From IPA PsychBytes (6/19/2013):”Communication skills and how couples approach conflict may be more important than how often conflict is ‘resolved.'”
I just finished reading The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald and seeing the movie by the same name. The book is a gem and I thought the movie conveyed “Gatsbyness.” Both book and movie rendered the Roaring Twenties and the impact of the then present social divides poignantly. Gatsby’s dream of love and inclusion in the world of the privileged was touching and tragic.
I do wish the movie makers had been more respectful of Fitzgerald’s artistry. There was no need for the artifice of the sanitorium and for showing Gatsby’s death., as well as for other unnecessary alterations. The author’s decisions were superior. Nevertheless, the movie was well worth my time. The book, which I had never read before, is now among my favorites.
Underface by Shel Silverstein:
Underneath my outside face
There’s a face that none can see.
A little less smiley,
A little less sure,
But a whole lot more like me.
John Dryden (1670): Only man clogs his happiness with care, destroying what is, with thoughts of what maybe.”
The July 2013 issue of Health After 50 recommends the following to prevent a sleep deficit, which can interfere with healthy brain function: 1) Go to bed and wake up at the same time every day, 2) Exercise at least 30 minutes daily but not 2 or 3 hours before bedtime, 3) Take time to relax before trying to sleep, 4) When arising in the morning, get exposure to bright light to reset the internal clock, 5) Set a moderate temperature for the bedroom, 6) If sleep won’t come, get out of bed and do something until fatigued, 7) No lights in the room at bedtime, 8) Don’t eat much before trying to sleep, and 9) Limit beverages at night.
Wachtel (2001) observed that not only can we deceive others but also ourselves.
Gardner Murphy (1947): The self is a thing perceived and it is also a thing conceived.
Mindfulness is being truly in the moment, giving a chance to be fully alive in the present without self-criticism or trying to be anyone but who one is right then.
Seneca: There are more things to alarm us than to harm us, and we suffer more in apprehension than in reality.
This observation made in the first century AD still holds true.
Hegel (Phenomenology of spirit, 1807) recognized that the more we try to control others, the more alone we become because they are not able to be fully present as themselves while they are being manipulated into being what we want them to be.
finebergpsychotherapy 