Attention Therapies reach places in the mind and body where words cannot go. Attention Therapies have the power to restore the balance trauma took away from us. Attention Therapies and Affective Neuroscience combine to form a comprehensive self-therapy. But it is not a quick fix. It takes dedication and “sticktoitiveness.”
Whether you are a clinician, client, educator, or researcher, affective neuroscience offers in-depth insight relating to core emotions and depression, anxiety, grief, fear, PTSD, and all aspects of personal and social life. Continue reading
You might not think of Play in terms of affective neuroscience, but according to Jaak Panksepp’s years of lab research, playfulness is the source of one of the most positive social-affective feelings our brains can generate. Continue reading
Comorbidity invokes scary images for me. Maybe it is because I taught high school English and broke complex words by their root, prefix, and suffix. Morbid (Oxford English Dictionary) is from classical Latin morbidus; diseased, sick, causing disease, unhealthy < morbus disease + -idus -id suffix. Or maybe it is scary for me because my PTSD is marked by comorbidity. Continue reading
We can counter virtually all mass violence with CARing. That sounds so easy. But it means warm and loving care from birth on. That does not seem so hard. But for some, it can be. Continue reading
Embodied Cognition describes the interrelationship between mind affecting body and body affecting the mind. It has a lot to do with our tendency to think in metaphors, best illustrated by priming. Continue reading
Rage is a bodily response. Emotional states arise at the neural level. Without this bodily response, there is no rage. We don’t think and become enraged. We experience rage in an ancient subcortical brain we have in common with other mammals. Rage is one of the primary affects (that arise from genetically encoded emotional circuits) that anticipate key survival needs. We automatically fight, run or freeze. Continue reading
I have an embarrassing confession. I am envious of my four-month-old grandson. Dash is generously loved not only by his mother and father but by his extended family and in fact, by everyone he comes in contact with. He is handsome, intelligent and loves to be around and reacting with people. He even loves traveling in an airplane, looking all around and being coo cooed by the stewardesses, while other kids his age are crying the entire way. He lacks Grief. Continue reading
Working in his lab with rats, Jaak Panksepp found seven primary-process emotional systems built into the brain by evolution. We and all other mammals are born with these innate neural systems in our brains. We are always on the lookout for something that we might need or want, or something that might just interest us or satisfy our curiosity. Our SEEKING systems keep us in a state of engagement with the world. “Beginning at birth, it is “a goad without a goal.”
All seven primary affects converge on the periaqueductal gray (PAG) at the lower midbrain or atop the brain stem. Here, all the emotional action systems, especially negative affective systems with their powerful and effective charge, converge. Continue reading
Invasive Emotions and Feelings
Invasive emotions and feelings are lower-minded subcortical storyless processes. The highly uncomfortable feelings you’re experiencing are not generated in the cortical executive part of the brain. Continue reading
“Total Self-Renewal through Attention Therapies and Open Focus” (Sample chapters on Amazon.)
Alternate Title: “Attention Therapies for Total Self-Renewal with 50 Bits–All We Have– Attention”