Auto-Immunization

Time Management

Ever asked yourself, where does the time go?

It seems that this hectic lifestyle in which we live, many in internet business have the complaint, “there’s just not enough time in the day” to get all the work required done. This proves especially true with companies running their internet business like a one man band, as many do. This is why time management is an extremely important factor in producing quantitive, yet quality results, day in day out.

Research suggests that more than half of our lives (on average) is a waste of time.

* We spend 5 years standing in line. * 2 years trying to return telephone calls. * 8 months opening direct mail. * 6 years eating food. * 1 year looking for misplaced objects. * 4 years doing general household chores. * 25 years sleeping.

Out of an 80 year life span a total of 43 years are consumed with trivial, boring tasks that seem to occupy the majority of our free time. With another 20 years being consumed by work it leaves little time to the imagination if you don’t have a daily time management system in place.

So I ask you this.

How many of the 30,000 odd days of our life do you spend on the pursuit of your interests, dreams and self satisfactions?

In a business sense, our only limited resource is time. So how much money we make is a direct reflection of how we use our time.

The clock is ticking, put it to good use.

Memory & Images

The subconscious mind, more commonly referred to in the field of psychology as the unconscious mind, not only stores words and memories of a literal sense, but this generally untapped realm of the mind also has an images folder. Automatically the unconscious mind takes a capture shot and attaches it to the corresponding literal aspect of the moment.

More times than not from an internet marketing perspective, in my research, the memory that a potential client forms of a visit to your website is primarily created by the images they see, the words these images convey are autonomously sucked up by the unconscious mind to form a relevant or not so relevant memory.

This giving some stable meaning to the age old saying “a picture paints a thousand words”.

So if you were thinking before reading this article that the look and feel of your website is inconsequential or secondary to the literal content conveyed, think again!

So if you want to instil a relevant memory of your website in your visitors mind don’t overlook the power of creative imagery. If you don’t make an impression with your imagery then a not so relevant memory will be formed and filed DEEP in the shadow realms of your potential customers unconscious mind, never to be retrieved again.

Focussing The Minds Of Others In The Direction You Want

Here are a couple of quick exercises that prove a point.

Exercise #1 – Close your eyes momentarily and for the period of approximately 1 minute I want you to do try and achieve the following.

Do NOT think of a black dog for 1 minute. Do it now.

Did you have major difficulty NOT thinking of that black dog for a whole minute? No matter how hard you tried that damn black dog just kept running on into your mind right?

Exercise #2 – Close your eyes momentarily and for the period of approximately 1 minute I want you to do try and achieve the following.

I want you to think of a red rose for 1 minute. Do it now.

This task was relatively easy huh? Now to the point of the exercise..

The focusing of the red rose was relatively easy enough, the second exercise also holds the key to the first exercise of NOT focusing on the black dog. The most effective way to NOT think of something is to think of something else.

Most importantly, we need to be aware that not thinking of something actually focuses the goal oriented part of the mind on that very thing, just as effectively as if you had chosen to think of it directly.

One can observe the principle of this exercise at work very effectively when parents walk their children home from school, they tell their children NOT to jump in the puddles right? But almost as if you could set a clock by it, your kids are back doing exactly what you told them NOT to do, yep they are jumping in the puddles.

By the parent saying to their children, don’t jump in the puddles, this draws the kids attention directly to the puddles and in they go. Then the parents have the cheek to get upset at the children after they have quite effectively, if somewhat unconsciously directed them straight into the puddles.

So how do you keep your children from jumping in the puddles you ask?

Think about it for a moment. The mind is a goal orientated decision making tool, you want the mind to focus away from the puddles, where do you want the mind to go? On the dry ground of course, so the effective thing to say is “keep on the dry ground”, this focuses the mind of the child on the dry ground and not on the puddles.

Have you ever seen a child carrying a full bowl of soup? What is the natural reaction?

You shout “don’t spill the bowl of soup” right? But by doing so, what has the child’s mind registered?

Yes, you are telling him to spill the soup by focusing his mind on spilling it, then there is insult added to injury when you say “you clumsy kid, why didn’t you do what I told you”? So not only does the child feel guilty for making a mess, he or she then gets a negative affirmation as well.

So how do you get the child to NOT spill the soup? Think what do I want the child’s mind to do and the answer is “keep the soup bowl level”.

Focus the mind towards the required task, invariably this will focus their mind away from the negative result that you instilled in their mind.

This is a very powerful psychological concept that can be effectively implemented into your internet marketing campaigns. If you want your customers to do something, maybe telling them not to do it may be more effective in certain situations, definitely “food for the taught”. This approach would also help to instil one of the most powerful action emotions also, curiosity

Two very different sides to the same coin, sit and ponder on this theory for a while, think of the many possibilities and how you could make it work for you and your internet marketing campaigns.

We accept that illness is part of our daily lives. Colds and flu, cuts and bruises. All these are taken within our stride. Curative potions, prescribed and otherwise, are taken and within a few days we are all back to normal ready to face the world. We have this acceptance because it is something that is tangible. Life is nice and simple as we look at these minor ailments. Everyone has had them at one time or another so it’s part of life.

What about depression? The word itself, particularly when used with regard to an illness, sends a shudder down the spines of most folk. Some would say that it is a disease of the 90s, something that television and the like, too much this, not enough of that and perhaps only confined to those in our community who have – what shall we say – some mental problem. It is so easy to dismiss this illness. We can then forget it and think of things a little more pleasant. What we don’t understand can certainly make us feel that way.

It’s all very easy to dismiss this very harrowing and distressing illness, for it is an illness, not a condition. Some of our community, although seeming physically fit, appear to be carrying the worries of the world on their shoulders. They find it impossible to cope with the normal pressures that the rest of us comfortably deal with in the course of our daily lives.

It is not meant to be patronising to call them poor people. It is merely gratitude for one not having the illness and pity, yes pity, that fellow human beings have to suffer such torment. Luckily nowadays there is some relief with medication that is available. It is however small compensation for the anguish that must be caused by this awful malady.

It is quite easy to remember the days when someone had an “off day” – due to what we now know as depression – to hear their close ones say “Buck yourself up – you’ll be OK tomorrow”. That was the diagnosis and cure for depression principally because not enough was known about the reason why it happens. We read of a blackness and inner torment that travels with it, unfortunately encouraging self harm in some cases.

Society now appears to be much more tolerant. It seems that a little knowledge does go a long way. People, who before seemed aloof and rude at times, with medical help and the correct medication, can now live a content and peaceful life, free from the demons that depression inevitably brings.

Depression hasn’t just happened in the last 15 years though. It surely must have been around for an incredible number of years. Does that mean that it has increased in intensity because of the type of lifestyle we lead, or does it mean that we simply shunned our lesser fortunate acquaintances because we felt there was something “odd” about them?

It is more likely to be the latter. It was far easier to think of someone as not quite the same as everyone else and reject them accordingly, which is what we normally do with things or people we don’t understand, than approach them and try to help them conquer their personal battles.

Michael Russell Your Independent guide to Depression

Many people think that communicating is easy. It is after all something we’ve done all our lives. There is some truth in this simplistic view. Communicating is straightforward. What makes it complex, difficult, and frustrating are the barriers we put in the way. Here are the 7 top barriers.

1. Physical Barriers. Physical barriers in the workplace include:
* marked out territories, empires and fiefdoms into which strangers are not allowed
* closed office doors, barrier screens, separate areas for people of different status
* large working areas or working in one unit that is physically separate from others.

Research shows that one of the most important factors in building cohesive teams is proximity. As long as people still have a personal space that they can call their own, nearness to others aids communication because it helps us get to know one another.

2. Perceptual Barriers. The problem with communicating with others is that we all see the world differently. If we didn’t, we would have no need to communicate: something like extrasensory perception would take its place. The following anecdote is a reminder of how our thoughts, assumptions and perceptions shape our own realities.

A traveller was walking down a road when he met a man from the next town.
“Excuse me,” he said. “I am hoping to stay in the next town tonight. Can you tell me what the townspeople are like?”
“Well,” said the townsman, “how did you find the people in the last town you visited?”
“Oh, they were an irascible bunch. Kept to themselves. Took me for a fool. Over-charged me for what I got. Gave me very poor service.”
“Well, then,” said the townsman, “you’ll find them pretty much the same here.”

3. Emotional Barriers. One of the chief barriers to open and free communications is the emotional barrier. It is comprised mainly of fear, mistrust and suspicion. The roots of our emotional mistrust of others lie in our childhood and infancy when we were taught to be careful what we said to others. “Mind your P’s and Q’s”; “Don’t speak until you’re spoken to”; “Children should be seen and not heard”. As a result many people hold back from communicating their thoughts and feelings to others. They feel vulnerable. While some caution may be wise in certain relationships, excessive fear of what others might think of us can stunt our development as effective communicators and our ability to form meaningful relationships.

4. Cultural Barriers. When we join a group and wish to remain in it, sooner or later we need to adopt the behaviour patterns of the group. These are the behaviours that the group accept as signs of belonging. The group rewards such behaviour through acts of recognition, approval and inclusion. In groups which are happy to accept you, and where you are happy to conform, there is a mutuality of interest and a high level of win-win contact. Where, however, there are barriers to your membership of a group, a high level of game-playing replaces good communication.

5. Language Barriers. Language that describes what we want to say in our terms may present barriers to others who are not familiar with our expressions, buzz-words and jargon. When we couch our communication in such language, it is a way of excluding others. In a global market place the greatest compliment we can pay another person is to talk in their language.

One of the more chilling memories of the Cold War was the threat by the Soviet leader Nikita Khruschev saying to the Americans at the United Nations: “We will bury you!” This was taken to mean a threat of nuclear annihilation. However, a more accurate reading of Khruschev’s words would have been: “We will overtake you!” meaning economic superiority. It was not just the language, but the fear and suspicion that the West had of the Soviet Union that led to the more alarmist and sinister interpretation.

6. Gender Barriers. There are distinct differences between the speech patterns in a man and those in a woman. A woman speaks between 22,000 and 25,000 words a day whereas a man speaks between 7,000 and 10,000. In childhood, girls speak earlier than boys and at the age of three, have a vocabulary twice that of boys.

The reason for this lies in the wiring of a man’s and woman’s brains. When a man talks, his speech is located in the left side of the brain but in no specific area. When a woman talks, the speech is located in both hemispheres and in two specific locations.

This means that a man talks in a linear, logical and compartmentalised way, features of left-brain thinking; whereas a woman talks more freely mixing logic and emotion, features of both sides of the brain. It also explains why women talk for much longer than men each day.

7. Interpersonal Barriers. There are six levels at which people can distance themselves from one another:
1. withdrawal. Withdrawal is an absence of interpersonal contact. It is both refusal to be in touch and time alone.
2. rituals. Rituals are meaningless, repetitive routines devoid of real contact.
3. pastimes. Pastimes fill up time with others in social but superficial activities.
4. working. Working activities are those tasks which follow the rules and procedures of contact but no more.
5. games. Games are subtle, manipulative interactions which are about winning and losing. They include “rackets” and “stamps”.
6. closeness. Closeness is the aim of interpersonal contact where there is a high level of honesty and acceptance of yourself and others.

Working on improving your communications is a broad-brush activity. You have to change your thoughts, your feelings, and your physical connections. That way you can break down the barriers that get in your way and start building relationships that really work.

(c) Eric Garner, ManageTrainLearn.com.

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An organization is like a vehicle: it is made up of many parts designed to work together to accomplish the purpose of getting from where it is now to where it is going. It takes a finely-tuned system to enable and insure that the whole is moved by the parts smoothly and in the right direction. If a single part breaks down it often means that the whole machine can no longer move forward.

The driver (for example, the Board of Directors, CEO, President, Owner, Managers) makes the decision where the vehicle should be going. However, the road upon which the vehicle travels is built by the work of those throughout the rest of the organization. In order to operate smoothly and continue moving forward, as individual parts of the whole, members of the organization work at honing their talents, gifts and graces so that they can contribute to the building up of those in their organization and those whom it serves (both internal and external customers). On-going learning and skill development are hallmarks of a highly effective and profitable organization because it is learning that enables us to better serve those around us.

One of the gifts we all are given is language. The effective use of language, or communication, is a skill that needs vigilant attention if we are to avoid ambiguity, uncertainty and confusion in our organizations.

Returning to our automotive metaphor, in order to arrive at its destination the vehicle must have fuel of sufficient quantity and quality. Effective use of language, that is to say, communication is the fuel of any organization – effective communication gets the vehicle to the chosen destination; ineffective communication causes the vehicle to sputter, choke and eventually stop.

Extending the metaphor, the fuel is a mixture of:

1. individual interpersonal communication skills

2. organizational communication infrastructure and processes

Both of these components either facilitate or frustrate effective communication. I will go so far as to say that any communication, no matter how innocuous it may at first seem, contributes either to clarity or ambiguity when it comes to intented consequences of goal accomplishment.

Does the the fuel of your organization need refining so that it is high quality and high mileage – so that it “clears things up” rather than “muddies the waters?” Here are the steps to take to refine your fuel. You’ll have to be creative in the ways you accomplish these tasks.

1. Communicate so that you understand and are understood the first time

2. Create and sustain an infrastructure throughout your organization that leads to consistent, thorough, accurate and timely communication

3. Use language correctly and consistently to motivate others to do better than what they thought they could do

4. Develop effective communication processes and techniques that reduce ambiguity and increase clarity while reducing the amount of time it takes to get goals accomplished

5. Communicate calmly and deliberately in times of stress, uncertainty, anxiety, fear, crisis and conflict that the outcomes will be better than anyone thinks they can be

6. You cannot manage people; you manage people’s time and effort in ways that motive them toward accomplishing organizational goals; motivation, when divided into two words, means to have a motive to take action. What motives do your people have to take the action needed to get and keep things moving forward?

7. Lead others through change so that things get better, not worse. It has been rightly said that the only thing that does not change is change itself. Since it’s going to occur anyway and, in fact, is happening constantly all around us, take charge of change by proactively designing your organization’s transition process thereby making it a strategic competitive advantage for your organization; otherwise, people will feel victims of change and resist it at every possible turn fearing that it will be for the worse, not for the best. With a clearly defined and communicated transition process, any change can be easily managed toward a desired destination.

Ken Wallace, M. Div., CSL has been in the organizational development field since 1973. He is a seasoned consultant, speaker and executive coach with extensive business experience in multiple industries who provides practical organizational direction and support for business leaders. A professional member of the National Speakers Association since 1989, he is also a member of the International Federation for Professional Speaking and holds the Certified Seminar Leader (CSL) professional designation awarded by the American Seminar Leaders Association.

Ken is one of only eight certified Business Systems Coaches worldwide for General Motors.

His topics include ethics, leadership, change, communication & his unique Optimal Process Design® program.

Tel:(800)235-5690 Claim your free eBook, “How to Do Better Than Your Best in Anything You Do” by visiting the Better Than Your Best website.

While your significant other is getting himself or herself better, they might start doing different things, small things that you might find annoying. Twirling pencils, specific television shows, small habits may start taking over their lives in a minor way. While these habits may not be big, they can become annoying. Sometimes these habits will be auditory, involving a pen clicking or other potential annoyance.

How you deal with these habits can set the tone for your relationship. There is no set way that will be beneficial either. You can encourage the habits, with the understanding that they are preventing a larger problem from developing or you can discourage them, trying to instead encourage your significant other to deal with the larger problem. There is no set way to deal with it, and instead, you need to choose which result you are looking for at the moment.

If the habit is relatively benign, then you might be okay in encouraging it. However, remember that habits, the longer they last, become harder and harder to break. By encouraging it today, you may find that you are stuck with it. The flip-side, on the other hand, ends up with your boyfriend or girlfriend being subject to other nervous habits if you try to put a stop to this one. A fidget could be covering up nervousness in front of other people, or an inability to sit still. Choosing which habit to encourage and which to discourage can be tricky. The best way to decide is to sit down with your significant other and ask them why they have started this new habit. After hearing what they say, decide if you can live with the results of them discontinuing it. But whatever you decide, you are going to need to accept for a while.

Learn to alleviate your depression at http://www.curemydepression.com

Countless number of patients and their family members have asked me about manic-depression and major depression. “Is there any difference?” “Are they one and the same?” “Is the treatment the same?” And so on. Each time I encounter a chorus of questions like these, I am enthused to provide answers.

You know why? Because the difference between these two disorders is enormous. The difference does not lie on clinical presentation alone. The treatment of these two disorders is significantly distinct.

Let me begin by describing major depression (officially called major depressive disorder). Major depression is a primary psychiatric disorder characterized by the presence of either a depressed mood or lack of interest to do usual activities occurring on a daily basis for at least two weeks. Just like other disorders, this illness has associated features such as impairment in energy, appetite, sleep, concentration, and desire to have sex.

In addition, patients afflicted with this disorder also suffer from feelings of hopelessness and worthlessness. Tearfulness or crying episodes and irritability are not uncommon. If left untreated, patients get worse. They become socially withdrawn and can’t go to work. Moreover, about 15% of depressed patients become suicidal and occasionally, homicidal. Other patients develop psychosishearing voices (hallucinations) or having false beliefs (delusions) that people are out to get them.

What about manic-depression or bipolar disorder?

Manic-depression is a type of primary psychiatric disorder characterized by the presence of major depression (as described above) and episodes of mania that last for at least a week. When mania is present, patients show signs opposite of clinical depression. During the episode, patients show significant euphoria or extreme irritability. In addition, patients become talkative and loud.

Moreover, this type of patients doesn’t need a lot of sleep. At night, they are very busy making phone calls, cleaning the house, and starting new projects. Despite apparent lack of sleep, they are still very energetic in the morning ready to establish new business endeavors. Because they believe that they have special powers, they involve in unreasonable business deals and unrealistic personal projects.

They also become hypersexual wanting to have sex several times a day. One-night stands can happen resulting in marital conflict. Like depressed patients, manic patients develop delusions (false beliefs). I know a manic patient who thinks that he is the “Chosen One.” Another patient claims that the President of USA and the Prime Minister of Canada ask for her advice.

So the big difference between the two is the presence of mania. This manic episode has treatment implications. In fact the treatment of these disorders is completely different. While major depression needs antidepressant, manic-depression requires a mood stabilizer such as lithium and valproic acid. Recently, new antipsychotics, for example risperidone, olanzapine, and quetiapine, have been shown to be effective for acute mania.

In general, giving an antidepressant to manic-depressed patients can make their condition worse because this medication can precipitate a switch to manic episode. Although there are some exceptions to the rule (extreme depression, lack of response to mood stabilizers, among others), it is preferable to avoid antidepressants among bipolar patients.

When considering the use of antidepressant in a depressed bipolar patient, clinicians should combine the medication with a mood stabilizer and should use an antidepressant (e.g. bupropion) that has a low tendency to cause a switch to mania.

About The Author

Copyright © 2004. All rights reserved. Dr. Michael G. Rayel – author (First Aid to Mental Illness-Finalist, Reader’s Preference Choice Award 2002), speaker, workshop leader, and psychiatrist. Dr. Rayel pioneers the CARE Approach as first aid for mental health. To receive free newsletter, visit www.drrayel.com. His books are available at major online bookstores.

mike@drrayel.com

Are You an Ugly Duckling?

Sometimes in life, we may feel like ugly ducklings.

We can’t fit in. Our walk is not the right waddle and our squawk is off-key. In fact, we wonder if the other ducks are snickering behind our back.

Our life is an example of what does not work. And, in quiet desperation, we feel we may soon be down to nothing.

The original sin appears to have found its full manifestation in us.

But consider this: we may actually be swans.

And amongst swans, we fit in perfectly. Our feathers are the right shade, length, and texture, our gait is regal, our voice has a perfect pitch, and we swim with grace. And what we reflect is the original perfection.

Swans aspire to their spiritual splendor.

They recognize that this life is transitory and that they have a hunger to connect with the source of all life. In essence, a part of them wants to feel a connection with all of life.

They’re really focused on reaching enlightenment itself.

It’s a novel situation to be a human being, and when we grasp this simple concept, we aspire to move ahead in a different way than other people.

As a swan, you’ve realized for some time now that your beliefs will cause you to create or attract situations and events that you experience as your life.

It’s your goal to explore your own belief system and you search to equip yourself with tools to modify those things which you wish to change.

You also seek to balance the understandings that you glean from world lessons, or experiences, as well as from word lessons, or intellectual understanding.

When you touch your true swan nature, I suspect, you will find an amazing love for life, and you will be a catalyst for positive change in the world. Your health, your relationships, your career, and your finances will all be touched and improved when you master deeper levels of your own consciousness.

Imagine feeling a profoundly deep connection to your own being, a connection that defies description. Imagine meeting others and see within them your own humanity and struggle for the light of truth.

As a swan, you aspire towards an experience of compassionate, accepting connection with all of life. You seek your own true power. In a world of lies, you seek truth.

If you find your life impossible right now–where you don’t quite seem to fit in and things aren’t going quite right for you–it may be that you’re a swan pretending to be a duck.

It may be time to accept that a greater game than you had imagined is afoot.

Sometimes when you’re down to nothing, your Spirit is up to something. The ugly duckling is about to recognize that it is a swan.

There is one place in which one’s privacy, intimacy, integrity and inviolability are guaranteed – one’s body, a unique temple and a familiar territory of sensa and personal history. The torturer invades, defiles and desecrates this shrine. He does so publicly, deliberately, repeatedly and, often, sadistically and sexually, with undisguised pleasure. Hence the all-pervasive, long-lasting, and, frequently, irreversible effects and outcomes of torture.

In a way, the torture victim’s own body is rendered his worse enemy. It is corporeal agony that compels the sufferer to mutate, his identity to fragment, his ideals and principles to crumble. The body becomes an accomplice of the tormentor, an uninterruptible channel of communication, a treasonous, poisoned territory.

It fosters a humiliating dependency of the abused on the perpetrator. Bodily needs denied – sleep, toilet, food, water – are wrongly perceived by the victim as the direct causes of his degradation and dehumanization. As he sees it, he is rendered bestial not by the sadistic bullies around him but by his own flesh.

The concept of “body” can easily be extended to “family”, or “home”. Torture is often applied to kin and kith, compatriots, or colleagues. This intends to disrupt the continuity of “surroundings, habits, appearance, relations with others”, as the CIA put it in one of its manuals. A sense of cohesive self-identity depends crucially on the familiar and the continuous. By attacking both one’s biological body and one’s “social body”, the victim’s psyche is strained to the point of dissociation.

Beatrice Patsalides describes this transmogrification thus in “Ethics of the Unspeakable: Torture Survivors in Psychoanalytic Treatment”:

“As the gap between the ‘I’ and the ‘me’ deepens, dissociation and alienation increase. The subject that, under torture, was forced into the position of pure object has lost his or her sense of interiority, intimacy, and privacy. Time is experienced now, in the present only, and perspective – that which allows for a sense of relativity – is foreclosed. Thoughts and dreams attack the mind and invade the body as if the protective skin that normally contains our thoughts, gives us space to breathe in between the thought and the thing being thought about, and separates between inside and outside, past and present, me and you, was lost.”

Torture robs the victim of the most basic modes of relating to reality and, thus, is the equivalent of cognitive death. Space and time are warped by sleep deprivation. The self (“I”) is shattered. The tortured have nothing familiar to hold on to: family, home, personal belongings, loved ones, language, name. Gradually, they lose their mental resilience and sense of freedom. They feel alien – unable to communicate, relate, attach, or empathize with others.

Torture splinters early childhood grandiose narcissistic fantasies of uniqueness, omnipotence, invulnerability, and impenetrability. But it enhances the fantasy of merger with an idealized and omnipotent (though not benign) other – the inflicter of agony. The twin processes of individuation and separation are reversed.

Torture is the ultimate act of perverted intimacy. The torturer invades the victim’s body, pervades his psyche, and possesses his mind. Deprived of contact with others and starved for human interactions, the prey bonds with the predator. “Traumatic bonding”, akin to the Stockholm Syndrome, is about hope and the search for meaning in the brutal and indifferent and nightmarish universe of the torture cell.

The abuser becomes the black hole at the center of the victim’s surrealistic galaxy, sucking in the sufferer’s universal need for solace. The victim tries to “control” his tormentor by becoming one with him (introjecting him) and by appealing to the monster’s presumably dormant humanity and empathy.

This bonding is especially strong when the torturer and the tortured form a dyad and “collaborate” in the rituals and acts of torture (for instance, when the victim is coerced into selecting the torture implements and the types of torment to be inflicted, or to choose between two evils).

The psychologist Shirley Spitz offers this powerful overview of the contradictory nature of torture in a seminar titled “The Psychology of Torture” (1989):

“Torture is an obscenity in that it joins what is most private with what is most public. Torture entails all the isolation and extreme solitude of privacy with none of the usual security embodied therein… Torture entails at the same time all the self-exposure of the utterly public with none of its possibilities for camaraderie or shared experience. (The presence of an all powerful other with whom to merge, without the security of the other’s benign intentions.)

A further obscenity of torture is the inversion it makes of intimate human relationships. The interrogation is a form of social encounter in which the normal rules of communicating, of relating, of intimacy are manipulated. Dependency needs are elicited by the interrogator, but not so they may be met as in close relationships, but to weaken and confuse. Independence that is offered in return for ‘betrayal’ is a lie. Silence is intentionally misinterpreted either as confirmation of information or as guilt for ‘complicity’.

Torture combines complete humiliating exposure with utter devastating isolation. The final products and outcome of torture are a scarred and often shattered victim and an empty display of the fiction of power.”

Obsessed by endless ruminations, demented by pain and a continuum of sleeplessness – the victim regresses, shedding all but the most primitive defense mechanisms: splitting, narcissism, dissociation, Projective Identification, introjection, and cognitive dissonance. The victim constructs an alternative world, often suffering from depersonalization and derealization, hallucinations, ideas of reference, delusions, and psychotic episodes.

Sometimes the victim comes to crave pain – very much as self-mutilators do – because it is a proof and a reminder of his individuated existence otherwise blurred by the incessant torture. Pain shields the sufferer from disintegration and capitulation. It preserves the veracity of his unthinkable and unspeakable experiences.

This dual process of the victim’s alienation and addiction to anguish complements the perpetrator’s view of his quarry as “inhuman”, or “subhuman”. The torturer assumes the position of the sole authority, the exclusive fount of meaning and interpretation, the source of both evil and good.

Torture is about reprogramming the victim to succumb to an alternative exegesis of the world, proffered by the abuser. It is an act of deep, indelible, traumatic indoctrination. The abused also swallows whole and assimilates the torturer’s negative view of him and often, as a result, is rendered suicidal, self-destructive, or self-defeating.

Thus, torture has no cut-off date. The sounds, the voices, the smells, the sensations reverberate long after the episode has ended – both in nightmares and in waking moments. The victim’s ability to trust other people – i.e., to assume that their motives are at least rational, if not necessarily benign – has been irrevocably undermined. Social institutions are perceived as precariously poised on the verge of an ominous, Kafkaesque mutation. Nothing is either safe, or credible anymore.

Victims typically react by undulating between emotional numbing and increased arousal: insomnia, irritability, restlessness, and attention deficits. Recollections of the traumatic events intrude in the form of dreams, night terrors, flashbacks, and distressing associations.

The tortured develop compulsive rituals to fend off obsessive thoughts. Other psychological sequelae reported include cognitive impairment, reduced capacity to learn, memory disorders, sexual dysfunction, social withdrawal, inability to maintain long-term relationships, or even mere intimacy, phobias, ideas of reference and superstitions, delusions, hallucinations, psychotic microepisodes, and emotional flatness.

Depression and anxiety are very common. These are forms and manifestations of self-directed aggression. The sufferer rages at his own victimhood and resulting multiple dysfunction. He feels shamed by his new disabilities and responsible, or even guilty, somehow, for his predicament and the dire consequences borne by his nearest and dearest. His sense of self-worth and self-esteem are crippled.

In a nutshell, torture victims suffer from a Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Their strong feelings of anxiety, guilt, and shame are also typical of victims of childhood abuse, domestic violence, and rape. They feel anxious because the perpetrator’s behavior is seemingly arbitrary and unpredictable – or mechanically and inhumanly regular.

They feel guilty and disgraced because, to restore a semblance of order to their shattered world and a modicum of dominion over their chaotic life, they need to transform themselves into the cause of their own degradation and the accomplices of their tormentors.

The CIA, in its “Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual – 1983″ (reprinted in the April 1997 issue of Harper’s Magazine), summed up the theory of coercion thus:

“The purpose of all coercive techniques is to induce psychological regression in the subject by bringing a superior outside force to bear on his will to resist. Regression is basically a loss of autonomy, a reversion to an earlier behavioral level. As the subject regresses, his learned personality traits fall away in reverse chronological order. He begins to lose the capacity to carry out the highest creative activities, to deal with complex situations, or to cope with stressful interpersonal relationships or repeated frustrations.”

Inevitably, in the aftermath of torture, its victims feel helpless and powerless. This loss of control over one’s life and body is manifested physically in impotence, attention deficits, and insomnia. This is often exacerbated by the disbelief many torture victims encounter, especially if they are unable to produce scars, or other “objective” proof of their ordeal. Language cannot communicate such an intensely private experience as pain.

Spitz makes the following observation:

“Pain is also unsharable in that it is resistant to language… All our interior states of consciousness: emotional, perceptual, cognitive and somatic can be described as having an object in the external world… This affirms our capacity to move beyond the boundaries of our body into the external, sharable world. This is the space in which we interact and communicate with our environment. But when we explore the interior state of physical pain we find that there is no object ‘out there’ – no external, referential content. Pain is not of, or for, anything. Pain is. And it draws us away from the space of interaction, the sharable world, inwards. It draws us into the boundaries of our body.”

Bystanders resent the tortured because they make them feel guilty and ashamed for having done nothing to prevent the atrocity. The victims threaten their sense of security and their much-needed belief in predictability, justice, and rule of law. The victims, on their part, do not believe that it is possible to effectively communicate to “outsiders” what they have been through. The torture chambers are “another galaxy”. This is how Auschwitz was described by the author K. Zetnik in his testimony in the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem in 1961.

Kenneth Pope in “Torture”, a chapter he wrote for the “Encyclopedia of Women and Gender: Sex Similarities and Differences and the Impact of Society on Gender”, quotes Harvard psychiatrist Judith Herman:

“It is very tempting to take the side of the perpetrator. All the perpetrator asks is that the bystander do nothing. He appeals to the universal desire to see, hear, and speak no evil. The victim, on the contrary, asks the bystander to share the burden of pain. The victim demands action, engagement, and remembering.”

But, more often, continued attempts to repress fearful memories result in psychosomatic illnesses (conversion). The victim wishes to forget the torture, to avoid re-experiencing the often life threatening abuse and to shield his human environment from the horrors. In conjunction with the victim’s pervasive distrust, this is frequently interpreted as hypervigilance, or even paranoia. It seems that the victims can’t win. Torture is forever.

Note – Why Do People Torture?

We should distinguish functional torture from the sadistic variety. The former is calculated to extract information from the tortured or to punish them. It is measured, impersonal, efficient, and disinterested.

The latter – the sadistic variety – fulfils the emotional needs of the perpetrator.

People who find themselves caught up in anomic states – for instance, soldiers in war or incarcerated inmates – tend to feel helpless and alienated. They experience a partial or total loss of control. They have been rendered vulnerable, powerless, and defenseless by events and circumstances beyond their influence.

Torture amounts to exerting an absolute and all-pervasive domination of the victim’s existence. It is a coping strategy employed by torturers who wish to reassert control over their lives and, thus, to re-establish their mastery and superiority. By subjugating the tortured – they regain their self-confidence and regulate their sense of self-worth.

Other tormentors channel their negative emotions – pent up aggression, humiliation, rage, envy, diffuse hatred – and displace them. The victim becomes a symbol of everything that’s wrong in the torturer’s life and the situation he finds himself caught in. The act of torture amounts to misplaced and violent venting.

Many perpetrate heinous acts out of a wish to conform. Torturing others is their way of demonstrating obsequious obeisance to authority, group affiliation, colleagueship, and adherence to the same ethical code of conduct and common values. They bask in the praise that is heaped on them by their superiors, fellow workers, associates, team mates, or collaborators. Their need to belong is so strong that it overpowers ethical, moral, or legal considerations.

Many offenders derive pleasure and satisfaction from sadistic acts of humiliation. To these, inflicting pain is fun. They lack empathy and so their victim’s agonized reactions are merely cause for much hilarity.

Moreover, sadism is rooted in deviant sexuality. The torture inflicted by sadists is bound to involve perverted sex (rape, homosexual rape, voyeurism, exhibitionism, pedophilia, fetishism, and other paraphilias). Aberrant sex, unlimited power, excruciating pain – these are the intoxicating ingredients of the sadistic variant of torture.

Still, torture rarely occurs where it does not have the sanction and blessing of the authorities, whether local or national. A permissive environment is sine qua non. The more abnormal the circumstances, the less normative the milieu, the further the scene of the crime is from public scrutiny – the more is egregious torture likely to occur. This is especially true in totalitarian societies where the use of physical force to discipline or eliminate dissent is an acceptable practice.

Sam Vaknin ( samvak.tripod.com ) is the author of Malignant Self Love – Narcissism Revisited and After the Rain – How the West Lost the East. He served as a columnist for Global Politician, Central Europe Review, PopMatters, Bellaonline, and eBookWeb, a United Press International (UPI) Senior Business Correspondent, and the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory and Suite101.

Until recently, he served as the Economic Advisor to the Government of Macedonia.

Visit Sam’s Web site at samvak.tripod.com

It is one thing to be free; it is quite another to be liberated. Liberation implies that freedom was absent for a time, and there was bondage. Though it may seem like a dichotomy, grief has both the power to bind and the power to liberate from bondage.

Initially, when a person we love dies, we are in the bondage of grief and it feels as if we will never recovernever be the same again. And we are right; we never will be the same again. But maybe being the same again shouldn’t be our goal. Having been confronted by death, we suddenly see LIFE in a totally different way than we had ever considered it before. Gradually, we begin to realize how we are different, and it is in those differences that we can find liberation and new freedoms.

Many of the things we used to think were important are now irrelevant. Previous goals and opportunities are now limp, meaningless, empty and discarded. But as we lose interest in many of the things that formerly seemed so life-enhancing, we discover new values and priorities.

At last we are liberated from the bondage of competition. If we were formerly obsessed with the fastest, the most expensive, the biggest, the newest, the most beautiful, the most powerful, we now know how empty and futile those victories can be. In our “other lives,” we believed we had to belong to the right organizations, attend the right schools, live in the right neighborhoods, work in the right jobs, wear the right clothes, have the right opinions. Now, some of the things that were “right” are wrong, and some just simply don’t matter anymore. Grief has liberated us from those masters.

We have a new freedom to challenge old ideas and goals, to attempt new ventures, to confront old relationships, to develop and explore latent skills and talents. No longer are we burdened and shackled by “should” and “ought.”

We have the freedom to be wrong. While we are no longer “right” as often as we used to be, when we are right, we’re more certain and less abusive about it.

We have been liberated from inhibition and self-consciousness. The strength born of our pain has given us the courage to speak out when before we might have been silent. We no longer fear the criticism and judgment of others. Who can hurt us now? We have experienced the worst and survived. Sorrow has stripped away those fears. Now, we are more aware of the panorama of life and less concerned with our own little piece of it.

We have discovered the freedom to express our affection for others freely, even lavishly. We are acutely aware that there may be no more chances to say “Goodbye,” or, “I love you,” one more time.

We are free to develop a new acquaintance with our inner selves. Often we have a keener awareness of the “still, small voice” within. We hear our directions with more sensitivity and trust. We are more aligned with our spiritual connections and perhaps less impressed with “religion.” We have learned to appreciate wisdom above knowledge.

We have the freedom to appreciate time in a new value system. Our experience has taught us to view time with a new fragility, because we know how easily and quickly it can seem to end.

We have the freedom to have an open mind. Previously, we may have made concrete and inviolate decisions about anything ranging from breakfast cereal to eternal destiny. Now, we are more cautious, ready to hear another point of view. Where we used to have all the answers, now we just have all the questions.

Finally, we have achieved a freedom from the fear of death. We can now look Death squarely in the eye and know that there is no more intimidation. No longer are we afraid. Death had one trump card, and now that it’s been played, we stand in the victor’s circle.

With liberation, we are free to live and work and advocate in memory of our absent loved ones for whatever time we remain here on Earth. And when it’s our turn to be called away, we will leave behind an ongoing legacy of freedom for those we love who yet remain.

Yes, in liberation, there is peace.

Good Grief Resources (http://www.goodgriefresources.com) was conceived and founded by Andrea Gambill whose 17-year-old daughter died in 1976. Almost thirty years of experience in leading grief support gropus, writing, editing, and founding a national grief-support magazine has provided valuable insights into the unique needs of the bereaved and their caregivers and wide access to many excellent resources. The primary goal of Good Grief Resources is to connect the bereaved and their caregivers with as many bereavement support resources as possible in one, efficient and easy-to-use website directory.

I had stated in a previous article how Yoga could work as a natural depression treatment based on my own experiences. To add to that information-being a very important limb of Yoga into itself- what you eat also has an effect on your mental health. Consequently, if you’re interested in a drug-free treatment of depression, without the side-effects common to most depression medications, a crucial step will be to make some dietetic changes amongst other factors.

However, what should be the main priority, to avoid adding insult to injury when using depression medications, will ironically be avoiding their use considering the many side effects common to these anti-depression drugs. Effective as they may be for a while, it’s been noted that these substances have several side effects which may include nausea, fatigue, insomnia and some sexual dysfunctions. In some cases on mental side effects, mania has even been reported; so needless to say, a drug free depression treatment might be your best AND safest bet for your health.

Now, when in depression, most of us have the tendency to binge in an effort to mask our feelings or deaden the pain, some of us go as far as soliciting the use of alcohol, drugs or even sex for depression help. Yes, they may give some relief for a while, but when these mere distractions wear off, the symptoms of depression always do come back, and with a vengeance.

This considered, it will be safe to say the first step of a dietetic factor in regards to depression treatment could be refraining from food, at least for a while friends, really.
An observance of nature will show us that when animals are frightened or angered, they refrain from eating until after the passage of considerable time.

It is true that under stressful circumstances many civilized people refrain from eating and find in truth that they lack the desire for food, but it is also too often that most will eat large meals under these circumstances, which will be mostly disease forming foods to start with, that as a consequence, complicates or altogether halts an already retarded ongoing digestion. This endless cycle leads to even more toxins and poisons in an already encumbered body.

So what are you saying Foras (that’s my name by the way), I should fast or something?

Well, if you can, that will be excellent. At least till your emotional balance returns, which will be the end result as the body is not taxed with the duties of digestion, assimilation and re-building. Your mind clears and all moroseness disappears and consequently, we tend to find the answers to the problems warranting a treatment for depression in the first place.

Now for many, I agree it might be asking for too much to fast during a stressful time based on old habits, but as an alternative, it will be advisable to steer clear of harmful mucus forming foods and partake of body healing ones: Fruits and Vegetables. A restricted diet of one kind of fruit can be considered a camouflaged fasts but you have to be knowledgeable of its season, how it was grown (organically or conventional) and even when to eat as body cleansing and building do occur at specific times of the day.

Now, not to get of the subject of depression treatment, these steps, be they a fast or a healthier diet, will ensure that the body is cleaner and well we all should know by now that a cleaner body equates to a cleaner mind. In fact Yoga sages (this obviously showing my vote of Yoga for anti-depression) suggest that certain foods, which they coin as ‘rajasic’ (stimulating foods including Spices, alcohol, and animal products) foods have a negative stimulating effect on the nervous and endocrine systems, the two main ones that are related to mental health and consequently depression.

Based on their impeccable analysis of the human body, it may be safe to say these old Yoga Sages are completely right in suggesting we as humans-or at least those of us seeking the use of Yoga for depression treatment-should abstain from these foods for optimal success.

Is it a co-incidence that these same foods are the ones that have been shown to wreak havoc on our physical health? I think not folks.

This considered, instead of introducing chemical substances into your body in a quest for seeking depression treatment, from the facts above, it will be wise to first make a dietetic change, which again may include a short fast, at least to clear our minds first to tackle our problems, then eat the proper foods for nourishment and of course partake in some physical exercise (my choice being some Yoga) to obtain the inevitable feel-good results.

Depression is something we all may go through at some point, but thankfully relief and a successful treatment of it is not out of reach and this without harmful side-effects.

So empower yourself to a successful depression treatment targeting its root cause with drug-free methods of healing. On the subject of diet and depression treatment, I choose to remind you of this quote: “Let your foods be your medicine and your medicine your foods” (By Hippocrates the ‘Father or Medicine”)

May happiness be yours.

Foras Aje is an independent researcher and author of Fitness: Inside and out, a book on improving physical and mental health naturally. For additional information on depression treatment go to: http://www.bodyhealthsoul.com/depression.htm