Buzzed

shrinbks-links-photo1Bringing you the best of mental health every week.

51g5nobfaul-_sx329_bo1204203200_The best book I know about how drugs of abuse work and their effects is Buzzed: The Straight Facts About the Most Used and Abused Drugs from Alcohol to Ecstasy, now in its fourth edition. No one is frying eggs and exaggerating or diminishing the effects of drugs of abuse in this book. You may be able to get this information in an internet search, but you wouldn’t be able to trust what you read. You can trust Buzzed, trust me.

Click here to go to the Amazon page.

Broken Promises

rr-image
While you’re at it, while you’re acknowledging the exact nature of your wrongs, don’t forget one wrong you might’ve committed that is so central that it may overshadow all others and be key to this whole business of reconciliation.

Broken promises.

Embedded in every wrong is a broken promise; a promise either declared or implied, clearly pledged or vaguely expected, guaranteed or merely hoped for. Sometimes a broken promise is the only wrong. Sometimes that one wrong is enough.Continue reading “Broken Promises”

Freedom

shrinbks-links-photo1
Bringing you the best of mental health every week.

If you’re interested in understanding human behavior, you could do a lot worse than reading novels and fictional short stories.

The worse thing you could do, I suppose, is to read instruction manuals on how to assemble Ikea furniture, astrophysics, or the nature of chemical reactions, anything in which no human need be present. The second worse thing would be to read heavy handed self help books or even handed psychology texts. The information there is often correspondingly one sided or thin. Reading journal articles about human behavior would the the third worse thing to read. They may help you drill down into specifics, but they all contain far more about statistics and experimental design than any student of the humanities has patience for.

indexFor my money, and to conserve my time, I would go to the fiction section of the library and load up on books that showcase the actions and interactions of people. One of the best of recent books that can teach you a lot about humans is Freedom by Jonathan Frazen.Continue reading “Freedom”

Admit the Exact Nature of the Wrong

rr-image

Now I’m going to talk about an essential part of the process of going from wrong to reconciliation, a part that many people, incredibly, try to pass over. What is this indispensable but neglected component?

Identifying what you did wrong.

People often want to pass right over this part to get to forgiveness, to argue their case, or to go right back to doing it again. Others disregard identifying what they did wrong and, instead, heap punishment on themselves for how they are wrong, without any recognition of what they did. This trick of shame keeps them stuck and miserable while insuring that they’ll learn nothing from the mistake and go right back to doing it again, remaining under the thumb of shame. Guilt, on the other hand, demands that you identify the exact nature of the wrong.

So, let’s get started.Continue reading “Admit the Exact Nature of the Wrong”

Unbroken Brain

shrinbks-links-photo1Bringing you the best of mental health every week.

People have often asked me to recommend a book about addiction. For thirty years, the only one I ever urged people to read has been the Big Book of AA, written eighty yea41wc6kjajil-_sx327_bo1204203200_rs ago, when we knew next to nothing about addiction. I’ll get into the reason why I recommended it in a minute. I’m happy to say that now there’s a better book for anyone interested in learning about addiction, drawing on the latest findings, written by an award winning journalist and recovering addict, Maia Szalavitz. Her book is Unbroken Brain: A Revolutionary New Way of Understanding Addiction.Continue reading “Unbroken Brain”

The Fractured Republic

shrinbks-links-photo1
Bringing you the best of mental health every week.

On this MLK Day, after the recent dissentious election, you may be interested in reading The Fractured Republic: Renewing America’s Social Contract in the Age of Individualism by Yuval Levin. Levin has ideas about how we can come together and mend what’s broken.
Continue reading “The Fractured Republic”

Beware of the Fundamental Attribution Error

rr-image
The old lady ahead of you falls. You think she’s too weak to get around without a walker until you trip over the same bad spot in the sidewalk.

You watch Jeopardy and try to come up with the questions for Alex Trebek’s answers. Alex Trebek seems to be smarter than you.Continue reading “Beware of the Fundamental Attribution Error”

Guilt and Shame: Good and Bad Ways to Feel Bad

rr-image

As soon as you see how you are responsible for trouble, you are met by two emotions who offer to be your guide: guilt and shame. Which one should you go with? Is there a difference between the two?

It’s easy to confuse guilt with shame. People refer to them interchangeably, like twins who are often mistaken. Along with embarrassment and pride, they both belong to the family of moral emotions. They pop up whenever you do something wrong. But, other than that, they’re very different, and if you discover that shame has been your guide, you should ditch it as soon as possible and go the other way. Continue reading →

Regaining Trust

rr-image

Two people go to the bank. One has a good credit score, the other a bad one. One is clearly more creditworthy, or trustworthy, than the other, based on past behavior. One paid his loans on time, the other sometimes defaulted. These two see the same banker and ask her for a loan.

You may think you know the sensible thing for the banker to do. She’s supposed to give the loan to the one with a good credit score and turn down the other with a bad credit score. But, she doesn’t have to do that; she can do what she wants. For instance, she could say the person with a good credit score can get a loan anywhere, so he doesn’t need to get it from her. She could decide to give the one with a bad credit score a break. Having a good credit score does not dictate the banker’s decision. She makes her own decision.Continue reading “Regaining Trust”