important step in helping people engage in more positive interactions.”

In another part of the study, Misch and Dunham repeated their experiment, but with a difference: They had the kids actually play the cooperative game together (or think they were playing together; in reality, they were playing alone). The researchers found that playing the game with others didn’t further reduce in-group favoritism, suggesting that anticipating cooperation may be as effective as actual cooperation in reducing bias.

This is important, says Misch, because while past research has found that cooperation between groups reduces prejudice and bias, her study is the first to show that simply anticipating cooperation can make a difference. 

Some biases are stronger than others

It’s striking to see this bias reduction happening in children rather than in adults, she adds. Perhaps if more teachers and parents kept this in mind, she says, they could help prevent prejudice from developing, by fostering more cooperation between diverse groups of children.

“Human group-mindedness is a characteristic that emerges early in life,” she says. “If we want to change intergroup relations and prejudice, we should start early.”

However, telling children that they should anticipate cooperating with others may not be enough to reduce deep-seated bias in all cases.

In one part of Misch’s study, children were separated into groups based on gender instead of using randomly colored scarves. Those who were told they’d be playing with kids in the opposite gender group didn’t show the same reductions in bias as children in prior experiments: They still preferred members of their own gender group.

To Misch, this is not too surprising, as gender bias is more firmly established than the kind of bias you see in groups like those created by scarf color. Stereotyped messages about boys and girls are passed down from parents, reinforced through culture, and perpetuated in media. Plus, gender is an important part of a child’s self-concept, which may cement it more firmly in their minds, she says.

Still, it’s possible that if differently-gendered children were encouraged to cooperate more from an early age, it could make a difference in reducing gender bias over time.

“Anticipating cooperation between some groups may help a little bit, even if it’s not going to be the only thing that’s needed,” she says.

Currently, Misch and her team are expanding their research to see if they can decrease bias based on race and ethnicity through anticipatory cooperation. She’s hopeful that having children—and adults—think about the necessity of working together across difference may lessen prejudice, not only helping us all get along better, but helping us to solve world problems that require a sense of commonality and shared purpose. 

“If we can replicate the effect with this study, it would be great,” she says. “Maybe it will just take a change of attitude around cooperation to reduce prejudice some and help society.”

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
SO What, huh?
Maybe if these past couple of years has taught us nothing else
isn’t it that
THE WE IN US
brings out the
Best in us
or
does it. . .

Psssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssst:
No answer necessary
.    .    .the way you live
TELLS  ALL

(we just don’t always act like it)

O T H E R W I S E

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Jane’s poem and some commentary of it has found me twice in less than a week which shouts:
PAY ATTENTION
and 
S H A R E
Have you ever had some
OTHERWISE
moments.          .          .          ?

 

While in the recovery room from a colonoscopy a very kind and attentive nurse told me I should get a mole checked on my shoulder.  I did.  But the mole I got checked was fine but there were two others ones that were discovered because of that visit that were not; they were successfully removed after being discovered that were cancerous.        .        .but it could have been OTHERWISE


*                                                        *                                                    *

I suffered through a agonizing night of urinary retention which resulted in an early morning Emergency Room visit before a busy day of two funerals and a wedding; while the young nurse was catheterizing me, she asked me what I did for a living and when I told her among other things, I was a hospice chaplain, she asked me what hospice and when I told her Hospice of the Western Reserve, she stopped and looked down at me and told me that her daughter of 8 months had been on our services and had recently died from brain cancer.  It was her first day back after her daughter’s death and her taking off three months to grieve her.  As we were finishing up with paperwork she asked me, “How did you know that I needed you to come in today?  I told her at that moment being there for both of us was the only thing that made sense and that we helped each other.          .          .but it could have been OTHERWISE

*                                                             *                                                  *

I had a stye on my eyelid but in my mind it had to be cancerous that would cause a hideous deforming blindness and as luck would have it the eye doctor was open late on this Monday night and had an opening for me.  He confirmed that it was a simple stye and could be managed with some hot compresses.  I told him I hadn’t been to see him in the 20 years that I’ve had success lasik eye surgery but then thought but there’s other reasons to visit him just to make sure my eyes were in good shape.  Tests were run and it was determined I have a cataract in both eyes that will eventually need repairing and pressure in both eyes that indicate early detection of glaucoma.  It was a less than a routine visit for a stye that could have easily been taken care of by Dr Google and it could have been OTHERWISE

*                                                                  *                                               *

What’s been your OTHERWISE moment?  Like the poet, Jane Kenyon, to be sure we all have those OTHERWISE moments, most likely more than we pay much mind.  “ONE DAY” as Jane says at the end of her poem, “IT WILL BE OTHERWISE”

One day, for a sure certainty, there will be a visit that will leave me so very much different coming out than when going it, if I come out at all, and I will not so much fall as drift softly into the arms of whatever’s next–a world that can’t be glimpsed from here.          .          .
But until that Sunrise that’ll never set I hope that I, and sincerely hopefully, like you, we will truly rejoice in the happy OTHERWISE-NESS of being alive, of being here, NOW

A RESURRECTION MANIFESTO

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Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front
by Wendell Berry

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.

So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion — put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie easy in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

DEATH AWAKENINGS

I went to sleep
and never woke up
A-lay-me-down-to-sleep-can’t-stay-
awake-anymoreness-kind-of-sleep
To a not all-that-well-to-known-
kind-of-Hereness
And it wasn’t an Okaynessability
or an Alrightynessity
but an Is-ie-ness
A never-not-to-be be-unknowability
that makes any new day
A Death Awakening
An Infinity
not a new Reality
sleeplessly Forevernity 



DO MORE THAN LOOK.        .         .
SEE
NOTICE
RECOGNIZE
R  E  S  U  R  R  E  C  T

SELF LOVING

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It can be really hard to
SELF LOVE
when you don’t much
SELF LIKE.         .         .
It’s been three years since we have
SHELTERED IN PLACE
and literally defined what
LONELINESS
is or now
will forever be defined
d i f f e r e n t l y.         .          .
REARVIEW MIRROR LIVING
always shows a little more than what
the Windshield can ever reveal
at first glance.       .       .
N            O            W
there’s some studies and evidence-based-data
that’s coming out and showing
what these past three years have
caused/done/begun in us

Self-Love Is Making Us Lonely

Getty Images
  MAYTAL EYAL=is a psychologist, writer, and speaker. She is the host of the podcast Heal With It  and she shares with us some of her findings.

Extolled by politicians and pop stars alike, it seems like everyone is talking about self-love these days. In a Vogue make-up tutorial, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez explains that loving yourself is “the one foundation of everything.” Nicole LaPera, the clinical psychologist behind the popular Instagram account, @theholisticpsychologist, tells her 6.4 million followers, “Self-love is our natural state.” And in her most recent chart-topping hit, “Flowers,” Miley Cyrus sings proudly, “I can love me better than you can.”

Self-love has become the core tenant of modern wellness culture, with the promise that what follows self-love is good health and freedom. In her book, The Self-Love Experiment, author Sharon Kaiser claims, “Whether you want to achieve weight loss, land your dream job, find your soulmate, or get out of debt, it all comes back to self-love and accepting yourself first.”

At this point, it doesn’t feel like much of a stretch to say that the self-love phenomenon is bordering on a societal obsession. The question is: why?

Today, we live in a climate where needing help can evoke shame and embarrassment, where cut-throat competition takes precedence over compassionate collaboration, and where self-sufficiency is celebrated as the ultimate achievement. To navigate the harsh terrain of radical individualism, self-love has emerged as our tool for survival. But it can come at a cost, especially when the type of self-love we turn to is the kind that has been manipulated by corporate ad campaigns and social media. In its commodified form, self-love is not really self-love at all; instead, it’s more like self-sabotage, convincing us to hyperfocus on ourselves at the expense of connecting with others.

While the exact origin of self-love remains unclear, one of the first psychologists to address the concept was Eric Fromm. In his 1956 book, The Art of Loving, he wrote, “Love of others and love of ourselves are not alternatives. On the contrary, an attitude of love toward themselves will be found in all those who are capable of loving others.” For Fromm, self-love operated as a necessary condition for relating with our fellow humans.

Going back further in history, we see other cultures referring to self-love as a channel for connection. In Ancient Greece, Aristotle claimed that self-love in its most virtuous form serves as a model for how we should love our friends. In the 13th century, Sufist poet Rumi wrote of the importance of recognizing the divine within oneself to feel one with the greater universe. And the ancient Buddhist practice of Metta, or loving-kindness meditation, involves practitioners directing love inwards so that they can then extend love outwards.

The self-love many of us have grown accustomed to today, however, veers from its authentic origin. Chewed up and spit out by toxic consumerism, it has been drained of its relational potential. Instead, it is often used by corporations and influencers alike to sell products and keep people hyper fixated on themselves. It is a force of isolation, rather than attachment.

When we take a moment to consider the culture we’re living in, where loneliness rates are at unprecedented highs, touch deprivation is a serious concern, and polarizing animosity has replaced empathic connection, it begins to make sense why we’ve sought refuge in self-love. To survive in our fractured world, we’ve been left with little choice but to turn inwards for affection.

Study after study shows that we’re living inside of a growing loneliness epidemic. In a recent survey conducted by Cigna, researchers found that almost 80% of adults from the ages of 18 to 24 reported feeling lonely. In 2018, even before the start of COVID-19 pandemic, one study showed that 54% of Americans felt like no one in their life knew them well.

Dr. Dan Siegel, clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine, attributes such jarring isolation to what he calls our “culture of separation.” In his latest book, Intraconnected, Seigel writes that our society “emphasizes separation rather than connection, independence rather than interdependence, individuality rather than a shared identity.” Ultimately, our prevailing cultural emphasis on excessive autonomy and self-reliance has engendered a society rife with disconnection.

We can see examples of this on social media, where it is common for women to be bombarded—under the guise of self-love and self-care—with advertisements for Botox and pilates machines, advanced skin care wands and organic hair growth serums. Such products don’t serve to bring women closer together; instead, they promote self-preoccupation, negative social comparison, and rattling insecurity.

Influencer culture, as another example, keeps the lines blurred between self-love and self-involvement. Narcissism is not only normalized, but rewarded by likes, follows, and corporate sponsorships. This, of course, comes at the detriment of influencers and followers alike, as both report experiencing a diminishment in psychological well-being.

When self-love becomes entangled with self-absorption and materialism, serious consequences emerge for our collective mental health. Studies show that too much focus on oneself is associated with anxiety and depression. Past research has also documented the vicious feedback loop of consumption and loneliness: When we purchase material possessions (even in the name of self-love), we surprisingly feel lonely, so we try and soothe ourselves through buying more, but this only makes us feel worse. This takes a toll on our health, as loneliness has been linked to increased inflammation, heart disease, and even premature death.

Self-love is a powerful tool; it can be used for good or bad, for connection or disconnection. And at a time of such immense social fragmentation, we need to cultivate the kind that brings us together. So how exactly do we do this?

Primarily, it requires introspection. We can know we’re practicing healthy self-love when we feel connected to our bodies and our communities. There are many iterations of what this may look like. Perhaps we choose to prioritize rest and replenishment one night so that we can be more engaged the next time we see our friends. Or maybe we decide to quit our high stress job, so that we can stop neglecting our needs and spend more time with the people and places we enjoy. True self-love not only bolsters our capacity for connection, but it also helps us become an actualized version of ourselves.

On the other hand, self-love through the warped filter of radical individualism tends to make us feel alienated, disconnected, and stuck in our own heads. This looks like buying a “self-care” product that causes us to ruminate on our appearance or justifying our anxious avoidance of meaningful social commitments through the co-opted language of self-compassion. It’s vital, then, that we begin actively recognizing when more nefarious forces are being disguised and packaged to us as self-love, and when we, ourselves, are consciously or unconsciously buying into them.

Our culture of separation carries a strong current. It’s easy to get pulled in, to become swept away by its riptide. But if we can achieve the balance between caring for ourselves and caring for others, real self-love may just very well be our life raft.

It can be really hard to
SELF LOVE
when you don’t much
SELF LIKE.         .         .
(but just remember)

 

LIFE SHINE

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I first saw this video about 12 years ago and actually shared it in a blog post here about 10 years ago and then as now.        .         .it’s timeless;

Often when I’m giving a presentation or workshop of “Palliation For The Soul,” I show this film clip.

I believe I’m the only bald man that actually buys Pantene Shampoo because I love what this makes us feel.

Every day, several times a day, we have opportunities to be Victors or Victims. Sometimes those lines blur seamlessly so it’s almost impossible to tell the difference between the two. And then we don’t look, so much as Feel. . .Experience the Difference.

When’s the last time, just by showing up, your life became EXTRAordinary? We all have the capabilities of inviting, making, allowing the very best of our lives to Shine and yes, it often does that best on our darkest days, our bleakest, grayest moments.

Make your Life ExtraORDINARY. Play your own Music. Be the Instrument that everyone needs in their Orchestra and then direct your Symphony to include everyone.  Be a Caring Catalyst enough to bring your Life Shine to the Shadows that lurk and haunt; Not just Today, but especially THIS DAY!

See. Be. Free that Luminosity Beaming to get out of you. . . .

CHECKING IN BEFORE BOARDING

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image.png

IMG_0249.JPG

Pssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssst
Before
B   O   A   R   D   I   N   G
CHECK  IN

 

MY SAVIOR COMPLEX

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DO UNTO OTHERS AS YOU’D LIKE TO BE DONE UNTO YOU.    .    .RIGHT
Or better,
DO UNTO OTHERS AS THEY REALLY WANT DONE UNTO THEM.   .   .
I mean these are really great aspirations for yourself
FOR OTHERS
.            .            .or are they the worst?
it’s real close to liking you to break open the
Butterfly Cocoon
before it’s ready
.       .     .seemingly to make it easier
But actually doing it the most harm ever.         .         .
THE  SAVIOR  COMPLEX
I’ve always had one
and thought it noble
and even sometimes wore it as a
Badge of Honor
until I saw I was actually doing more harm
than any kind of well intended
G                 O                 O                 D
so when an article about SAVIOR COMPLEXING comes across my attention
I SOAK IT UP
and ok, fine, here’s the truest of true Confessions:
I end up making this Complex even more
C     O     M     P     L     E     X     I     N     G
and yet, I read on and invite you to do the same now with this article from a recent Psychology Today by Mark Travers, Ph.D., an American psychologist with degrees from Cornell University and the University of Colorado Boulder.

Aamir Suhail / Unsplash
Source: Aamir Suhail / Unsplash

3 Ways to Control the Urge to Save

Everyone.       .       .

Dr. Travers shares that many people come to therapy troubled by their inability to help someone in need. They may say things like:

  • “Why do I always feel attracted to people who have had lots of troubles in life?”
  • “I make every sacrifice possible to help him, but he still doesn’t change.”
  • “If I’m constantly trying to change my significant other for the better, does that mean I’m not accepting of them?”

If you relate to any of these questions, you may have a savior complex. At first glance, your behaviors might point to your helpful nature. But, when examined more closely, your savior complex can be psychologically unhealthy as it can give you an external outlet to focus on instead of addressing your own problems.

Helpfulness is a valued and pro-social trait, but there is a difference between helping and saving. A savior complex goes beyond our ability to help people, crossing into the realm of trying to be a hero in someone else’s life for your benefit more than theirs.

Here I’ll talk about three ways you can manage your instinct to want to “save” people.

1. Practice active listening

When people confide in you, they are often looking for an outlet to let out pent-up emotions instead of wanting to “be fixed.” A big problem for many “saviors” is the mistaken assumption that people are incapable of solving their own issues. If you take up the practice of listening more actively, you may learn that this person is perhaps just looking for a supportive shoulder and someone who will listen.

A study published in the Journal of Positive Psychology finds that listening carefully and attentively increases the level of humility in any conversation, resulting in a positive feedback loop of increased humility and better listening.

Here are two ways to up your listening skills, according to the researchers:

  • Don’t be afraid of silence. Silent moments are essential for building a good conversation. Allow yourself to be silent to enable the other person to speak. For instance, when a friend comes to you with a problem, aim to understand rather than immediately reply. Instead, watch for their body language, which speaks volumes (e.g., tensed shoulders may express fear or hesitation).
  • Believe in the benefits of listening. Familiarize yourself with the benefits of listening. This will motivate you to become a better listener.

2. Wait it out before stepping in

Aside from practicing active listening, resist your urge to intervene. You may find that people can often come to their own aid when helping themselves is the only real way out.

If you try to be the fixer of all their problems, you run the risk of unintentionally pushing them towards a sense of learned helplessness, where they lose the perspective to be able to diagnose and address their own issues.

When a loved one comes to you with an issue, refrain from offering assistance or suggestions right off the bat. Remind yourself that you can be present for someone without having to rescue them. Instead, you can offer validation that shows that you understand and empathize with them and are there for them whenever they need to vent.

3. Hold in your urge to help until you are asked for it

One key aspect of the savior complex is the ingrained desire to help even when it’s not wanted or requested. Assuming that the other person is incapable of helping themselves may reflect or be perceived as a superiority complex on your end.

Instead, you can offer assistance in low-pressure ways that keeps the ball in their court. For instance, ask the other person questions like, “This situation seems quite tough. Is there any way I can help?”

Follow their guidance if they ask you to help in a certain way instead of assuming that you know what’s best.

Now READING and Article and even remotely trying to implement it makes not an expert but.        .       .
It’s a beginning (a g a i n)

Managing your savior instincts may seem difficult at first, but it’s a learnable skill. Even though you may believe you are doing someone a favor, saving someone who doesn’t want to be saved may backfire. Wait until this person asks for your assistance since it’s likely that someone who truly needs it will ask you for it directly.
And remember
Even as you’re Reaching Out
To REACH IN
f            i            r            s            t
IS THIS HELPING THEM
MORE THAN 
APPEASING ME.          .          .          ?

 

MORE or less

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Give MORE and take less.          .          .
Can we.     .     .     ?
THEY SAY:
Giving to others brings a sense of satisfaction and fulfillment that cannot be achieved through material possessions or personal gain. It  can also have positive effects on our mental and physical #health. Research has shown that people who regularly engage in acts of kindness and giving are more likely to experience lower levels of stress, depression, and anxiety.          .          .

S                    T                   I                    L                    L

In this for real
DOG eat Dog
world
we can still see how
We Mutts can still learn
(or forever RE-LEARN)
New Tricks
without so much as
ROLLING OVER
or worse
PLAYING DEAD

SUPERNATURAL PRESENCE

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IT IS A SUPER POWER
and we all possess it
but don’t always access it
P     R     E     S     E     N     C     E
Some call it:
HOLDING SPACE
and I’ve blogged on it before
but as a striving to always be better
CARING CATALYST
I can’t learn enough about it
or dare to believe
I’ve always provided it
to my utmost ability
.          .          .and then this article from
TIME MAGAZINE
found me:

The New, Strange Science

Behind Felt Presences

Chris Dale—Getty Images
IDEAS
BY BEN ALDERSON-DAY
Alderson-Day is an Associate Professor in Psychology and a Fellow of the Wolfson Research Institute for Health and Wellbeing at Durham University. A specialist in atypical cognition and mental health, his work spans cognitive neuroscience, psychiatry, philosophy, and child development. He is the author of Presence

Many of us have had this uncanny feeling before: Entering a silent room, walking through a dark night, or waking from sleep—and suddenly, it’s there. A sense that someone is with us, without any sight or sound. A feeling of a presence.

It’s a sensation that occupied the forefathers of psychology for a long time, including William James. Writing in the Varieties of Religious Experience, James wrote of “a feeling of objective presence, a perception of what we may call ‘something there,’ more deep and more general than any of the special and particular ‘senses.’” It was an experience he recognized as key to many a spiritual occurrence, but also one with an often sinister and foreboding air. A friend of James’ recounted a night-time encounter of his own that he experienced as a student: “I did not recognize it by any ordinary sense and yet there was a horribly unpleasant ‘sensation’ connected with it. It stirred something more at the roots of my being than any ordinary perception.”

If you’ve had this experience and you’ve tried to explain it to someone, you may be met with a blank look, or even skepticism. It sounds like something out of a ghost story, and indeed, William James was a kind of 19th-century ghostbuster. He was a key member of the Society of Psychical Research, which was set up to examine the truth behind telepathy, spiritualism, and apparitions of the night.

But what we now know is that James’s friend was correct. This isn’t a ghost story, or even a sixth sense, but something at the roots of our being. Contemporary neurology, cognitive neuroscience, and psychiatry shows us that such presences truly belong to us because they are linked to how our bodies and minds give us a sense of self.

The first piece of evidence comes from case studies of people affected by epilepsy, brain tumors, and other major changes to brain functioning. For instance, in a 2006 study, a 41-year-old man, whom the study called “PH,” presented to a hospital clinic complaining of fatigue, dizziness, and seizures. The one night in hospital, he awoke to feel he had split into three parts: his left side, which felt normal; his right side, which felt somehow detached; and then off to his right, another man who wasn’t him. This figure mirrored his body position, and when he tried to look at him, he looked away; PH felt as if “they shared the same soul.” Beyond the man stood a woman, again mirroring PH, and beyond that, some girls; he called them his “family.” After a few days the image of these figures receded, but the feeling of their presence remained.

PH’s experiences were the product of an aggressive tumor in the left hemisphere of his brain, which affected two areas in particular: the posterior insula and the temporoparietal junction. The former is a key brain area for processing internal information about our bodies (like heart rate or gut feelings), while the latter is involved in integrating our senses to make a map of where we are in space. Damage to those areas would have changed PH’s internal model for where he felt his body was. So when he was visited by this presence, in a way it did share his soul. It was where he should have been (or his brain thought he was).

The next piece of evidence comes from cognitive neuroscience, and a team led by neurologist Olaf Blanke in Geneva. Since 2014, they have used a robot to induce feelings of presence in healthy individuals and clinical disorders, such as Parkinson’s disease. The robot works to disrupt your sensory expectations: Whenever we make a movement, our brains are thought to make a set of predictions about what will happen to our senses. Go to clap your hands, and your brain is ready for a new sight and sound, all at the right time. But if you mess with that, strange things start to happen; things don’t feel like “us” and instead start to feel like they belong to someone else. With the presence robot, you make random pressing movements into the air in front of you, while the robot presses you in the back at exactly the same time. In sync, it almost feels like it’s you pressing your own back—you brain takes the cues from your own movements, and the sensations on your back, and comes to the conclusion that the only person in this process is you. But when the touches start to then go out of sync—slowing and dragging, not quite hitting where they should—participants suddenly feel like a person, not just a robot, is controlling the touches from behind. Lots of people with Parkinson’s have feelings of presence as part of the condition, and this makes them particularly susceptible to the phantom touches of the robot.

Lastly, we’re now beginning to recognize that feelings of presence are a missing piece in the story of psychosis. Not long after William James was writing, figures like Karl Jaspers were describing examples of presence in some of the first textbooks of psychiatry. But the trail ran cold for a number of years—until very recently. There’s now evidence that people who hear voices (or have auditory hallucinations) also describe high rates of felt presence—literally voices than can be there without speaking. And grassroots work such as Rethink Psychosis, led by people with experience of psychosis themselves, are calling for more recognition and understanding of the phenomenon through projects like “Psychosis Outside the Box,” a collection of the more neglected and unusual aspects of psychosis.

The strangeness of presences makes them all too easy to miss in a time-pressured doctor’s appointment, but for many people, it may be the figure behind voices or visions that matters the most. If you’ve ever had your own personal space violated, or dreaded to go into certain places because of who might be there, you will know how much the presence of another can affect you, even without a word being uttered. Thinking about presences, and not just voices, poses a whole new set of challenges for our scientific models of psychosis and how we deliver psychotherapy. It’s even part of some of the newer psychotherapeutic approaches to psychosis, such as AVATAR therapy.

The through-line in all these examples is the self. In Western societies, we are used to the idea of a unitary, consistent self—the core of us that never changes. But psychologists and neuroscientists know that the self is something that can be disrupted in multiple ways; it’s less of a one-man band, and more of an ensemble piece. In clinical disorders, case reports, or through ingenious experiments, we can observed how radically the self can altered to produce a presence.

It goes beyond that, too. Given the right conditions, all of us could have this is experience, whether as a result of grief, exhaustion, trauma, or even sleep problems. In this way, the new science of presence isn’t about a mysterious “other,” after all. It’s a way of learning about ourselves.
W  H  O  A,  Right
And yet the not-so-big-surprise
WE ARE LIKE OCEANS.          .          .
THERE IS SO MUCH WE KNOW ABOUT EACH OTHER
AND SO VERY, VERY MUCH MORE THAT WE DON’T.     .     .
with the biggest question of
JUST HOW WILLING ARE YOU TO FIND OUT?
Psssssssssssssssssssssssssssst:
FIND  OUT

Professional Speaker, Author, Assurance Man