The Caring Catalyst

Who Cares - What Matters

KING OF A LAND

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I love this new song and video by Yusuf, formerly known as Cat Stevens.  .  .

If I was a king of a land I’d free every woman and man I’d let them go I’d set them free, to serve You

If I knew every fish in the sea And every bird in the tree I’d hear their call I’d hear them speak Your name

If I ran the schools of this world I’d teach every boy and girl I’d let them learn the truth I’d let them know Your glory

If I had stairs to the sky I’d raise my voice up there high I’d want the world to hear Your perfect words and thank You

If I had a mountain of gold I’d try to feed every poor soul And give them hope again And let them taste Your bounty

If I could reach every dream I still would search the unseen To find a way That leads us to Your mercy

If I was a king of a land I’d free every woman and man I’d let them go I’d set them free to serve You

The lyrics and the tune, well, it’s not the only thing
and maybe not as important as this
one single question:

IF YOU WERE A KING OF A LAND.     .     .
WHAT WOULD IT LOOK LIKE?
Psssssssssssssssssst:
It’s more in your HANDS
to choose
than you might ever imagine
.          .         .MAKE IT COUNT

(I don’t know how long you have been following and supporting THE CARING CATALYST BLOG; but I’m humbly grateful and congratulations to you; this is my 1100th post)

ONE OUT OF ONE OF US

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Rabbi Harold S. Kushner, Reassuring

Best-Selling Author, Dies at 88

With a wide-reaching spiritual message in books like “When Bad Things Happen to Good People,” he drew on his own experience with grief and doubt.

A black and white photo of a middle-aged Rabbi Kushner wearing thick-framed eye glasses and a suit and necktie. He holds a copy of his book “When Bad Things Happen to Good People.”
Rabbi Harold S. Kushner in 1981, the year “When Bad Things Happen to Good People” was published. He wrote it after the death of his 14-year-old son. “Like a lot of children who feel they’re going to die soon, he was afraid he would be forgotten because he didn’t live long enough,” he said, adding, “I promised I’d tell his story.”Credit…Neal Boenzi/The New York Times

By Sam Roberts

Rabbi Harold Kushner, a practical public theologian whose best-selling books assured readers that bad things happen to good people because God is endowed with unlimited love and justice but exercises only finite power to prevent evil, died on Friday in Canton, Mass. He was 88.

His death, in hospice care, was confirmed by his daughter, Ariel Kushner Haber.

Several of Rabbi Kushner’s 14 books became best-sellers, resonating well beyond his Conservative Jewish congregation outside Boston and across religious boundaries in part because they had been inspired by his own experiences with grief, doubt and faith. One reviewer called his book “When All You’ve Ever Wanted Isn’t Enough” a “useful spiritual survival manual.”

Rabbi Kushner wrote “When Bad Things Happen to Good People” (1981) after the death of his son, Aaron. At age 3, just hours after the birth of the Kushners’ daughter, Aaron was diagnosed with a rare disease, progeria, in which the body ages rapidly.

When Aaron was 10 years old, he was in his 60s physiologically. He weighed only 25 pounds and was as tall as a three-year-old when he died in 1977 two days after his 14th birthday.

“Like a lot of children who feel they’re going to die soon, he was afraid he would be forgotten because he didn’t live long enough, not knowing parents never forget,” Rabbi Kushner told the alumni magazine Columbia College Today in 2008. “I promised I’d tell his story.”

The book was rejected by two publishers before it was accepted by Schocken Books. It catapulted to No. 1 on the New York Times best-seller list and transformed Rabbi Kushner into a popular author and commentator.

“It was my very first inkling of how much suffering was out there, all over the world, that religion was not coping with,” he told The Times in 1996.

His thesis, as he wrote in the book, was straightforward: “It becomes much easier to take God seriously as the source of moral values if we don’t hold Him responsible for all the unfair things that happen in the world.”

Rabbi Kushner also wrote:

“I don’t know why one person gets sick, and another does not, but I can only assume that some natural laws which we don’t understand are at work. I cannot believe that God ‘sends’ illness to a specific person for a specific reason. I don’t believe in a God who has a weekly quota of malignant tumors to distribute, and consults His computer to find out who deserves one most or who could handle it best

i“‘What did I do to deserve this?’ is an understandable outcry from a sick and suffering person, but it is really the wrong question. Being sick or being healthy is not a matter of what God decides that we deserve. The better question is, ‘If this has happened to me, what do I do now, and who is there to help me do it?’”

He was making the case that dark corners of the universe endure where God has not yet succeeded in making order out of chaos. “And chaos is evil; not wrong, not malevolent, but evil nonetheless,” he wrote, “because by causing tragedies at random, it prevents people from believing in God’s goodness.”

Unpersuaded, the journalist, critic and novelist Ron Rosenbaum, writing in The New York Times Magazine in 1995, reduced Rabbi Kushner’s thesis more dialectically: “diminishing God to something less than an Omnipotent Being — to something more like an eager cheerleader for good, but one decidedly on the sidelines in the struggle against evil.”

“In effect,” he wrote, “we need to join Him in rooting for good — our job is to help cheer Him up.”

Rabbi Kushner argued, however, that God was omnipotent as a wellspring of empathy and love.

Image

A color photo of an older Rabbi Kushner wearing wire-frame glasses, a light-gray shirt and a dark necktie. The altar of his synagogue and a colorful stained-glass window can be seen behind him.
Rabbi Kushner in 2012 in the sanctuary of Temple Israel in Natick, Mass., outside Boston. He led the congregation for 24 years while writing many of his books. Credit…Art Illman/Metro West Daily News, via Associated Press

Harold Samuel Kushner was born on April 3, 1935, to Julius and Sarah (Hartman) Kushner in the East New York section of Brooklyn. His mother was a homemaker. His father owned Playmore Publishing, which sold toys and children’s books, especially Bible stories, from a shop at Fifth Avenue and 23rd Street that he hoped his son would take over. Harold felt he lacked his father’s business sense.

He was raised in Brooklyn (the family moved to the Crown Heights section when he started elementary school), where he was a passionate Brooklyn Dodgers fan. After graduating from Erasmus Hall High School, he earned a bachelor’s degree from Columbia University in 1955 and a master’s there in 1960.

He had planned to major in psychology but switched to literature after studying under Prof. Mark Van Doren, the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet. On a lark, but armed with a solid religious upbringing, he enrolled in an evening program at the Jewish Theological Seminary. By his junior year at Columbia he had decided to become a rabbi.

After Columbia, he enrolled full-time at the seminary where he was ordained, graduated in 1960 and received his doctorate in 1972. He studied later at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

He volunteered for two years in the Army’s Chaplain Corps at Fort Sill, Okla., where he became a first lieutenant. Returning to New York after his discharge, he served for four years as an assistant rabbi at Temple Israel in Great Neck, N.Y., on Long Island.

Rabbi Kushner married Suzette Estrada in 1960 and moved to Massachusetts, where he became rabbi of Temple Israel in Natick, a suburb of Boston, in 1966. He served as the congregational rabbi there for 24 years and remained a member of the congregation until he moved into a senior living residence in Canton in 2017.

His wife died in 2022. His brother, Paul, a rabbi in Bellmore and Merrick on Long Island, died in 2019. In addition to his daughter, he is survived by two grandchildren.

Among Rabbi Kushner’s other books are “How Good Do We Have to Be? A New Understanding of Guilt and Forgiveness” (1997), “Living a Life That Matters” (2001) and “The Lord Is My Shepherd: Healing Wisdom of the 23rd Psalm” (2003).

He also collaborated with the novelist Chaim Potok in editing “Etz Hayim: A Torah Commentary,” the official commentary of Conservative Jewish congregations, which was published by the Rabbinical Assembly and the Jewish Publication Society in 2001.

Rabbi Kushner often said he was amazed at the breadth of his readership across theological lines. In 1999, he was named clergyman of the year by the organization Religion in American Life. In 2007, the Jewish Book Council gave him a Lifetime Achievement Award.

In his books, other writings and on-air commentary, often as a radio and television talk show guest, he became a font of aphorisms embraced by clergy of all denominations. Among them were: “Forgiveness is a favor we do for ourselves, not a favor we do to the other party,” and, “If we hold our friends to a standard of perfection, or if they do that to us, we will end up far lonelier than we want to be.”

“People who pray for miracles usually don’t get miracles, any more than children who pray for bicycles, good grades, or good boyfriends get them as a result of praying,” he wrote. “  But people who pray for courage, for strength to bear the unbearable, for the grace to remember what they have left instead of what they have lost, very often find their prayer answered.”

He explained that his book “When All You’ve Ever Wanted Isn’t Enough” was intended to be “an examination of the question of why successful people don’t feel more satisfied with their lives.”

“Drawing on the Biblical book of Ecclesiastes, it suggests that people need to feel that their lives make a difference to the world,” he wrote. “We are not afraid of dying so much as of not having lived.”

Psssssssssssssssssssssssssssst:

One out of One of us dies. . .even Rabbi’s  I first fell in love with this book even before I opened up the cover to the first page just by the Title: WHEN BAD THINGS HAPPEN TO GOOD PEOPLE  Did you catch it?  W H E N not IF   We live in a world today that not only defies DEATH, it actually believes it doesn’t exist; that a drug, a therapy, an intervention, even a prayer, eliminates the possibility of it in our lives.

Rabbi Kushner showed us that DEATH and GRIEF are real; they are not to be cured, but HEALING is more than possible.          .          .
NOW THAT IS A LITTLE HARSH.         .          .
T        R        U        T        H
SOLUTION TO LIFE AND DEATH:
LOVE
THE
DEEPEST

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

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

I’M SO VERY SORRY

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YOU BLEW IT
YOU KNEW IT
DON’T CHEW IT
JUST DO IT.          .          .
SAY
“I AM SORRY”
.          .          but how.     .     .

8 Ways to Apologize Well

(when just one way doesn’t feel enough)

Apologies are how we smooth over conflicts and repair relationships, prove our character to others, and coexist as imperfect beings. Yet few of us know how to do it well—or have the bravery to do so.

“A good apology builds bridges. It heals wounds,” says Marjorie Ingall, coauthor of the new book Sorry, Sorry, Sorry: The Case for Good Apologies. “It’s also really hard. Apologizing is a courageous act, because we’re overcoming all of our own animal instincts and all of our own self-protectiveness when we do it.”

Sincere apologies can be difficult to nail. Everyone wants to feel like a good person, which can lead to defensiveness—we talk ourselves out of the idea that we did something wrong in order to safeguard our sense of self. “We immediately turn to excuses, justifications, reasons why the victim provoked us,” says Karina Schumann, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Pittsburgh who’s researched the barriers to apologizing. “And if we’re able to convince ourselves of that, then that can—in our minds—preclude the need for an apology.” Or, perhaps we don’t care enough about fixing a certain relationship to apologize, she adds. We might also overestimate how uncomfortable delivering the apology will be, or assume that it won’t work.

But sincere apologies bring a host of benefits to the person delivering the message and the one receiving it. They help solidify relationships and mend trust, both of which can lower stress and improve mental health. “It’s really unhealthy to hold onto shame and guilt and not try to work through your emotions around negative behaviors and harmful acts you’ve committed,” Schumann says. Plus, some research indicates that those receiving apologies can experience improvements in blood pressure and heart rate, as well as increased activation of empathy-related brain regions that set the stage for forgiveness and reconciliation.

If you’re ready for your mea culpa moment, here are eight keys to apologizing well.

Don’t rush into it

Apologies are better late than early, says Cindy Frantz, a social psychologist at Oberlin College who has researched how timing influences apology effectiveness. “What we found is that there can be a temptation to offer an apology quickly,” she says. “It’s an effort to shut the whole incident down and move on. And that benefits the perpetrator, but it doesn’t meet the needs of the victim.”

You can’t deliver an effective apology until and unless the injured party believes that you fully understand what you did wrong, she says. “If the apology comes before that, it’s not going to be seen as sincere.”

Be open to a variety of formats

If you’re dealing with a relatively minor offense, consider apologizing over text message or in person, Ingall suggests. Emails often work well for more serious situations. “And if you really screwed up, there’s something very powerful about a stamp and nice stationery and a pen,” she says. Just don’t issue your apology via social media, which can be humiliating for everyone involved.

Another rule of thumb: “When you’re apologizing to someone, you have to give them an out,” Ingall says. “You don’t want somebody to feel trapped by you—they need an escape route.” Don’t block the pathway out of someone’s work cubicle, for instance, or lean into their car window so they’re unable to pull away.

Start with specific words

Use the words “I’m sorry” or “I apologize.” Opting instead for phrases like “I regret” or “I feel bad about what happened” often results in non-apologies, which “have the vague contours of an apology, but don’t actually get there,” Ingall says. (See: The classic “sorry if you were offended” or “sorry, but…” approaches.) Plus, saying you regret something puts the focus on you and your emotions, when it needs to center squarely on the wronged person’s feelings.

Accept responsibility

Why should you apologize if you’re both at fault? That’s exactly the question many people struggle with, Schumann says—and certainly, there often is dual-responsibility. “But I like to encourage people to really focus on taking responsibility for the parts of the conflict that they’re responsible for,” she says. Avoid the urge to phrase it as, “I’m sorry I did this, but you also did that.” The inclination to do so is “normal, because we want to contextualize our behavior and call attention to the fact that we’re also hurt,” she says. But save it for later on in the conversation.

Emphasize certain words

Always choose your words carefully when apologizing, advises Lisa Leopold, an associate professor of English language studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey who has analyzed the language of public apologies. Avoid conditional phrases, like “if” or “may”—as in, “I’m sorry if anyone was offended,” which suggests that perhaps there were no victims. “But” is another misstep. It undercuts your message, she notes.

It’s crucial to use “I” or “my” while apologizing, Leopold adds. For example, say “I’m sorry for my outburst,” rather than “I’m sorry for the interaction this morning.” And always use the active voice. “If you say something like, ‘I apologize for what happened,’ well, ‘what happened’ is something you have no control over,” she says.

It can also be helpful to utilize intensifiers such as “very,” “truly,” “sincerely,” “deeply,” and “extremely.” These can “enhance the language of an apology,” Leopold notes.

Be clear about how you plan to repair things

One of the core elements of an apology is making reparations. Sometimes, Schumann says, that will be possible in a direct way: You broke their favorite wine glass? Buy them a new one. Spilled coffee on their dress? Pay for the dry-cleaning.

If that’s not feasible, consider more symbolic forms of repair. For example, if you hurt someone’s feelings with a critical comment, make it clear that you misspoke. “Sometimes you can’t repair what’s happened, but you can think about the relationship moving forward,” she says. “How can you communicate a promise to behave better?” It’s important for the other person “to hear that this is not going to continue…and they can trust you to improve your behavior in the future.”

Communicate sincerity

A variety of things can help make it clear your words are coming from the heart, Schumann says. First, the apology should match the severity of the offense. If you’re apologizing for infidelity and say, “Sorry about that, love,” you won’t come across as very genuine, she notes; however, those words might be adequate if you’re 10 minutes late for dinner.

You should also aim to put yourself in the other person’s shoes and convey that you understand what you did was hurtful to them, and the consequences they dealt with as a result. It can be helpful to listen first and ask them questions about their vantage point, Schumann advises. “That might allow you to really understand what they’re going through, and therefore be able to offer a more authentic, victim-focused apology.”

Don’t expect forgiveness

An apology is a starting point. Particularly with severe offenses, the person wronged will often need time and space to heal, and it’s important not to pressure them. It can be tempting to follow up with something like, “What’s wrong? I apologized—how long are you going to hold onto this?” Instead, Schumann suggests checking in like this: “I understand this isn’t going to fix everything, and I want to continue to do whatever I can to make this right by you. I hope that, even if you’re not ready to forgive me, you’re open to working with me to get us to a point where we can move forward.”

Now, just remember
WHEN THE SHOE’S ON THE OTHER FOOT

Professional Speaker, Author, Assurance Man