Redirect: The surprising new science of psychological change

Laura said:
Arbitrium Liberum said:
Very interesting topic.

I'm aware that I will possibly just babble now, but it is almost as traumas (like everything else of course) are very energetic thing. And that some time must pass so that every "sort" of that energy fits where it need to be. To settle down before person can have any benefit of recapitulating the event.

Seems that forcing it can lead in wrong direction and shut down of the system which must "chew" it. In forcing it, there is maybe some sort of superficial ease, but that energy stays is the system unchanged, and no benefit for the person, nothing is learned from the trauma. Trauma is just superficial surpassed.

Just sit down and try the writing exercises. If it is all a muddle at first, that's okay.

You are right. Why complicate it and inventing the hot water when there is easy way :)

Although I am not very good (and useful for others) example of that. I did tried with writing some years ago (I remember that you Laura were suggesting that long before the "science" discovered that). But, I never had enough patience to make it good. Instead of that I invented my "way" which is actually just recapitulation. I did describing the events in narrative way to myself (thinking about that). And I realize that to make it good and having some understandings of that I had to let some time from the event pass. In that way it was much less stressful and painful, and I was having more benefit of the whole traumatic event (benefit in the way of understanding it and having something learned from that).

Maybe it is time now for writing, I'm more calm and having much more patience now. I guess that the writing is also more quick and precise.
 
The thing about writing is that it helps to synchronize the brain hemispheres. Read the study in the thread "Do you know when you are lying to yourself" for some insight on that.
 
Laura said:
Yes. And it kinda puts a period to the idea that you should just re-experience stuff or "feed the inner child."

That makes a lot of sense. My "inner child" is a brat. It's my "inner adult" that's good at dispassionate reason and logic, and that's always been the best way to deal with trauma for me ...after a brief period of kicking and screaming and feeling sorry for myself.
 
i'm passionate about being dispassionate. :lol:

but seriously, i feel that learning to be dispassionate and weigh things from afar is an extremely useful tool.

this book is looking very interesting indeed.
 
Facing Reality and Finding Meaning

The reader might want to refer to this short thread and have it in mind while reading the following, excerpted from Timothy Wilson's book "Redirect: The Surprising New Science of Psychological Change." Wilson is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Virgina. He's also written "Strangers to Ourselves" and a textbook: "Social Psychology."

Wilson points out that the big difference between human beings and animals is that we have a large brain with which we construct elaborate theories and explanations about what is happening in the world and why. As Gurdjieff points out, when these theories are constructed using the intellect, it is much better and more likely to be accurate than when the intellect is running on emotional energy or sexual/moving center energy.

However, our ability to think about things in representational ways has a price: we can be aware of our own mortality. As far as we can tell, we are the only creatures that can be fully aware of what is in store for us in the future, i.e. ultimately death. This thought is so unnerving to us that we have created narratives - CORE narratives - that explain creation, the purpose of life, and what happens after we die. (Here, I would recommend "The 5th Option" for a wonderful systems analysis of life itself.)

Organized religions are the usual sources of our core narratives since they propose to explain how we came to be, how we ought to live, and what happens to us after death. Many studies show that religious people are happier than non-religious people. (Refer to the study linked above for insight.)

However (and here I'm diverging from Wilson a bit), Bob Altemeyer has shown in his book "Amazing Conversions" that there is something more complex about this. Some people can be born in very religious families and abandon their faith and some people can be born into totally non-religious families and grow up to convert to some religion (usually fundamentalist in type) and become fanatics - more Catholic than the Pope, so to say.

The apparent reason for this is the core narrative and how it acts on the individual in combination with the teachings of the religion. But here we find an interesting point: Monotheism came along and declared that there was one god, one truth, and it was possible to know it. So, some people who were very bright and adventurous, brought up with this idea, took it seriously and submitted the tenets of their faith, the very religion that taught this principle, to examination and found that it could not be the "one truth." On the other hand, other types of individuals - those whose were loaded with internal fear and generally not that intelligent, (the Authoritarian Follower type) either stuck with the faith trip, or bought into it (if they were not born in it).

In other words, it could be said that Monotheism was the parent of science because some really clever people, raised with this principle of "one truth that could be found" actually took it seriously to the core of their being, it became their core narrative, and they were of a fearless disposition and with less tendency to lie to the self or to avoid reality, (You could look at the parable of the talents from the Bible in this context), the end result being the birth of science itself as a cognitive style of dealing with the world, explaining creation, the purpose of life and what happens after we die.

Interestingly, there are Authoritarian types that engage in "belief in science" - taking it to extremes in literality - and have thereby completely abandoned any non-material explanations for anything that happens in our reality. Again, refer to the study linked above.

In other words, it seems to me that religions and even science itself, when taken to an extreme, are explanatory systems for average or below average intelligences, for lack of a better way to describe it. The true scientific mind of truly higher intellect is OPEN and aware that there are things that materialistic science cannot explain - at least not as it is presently formulated.

Anyway, after that aside, returning to Wilson: "Religious people are happier only if they truly believe and those beliefs are shared by their loved ones." (Refer here to "The Third Person Effect".

It seems that, if people have fragmented beliefs that are not well integrated into their lives, or those beliefs are not supported by their loved ones, they aren't able to be very happy.

So here we come to an interesting point: what does the person do who is born with somewhat greater intellect, a somewhat more open temperament, who takes the tenets of "one god, one truth" seriously because it is inculcated into him/her, finds that the religion of the parents isn't up to snuff, and goes looking for a better explanation of things? It can lead to some serious unhappiness, and I think that many of us have experienced this because, we, too, are human and have the need to have our core narratives integrated into our lives and to have companionship and support of loved ones. (Here, I highly recommend Altemeyer's book "Amazing Conversions" because he describes the price that many people who leave their faith have to pay and their explanations for why they just can't live in a lie. Remember, they are brought up to believe that there is one truth, and they want that truth, and can't live with anything less.)

Wilson again: "Research shows that people who believe in the devil and hell are less happy than people who do not. Apparently, worrying that we might end up at Satan's side in everlasting flames confers less happiness than believing that - no worries! - we are guaranteed a spot in the eternal Eden."

So, there is a strong tendency for human beings to want to avoid thinking about anything unpleasant, to want to believe that "all is well in the world and God is in his heaven, benevolently overseeing everything." Obviously, this belief in hell and the devil acts particularly strongly on the people Altemeyer describes as Authoritarian because their internal make-up - whether genetic temperament or whatnot - is fear oriented, lack oriented, and the ego cannot stand that sort of thing and so selection and substitution of premises, to cite Lobaczewski, begins.

Wilson: Core narratives don't have to be religious in nature. 'Whatver gets you through the night,' as John Lennon sang, can reduce existential teror, as long as it is a coherent set of beliefs that explains life's mysteries.

Here we have a possible explanation for why some people who are very bright (but still fear based inside) convert to the religion of science with such fanatical zeal. It eliminates "evil" to some extent.

Wilson:
"To a large extent, we acquire core narratives from our culture and parents and religions. We are provided with a ready-made belief system about the major questions in life, and for many of us, this is perfectly fine. ... Other people, however, question their core narratives at some point in their lives, coming to believe that the religion they were brought up with does not provide all the answers or that the prevailing cultural view about 'the good life' is not for them. If they are lucky, they are able to find a new set of core beliefs that answer life's most basic questions. ...

"What about those of us who struggle with our basic beliefs? Some of us have lost faith in the core beliefs of our childhoods and haven't found a compelling new narrative. ... we can't wave a magic wand and suddenly believe in Christianity or Judaism... Most of us have at least some core beliefs... whether they are our political views our desire for social change... In order to develop and validate those beliefs, one thing we can do is to hang out with like-minded individuals. I say that with some reluctance, because seeking out only people who share our beliefs, and avoiding those who do not, is not a good way to stretch on's mind and is likely to contribute to the polarization of viewpoints that is so endemic today. But the fact is that interacting with people who share our core beliefs is a way to strengthen and validate those beliefs.

"Further, other people are a source of comfort when our most basic core beliefs are challenged, such as when we are reminded of our own mortality.

"It is thus critical to have core narratives about the basic questions of life. But let's say that we have that covered - we have a coherent narrative that keeps existential terror at bay and loved ones who share those views. That's great, but we are still going to experience the spills and tumbles, hassles and setbacks that plague everyone from time to time. The better we can understand and explain negative events such as relationship break-ups, business failures, or medical problems, the faster we will recover from them.

"Obviously, some kinds of explanations make us feel better than others... optimists put more of a positive spin on negative outcomes than do pessimists, enabling them to cope better and bounce back more quickly. But achieving some understanding of a negative event is preferable to having no understanding at all.

"Suppose, for example, that you are in your twenties and that one of your parents died of Huntington's disease... The disease is genetically transmitted, and if one of your parents had it, you have a 50% chance of getting it yourself. ...A genetic test has been developed that can, in most cases, identify whether you have inherited the gene that will trigger the disease. You can take the test and find out the good news - you didn't inherit the gene - or the really bad news - you have the gene and, because there is no cure for Huntington's, you will die of the disease in middle age. Would you take the test? Maybe it would be best to leave well enough alone and let nature take its course.

"According to at least one study, that would be the wrong decision. Researchers followed a sample of young adults who had a 50% chance of getting Huntington's disease and who agreed to take the genetic test. The participants completed measures of depression and psychological well-being before they knew the results of the genetic test, right after they got the results, six months later, and one year later.

"Those who got the bad news were, of course, initially devastated, reporting considerably more distress and depression than did those who got the good news. At the sic-monht and on-year points, however, the two groups were indistinguishable - those who knew that they would die at a relatively young age were no more depressed, and expressed just as much well-being as did those who knew that they were disease-free. The particpants who learned they had the gene received the worst news on can get, and yet within six months they were as happy as anyone else.

"Even more striking were the results of a third group - those for whom the test was inconclusive or who had chosen not to take the test. At the beginning of the study, before any genetic testing had begun, this group was as happy and well-adjusted as the others. But as time went by, this group did the worst: at the one-year mark, they exhibited significantly more depression, and lower well-being, than those in the other two groups - including the ones who had found out that they had inherited the Huntington gene. In other words, people who were 100% sure that they would get the disease and die prematurely were happier and less depressed than people who were 50% sure that they were healthy and disease-free.

"This study illustrates, I think, how adept people are at making sense of even the worst news. Those who learned that they had inherited the Huntington's gene found a way to come to terms with it, by incorporating this news into their narratives and finding some meaning in it. ...they developed a view of themselves as people whose time would be short but who would live life to the fullest. Those who remained uncertain about their health status could not undergo this restorative process of narrative change, because there was always the possibility that they didn't have the gene. In other words, the uncertain person doesn't know what to make sense of, whereas the certain one can begin the process of meaning-making and understanding and explanation for even the bleakest of outcomes. And by so doing, that person adapts and recovers - because once we reach an understanding of what something means and why it occurred, we dwell on it less and its impact wanes.

"This making sense of negative outcomes is the first step to recovering from them.

Which brings us back to those issues and traumas that people have not been able to make sense of and the Pennebaker writing exercises. People who wait until they have some distance from a problem (during which time they may cry, be angry, generally express a lot of emotions), and then write about it for at least fifteen minutes on each of four consecutive days.

The writing exercise works best when two conditions are met: 1) people gain some distance from the event so that thinking about it does not overwhelm them AND 2) ANALYZE WHY the event occurred.

Obviously, the explanation of WHY is going to depend on your core narratives about life, reality, etc.

People who attribute negative events to things about themselves that are hard to change (I'm just that way; I'm not college material; I'm an emotional person and I can't help saying those things when you push my buttons; I'm wounded by my parents; my teachers all hated me; I keep forgetting, something is wrong with my memory; and so on and so on), experience learned helplessness which can lead to poor health and depressions, gives them low expectations about the future, makes them likely to give up easily, etc.

People who attribute negative events to things they can control and change, (I can work harder, try again another way, get over myself, see the other person's point of view) are less likely to be depressed, less likely to have health problems, more likely to try harder when the going gets tough and to ultimately succeed against odds and obstacles.

People who have a hopeful, optimistic outlook on life are happier and healthier than people who have a hopeless pessimistic outlook. BUT, here we come to a really crucial point: this does NOT mean that you just need to think positive thoughts in order to get what you want in life. Rather, "what really sets optimists apart is that they have better coping strategies in the face of adversity - they confront problems rather than avoid them, plan better for the future, focus on what they can control and change, and persist when they encounter obstacles instead of giving up." True optimists do NOT have their heads in the sand.

"Optimists see the world the way it really is and recognize the obstacles in their path, but also believe that they can overcome these obstacles by planning for them and redoubling their efforts when they fail. In short, optimists don't just sit back and think positive thoughts - they have an adapticve, healthy way of coping with the world.

But here's a problem: optimism vs pessimism - they both seem to be deeply rooted traits and there may be a genetic/temperament component.

However, there does seem to be some room to maneuver - people can be trained to be more optimistic (as defined above), using writing/story editing techniques and utilizing a robust, intelligent, core narrative to explain reality.

A technique: Think about your life in the future and write for twenty minutes on four consecutive days, about how "everything in my life has gone as well as it possibly could" and describing how all of your dreams have come true. The important thing about this is to focus on ways of achieving those goals and thinking about what you need to do to get there, to that life in the future. That is, write for twenty minutes each day about the ways in which you can become good enough and smart enough instead of simply declaring it to be so.
 
Thank you Laura for putting this out there. Critical incident stress debriefing is something familiar with, from both sides in accident post situations. This opens my eyes to how i’ve dealt with it and how others deal with these things in the aftermath of an incident – where bottle necks in positive response can manifest. There is much to gain from this thinking.

That is: making people undergo CISD right after a trauma impedes the natural healing process and might even freeze memories of the event in the person's mind.

For the one where i was receiving, this is exactly so, like a film replaying and getting stuck on particular frames. Even after all these years it is still so.
 
One interesting thing I got from Levine's "In An Unspoken Voice" is, that to overcome a traumatic event one has to release the pent up energy that was built up during the traumatic event - either the energy stuck into a freeze or the sympathetic energy of the fight or flight reaction. This might take some time and a early revisit to the scene of the horrors may effectively interrupt the dissipation of that pent up energy.

The fascinating point for me is, that - contrary to what I and most others believed or still believe - trauma is as much an assault on your body as much as on your mind, and to overcome it, you have to adress both.
 
There is evidence from the field of neuroscience which is in agreement with the findings of social psychologists regarding the "redirect" concept. "Reconsolidation" of memory is a relatively newer concept coming from the world of neuroscience and despite some opposition, the concept seems to be on relatively firm ground.

Nobel prize winning neuroscientist Eric Kandel had shown the cellular mechanisms by which memories are consolidated from short term to long term. Neuroscientists Karim Nader and others have shown that when memories are accessed or recalled, they can be altered. The plasticity of memory has been known to social psychologists (like Elizabeth Lofter) and is highlighted in David Mcraney's "You Are Not So Smart" under the title Misinformation Effect" which states
[quote author=You Are Not So Smart]
The Misconception: Memories are played back like recordings.

The Truth: Memories are constructed anew each time from whatever information is currently available, which makes them highly permeable to influences from the present.
[/quote]

Nader's work in neuroscience comes to similar conclusions.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/How-Our-Brains-Make-Memories.html?c=y&page=1

[quote author=How-Our-Brains-Make-Memories]
....the work suggested that filing an old memory away for long-term storage after it had been recalled was surprisingly similar to creating it the first time. Both building a new memory and tucking away an old one presumably involved building proteins at the synapse. [Eric Kandel had demonstrated this mechanism for building long term memories].
...........
Nader suggests that reconsolidation may be the brain’s mechanism for recasting old memories in the light of everything that has happened since. In other words, it just might be what keeps us from living in the past.
[/quote]

Nader and McGill University research pertaining to PTSD
http://www.mcgill.ca/newsroom/news/item/?item_id=107432
[quote author=Backing up your brain: McGill researchers discover how old memories are re-saved and changed]
Researchers at McGill University have discovered a series of molecular mechanisms that regulate how our brains call up, restore and even change old memories. This process, called memory reconsolidation, radically alters our understanding of how memory works. The McGill team led by Prof. Karim Nader discovered that extremely strong fear memories do not initially undergo reconsolidation, but over time (on the order of a month or so) even these memories can undergo reconsolidation. Furthermore, the authors identified some of the brain mechanisms that determine whether a memory will or will not undergo reconsolidation. Their results will be published in the journal Nature Neuroscience on June 21.

“The old theory is that once a memory is wired in your brain, it stays that way,” explained Nader, William Dawson Scholar and EWR Steacie Fellow in the Department of Psychology. “But our discovery shows that once you remember something, it doesn’t stay wired in your brain, it becomes unwired and needs to be restored again - reconsolidation.”

This latest finding builds on Nader’s previous research which showed that it was possible to chemically erase fearful memories in rats. That research shed light on the neurobiology of memory and showed that long-term memories can be unlocked and even modified. Nader’s discoveries challenged traditional views about the neural basis for memory.

The new findings deepen our understanding of the molecular basis by which the brain controls which memories do and do not undergo reconsolidation. Reconsolidation blockade has been suggested as a possible new treatment for sufferers of psychological disorders, including those involving uncontrollable, intrusive memories, such as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The results of this research indicate that reconsolidation based therapies of PTSD should not attempt to treat patients shortly after the trauma. This is because these extremely strong memories may not undergo reconsolidation for a long period of time, up to a few months after experiencing the trauma. Nader has previously collaborated with a team led by Roger Pitman of Harvard University and McGill University Psychiatrist and the Douglas Mental Health University Institute researcher Dr. Alain Brunet; that collaboration demonstrated that interrupted reconsolidation can be used to relieve the suffering of patients with chronic PTSD. The therapy involves administering a common blood pressure drug, propranolol, as a traumatic event is recounted. The propranolol partially blocks the reconsolidation of the fear associated with the memory. Amazingly, the trend of these findings indicates that those with the oldest trauma responded best to the treatment, exactly the same effect as found by Nader’s group.

“These findings are very exciting because we have always known that not every memory undergoes reconsolidation. But there was nothing known about the mechanisms that determine when a memory does or does not undergo reconsolidation. These findings suggest a neurobiological principle that controls this process. Understanding these mechanisms is crucial because they tell us what has to happen on a neurobiological level in order to turn reconsolidation on and off. This is clinically important because in the clinic we want to be able to turn reconsolidation on and off if possible.” said Nader.
[/quote]

So revisiting trauma soon likely reinforces the trauma patterns and leads to "retraumatization" as Peter Levine called it.

Wilson's recommendation in "Redirect" to write about traumatic experiences for four consecutive nights also finds support with experimental evidence . It seems that there is a strong correlation between sleep and memory.
http://walkerlab.berkeley.edu/reprints/Walker&Stickgold_AnnRevPsych_2006.pdf
[quote author=Walker&Stickgold]
Recent findings have begun to extend the definition of consolidation. For example, consolidation can be thought of as not only stabilizing memories, but also as enhancing them—two processes that may be mechanistically distinct. The stabilization phase of consolidation appears to occur largely during wake cycles....The enhancement stage appears to occur primarily, if not exclusively, during sleep, either restoring previously lost memories or producing additional learning, both without the need for further practice. From this perspective, the enhancement phase of memory consolidation causes either the active restoration of a memory that had shown behavioral deterioration, or the enhancement of a memory over its simple maintenance.
[/quote]
 
From Redirect:
Shaping Our Kids' Narratives
Becoming better parents


[quote author=Redirect]
There is plenty of research showing that parents exert a huge influence on their kids' social and emotional development. Effective parents are attentive to their children's needs and form close attachments with them, which allows the children to internalize healthy narratives about relationships - narratives that increase the likelihood that they will form trusting, loving relationships with others through out their lives. Effective parents also know how to shape their children's behavior in ways that encourage them to internalize desired values and attitudes. But how do good parents learn how to do this?
[/quote]

Wilson goes on to describe different approaches taken by the parents - starting from relying on their own instincts, relying on the wisdom of their elders, seeking guidance from the many available parenting books and experts who often differ widely amongst each other. Many parenting practices cannot be tested experimentally in a proper scientific study but those which can often show results which challenge common sense or commonly held beliefs. He gives an example of a study conducted in the University Of Virginia on the effect of age appropriate commercial education videos for toddlers. The more the parents liked the videos, the more they thought that their children had learned from them but the study showed otherwise. The children were divided into 4 groups: in the first group, the kids watched the video by themselves, second group watched the video with their parents, the third group had parents teaching their children the list of vocabulary words featured in the video and the fourth group was the control group where the kids neither watched the video nor did the parents teach them the words from it. When the kids were tested later, it was seen that the kids in the third group which had their parents teach them learn the most number of words. The children watching the video with or without the parents did not do much better than the control group.


Autonomy and a sense of purpose are key elements in the formation of a healthy adult narrative of life. "Helicopter parents" trying to help out their kids even in college did not contribute positively towards developing these elements in their children. Even in earlier formative years, like middle school, studies show that domineering and controlling style of parenting where decision making was completely in the hands of the parents were predictive of problems later down the road.

Other studies have shown the dangers of another version of controlling parenting style - that which doles out love and affection only when kids do what the parents want them to do. This is referred to as "conditional negative regard" like "If I do poorly in school, my mother will ignore me for a while" and "If I show my fear, my father will express less warmth towards me for a while". Kids (9th graders in the study) whose parents used this style reported greater resentment towards their parents, and their teachers rated them as less engaged in school compared to kids whose parents did not use this style.

The opposite of the above is the "conditional positive regard" where kids endorsed statements like "I feel that when I am studying hard, my father appreciates me much more than usual" and "If I am afraid and do not express my fear, my mother will express more love for me". This style was better than the conditional negative regard but the study (done in Israel) found that kids whose parents used the conditional positive regard were more interested in grades than the academic material as reported by their teachers.

Wilson writes
[quote author=Redirect]
Actually, there is a better approach, called autonomy support, in which parents try to see things from their children's perspective, helping them understand the value of different alternatives with which they are faced and convey a sense that they, the children, are ultimately the ones choosing which path to follow. The idea is to gently guide one's kids in the right direction while giving them the sense that they are making the choice themselves.
[/quote]
Studies done in Israel and USA support the efficacy of the above approach.

Regarding discipline and using the reward and punishment approaches, Wilson says that the issue is not just one of compliance but that of internalization. Harsh punishments or lavish rewards can get desirable behavior out of kids but the more important question remains what the child has internalized. He sites quite a few interesting studies on different age groups to show that

[quote author=Redirect]
giving people strong rewards for an activity convinces them that they are "doing it for the money" and not because they have any intrinsic interest in the activities, and that in fact rewards can undermine interest that was there at the outset.
[/quote]
While using rewards and punishments, Wilson suggests using just enough - the minimal sufficiency principle.

[quote author=Redirect]
If the goal is to get the kids to internalize desired attitudes and values, then parents should use threats and rewards that are minimally sufficient to get kids to do the desired behaviors, but not strong that the kids view the threats or rewards as the reason they are acting that way. Minimally sufficient threats and rewards are an effective story-editing technique, convincing kids that they are doing the right thing because they believe in doing the right thing.
[/quote]


Another useful and more straightforward way to get kids internalize desired values is the story prompting approach where kids are provided with an appropriate label for their behavior. For behavior like lying, Wilson sites research studies to state that for kids to internalize the motivation to be good, when they screw up, labeling their feelings as guilt can be useful. When kids do the right thing, we label that behavior appropriately as well. In the context of cleanliness, Wilson sites results of a study in a classroom where putting up labels indicating that the class was clean and litter conscious proved to be more effective than sermons and persuasive appeals to maintain cleanliness. Subsequent tests further showed that the labeling approach helped kids internalize the message more effectively.

While sending messages to kids, another thing to watch out for is what is referred to as a fixed mindset which conveys the idea that we are born with a fixed amount of talent in a specific area. For example, "Great job on the multiplication test, you sure are good at math" can promote the idea of a fixed mindset. If the child is faced with a failure in a subsequent math test, if the fixed mindset has been internalized, the child may conclude that "I am just not a math person".
Instead, Wilson asks to adopt the growth mindset which conveys the idea that we can learn to be good at something if we try hard and practice. Then if we have a setback, we are more likely to take it as a sign that we did not try hard enough and could do better the next time. "Great job on the multiplication test. I really admire how much time you spent studying for it. It really paid off" would promote the growth mindset.
 
Hi obyvatel,

Thank you for sharing!

obyvatel said:
Another useful and more straightforward way to get kids internalize desired values is the story prompting approach where kids are provided with an appropriate label for their behavior. For behavior like lying, Wilson sites research studies to state that for kids to internalize the motivation to be good, when they screw up, labeling their feelings as guilt can be useful. When kids do the right thing, we label that behavior appropriately as well.

If I may ask a question here, I don't really understand how the whole labeling thing works as explained above. For example in the case of labeling their feelings as guilt, how would they go about that? I understand the example with the cleanliness, but I couldn't think of examples of when a child would do something bad and how to provide the child with a label then. Where would you put the label and what would it say? :huh:
 
obyvatel said:
Autonomy and a sense of purpose are key elements in the formation of a healthy adult narrative of life. "Helicopter parents" trying to help out their kids even in college did not contribute positively towards developing these elements in their children. Even in earlier formative years, like middle school, studies show that domineering and controlling style of parenting where decision making was completely in the hands of the parents were predictive of problems later down the road.

There is also the following:

Gurdjieff - Wartime meetings said:
That also is the merde education, (Call it how you like, I only say one word: merde. I speak bad French, so I call everything which is bad merde.) Everyone has this education here. And specially in France, I noticed that in a very original experience. I always have bonbons in my pocket. When I see a child I give some to it. With a child there is always someone, father, mother, aunt. Without exception they all say the same thing to the child: "What do you say?" Automatically, little by little, the child says thank you to everyone and feels nothing any more.

This is idiot thing. This is merde. When a child wishes to say thank you to me, I understand it. It speaks a language which I understand. And it is that language which I love. Only to hear it, only to see its impulses, I spend every day five kilos on bonbons, for which I pay 410 francs a kilo. Only to see these impulses. But when one says to a child, "What do you say?" one kills everything. It is merde, father, mother. They kill the child for the future, and they kill my goodwill. It is a good example, this, you know. I don't know how you understand it, but for me it is very characteristic. I say it as example. People prepare everything automatically, they make children function like bells which ring when one presses them, like an electric push button.
 
Yes, I've always cringed when parents try to make children into parrots. Whether it's the "What do you say?" mentioned by Gurdjieff or making them recite poetry, or whatever. I've always felt that it kills something essential in the child with these overbearing parental commands to do this or that on command.
 
Oxajil said:
Hi obyvatel,

Thank you for sharing!

obyvatel said:
Another useful and more straightforward way to get kids internalize desired values is the story prompting approach where kids are provided with an appropriate label for their behavior. For behavior like lying, Wilson sites research studies to state that for kids to internalize the motivation to be good, when they screw up, labeling their feelings as guilt can be useful. When kids do the right thing, we label that behavior appropriately as well.

If I may ask a question here, I don't really understand how the whole labeling thing works as explained above. For example in the case of labeling their feelings as guilt, how would they go about that? I understand the example with the cleanliness, but I couldn't think of examples of when a child would do something bad and how to provide the child with a label then. Where would you put the label and what would it say? :huh:

Sorry for not providing the context for the statement.

The goal as far as I understand was to help kids label their feelings. So if someone messes up and consequently feel bad, the message given out by the parent (or teacher) is important to internalize the lesson.

Wilson sites a study which he terms devious (the above situation where a kid messes up is a little difficult to study in a straight forward way) where a researcher took second graders to a room where there was a race car slowly going around race tracks. The kid was asked to keep a watch on the car and was shown how to stop the car if it was going too fast so that it did not jump tracks. Unknown to the child, there was a guy in another room who had control of the car and could see what the child was doing and when the child's attention went away from watching the car, he would speed up the car and make it jump tracks. Then the first researcher would come back and would be dismayed at the broken car.

[quote author=Redirect]
Now imagine you are the second grader. The man had just asked you to do something but you really screwed up. You are probably feeling pretty bad. But how exactly do you interpret these feelings? Do you feel guilty or annoyed over getting caught? For the kids in the race car study, it depended on how the researcher labeled their feelings.

Some of the children were randomly assigned a guilt condition in which the researcher communicated that they probably felt guilty for doing something wrong. "I bet you feel a little bad now that the car fell off", he said. "I have seen other kids feel bad when they were not able to do exactly what they were supposed to do".

Other kids were randomly assigned to what me might call a "dang, I can't believe I got caught" condition. Here the researcher altered his comments slightly, labeling the kids' feeling as disappointment over being discovered. "I bet you feel a little bad now that I found out the car fell off ", he said. "I have seen other kids feel bad when someone found out they were not able to do exactly what they were supposed to do".

To see if his comments had sunk in, the researcher gave the kids a new race car, showed them how to put it back on the track if it came off and asked them to keep an eye on it while it went around the track. As he left, he emphasized that no one would come into the room for several minutes. Then the researchers surreptitiously measured how much time the kids spent focusing on the car while they were alone, making sure that it didn't jump the track, and how much time they spent looking at other toys in the room.

It turned out that the label the researcher provided did sink in. The kids who had been encouraged to attribute their earlier transgression to guilt spent significantly more time watching the race car than did the kids who had been encouraged to attribute their behavior to disappointment over getting caught. The former kids seemed to be thinking, "I'd better keep an eye on the car, because I sure would feel guilty if I screwed up again, even if no one finds out". But the latter kids seemed to be thinking, "So what if the car jumps the track - no big deal. I can just put it back on the track before that guy comes back. "
[/quote]

The message I got from the above example (I got a reaction to it when I read it the first time because of the guilt thing) is that the point is about helping little kids learn to do the right thing even when no one is around to praise or punish them. Our behaviors - as kids or adults - seem to be driven by a desire to feel good and avoid pain. When someone feels bad after doing something, there is this motivation to cover it up in some way so that the bad feeling can be avoided. However, that action of covering up can cause behavioral problems in childhood and even hurt the chances of developing true conscience later on in life. Whereas what can start off as a feeling of guilt could help in autonomous regulation of behavior and unless the concept of guilt is inappropriately stressed or applied by others for shaming, it could ideally be transformed into remorse later in life with a concomitant development of consciousness.

My take fwiw
 
Arbitrium Liberum said:
Although I am not very good (and useful for others) example of that. I did tried with writing some years ago (I remember that you Laura were suggesting that long before the "science" discovered that). But, I never had enough patience to make it good. Instead of that I invented my "way" which is actually just recapitulation. I did describing the events in narrative way to myself (thinking about that). And I realize that to make it good and having some understandings of that I had to let some time from the event pass. In that way it was much less stressful and painful, and I was having more benefit of the whole traumatic event (benefit in the way of understanding it and having something learned from that).

Maybe it is time now for writing, I'm more calm and having much more patience now. I guess that the writing is also more quick and precise.

It's always been a struggle to get words down for me too, because of heavy deliberations on everything formulated, it had to fit with bigger picture, bogging down emotional flow by the intellectual centers dominance.

With this 1st 4-day run of the exercise I sort of let my thinking be detached or serve what the emotional /motor had to tell, by letting fingers flow and let intellect structure what was already on its way. Relaxing that connection was always the problem, thinking too much about what the emotional should be doing, but this time it was different. I put down a loose frame like; 1 st day= the past. 2nd day = now. 3rd day = recap. 4th day =future : loose frame narrative was good for bypassing the inner protest over fixed formats. Doing EE beforehand. Looking away from the keyboard and screen to not get into the feedback loops of the environment, so to speak, letting whatever needs to come down, come. I'm no ace at typewriting but fingers found their way. Not worrying about editing or correcting symbols/ punctuation while writing, later if someone else is to read.

The renegociation or re-threading aspect this thread offers to recapitulation has helped me make alot more sense of recapping.
 
With regard to the race car experiment, I actually felt bad for the child about the way he was set up, manipulated and 'programmed' with a 'guilt' identification. I get a strong impression of this process being antithetical to Gurdjieff's concept of life being Real for a child who is being Real. Real in a sense like what Keit's G quote points to.

Seems to me the child apparently watched long enough for part of him to intuit that all was well with the race car and tracks and would likely remain that way for some time. In fact, he was already 'in the right' to the extent that an experimenter had to force an accident for an accident to even happen. This is information that experimenters seem to think is unimportant.

How is placing a child in a contrived situation, inducing him to feel "bad", presumptively questioning him about his feelings, giving him a "label" for his feelings and an opportunity to modify previous behavior judged "bad", any process other than predominately child manipulation and possibly ponerization? Maybe I'm just feeling a bit too strongly about this?

Did any experimenters report feelings of guilt or remorse for putting a child in a situation which might make him feel bad for something he wasn't really even responsible for anyway (the experimenters contrived and implemented the "mistake")? Do the experimenters have anything to feel 'bad' about?

I'd like to share something here that may be useful:

When I walk out into my front yard, I see a bush full of blooming examples of "rose". I know they are all "roses" because they are all similar to the label I was taught for "rose" many years ago. This similarity also extends to all previous examples of "rose" I've experienced. Still, I can notice that there appears to be obvious as well as ever so slight differences in color tint and depth between each "rose". Even areas of gradient change are different on each bloom. Petals are all slightly different in their thickness, height from stem, width and positioning around the center of the blossom. The centers of each blossom all seem to have noticeable differences between one another. Even the topology of the outer edge of the rose petals vary with each other. Some even feel more fragile than their neighbors. Each one even smells slightly different and the differences can translate into different effects on me as well. I even suspect there are not only differences between each blossom on one bush, but there would also likely be differences between those and every other "rose" that ever blossomed! In fact, I can probably find so many differences, that with little effort I might even begin to question how they all could possibly be called the same thing! Until I remember that each of these blooms I call "rose" are actually unnamed. They present as unique living examples of a simple category label: "rose".

I suspect similar phenomena pertains to emotions and feelings. I suspect that a child learning guilt-by-association this way, i.e., associating certain kinds of other-contrived "not doing what's right physical events" to certain strengths, intensities, magnitudes, felt locations in the body, etc., of general waves of endocrine sensate or emotions, is simply learning "identification" in a way that would be naturally "false" to that child and may later require Work to undo. False in the sense that he's being "helped" to focus his attention in a narrow context and in a very specific manner and ignoring other also significant and meaningful information.

Who is to say that this child's best effort at telling what he felt was actually 'appropriate' 'guilt'? Why was it not simply a feeling of being at a loss (emotional confusion) to explain a discrepancy between what his own (correct) cognition informed him about the race car and what actually happened? Again, we're talking about a child here - 7 years old probably.

This is not to suggest linguistic associations with actuality and personal narratives to be useless, rather it would seem to me to be better for self-remembering (as it seems to be for me) if the kid were to occupy the "included middle" position with regard to these feelings - the area between the similarities and differences with previous experiences and with a conscious awareness of, and acknowledgement to both. But I wonder if that may tend to prevent the experimenter's desired identification?

Hope this is not too confusing to anyone. If anything needs clarification, please ask.
 
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