Are You Stuck Playing These Three Roles in Love?
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The psychology of Transactional Analysis holds that our interpersonal dynamics can be modelled in the following fashion:
The roles
- Child: vulnerable, trusting, weak, and support-seeking
- Parent: strong, dominant, responsible—but also often exhausted and critical
- Adult: balanced, thoughtful, creative, and kind
Ideally we’d be able to spend most of our time in “Adult” mode, and occasionally go into “Child” or “Parent” mode when required, e.g. child when circumstances have rendered us vulnerable and we need help; parent when we need to go “above and beyond” in the pursuit of looking after others. That’s all well and good and healthy.
However, in relationships, often it happens that partners polarize themselves and/or each other, with one shouldering all of the responsibility, and the other willfully losing their own agency.
The problem lies in that either role can be seductive—on the one hand, it’s nice to be admired and powerful and it’s a good feeling to look after one’s partner; on the other hand, it’s nice to have someone who will meet your every need. What love and trust!
Only, it becomes toxic when these roles stagnate, and each forgets how to step out of them. Each can become resentful of the other (for not pulling their weight, on one side, and for not being able to effortlessly solve all life problems unilaterally and provide endlessly in both time and substance, on the other), digging in to their own side and exacerbating the less healthy qualities.
As to the way out? It’s about self-exploration and mutual honesty—and mutual support:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Further reading
While we haven’t (before today) written about TA per se, we have previously written about AT (Attachment Theory), and on this matter, the two can overlap, where certain attachment styles can result in recreating parent/child/adult dynamics:
How To Leverage Attachment Theory In Your Relationship ← this is about understanding and recognizing attachment styles, and then making sure that both you and your partner(s) are armed with the necessary knowledge and understanding to meet each other’s needs.
Take care!
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The Real Benefit Of Genetic Testing
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Genetic Testing: Health Benefits & Methods
Genetic testing is an oft-derided American pastime, but there’s a lot more to it than finding out about your ancestry!
Note: because there are relatively few companies offering health-related genetic testing services, and we are talking about the benefits of those services, some of this main feature may seem like an advert.
It’s not; none of those companies are sponsoring us, and if any of them become a sponsor at some point, we’ll make it clear and put it in the clearly-marked sponsor segment.
As ever, our only goal here is to provide science-backed information, to enable you to make your own, well-informed, decisions.
Health genomics & genetic testing
The basic goal of health genomics and genetic testing is to learn:
- What genetic conditions you have
- Clearcut genetic conditions, such as Fragile X syndrome, or Huntington’s disease
- What genetic predispositions you have
- Such as an increased/decreased risk for various kinds of cancer, diabetes, heart conditions, and so forth
- What genetic traits you have
- These may range from “blue eyes” to “superathlete muscle type”
- More specifically, pharmacogenomic information
- For example, “fast caffeine metabolizer” or “clopidogrel (Plavix) non-responder” (i.e., that drug simply will not work for you)
Wait, what’s the difference between health genomics and genetic testing?
- Health genomics is the science of how our genes affect our health.
- Genetic testing can be broadly defined as the means of finding out which genes we have.
A quick snippet…
More specifically, a lot of these services look at which single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs, pronounced “snips”) we have. While we share almost all of our DNA with each other (and indeed, with most vertebrates), our polymorphisms are the bits that differ, and are the bits that, genetically speaking, make us different.
So, by looking just at the SNPs, it means we “only” need to look at about 3,000,000 DNA positions, and not our entire genome. For perspective, those 3,000,000 DNA positions make up about 0.1% of our whole genome, so without focusing on SNPs, the task would be 1000x harder.
For example, the kind of information that this sort of testing may give you, includes (to look at some “popular” SNPs):
- rs53576 in the oxytocin receptor influences social behavior and personality
- rs7412 and rs429358 can raise the risk of Alzheimer’s disease by more than 10x
- rs6152 can influence baldness
- rs333 resistance to HIV
- rs1800497 in a dopamine receptor may influence the sense of pleasure
- rs1805007 determines red hair and sensitivity to anesthetics
- rs9939609 triggers obesity and type-2 diabetes
- rs662799 prevents weight gain from high fat diets
- rs12255372 linked to type-2 diabetes and breast cancer
- rs1799971 makes alcohol cravings stronger
- rs17822931 determines earwax, sweating and body odor
- rs1333049 coronary heart disease
- rs1051730 and rs3750344 nicotine dependence
- rs4988235 lactose intolerance
(You can learn about these and more than 100,000 other SNPs at SNPedia.com)
I don’t know what SNPs I have, and am disinclined to look them up one by one!
The first step to knowing, is to get your DNA out of your body and into a genetic testing service. This is usually done by saliva or blood sample. This writer got hers done many years ago by 23andMe and was very happy with that service, but there are plenty of other options.
Healthline did an independent review of the most popular companies, so you might like to check out:
Healthline: Best DNA Testing Kits of 2023
Those companies will give you some basic information, such as “6x higher breast cancer risk” or “3x lower age-related macular degeneration risk” etc.
However, to really get bang-for-buck, what you want to do next is:
- Get your raw genetic data (the companies above should provide it); this will probably look like a big text file full of As, Cs, Gs, and Ts, but it make take another form.
- Upload it to Promethease. When this writer got hers done , the cost was $2; that price has now gone up to a whopping $12.
- You will then get a report that will cross-reference your data with everything known about SNPs, and give a supremely comprehensive, readable-to-the-human-eye, explanation of what it all means for you—from much more specific health risk prognostics, to more trivial things like whether you can roll your tongue or smell decomposed asparagus metabolites in urine.
A note on privacy: anything you upload to Promethease will be anonymized, and/but in doing so, you consent to it going into the grand scientific open-source bank of “things we know about the human genome”, and thus contribute to the overall sample size of genetic data.
In our opinion, it means you’re doing your bit for science, without personal risk. But your opinion may differ, and that’s your decision to make.
Lastly, on the pros and cons of pharmacogenetic testing specifically:
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- What genetic conditions you have
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Sweet Potato vs Winter Squash – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing sweet potato to winter squash, we picked the sweet potato.
Why?
In terms of macros, the sweet potato has 2x the protein, 2x the carbs, and slightly more fiber. Because the protein numbers are small, the carb:fiber ratio is the deciding factor here, and has winter squash has the lower glycemic index (assuming cooking them both on a like-for-like basis), we’re going with that on macros, but it’s subjective.
In the category of vitamins, sweet potato has more of vitamins A, B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, C, E, and choline, while winter squash has more of vitamins B9 and K. It’s interesting to note that while sweet potato is rightly famous for its vitamin A content, winter squash is actually very good for that too. Still, by the numbers, it’s a clear 9:2 victory for sweet potato here.
When it comes to minerals, sweet potato has more calcium copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, and zinc, while winter squash has more selenium, meaning an 8:1 victory for sweet potato this time.
In short, enjoy either or both, but sweet potato is the more nutritionally dense option for sure.
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
Carb-Strong or Carb-Wrong? Should You Go Light Or Heavy On Carbs?
Enjoy!
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Knitting helps Tom Daley switch off. Its mental health benefits are not just for Olympians
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Olympian Tom Daley is the most decorated diver in Britain’s history. He is also an avid knitter. At the Paris 2024 Olympics Daley added a fifth medal to his collection – and caught the world’s attention knitting a bright blue “Paris 24” jumper while travelling to the games and in the stands.
At the Tokyo Olympics, where Daley was first spotted knitting, he explained its positive impact on his mental health.
It just turned into my mindfulness, my meditation, my calm and my way to escape the stresses of everyday life and, in particular, going to an Olympics.
The mental health benefits of knitting are well established. So why is someone famous like Daley knitting in public still so surprising?
Africa Voice/Shutterstock Knitting is gendered
Knitting is usually associated with women – especially older women – as a hobby done at home. In a large international survey of knitting, 99% of respondents identified as female.
But the history of yarn crafts and gender is more tangled. In Europe in the middle ages, knitting guilds were exclusive and reserved for men. They were part of a respected Europe-wide trade addressing a demand for knitted products that could not be satisfied by domestic workers alone.
The industrial revolution made the production of clothed goods cheaper and faster than hand-knitting. Knitting and other needle crafts became a leisure activity for women, done in the private sphere of the home.
World Wars I and II turned the spotlight back on knitting as a “patriotic duty”, but it was still largely taken up by women.
During COVID lockdowns, knitting saw another resurgence. But knitting still most often makes headlines when men – especially famous men like Daley or actor Ryan Gosling – do it.
Men who knit are often seen as subverting the stereotype it’s an activity for older women.
Knitting the stress away
Knitting can produce a sense of pride and accomplishment. But for an elite sportsperson like Daley – whose accomplishments already include four gold medals and one silver – its benefits lie elsewhere.
Olympics-level sport relies on perfect scores and world records. When it comes to knitting, many of the mental health benefits are associated with the process, rather than the end result.
Daley says knitting is the “one thing” that allows him to switch off completely, describing it as “my therapy”. https://www.youtube.com/embed/6wwXGOki–c?wmode=transparent&start=0
The Olympian says he could
knit for hours on end, honestly. There’s something that’s so satisfying to me about just having that rhythm and that little “click-clack” of the knitting needles. There is not a day that goes by where I don’t knit.
Knitting can create a “flow” state through rhythmic, repetitive movements of the yarn and needle. Flow offers us a balance between challenge, accessibility and a sense of control.
It’s been shown to have benefits relieving stress in high-pressure jobs beyond elite sport. Among surgeons, knitting has been found to improve wellbeing as well as manual dexterity, crucial to their role.
For other health professionals – including oncology nurses and mental health workers – knitting has helped to reduce “compassion fatigue” and burnout. Participants described the soothing noise of their knitting needles. They developed and strengthened team bonds through collective knitting practices. https://www.youtube.com/embed/dTTJjD_q2Ik?wmode=transparent&start=0 A Swiss psychiatrist says for those with trauma, knitting yarn can be like “knitting the two halves” of the brain “back together”.
Another study showed knitting in primary school may boost children’s executive function. That includes the ability to pay attention, remember relevant details and block out distractions.
As a regular creative practice, it has also been used in the treatment of grief, depression and subduing intrusive thoughts, as well countering chronic pain and cognitive decline.
Knitting is a community
The evidence for the benefits of knitting is often based on self-reporting. These studies tend to produce consistent results and involve large population samples.
This may point to another benefit of knitting: its social aspect.
Knitting and other yarn crafts can be done alone, and usually require simple materials. But they also provide a chance to socialise by bringing people together around a common interest, which can help reduce loneliness.
The free needle craft database and social network Ravelry contains more than one million patterns, contributed by users. “Yarn bombing” projects aim to engage the community and beautify public places by covering objects such as benches and stop signs with wool.
The interest in Daley’s knitting online videos have formed a community of their own.
In them he shows the process of making the jumper, not just the finished product. That includes where he “went wrong” and had to unwind his work.
His pride in the finished product – a little bit wonky, but “made with love” – can be a refreshing antidote to the flawless achievements often on display at the Olympics.
Michelle O’Shea, Senior Lecturer, School of Business, Western Sydney University and Gabrielle Weidemann, Associate Professor in Psychological Science, Western Sydney University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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ADHD… As An Adult?
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ADHD—not just for kids!
Consider the following:
- If a kid has consistent problems paying attention, it’s easy and common to say “Aha, ADHD!”
- If a young adult has consistent problems paying attention, it’s easy and common to say “Aha, a disinterested ne’er-do-well!”
- If an older adult has consistent problems paying attention, it’s easy and common to say “Aha, a senior moment!”
Yet, if we recognize that ADHD is fundamentally a brain difference in children (and we do; there are physiological characteristics that we can test), and we can recognize that as people get older our brains typically have less neuroplasticity (ability to change) than when we are younger rather than less, then… Surely, there are just as many adults with ADHD as kids!
After all, that rather goes with the linear nature of time and the progressive nature of getting older.
So why do kids get diagnoses so much more often than adults?
Parents—and schools—can find children’s ADHD challenging, and it’s their problem, so they look for an explanation, and ADHD isn’t too difficult to find as a diagnosis.
Meanwhile, adults with ADHD have usually developed coping mechanisms, have learned to mask and/or compensate for their symptoms, and we expect adults to manage their own problems, so nobody’s rushing to find an explanation on their behalf.
Additionally, the stigma of neurodivergence—especially something popularly associated with children—isn’t something that many adults will want for themselves.
But, if you have an ADHD brain, then recognizing that (even if just privately to yourself) can open the door to much better management of your symptoms… and your life.
So what does ADHD look like in adults?
ADHD involves a spread of symptoms, and not everyone will have them all, or have them in the same magnitude. However, very commonly most noticeable traits include:
- Lack of focus (ease of distraction)
- Conversely: high focus (on the wrong things)
- To illustrate: someone with ADHD might set out to quickly tidy the sock drawer, and end up Marie Kondo-ing their entire wardrobe… when they were supposed to doing something else
- Conversely: high focus (on the wrong things)
- Poor time management (especially: tendency to procrastinate)
- Forgetfulness (of various kinds—for example, forgetting information, and forgetting to do things)
Want To Take A Quick Test? Click Here ← this one is reputable, and free. No sign in required; the test is right there.
Wait, where’s the hyperactivity in this Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder?
It’s often not there. ADHD is simply badly-named. This stems from how a lot of mental health issues are considered by society in terms of how much they affect (and are observable by) other people. Since ADHD was originally noticed in children (in fact being originally called “Hyperkinetic Reaction of Childhood”), it ended up being something like:
“Oh, your brain has an inconvenient relationship with dopamine and you are driven to try to correct that by shifting attention from boring things to stimulating things? You might have trouble-sitting-still disorder”
Hmm, this sounds like me (or my loved one); what to do now at the age of __?
Some things to consider:
- If you don’t want medication (there are pros and cons, beyond the scope of today’s article), you might consider an official diagnosis not worth pursuing. That’s fine if so, because…
- More important than whether or not you meet certain diagnostic criteria, is whether or not the strategies recommended for it might help you.
- Whether or not you talk to other people about it is entirely up to you. Maybe it’s a stigma you’d rather avoid… Or maybe it’ll help those around you to better understand and support you.
- Either way, you might want to learn more about ADHD in adults. Today’s article was about recognizing it—we’ll write more about managing it another time!
In the meantime… We recommended a great book about this a couple of weeks ago; you might want to check it out:
Click here to see our review of “The Silent Struggle: Taking Charge of ADHD in Adults”!
Note: the review is at the bottom of that page. You’ll need to scroll past the video (which is also about ADHD) without getting distracted by it and forgetting you were there to see about the book. So:
- Click the above link
- Scroll straight to the review!
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Atomic Habits – by James Clear
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James Clear’s Atomic Habits has become “the” go-to book about the power of habit-forming. And, there’s no shortage of competition out there, so that’s quite a statement. What makes this book stand out?
A lot of books start by assuming you want to build habits. That can seem a fair assumption; after all, we picked up the book! But an introductory chapter really hammers home the idea in a way that makes it a lot more motivational:
- Habits are the compound interest of productivity
- This means that progress is not linear, but exponential
- Habits can also be stacked, and thus become synergistic
- The more positive habits you add incrementally, the easier they become because each thing is making your life easier/better
For example:
- It’s easier to save money if you’re in good health
- It’s easier to sleep better if you do not have financial worries
- It’s easier to build your relationship with your loved ones if you’re not tired
…and so on.
For many people this presents a Catch-22 problem! Clear instead presents it as an opportunity… Start wherever you like, but just start small, with some two-minute thing, and build from there.
A lot of the book is given over to:
- how to form effective habits (using his “Four Laws”)
- how to build them into your life
- how to handle mishaps
- how to make sure your habits are working for you
- how to see habits as part of your identity, and not just a goal to be checked off
The last one is perhaps key—goals cease to be motivating once accomplished. Habits, on the other hand, keep spiralling upwards (if you guide them appropriately).
There’s lots more we could say, but it’s a one-minute book review, so we’ll just close by saying:
This book can help you to become the kind of person who genuinely gets a little better each day, and reaps the benefits over time.
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Behavioral Activation Against Depression & Anxiety
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Behavioral Activation Against Depression & Anxiety
Psychologists do love making fancy new names for things.
You thought you were merely “eating your breakfast”, but now it’s “Happiness-Oriented Basic Behavioral Intervention Therapy (HOBBIT)” or something.
This one’s quite simple, so we’ll keep it short for today, but it is one more tool for your toolbox:
What is Behavioral Activation?
Behavioral Activation is about improving our mood (something we can’t directly choose) by changing our behavior (something we usually can directly choose).
An oversimplified (and insufficient, as we will explain, but we’ll use this one to get us started) example would be “whistle a happy tune and you will be happy”.
Behavioral Activation is not a silver bullet
Or if it is, then it’s the kind you have to keep shooting, because one shot is not enough. However, this becomes easier than you might think, because Behavioral Activation works by…
Creating a Positive Feedback Loop
A lot of internal problems in depression and anxiety are created by the fact that necessary and otherwise desirable activities are being written off by the brain as:
- Pointless (depression)
- Dangerous (anxiety)
The inaction that results from these aversions creates a negative feedback loop as one’s life gradually declines (as does one’s energy, and interest in life), or as the outside world seems more and more unwelcoming/scary.
Instead, Behavioral Activation plans activities (usually with the help of a therapist, as depressed/anxious people are not the most inclined to plan activities) that will be:
- attainable
- rewarding
The first part is important, because the maximum of what is “attainable” to a depressed/anxious person can often be quite a small thing. So, small goals are ideal at first.
The second part is important, because there needs to be some way of jump-starting a healthier dopamine cycle. It also has to feel rewarding during/after doing it, not next year, so short term plans are ideal at first.
So, what behavior should we do?
That depends on you. Behavioral Activation calls for keeping track of our activities (bullet-journaling is fine, and there are apps* that can help you, too) and corresponding moods.
*This writer uses the pragmatic Daylio for its nice statistical analyses of bullet-journaling data-points, and the very cute Finch for more keyword-oriented insights and suggestions. Whatever works for you, works for you, though! It could even be paper and pen.
Sometimes the very thought of an activity fills us with dread, but the actual execution of it brings us relief. Bullet-journaling can track that sort of thing, and inform decisions about “what we should do” going forwards.
Want a ready-made brainstorm to jump-start your creativity?
Here’s list of activities suggested by TherapistAid (a resource hub for therapists)
Want to know more?
You might like:
- How To Use Behavioral Activation (guide for end users)
- Treatment Guide: Behavioral Activation (guide for clinicians)
Take care!
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