The Tyranny of Positivity and Other Happy Brain Findings

The Tyranny of Positivity

Susan David is a Harvard psychologist who lost her father at age 15 and learned first-hand how denial can wreak havoc with not just our own lives, but the lives of many in our immediate and extended circle. Pointing out how “rigidity in the face of complexity is toxic” and “emotions pushed aside or ignored only get stronger” and “life’s beauty is inseparable from its fragility,” David shatters the cultural directive that it’s best if we all just don’t worry and be happy. Better is to get help to turn and face our own pain and suffering. And then make ourselves available to help others do likewise.

Warming Up to the Ice Man

Wim Hof on Ice

Wim Hof has developed a method to self-regulate his autonomic nervous system. As a result he has deliberately developed a super-high pain threshold, particularly to cold. In this article researchers at Wayne State University wired Wim up to their scanners and imaging machines and discovered how his brain operates much differently than yours and mine. What’s especially interesting to me is the speculation by the Wayne State researchers that we can very likely intentionally develop the capacity to positively affect our brain’s and body’s immune function.

Holding Hands Reduces Pain Through the Alpha Mu Band

There have been lots of studies that show how a more organized brain can help organize a less organized brain (The Golden Rule of Social Neuroscience), but this study actually drills down into the neural depths and takes a close look at what’s happening when romantic couples hold hands when one of them is in pain. “Interpersonal synchronization” is the term they’ve given for the phenomenon. It appears that empathic touch is able to blur our interpersonal boundaries in beneficial ways. Imagine what might happen to the world’s pain if we inaugurated a planet-wide Global Hand-Holding Day every month.

The Strange Order of Things

Antonio Damasio is one of my favorite neuroscientists and one of the hardest ones for me to read.

Antonio Damasio, MD

Fortunately, he’s not hard for everyone and in this review of his most recent book, The Strange Order of Things, Brainpickings blogger, Maria Popova does all the heavy lifting for me. So, are you now ready to learn the language of feelings, all 32000 of them? If we consider that learning the 900 English words commonly used in most everyday speech would make us fluent, imagine how feeling-fluent we would become learning about and learning how to discriminate between all 32000 of them. If so, you’re going to have to do a lot of work to reclaim the body sense you had as a toddler before the language of words took center stage.

Smartphone: An Extension of Your Mind?

I’ve never liked phones – of any kind: smart, dumb or even genius. I find them to be an annoying, intrusive technology, mostly used by people I don’t know to convince me to give them money to buy something I don’t need or want. If the police were to get a warrant to search my phone, their primary criminal finding would be that I like folk-country music. Oh, and podcasts like, Hidden Brain, Cerebrum and Brain Candy. That said, most people aren’t like me. Their phones hold more information about them than their parents or their best friends. This essay makes the argument that we might want to consider caring for our phones like we would ideally care for our brains and our bodies.