Carnegie Hill News

I watched a documentary on stress by biologist/professor and author of Why Zebras don’t get Ulcers, Robert Sapolsky. He provides some fascinating information on stress based primarily on his longitudinal research in Africa with a single baboon troop. Here are some of the findings that stuck with me:

• Stress levels changed based on the order in the social hierarchy. This was true for baboons and for people in the workplace. The higher in the hierarchy, the lower the stress. Stress was measured physiologically, not psychologically.
• Stress reactions caused neurons to dramatically decrease in size.
• All animals, including humans, release stress hormones in response to stress, which aids in the stress response when a threatening situation arises. Humans also have stress responses that are work or money related, etc., so that the stress response inevitably becomes chronic causing a host of ailments and disorders such as high blood pressure, heart disease, and ulcers.
• Social isolation is a huge cause of stress. Contact, care, nurturing and compassion all significantly reduce stress.

There are so many things we can do to mitigate stress including exercise and meditation. You can rent Sapolsky’s documentary on Netflix.

By David B Younger, PhD, CGP, PC

Children need to be listened to. Do not assume that you know what they are feeling. The fact that they may not have words for their feelings makes it easier to dismiss them, and when they start crying inconsolably it can be equally challenging as a parent to be supportive, because a crying child moves many things inside the parents from our own childhoods. We often reflexively react to our children the way we were reacted to by our own parents.

One thing that we can do when our kids are upset is to help them put words to their feelings by saying things like: “Are you feeling mad because we had to turn off the TV before your program ended so that we can go for dinner?” Another thing we can do is to be empathic. For example: “I know it must be hard or frustrating right now. I can remember feeling similar feelings when I was your age”. This helps children to feel understood.

Do not tell them to stop crying. That’s one of the worst things to do. Do not call them babies for being upset over something that you think is trivial. It is not trivial for them. Children can easily learn to feel shamed for expressing their natural emotions. You more than likely experienced this at some point in your own life.

Parenting is hard work. It is especially hard when we are triggered by something and have to make concerted efforts not to react impulsively and to give our children the space that they need to express themselves.

By David B Younger, PhD, CGP, PC

I have been interested in meditation for years, but it was only until fairly recently that I completed a Vedic meditation training here in NYC and committed to a regular practice.

In the Vedic tradition, a mantra is used to anchor the meditation. One of the biggest benefits of meditation, as far as I am concerned, is that it is a consciousness and practice of training the mind. I didn’t realize the full extent to which my mind was a wild animal until I began the practice of taming it. Jack Kornfield compares the mind in meditation to a puppy. It keeps trying to run off in different directions and you gently continue bringing it back.

Thoughts used to keep me up at night as well as hook onto my moods and take them swinging through the vines of my mind. I never even entertained the notion that this would be something that I could control. But that is what meditation has helped me to do. This does not mean that my mind never wanders. I am still human. But I do not feel like I am at the mercy of my mind anymore. I don’t allow it to race when I am about to sleep, and I am able to recognize when I am feeling low and start to attach negative cognitions to the feeling, which feeds it and enables it to persist way more than it needs to.

Thoughts and feelings are like waves that rise from the vast reservoir of the mind and melt back to the source. This is happening all of the time. Tsunamis are in large part self imposed. The process of attaching to specific thoughts and feelings blocks the natural ebb and flow. Pressure builds and the wave grows until it crashes down.

There are many different types of meditation. It doesn’t matter which one you choose, but I strongly believe it is one of the most natural and powerful remedies that exists with respect to psychic suffering.

David B. Younger, Ph.D, CGP, P.C.