Tag: mind

It’s hard to tell when your brain is playing tricks on you.

After all, your brain is both the agent and the recipient of perception, and whoa, uh oh, we think our minds just blew up.

Anyway, scientists and philosophers still have a lot to learn about the human brain and how it relates to subjective experience—where exactly the “subject” doing the “experiencing” is located, for one thing. Philosopher David Chalmers calls this the “hard problem of consciousness,” and if you can understand his arguments, then you should be writing this article, not us.

So let’s dispense with the heady question of how it’s even possible for the same organ that gives rise to both perceiver and perception to trick itself. Let’s just look at the most bizarre of these instances.

You’ll definitely recognize some, if not all of these. It turns out that everyone’s brain is a tricky little son of a gun.

1. Earworms: The “In West Philadelphia…” Problem

We’ve all suffered from these pests. Sometimes you get just a snippet of a song—the guitar lead from Eric Clapton’s unholy abomination “Wonderful Tonight,” say—and it’s like your brain hit the repeat button and then fell asleep.

Earworms can get stuck in your head for days at a time. Sometimes the only way to drive them out is to replace them with another earworm. “Total Eclipse of the Heart” by Bonnie Tyler tends to work pretty well for us.

If you want to give ’90s kids an incurable earworm, by the way, just walk into a room and sing the first three words of the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air theme song. You’d better wear your running shoes, though, because people do not appreciate it when you infect them with an earworm.

Psychologists are still studying this phenomena to figure out why exactly your brain gets stuck in an audio loop, but until they figure out the reasons, at least they have some advice to help get rid of them. Concentrate on something else, they say, like a crossword puzzle or decoding a list of anagrams.

2. Phantom Memories

What are you if not the sum of your memories? If the memories really do make up the character, though, humans prove to be awfully chimerical creatures.

That’s because memory is incredibly malleable. We may remember the events of our childhoods in ways that don’t conform to truth. We may even remember things that never happened at all.

In 1997, researcher James Coan wrote booklets describing childhood events and gave them to his family members to read. He snuck a fake into his brother’s booklet—a detailed account of the brother getting lost in a shopping mall.

Later, when he asked his family to remember the stories from the booklets, Coan’s brother recalled the “lost in the mall” story as real. He even unconsciously invented his own details. As far as he was concerned, this memory was as vivid as any other childhood scene.

We’re not sure exactly how memory works, but one thing is for sure: You can’t always trust it.

3. Believing Lies

If the “fake news” debacle of 2016 has taught us anything, it’s that facts don’t have to be true for millions of people to believe them. That’s kind of the brain’s fault, as it turns out.

A 2016 literature review from Northwestern University suggests that there are two operations that lead people to believe blatantly untrue statements. First, when confronted with a purported fact, it’s simply easier to believe it than to analyze and evaluate it. The brain is busy. Sometimes it can’t spare the resources to consider statements skeptically.

Then, when confronted with a problem, the brain retrieves the last relevant information it consumed—even if it isn’t true.

“We often assume sources are reliable,” said psychologist David Rapp in a press release about the study. “It’s not that people are lazy, though that could certainly contribute to the problem. It’s the computational task of evaluating everything that is arduous and difficult, as we attempt to preserve resources for when we really need them.”

4. Word Dust

Have you ever sat there and repeated the same word over and over until the meaning drained away completely? That’s a well-documented phenomenon called “semantic satiation.”

You can blame your cortex for any discomfort this exercise may cause. When you say a word, the cortex retrieves the meaning of that word. If you repeat the word many times quickly, that neural pathway begins to weaken with each repetition. Eventually the stimulus (saying the word) ceases to cause the neural activity (the firing of a pathway to meaning).

Interestingly, scientists have found ways to use semantic satiation therapeutically. It can help with stuttering, for instance, and even with the uncontrollable use of profanity sometimes associated with Tourette syndrome.

(FYI: Most people who have Tourette syndrome don’t exhibit coprolalia, or the uncontrollable use of socially inappropriate words, no matter what the movies say. Semantic satiation, on the other hand, is very real.)

5. Believing What You Want to Believe

If you’ve ever gotten in a political argument on an online comments thread, you’re familiar with a phenomenon the professionals call “motivated reasoning.”

Essentially, the mind doesn’t want its precepts and assumptions challenged by a pesky thing like reality. That means people are less likely to accept statements that challenge a previously held belief. Paradoxically, these challenging statements tend to make people cling even more tightly to their beliefs.

“If we believe something about the world, we are more likely to passively accept as truth any information that confirms our beliefs, and actively dismiss information that doesn’t,” wrote reporter Joe Keohane in the Boston Globe.

This works both ways. You’re more likely to believe false statements that support your worldview. You’re also more likely to reject true statements that counter your worldview. Given that these tendencies are baked into the mind, it seems, any hope of a less-contentious political landscape seems pretty unfounded. Fortunately, if you have that hope, you’re likely to ignore, refute, or reframe the implications of motivated reasoning.

6. Altered States

In 1978, Paddy Chayefsky published a novel about sensory deprivation. His character had a series of stronger and stronger hallucinations upon entering the sensory deprivation tank until he eventually turned into a monkey, which is the really weird part.

That’s why we always carry a copy of Altered States into the waiting room at the floating spa downtown (that’s a thing now). So far the staff hasn’t said anything to us, but you know it makes them uneasy.

Anyway, that novel, and the cult film that it inspired, are actually pretty accurate. Well, except for the monkey thing. A 2009 study threw 19 subjects who had no existing known mental illness into an “anechoic chamber,” which is basically a room that dampens sound and blocks out all light.

The subjects sat there with nothing but their thoughts for 15 minutes. Afterward, five of them said they saw faces in the darkness. Six saw nonexistent objects. Four smelled phantom odors, and two sensed an “evil presence” nearby. Nearly all of the subjects said that they “experienced something very special or important” in the darkened room.

7. When Two Become One

You are yourself and others are ot
hers, right? Well, it’s complicated. A 2013 study in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience suggests that people who love each other actually blend identities.

We don’t mean they start listening to the same music and wearing the same clothes, although that might happen too. On a neurological level, we identify ourselves as our loved ones.

In the study, “Familiarity Promotes the Blurring of Self and Other in the Neural Representation of Threat,” researchers stuck subjects in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine so they could see which parts of their brains lit up during stimulus. Then they threatened the subjects with electric shocks.

Later, they threatened the subjects’ friends and loved ones with electric shocks too. Finally, they applied the threat to a stranger. The brain activated incredibly similar areas whether self or friend was threatened. When the stranger was threatened, though, the brain seemed indifferent.

“The correlation between self and friend was remarkably similar,” said one of the study’s authors, James Coan. “The finding shows the brain’s remarkable capacity to model self to others; that people close to us become a part of ourselves, and that is not just metaphor or poetry, it’s very real.”

Have you ever hoped that your serial procrastination, your ability to lose hours of time to sitting idly as your mind travels great distances, your inability to concentrate except in total silence, and your tendency to become overwhelmed by small everyday tasks like doing laundry or keeping your workspace clutter-free were, rather than handicaps, indicative of some kind of wacky creative genius?

Well, congrats! Your hopes may be more than just self-serving delusions that allow you to continue erratic, self-sabotaging behavior. They may actually be because your mind is a superior machine. (Take that, ex-boss who called you a special snowflake for being unable to write with the constant chatter in an open office!) Read on to learn what some research has told us about the quirks of the exceptionally intelligent…

They have different “sensory gating.”

You know your friend who has to plug his ears while trying to write on deadline in a coffee shop, and your other friend who could probably miss the natural disaster going on around her as long as she was concentrated on a specific task? These friends and others like them may have higher intelligence or creativity, according to some research.

One study from Northwestern University, “Creativity and sensory gating indexed by the P50: Selective versus leaky sensory gating in divergent thinkers and creative achievers,” found that a lower ability to filter out “irrelevant” sensory information may be an indicator of greater creativity, as measured by “real-world creative achievements.” It’s possible that their “leaky sensory gating” led to more surprising connections.

Divergent thinking—also known as lateral thinking—is, on the other hand, correlated with “selective sensory gating,” or more ability to filter out extraneous sensory information. That may explain why there is some research suggesting that those with high intelligence find it difficult to concentrate, and other research suggesting just the opposite, that high intelligence means greater capacity for singular focus.

(Of course, there’s some debate about the relationship between increased creativity and high intelligence, and one doesn’t necessarily imply the other, but that’s an article in itself.)

They understand that they don’t understand.

I know that I know nothing is a phrase attributed to Socrates, who broadcasted his ignorance, despite being one of the most influential thinkers in Western philosophy. (See also: Socratic paradox. Socratic ignorance.)

He was famous—and eventually put to death—for exposing know-it-alls, who he characterized as being doubly ignorant for both their ignorance and their lack of awareness of their ignorance.

A 1999 Cornell study authored by social psychologist David Dunning and his student Justin Kruger would call this double ignorance the Dunning-Kruger effect—a phenomenon that’s gained fresh popularity in the wake of Donald Trump’s presidency. The study, “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments,” says:

“People tend to hold overly favorable views of their abilities in many social and intellectual domains. The authors suggest that this overestimation occurs, in part, because people who are unskilled in these domains suffer a dual burden: Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it.” Ouch.

The summary points out that, “[p]aradoxically, improving the skills of participants, and thus increasing their metacognitive competence, helped them recognize the limitations of their abilities.”

Their minds wander.

Did you ever panic during class because a teacher called on you and you had absolutely no idea what they were talking about? Are you frequently called an airhead? Do people tell you you have your head in the clouds? (Replace “airhead” and “head in the clouds” with the 2017 equivalents, since these strike us as insults from the 1990s and, like, a Humphrey Bogart movie, respectively.)

If so, you may be a daydreamer, and you’re probably used to these subtle jabs at your intelligence/competence.

While there is evidence that a wandering mind can take a toll on your performance in certain tasks inv
olving reading comprehension and model building, and tests that measure working memory and intelligence, research from recent years suggests that mind-wandering is functional and, in fact, may even be indicative of a better working memory, which has been linked to higher IQ.

Joseph Stromberg, for Smithsonian, reported on a 2012 study published in Psychological Science by researchers from the University of Wisconsin and the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Science. Stromberg, paraphrasing one of the study’s authors, writes that their findings suggest that “daydreamers’ minds wander because they have too much extra capacity to merely concentrate on the task at hand.”

They’re messy.

Some people work at desks where all of the pencils are in the containers where pencils are supposed to go, papers are in orderly stacks and color-coded, and there’s not a wad of trash in sight.

Other people work at desks where the pencils are in containers mixed in with a bunch of other stuff, like paper clips and dried-out markers and three Lisa Frank erasers from 1992, and the top of the workspace is littered with little scraps of paper and receipts from Dunkin’ Donuts. Different strokes for different folks, right?

That’s right, according to studies conducted by psychological scientist Kathleen Vohs and co-researchers Joseph Redden and Ryan Rahinel at the University of Minnesota published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Vohs says:

“Prior work has found that a clean setting leads people to do good things: Not engage in crime, not litter, and show more generosity. We found, however, that you can get really valuable outcomes from being in a messy setting. … Disorderly environments seem to inspire breaking free of tradition, which can produce fresh insights. Orderly environments, in contrast, encourage convention and playing it safe.”

They talk to themselves.

People may look at you funny on the streets and move to the other side of the subway car if you’re talking to yourself. (Or they may just assume you’re having an impassioned phone conversation while wearing earbuds.) But talking aloud to yourself doesn’t necessarily mean you’re mentally unwell; in fact, some research shows that it may help you think better.

According to a study from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Pennsylvania, talking to yourself can aid in memory recall and focus. The study, “Self-directed speech affects visual search performance,” asked participants to remember and find objects. One experiment had volunteers look at pictures of various objects before being asked to find a specific item, like a banana. Some were told to repeatedly say the name of the item as they looked, and some were told to remain silent during their searches.

Those who talked to themselves were able to find the objects about 50 to 100 milliseconds faster than those who did not.

The study was apparently inspired by the personal experiences of one of the researchers, cognitive psychologist Gary Lupyan, who said, “I’ll often mutter to myself when searching for something in the refrigerator or supermarket shelves.”

We’re not exactly sure when and how the entire internet decided to use this study as evidence of an explicit correlation between high intelligence and talking to yourself, and we are giving major side eye to those who have used it to perpetuate the even bolder claim that people who talk to themselves are “actually geniuses.” (Where are these people’s sources?)

It seems plausible, though, that those with high intelligence might intuitively gravitate toward behavioral adaptations that improve thought and performance—like saying “banana, banana, banana” while looking for a banana.

They curse more.

Just because your square fourth-grade English teacher whose husband was probably a Baptist preacher told you that only unintelligent people cussed often doesn’t make it so.

In fact, you can tell Mrs. Brown that her didactic tirades were a reductive load of s***, at least according to a study by psychologists Kristin Jay of Marist College and Timothy Jay of the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts published in the journal Language Sciences in 2015. As the study’s abstract reads:

“A folk assumption about colloquial speech is that taboo words are used because speakers cannot find better words with which to express themselves: because speakers lack vocabulary.

A competing possibility is that fluency is fluency regardless of subject matter—that there is no reason to propose a difference in lexicon size and ease of access for taboo as opposed to emotionally-neutral words. … Overall the findings suggest that … the ability to generate taboo language is not an index of overall language poverty.”

They stay up late.

As one report published in 2009 from the London School of Economics argues, daytime schedules are conventional and, since those with high intelligence are increasingly likely to bypass tradition, night owls probably possess more intelligence, among other beneficial traits.

It’s also possible that the staying up late is less about personal taste and more about the desperate attempt to work around other quirks often found in highly intelligent and creative folks, like the trouble some of them encounter with concentrating in the face of distractions. (Remember our first section that talked about “leaky sensory gating”?)

In his book Daily Rituals: How Artists Work, Mason Currey describes the working habits of Franz Kafka, author of the short story “The Metamorphosis.” Currey writes that Kafka “felt stymied … living with his family in a cramped apartment, where he could muster the concentration to write only late at night, when everyone else was asleep.”

As Kafka wrote in a letter in 1912, “time is short, my strength is limited, the office is a horror, the apartment is noisy, and if a pleasant, straightforward life is not possible then one must try to wriggle through by subtle maneuvers.”

Their moms had morning sickness.

Also in 2009, Reuters reported on a small study linking high IQ children and mothers who suffered from morning sickness while pregnant with them. The study, published in the Journal of Pediatrics, looked at 121 Canadian children between the ages of 3 and 7.

Researchers found that the mothers who had suffered from morning sickness scored higher, on average, on certain tests measuring IQ, memory, and language skills.

As Amy Norton wrote: “Nausea and vomiting during pregnancy is very common, particularly in the first trimester. Because it is related to changes in particular hormones that are needed for the placenta’s development, one theory is that morning sickness is a sign of a healthy pregnancy. Past studies have linked morning sickness to lower rates of miscarriage, stillbirth and preterm delivery. Whether it is related to any long-term benefits had been unclear.”

Most people don’t actively enjoy throwing up—but we bet they would be willing to toss up a few meals for the sake of their children’s intelligence. Moms really are the best.

We get it: Dating is difficult.
If you’re a man, the good news is that the numbers are on your side. According to the 2015 census, there are about 88 unmarried men for every 100 unmarried women in the United States. That means that guys are in short supply—women should be reading these types of articles about us, right?
Still, when you’re trying to land a date, it never hurts to have some extra help. That’s where science comes in; researchers have poured countless hours and grant dollars into studying the science of attraction, so we decided to look through a few of those studies and compile some effective (and scientifically sound) dating tips.
For instance, you might improve your chances of making a great impression if you…

1. Indulge in a little “courtship feeding.”

“Courtship feeding” is exactly what it sounds like. Really, it’s just a fancy way of saying, “Take her out to dinner.”
According to a 2014 study in the journal Frontiers in Psychology, sharing food “increases interpersonal closeness.” Strangely, offering a slice of pizza seems to make the giver of the food like the recipient more, as well as the other way around.

The whole thing probably goes back to human infancy. To quote the study, titled Food for love: the role of food offering in empathic emotion regulation (of course a title like that would be a mouthful), “Food offering is one of the earliest biobehavioral regulatory interactions between parent and child.”
https://twitter.com/LuyandaMzazi/status/995199753850884097
Basically, that boils down to the inversion of that old chestnut about the way to a man’s heart being his stomach. It turns out that stomachs are a pretty dependable route to a woman’s heart, too.

2. Skip the razor for a while (but not for too long).

Some women seem to love beards—but not all beards. There are several factors that go into a beard’s allure. Watch the video below to see exactly what kind of facial hair is scientifically proven to attract women—and in what way:

3. Ditch the pickup lines.

Yes, scientists have studied pickup lines. Isn’t science great?
Two groundbreaking studies of classic cheesy pickup lines seem to suggest that (spoiler alert) they don’t work.
Almost 90 percent of the women in one of those studies rated those bad old pickup lines as extremely useless.

But where science shuts a door, it opens a window. Around 65 percent of the women surveyed in a Personality and Individual Differences article said that they appreciate a simple, confident, and direct approach.
The takeaway: Forget the cheesy lines, even if you’re trying to be ironic. In fact, we tried to include a sample of bad pickup lines in this list, but they’re all too bad, so we won’t subject you to the cringefest.
https://twitter.com/ErinAllsop/status/287967592470167552
Just remember that a simple, self-assured “hello” will get you a lot further, and you won’t be as ashamed of yourself in the morning.

4. Dress in red.

This has little to do with fashion sense. A study from the United Kingdom attempted to determine whether the color red could affect social signals.

Researchers took photos of several men and digitally altered the color of the men’s clothing. When women were shown images of men in red clothes, they rated the men as “more aggressive” and more attractive. When male test groups were shown the same images, they rated the red-clothed subjects as “more dominant.”
The study’s authors note that red coloration correlates with testosterone production in many species (although the color doesn’t really indicate anything about testosterone in humans). Bright red colors do seem to have some effect on our perception of potential mates.
So, does this mean that Ronald McDonald is one of the most attractive men alive? Well, we’re not going to argue with the science.

5. Crack a lot of jokes (but only the good ones).

Women love a guy with a good sense of humor. This almost seems like a cliche, right?

But scientists still aren’t completely sure why humor is such a turn-on. At one point, the general consensus was that good jokes showed that a potential partner was smart…but then, several studies proved that humor doesn’t correlate with intelligence.
Jeffrey Hall of the University of Kansas believes that humor may simply show that a man is sociable, but there’s another potential explanation: Men might be using humor to gauge a woman’s interest. Men act like jokers, and women play along. “The script is powerful and it is enduring, and it dictates everything from asking someone out to picking up the tab,” Hall explained.
Of course, he also admits that humor might be simply valuable for humor’s sake. That’s a scientific way of saying, “We’re not actually sure what’s going on here, but it’s probably not that important.”

6. Smell like gasoline, printer ink, or leather…or, just smell.

This survey wasn’t performed with proper scientific controls, but it’s almost too interesting to ignore. Daz, a soap company, surveyed 2,000 people to find the most attractive scents. The results indicated that gasoline, printer ink, paint, and leather were the most sensually exciting scents on a man, while lipstick and baby lotion were most attractive on a woman.

We’d definitely take that info with a grain of salt, but scientists do believe that scent plays a role in attraction. Some studies suggest that the human nose has pheromone receptors, which would indicate that we’ve got the biological gear necessary to process chemical cues from our potential mates.
So, how does that actually work in dating? One study showed that women exposed to male sweat felt more arousal than women exposed to other substances.
No word on what those other substances were, but we’re guessing that they weren’t printer ink, paint, or leather.

7. Get older.

We all know the stereotype about the older man and the younger woman. According to a zoologist named Stephen Proulx, that stereotype has its basis in the animal kingdom. From there, it traveled the lines evolution to land squarely in the modern human heart.

Basically, Proulx’s argument goes like this: In nature, males don’t tend to live that long. If you’re a female deer and you meet a majestic, elderly stag with a full head of antlers, odds are that potential mate is packing some healthy genes.
At the dawn of humanity, males didn’t live much past their twenties. If women encountered a healthy male specimen who managed to beat the odds, their evolutionary psychology might push them toward attraction. It’s all about the genes.
However, this trick doesn’t work for every male of any species. You can’t just be old. You also have to be sort of fit. “If males can display ostentatiously at that age, then they really have to have something going for them,” Proulx told The Observer.
It might not be a bad idea to spring for that gym membership.

8. Play an instrument.

Just make sure it’s not the drums. Nobody wants to date the drummer. (We’re kidding, of course.)
Or are we? The only scientific evidence we could come up with is a 2014 article published in the journal Psychology of Music. The method of the study “Men’s music ability and attractiveness to women in a real-life courtship context” reads a lot like the script of a bad internet “prank” video.
Researchers planted a young (presumably handsome) guy in the street. He asked out 300 random women. In fact, he did this three times. The first time, he was empty handed. The second time he held a sports bag. The third time, he hauled around a guitar case.

Guess which accessory scored the guy the most phone numbers? Yep, it was the guitar. Researchers have yet to repeat the study with a guy carrying drumsticks, but anecdotal evidence suggests that the results would differ.

9. Work that body.

First impressions matter, and in “zero-acquaintance” situations (the scientific term for “strangers in the night, exchanging glances”), posture matters.

A 2015 study showed that expansive body postures “increase one’s romantic desirability.”
Basically, women see an open, expansive posture—pushing your chest out, keeping your shoulders back and relaxed, and standing straight—as a sign of “dominance and perceived openness,” according to the researchers.
The effect works both ways, so guys are more likely to be interested in a woman who stands with an expansive posture (as opposed to a contracted posture).

Next to dealing with life-or-death situations, there may be no job more stressful than delivering people their morning coffees. We all know those people, the ones you wouldn’t dare cross before they’ve consumed 225 mg of caffeine straight to the face.

In his New York Times bestseller The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business, Charles Duhigg writes about the ways Starbucks employees are taught to hack their behavior to manage their emotions and the emotions of others.

The key, he says, lies in habits: training employees so well that they can fall back on deeply ingrained coping mechanisms for conflict resolution even in highly stressful situations.

If you’re trying to learn how to manage your emotions—how to be less impulsive and more capable of resolving conflicts—you may want to consider picking up some of the following habits…

Embracing Routine

Travis Leach’s parents took him and his siblings camping every summer. Most Friday nights, they attended his sister and brother’s softball games. Travis went to Disneyland when he was 4. When he was 9, he saw his dad overdose on heroin. Travis’s parents were “functioning” addicts, cycling through heroin and crank while maintaining enough normalcy to keep custody of their kids.

At 16, Travis dropped out of high school. He tried working jobs at a car wash, McDonald’s, and Hollywood Video, but he was prone to emotional outbursts when customers were rude to him or work became too busy. After someone recommended that he get a job at Starbucks, his life changed; by age 25, he was manager of two Starbucks locations, with a salary, no debt, and a 401(k). What changed? His routine.

Starbucks “spent millions of dollars developing curriculums to train employees on self-discipline,” Duhigg writes in The Power of Habit. “Executives wrote workbooks that, in effect, serve as guides to how to make willpower a habit in workers’ lives.”

Sounds good! But what does it look like in practice?

Resolving Conflicts The Starbucks Way

Sasha Mirzoyan worked at a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Starbucks more than five years ago, but he still remembers the basic tenants of his training in dealing with disgruntled customers. “There was a funnel we had to follow,” he says.

First, “hear what they are upset about.” Second, “make them feel they are understood.” Finally, “offer a solution,” like making a new drink or offering something for free. The point, Mirzoyan notes, is to make the customer feel “in a genuine way” that you can relate to their discontent.

He’s referring to what they call at Starbucks the LATTE Method, an acronym encapsulating the steps of resolution. Employees are drilled in this response until the following becomes automatic: Listening to the customer, Acknowledging their complaint, Taking action by solving the problem, Thanking them, and Explaining why the problem occurred.

This kind of emotionally intelligent response process is proven to diffuse negativity, making things better for the person on either side of the confrontation. Starbucks isn’t the only organization to provide more emotional stability though.

Implementing The Golden Rule

Academics and researchers have given some side eye to Alcoholics Anonymous for its lack of structure, according to Duhigg in The Power of Habit, but in recent years they’ve begun to take note of why the organization has been such a force of change in the lives of many who join it.

Alcoholics Anonymous adheres to “the Golden Rule of habit change,” says Duhigg. That is, “AA succeeds because it helps alcoholics use the same cues, and get the same reward, but it shifts the routine.”

For example, the craving for drunkenness may really be a crav
ing for “escape, relaxation, companionship, the blunting of anxieties, and an opportunity for emotional release.” These rewards are sought after certain cues, or triggers, like traumatic events.

Once the recovering alcoholic is forced to examine the rewards they crave and the cues that precede these cravings, they can replace the go-to routine (drinking alcohol) with a different, healthier routine (talking to a sponsor, attending a group gathering, exercise) that can provide the same rewards.

Believing That Change Is Possible

Just have faith. It sounds trite, and, as Duhigg notes, researchers are not fond of the idea that some Other Force is responsible for people’s success, given that this is not a testable hypothesis—but recovering alcoholics consistently attribute their sustained sobriety to God.

When, in 2005, scientists began to test whether there was a correlation between religious belief and recovery, they uncovered a pattern: “Alcoholics who practiced the techniques of habit replacement, the data indicated, could often stay sober until there was a stressful event in their lives—at which point, a certain number started drinking again, no matter how many new routines they had embraced. However, those alcoholics who believed … that some higher power had entered their lives were more likely to make it through the stressful periods with their sobriety intact.”

Of course, if you don’t believe in God, you can’t simply will yourself to do it without feeling like a fraud. Not to worry! “It wasn’t God that mattered, the researchers figured out,” writes Duhigg.

“It was belief itself that made a difference. Once people learned how to believe in something, that skill started spilling over to other parts of their lives, until they started believing they could change.”

Practicing Self-Distance

If you’ve never had substance dependency issues, you’ve probably never considered yourself an addict. But have you ever been in love? If the answer is yes, you could, by some definitions, consider yourself among the addicted. Research reveals that the stew of brain chemicals resulting from romantic attachment is not so different from that brought on by a heroin high.

In that line of thinking, you might liken someone experiencing a painful breakup to someone going through withdrawals (with symptoms worsening during every surprise assault by that Adele song). At the very least, “a breakup throws both partners out of whack, like a caffeine addict suddenly deprived of her morning red-eye,” writes Grace Larson, a PhD student studying close relationships, for Vox.

To move on from the emotional trauma, Larson recommends something called “self-distancing,” or viewing the narrative of your breakup as if through the eyes of a third-party observer.

Try it with any emotionally gutting situation. “Researchers at Berkeley have found that this technique … can help people bounce back from distressing events like rejection,” Larson writes.

Refocusing Nervous Energy

When Michael Phelps started swimming at the age of 7, it was to keep him from driving other people up the wall.

His energy was exhausting to his mom and his teachers, and a local swimming coach, Bob Bowman, suggested the sport, given Phelps’s long torso, large hands, and comparatively short legs, all of which gave him the ideal swimmer’s body.

Despite being the perfect physical specimen, Phelps was unable to calm himself before races. He had a lot to cope with, like his parents’ divorce. So, Phelps’s coach bought him something. “Bowman purchased a book of relaxation exercises and asked Phelps’s mom to read them aloud every night,” writes Duhigg in The Power of Habit.

The script it contained instructed Phelps to tighten and release different parts of his body—turning one hand into a fist and then releasing it, for example—until every part had been relaxed before he fell asleep. In effect, Bowman was asking Phelps to redirect his energy into mindfulness meditation.

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Positive Envisioning

Something else Bowman had Phelps do was positive envisioning. Duhigg notes that Bowman instructed a teenage Phelps after each practice to “watch the videotape … before you go to sleep and when you wake up.” This “videotape” wasn’t literal, but “a mental visualization of the perfect race.”

Director of the Ohio Center for Sport Psychology, Dr. Jack J. Lesyk, confirms that this kind of visualization is an essential aspect of preparation for elite athletes.

“Successful athletes,” he says, “[c]reate and use mental images that are detailed, specific, and realistic.” Part of this process is also “[preparing] themselves for competition by imagining themselves performing well in competition” and “[using] imagery during competition to prepare for action and recover from errors and poor performances.”

It may sound wild or self-indulgent, but this process of mentally rehearsing a desired outcome can help you with anything, perhaps because, as some studies suggest, mental rehearsals activate some of the same neural pathways involved in real-life experiences. Anyone feel like watching The Matrix?

Perfecting “Oscillation”

Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz have spent years studying top executives—”corporate athletes”—to find whether their success can be condensed into some kind of formula. Their theories are informed by the two decades that performance psychologist Jim Loehr spent working with world-class athletes at LGE Performance Systems.

“If [executives] were to perform at high levels over the long haul, we posited, they would have to train in the same systematic, multilevel way that world-class athletes do,” Loehr and Schwartz tell the Harvard Business Review. They found that top executives’ capacity to perform well even in the face of increasing demands relies heavily on whether they have mastered “oscillation,” or “the rhythmic movement between energy expenditure (stress) and energy renewal (recovery).”

Echoing the premise of Duhigg’s The Power of Habit, Loehr and Schwartz hold that it’s “these highly precise, consciously developed routines [that] become automatic over time” and allow optimum performance. In other words, conscious habits are the key to living your best life.

So go ahead, take your 225 mg of caffeine straight to the face—and then get to planning.

Sexuality is complicated. So is gender identity. Let’s just get that out of the way. The scope of it is too big for one article, but let’s go smaller: girls, clothing, and body image.

We get a little queasy when we hear the word “inappropriate” applied to girls’ and women’s clothing. We break out in small hives when we hear the word “should” applied to it.
We get palpitations, our mouths go dry, and we feel rage rise like bile at the back of our throats when we observe people—specifically male people in male bodies— criticize women who are probably intellectually and morally superior to them all because of some arrangement of fabric the women have chosen to drape around their human forms. We want to plug our ears and close our eyes and hum loudly while remembering this Danish couple from Into the Wild.

There exists a long and convoluted history of women being ridiculed for what they wear—in whether it covers too much or too little, and in how it relates to their sexuality. No woman is safe from this. It happens to female celebrities, high school students, politicians, journalists, athletes, and, basically, regular women everywhere JUST TRYING TO LIVE THEIR GODFORSAKEN LIVES.
Whew. Sorry, blacked out for a moment. Where were we? Oh yes: girls, clothing, and body image. It’s complicated because, on the one hand, we want girls to be free to wear what they want. On the other hand, we have to take into consideration that girls, like all young humans, are sponges, susceptible to the messages they receive from the world around them.

One of those messages, for example, is that a female human’s value is inextricable from her sexuality—whether she is sexy enough, pure enough, “sexy without being sexual” enough. (Yes, that’s a real thing, we’ll get there.) All of her other attributes? Beside the point.
So it’s not surprising when some researchers say there is a link between hypersexualized girls’ clothing and poor body image. When people are programmed to express themselves in ways that don’t feel authentic, autonomy takes a hit and some parts of themselves are erased.

Equally damaging is the message that being sexual makes a girl bad or gross—or that her worth and integrity are directly proportionate to her “purity,” an entirely subjective concept. We would recommend taking on this topic in your private studies. But for starters, here are eight probably damaging views of girls and women and the clothes they wear.

Girls Are Like This

If you haven’t watched this video of an 8-year-old girl slamming the gender stereotypes perpetuated by the messaging she finds in gendered clothing while shopping with her mom (boys get “Hero!,” “Think outside the box,” and “A desert adventure awaits,” while girls get “Hey,” “Beautiful,” and “I feel fabulous!”), you’ve probably at least seen it circulating on social media.

Surely this messaging acts in some ways as a social cue, but the problem lies mostly in that it’s a symptom of a larger sickness—a world culture that grooms women as girls to be collapsible objects with limited autonomy and domain. To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with girls who like “girly” things. The problem is when girls are explicitly or implicitly told that the only appropriate way to be is “girly,” and that their interests should naturally lie only in specific areas. And then there’s the related issue of treating “girly” things and behaviors contemptuously.
Those who like to roll their eyes at this point and harken back to the good old days when people weren’t always making such a fuss about political correctness should take note that, while these signals are subtle, they are important. We still live in a world where, for example, it may take 170 years for the economic gender gap to close.

On top of all that, just as women’s clothing is often inferior in quality to men’s clothing, apparently the same holds true for girls’ clothes versus boys’. We just can’t with these clothing companies.

The Paris Paradox

Here’s a fun torture chamber of ideas: Girls should be sexy without being sexual. If this piece of advice sounds confusing, it’s because it is! It’s one of those often repeated, little examined maxims that we hold within our collective consciousness where it can erode our souls slowly and secretly.

Women and girls being sexy for someone else is more or less OK, as long as no actual sex occurs, and as long as the version of ‘sexy’ has appropriate markers of being middle- or upper-class, writes Jill Filipovic for The Guardian. “Women who exhibit a degree of sexual agency by acting – rather than only appearing attractive – or women perceived as inappropriately powerful or aggressive inevitably face being branded sluts and whores.”
It’s referred to as the “Paris Paradox” in a 2010 Jezebel article because Paris Hilton, whose ethos resonated with many young women, referred to herself as “sexy, but not sexual.” (The irony of referencing an article written by a “male feminist” notorious for his own abuses of power to get sex from women, often young minority women, not to be confused with that world-famous “ethicist” who reportedly did the same, is not lost on us. But what he writes here resonates so we’ll use it and leave others to argue the rest, which makes us want to leave our earthly form and reside as a spirit in the mountains.)

The Paris Paradox is often, consciously or unconsciously, pandering to the male gaze at its finest—presenting as a sort of “virginal s***” who is sexually palatable to hetero dudes but also untouched by them. (A read-through of the mostly hostile, clearly male-authored Urban Dictionary definitions of the term yields no sympathetic explanation, like that it’s a mode of behavior that may have been adopted by a young woman who is trying to navigate a world in which she is damned if she does, damned if she doesn’t.)
As the Jezebel article reasons:
“Young women with the Paris Paradox were raised in a culture that promised sexual freedom, but what they ended up with looked a lot more like obligation than opportunity. It’s not hard to understand why the pressure to be sexy so often trumps the freedom to discover one’s authentic sexuality. … It only takes a girl a few seconds to realize what someone else may want from her sexually. It often takes her much longer to figure out what she really wants, to discern the pleasure she gets from bringing pleasure to another from the pleasure she wants for herself.”

Girls Who Show A Lot Of Skin Are Sexual/Sexy

The idea that just because a girl dresses in a way that shows a lot of skin means that she either does or should behave sexually can be found in angry, dude-heavy threads all across the internet, as if wearing something that men find sexually arousing is the equivalent of entering into some binding, unspoken contract with them. This thinking is wrong.

Men are not wrong for being sexually attracted to these women; they’re wrong for believing that their perceptions of the world are the only or the most important realities, and that their perceptions of reality should dictate the way that women lead their lives. Men who would like to argue that the same should be true vice versa lest we be unfair would do well to read up on something called History, which shows that their (straight white male) realities have consistently been favored as the Proper And Most Important Perceptions and, as such, institutionalized in laws and social mores.
Consider the history of toplessness, and the ways that bared female breasts, especially in places like the U.S. where their tabooness likely does more to fetishize them than anything, have often only been weaponized as some hostile attack on purity or sexualized as an invitation for leering.

Breasts are not so one-dimensional. Sometimes they are sexual, sometimes they are comforting, sometimes they feed new humans, sometimes they are good for dancing, sometimes they are a good place for storing things like pencils or credit cards or a small package of crackers, and sometimes they are just there doing absolutely nothing.

Sexual/Sexy Girls Are Good

But only the “right” kind of sexual and sexy, which is, of course, defined by hetero dudes. The idea that what hetero dudes find appealing in women is superior to other ways of being as a female person is a persistent one, and it’s basically the conviction that the only girl who is worthwhile is “a cool, chill girl who is Cool and Chill,” aka a figment of the male imagination. She is described thusly by Beth McColl in Dazed:

The cool and chill girl enjoys stereotypically masculine things like watching ‘Sports’ […] Her favourite movies are Die Hard [and] Fight Club … She doesn’t bother her man with serious conversations. She’s there when he wants, but when he needs space, she’s gone without him even needing to ask. She looks like a supermodel without spending hours getting ready.

Sexual/Sexy Girls Are Bad

It’s interesting to watch this American Psychological Association video interview with six middle-school girls talking about women celebrities, women represented in ads, and the sexualization of girls. How people feel about things is usually a tangling of our natural reactions and how we believe we are supposed to feel (different still are how we feel about things and how we say we feel), and these girls’ responses reflect these unclear boundaries.
All sexually suggestive images of women are deemed “gross,” “not cute,” and “not attractive.” Maybe they actually do feel this way, maybe they simply believe these are the “correct” answers, or maybe they’ve absorbed the message that girls and women who appear or behave sexually are morally bankrupt, and they haven’t been exposed to the language of sexual empowerment for women who do choose to dress in ways deemed provocative.

Also apparent are some racialized notions of beauty and purity, as when the picture of Nicki Minaj’s booty is deemed “more big than attractive” (perhaps unsurprisingly, by the white girl) and another girl (of color) seems to dub Michelle Obama’s classiness a rarity among African-American women.
There is indeed a double standard for white and black women, with the former afforded more freedom to explore different identities with comparatively fewer and lower-stakes repercussions. As Lutze B. points out in this Salon article: “The bodies of black women are highly politicized and critiqued no matter who they belong to, from the first lady to ‘the help.’ The physical movements and choices of black women are always viewed through a filter of suspicion.”

Girls Who Cover Up Are Modest/Prudes

A woman who covers more of her body is not, as a rule, automatically less sexual in thought or behavior than a woman who covers up less. She may be, but she may not be. We don’t know her life!
What if she’s naturally shy about showing her body to anyone? What if she finds it more erotic to cover more of her body on some occasions and go completely nude on others? What if she’s tired of getting catcalled and she’s experienced it less while covering more?

What if she likes the feeling of an all-silk suit against her skin? What if she prefers the aesthetic? What if she is entirely uninterested in clothing and covering more just seems more practical to her? What if she’s worried about skin cancer or has a skin condition that worsens with exposure to sunlight?
The possibilities are as endless as your imagination. We shouldn’t assume that we understand her motivations for being covered up.

Modest Girls Are Good

The narrative that women are sinful seductresses who “cause” men to “stumble” is literally as old as the Bible. (See Genesis.) When you take that deeply cherished conviction and pair it with the reactionary social climate of the 1990s, you get the purity movement, an evangelical Christian philosophy that promoted abstinence as the key to progress and—surprise—placed the onus of responsibility for men’s sexual behavior primarily on the shoulders of women.

As Amanda Barbee writes in “NAKED AND ASHAMED: WOMEN AND EVANGELICAL PURITY CULTURE” for a digital and print journal focused on the intersection of theology and culture:
“While the church has often taught that sexuality can only be properly expressed within marriage, the purity movement takes that premarital prohibition to a deeper level, not only calling for physical abstinence but also for emotional and mental purity. Similar to Jesus’s teaching on adultery in the Beatitudes—that a man who even looks at a woman lustfully has already sinned—the movement teaches that any sexual feelings, desires, or thoughts that occur before marriage are sinful.”
The result? “During a time when sexual curiosity and exploration is a normal and important part of sexual and psychological development,” Barbee writes, “these teenagers and young adults are being indoctrinated by a shame-based culture that trains them in the ways of sexual dissociation.”
Out of this also came the modesty doctrine, promoting hyper vigilance among women of the way they dressed or behaved for fear that they might unsuspectingly arouse male attention. (“My mind reeled when I met one young woman who told me she was once ordered by her father to wear her seatbelt underneath her chest—apparently he felt when it cut across her chest, it accentuated her breasts too much and could cause some men to ‘stumble,'” writes Jennifer Mathieu for Time.)
This way of thinking removes the agency of both men and women, and encourages women to fuse their self-conceptions with a sexualized male gaze. As many have pointed out, it’s also the basis of rape culture, which shifts the blame onto the victim rather than the perpetrator.

Modest Girls Are Bad

Belittling women who do choose to cover up more of their bodies is unhelpful and reductive. Janelle Monáe, for example, has often opted to wear outfits that don’t show very much skin. One man tweeted at her, “girl stop being so soulful and be sexy..tired of those dumba** suits..you fine but u too damn soulful man.”
Her response was perfect: “sit down. I’m not for male consumption.”

Not every woman who covers herself for religious reasons feels victimized, either. In a BuzzFeed article enumerating all the items of clothing women were told not to wear in 2014, Rossalyn Warren highlights the contradictions of this kind of policing.
“In Australia, it was announced this month that Muslim women wearing niqabs could be forced to sit in glass enclosures instead of regular public galleries in Federal parliament,” writes Warren. She goes on to quote Mariam Veiszadeh, an Australian lawyer and a Muslim, who notes, “There’s a distinct irony in the suggestion that women who are allegedly forced to wear a face covering should be forced not to wear it.'”

In summary: Respect girls and women. Listen to their experiences with compassion. Don’t make laws about what they can wear. And when you’re feeling overwhelmed personally by these dissections, because all humans and ideas start to seem problematic when you look at them too deeply and there are no clear answers to anything, step away and breathe.
All we can do is our very best to love one another well. If we’re lucky, soon we’ll leave our earthly forms anyway and reside together as spirits in the mountains. Until then, we’ll continue to dress only for the sea witch that cursed us.

It’s one of every parent’s worst nightmares: the day when their sweet, innocent child learns the word “no.” Suddenly, the answer to everything becomes “no,” even when they weren’t being asked a question that the word could be a valid answer for.

When you think about it, though, it’s not hard to figure out where they’ve picked up the word and why they seem to say it so often—it’s because they heard it from you. For parents of young children, “no” is a word that’s used often and easily.
“No, you can’t eat that crayon.”
“No, you can’t ride the cat.”
“No, you can’t scale the fireplace.”
Young children just don’t know their boundaries yet and there are a lot of things they’ll try to do, even though it’s obvious to you that they can’t.

“No” is the word that naturally escapes any parent’s lips when they see their child doing something that could very easily land them in the hospital, but did you know that saying it too much could be giving them a negative outlook on life?
For most parents, “no” tends to be a quick response and one that comes to mind with such ease that most probably don’t even realize how often they say it. It’s also a response that tends to come without any further explanation, meaning that kids know that what they’ve done is somehow bad, but they have no idea why.

Without any reasoning behind it, the word “no” can lead to confusion, frustration, and even anger, which can lead to a variety of reactions from a child.
-Mumble “no” to your child then walk away, and your kids will probably stop taking the word seriously at some point in time because it comes without any consequence to them.
-Blurt it out with no explanation enough times and your child might take it upon themselves to find out what’s wrong with what they did, and they’ll do so by testing you until they get the answer they crave.
-Eventually, the word might even make them feel bad enough that hearing it will result in an automatic, explosive temper tantrum.

So, what’s a parent to do? There are obviously some boundaries that have to be set, and a world without “no” would result in a child who behaves as if they were raised by wolves. However, a home without “no” doesn’t have to mean it’s a home without any rules, boundaries, or discipline. In fact, there are plenty of ways to put your foot down without it.

Kara Carrero is a blogger and mother of three who says that how you say things to kids is the key to helping them understand you. “The way we are hard wired as humans is to listen to the sentence structure,” she says .
“We sometimes hear the first part of a sentence, almost always hear the last part, but rarely hear the middle unless we have our complete attention on the person talking to us. And really, what young child is giving us their undivided attention at all times?”

Using this method, instead of saying “We can’t play now,” you might say “We can play after dinner.”

The result?

Even though you did truly tell your child “no” to their request to play, it was done in a way that sounds less harsh to them and they’ll feel better because they know they’ll be given time to play later. The answer also gives them a brief explanation as to why you’re saying no to them—because dinner’s almost ready.

In addition to feeling more positive, responding to children with more than just “no” can even help them out later on in life. We all know that life doesn’t always work in our favor and, by teaching children that there are other options when the answer is “no,” they’ll be better prepared to find solutions and alternatives to their problems when they’re older.
After all, no one likes a screaming, sulking toddler—why would anyone appreciate those behaviors in an adult?
Here are some other tactics for telling your child “no” just a little bit less.

Be Positive

One of the most important things we teach our children is the art of “please” and “thank you,” and it’s just as crucial to say these words to them, too. You may also have more luck cutting out negatives like “don’t” and “stop” from your sentences.

Instead of saying “Stop running,” try using “Please walk in the house.” The message is still conveyed directly and will probably sound a little bit nicer to them, as well.

Share Your Feelings Too

When your child has just hit you in the head with a plastic bat for the fifth time in a row, it can be easy to yell out “Quit it!” in frustration. Children don’t often respond well to sudden outbursts, though, so you’ll need to put your request in different terms.

Next time, try explaining how their actions make you feel—”It hurts when you hit my head. Please be more careful with your bat.”

Give Choices

Shutting down a request from your child can often leave them feeling frustrated, so giving them different choices instead of saying no can help them reevaluate what they want.

Let’s say today’s request is candy before dinner. Instead of telling them no, give them an option—”Dinner’s almost ready, but it seems like you really want candy, so it can be your choice. Would you rather have one piece now or have two after dinner?”

Make Suggestions

The next time you want your child to stop doing something you don’t want them to, it may help them feel better if you also give them alternatives.

For example, we all know kids love to throw balls in the house, but it’s not something that really ever ends well. Instead of telling them to stop, try saying “Please throw the ball in the backyard or out on the driveway instead of the house.”

Make It Fun

If you can’t think of any alternatives to what your child wants to do, try making a fun game out of their request.

If your child is asking for candy for the third time in a row, put on your best monster face, curl your hands into claws, and pretend you’re on the lookout for kids who eat candy before dinner. You can give them a chase around the house, and they’ll probably forget what they were asking for because you’ll be having too much fun.

Use Past Examples

Sometimes kids do something bad once and learn a lesson, and other times it takes them a few times to realize that something isn’t the greatest idea. The next time they go for it, try giving them a gentle reminder of what happened last time. “Remember when you got sick the last time you ate a cookie before dinner? How about we save it for dessert this time?”

A word of caution, though—it’s best not to use this technique when it comes to something they got in trouble for, as it could make them upset to relive it.

Try Sportscasting

When it comes to your kids, sportscasting is a term that refers to verbalizing your observations in a factual way to help your child understand different experiences.

When you see your child pushing food on the floor, you might say “You’re throwing your food on the floor instead of eating it. Since that tells me you’re done eating, I’ll put the food away now.” By stating these facts, you help your child understand what message their actions are conveying to you.

Just Agree With Them

When you’re met with a plea for cookies before dinner, you might find success with acknowledging the request—with a catch, though.

“Sure, you can have a cookie–after dinner,” is definitely denying your child’s demands in the moment, but it’s a compromise that works out for both of you in the end. We can’t guarantee it won’t be met with more pleas and whining, but at least you have plenty of other options if it is.

Every Couple’s Dream

Paul Servat, 35, and his girlfriend, Barbara Bienvenue, 37 of Quebec, Canada, had only been dating for two months when Bienvenue found out that she was pregnant. In September 2013, Bienvenue informed Servat that they would be having not one but FIVE babies.
That’s right, Bienvenue was pregnant with quintuplets! And they couldn’t have been more excited. After they told their family and friends the exciting news, the couple set up a social media page so that they could keep everyone up to date on Bienvenue’s pregnancy.

Many people from around the community began donating items like baby clothes and furniture to help the expectant parents.
Bienvenue even let Servat pick out the names for the babies—the two were ecstatic about becoming parents!

There’s something wrong.

That March, when Bienvenue was 34 weeks pregnant, Servat took her to the CHU Sainte-Justine Hospital in Montreal to give birth. After they arrived at the hospital, Servat received some heartbreaking news.
A hospital employee informed Servat that Bienvenue would not be delivering the babies that day or anytime soon because she wasn’t actually pregnant. Wait…WHAT?! In fact, the hospital had no documentation regarding Bienvenue’s pregnancy, and a blood test confirmed that Bienvenue wasn’t pregnant at all!

Servat was completely shocked and devastated by the news. Then, to make matters worse, one of Bienvenue’s relatives came forward and admitted that this was not the first time that Bienvenue had pulled a stunt like this. In 2010, she had lied to an ex-boyfriend about being pregnant.
“This isn’t the first time she’s done it,” said a male relative who wished to remain anonymous. “But honestly, we never would have thought she was sick enough to do it again.”

A Terrible Trend

The family also told the QMI Agency that Bienvenue had faked leukemia and other illnesses in the past. “She cut ties with us in recent months,” said the relative. “She didn’t want us to know about her game.”

Although Servat was completely blindsided by the stunt, a woman by the name of Genevieve Laflamme admitted she wasn’t the least bit surprised. As an experienced mother, Laflamme had been advising Bienvenue throughout her so-called pregnancy, but it wasn’t long before she became suspicious of Bienvenue’s story.
Laflamme is a mother of triplets, so she’s familiar with the characteristics and symptoms associated with carrying multiple children. For example, if Bienvenue had truly been pregnant with five children, she would have been on bed rest long before her due date. Understandably, Laflamme had kept her hunch to herself and given Bienvenue the benefit of the doubt.
“I gave her tips on how to handle it, where to get financial support, where to get sponsors for diapers,” Laflamme told CTV.

Coming To Terms

Servat is still coming to terms with the harsh realization that he will not be a father to quintuplets. In order to correct the situation to the best of his ability, Servat immediately removed the couple’s social media page and began returning or donating the items that they had received for their nursery.
“I’m a good person,” Servat stressed. “I have nothing to do with these lies.”

Bienvenue remained at the hospital for psychiatric observation following the incident. “Doctors need to take care of her or else she’ll do it again and again,” said one of her male relatives.
But is there more to this story? Was Bienvenue simply “pretending” to be pregnant or did she actually believe she was?
It’s possible she was suffering from pseudocyesis, or phantom pregnancy. This is a condition wherein women experience symptoms similar to pregnancy, such as a swollen belly and morning sickness, without an actual fetus being present.

Understanding Pseudocyesis

Although doctors do not fully understand pseudocyesis or what causes it, psychological factors are most likely at the root. When a woman wants so desperately to become pregnant, her body may actually “trick” itself into believing that it is. Her belly swells, her breasts enlarge, and sometimes even fetal movement can be felt.

Once the brain convinces her that she’s pregnant, the woman can experience these symptoms along with many others such as the interruption of the menstrual cycle, milk production, and nausea. However, a urine pregnancy test will always be negative in these cases and of course no fetus will be present in an ultrasound.

There are some medical conditions that can also be responsible for pregnancy symptoms including ectopic pregnancy, morbid obesity, and certain types of cancer. Phantom pregnancies can also be triggered by a trauma such as the death of a spouse or multiple miscarriages.

Losing Touch With Reality

Dealing with the reality of a phantom pregnancy is heartbreaking for the couple, however some simply refuse to believe scientific fact. While a “cryptic” pregnancy in the mainstream means a pregnancy that the woman isn’t aware of, there is a subculture of people who believe it to be a pregnancy where there are no medical signs or symptoms of any kind.
These people believe that gestations can last as long as two to five years due to the “slow growth of the fetus.”

These women do not seek out doctors or medical advice, but instead turn to support groups to share their stories and chart their progress. They warn that if you go to a hospital you’ll be diagnosed with IBS, UTIs, and other medical conditions that will explain away the pregnancy.
One such couple even stated that their fetus was a miracle since the father does not have testicles and cannot produce sperm. The mother still has not given birth to this miracle fetus—after several years of “pregnancy.”

The best part of the day is plopping into bed and sleeping like a log. It’s the time of the day when you try to set aside all your worries and prepare for a few hours of rest. It can be hard to stop thinking about the stressful events of your day, but once you fall asleep, there should be nothing but sweet dreams ahead of you. Sweet dreams, that is, until you suddenly jerk back awake.

You quickly look around your room, and remember you are safe and sound. For seemingly no reason, your body just forcefully woke you up. Many of us have had this experience, but what is it all about?

The phenomenon is known as a “hypnic jerk.”

It’s also known as a “sleep start” or “night start.” It is a quick muscle reflex whose intensity varies from person to person. Reactions can also be different for different people. Some people don’t even realize they’ve had a hypnic jerk while others may scream while it’s happening.

For years, scientists have been trying to figure out what causes it. and now they’re starting to understand a little more about it. The condition occurs most frequently when people are exhausted and fall asleep quickly.

Many people who experience hypnic jerks report having dreams at the moment they wake up. 

In these dreams, people are often falling, jumping, or tripping. Sometimes you may feel like you’ve lost your balance while other times you may feel like you’re falling off a cliff!

Scientists that study sleep disorders are trying to determine what causes this phenomenon. Dr. Carl Bazil M.D. Ph.D., and the director of the Sleep Disorders Center at New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center is a sleep expert.

He says that hypnic jerks seem to result from a conflict between the brain system that keeps you awake and the brain system that helps you fall asleep.

Jolting up is usually accompanied by dreams of falling, tripping, maybe even leaning too far back in your office chair. You get the sensation that you’re losing your balance, and you jerk awake.

Michael Breus, Ph.D., a sleep doctor, clinical psychologist, and fellow of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, explains, “We don’t have a great answer to the visual component, but we think it might be the easiest way for the brain to interpret the rush or feeling of falling into sleep too quickly, like a lack of balance if you faint while standing up.” Because these dreams are so individualized, it can be hard to study.

Scientists aren’t sure why you have dreams of falling.

“One of the things that happens as you fall asleep is your muscles relax, but the awake part may still be stimulating enough that it will temporarily overreact and you get this jerk of muscle activity,” he says.

Doctors are still uncertain why you see the images you do when you have a hypnic jerk. Because hypnic jerks are only about as harmful as hiccups, they have not been a high priority research topic. While that is reassuring in some ways, many people would still be glad to know the reason they jerk awake as they are calmly trying to fall asleep!

A hypnic jerk is not the same as a bobbing head.

If you’ve fallen asleep sitting up at your desk or on an airplane, you likely know the feeling of your head suddenly bobbing and waking you up.

This is another natural reaction, but it likely occurs for a different reason than a hypnic jerk. “Your head weighs roughly eight pounds so if it falls over too far, it will bend your air pipe in a way that makes it difficult to breathe. The brain jerks your head back up to straighten the air pipe back out so you can breathe properly,” says Breus.

There are several theories for what causes this phenomenon.

Since hypnic jerks occur naturally as the body falls asleep, many hypothesize that this is just the body preparing for rest. Scientists also believe hypnic jerks can happen when the body doesn’t spend enough time in the first stage of sleep. This is more likely to occur when you are overly tired.

Typically, the first stage of sleep lasts a few minutes. During this time, the body begins breathing more slowly and the heart rate also slows. You are sleeping lightly in this stage but can still easily wake up. When you are exhausted, your body may go through the first stage of sleep too quickly, making your brain think you are dying.

Perhaps this is the fastest way the brain knows how to wake the body up. Anyone who suffers from this condition can tell you that it certainly does the trick. Breus says “It might be a kind of protective mechanism, but we really aren’t sure because it’s difficult to study.”

You could be experiencing hypnic jerks without realizing it.

Even if a hypnic jerk technically wakes you up, you might fall back to sleep so quickly you don’t even remember what happened. It can be difficult to sleep with someone who jerks around in their sleep every night. “I’ve had patients whose hypnic jerks are so frequent and intense that partners have had to move into a separate bed to avoid waking their partner,” Breus says.

Hypnic jerks are more likely to happen when you are sleep deprived, stressed, or intoxicated.

When you are getting enough sleep, either in quantity or quality, you could experience more hypnic jerks. This means not getting between seven and nine hours of sleep or not getting restful sleep.

If you are having disrupted sleep, you may be affected by stress or be drinking too much caffeine. You may even have a sleep disorder such as sleep apnea or insomnia. Drinking alcohol can also increase your chances of having hypnic jerks. Breus confirms this saying, “Alcohol is another huge factor — many people get hypnic jerks after a night of drinking.”

Hypnic jerks aren’t dangerous, but they can keep you awake.

Hypnic jerks can’t hurt you, though your hypnic jerk dreams could trick you into believing otherwise. But Breus says there’s nothing to worry about. “There are no serious consequences, it won’t give you a heart attack or anything — the worst that could happen is you jerk so hard that you fall out of bed,” says Breus.

But for some people who have very strong hypnic jerks all the time, they become apprehensive about falling asleep. In these cases, hypnic jerks can indirectly lead to insomnia.

If you notice them becoming a problem for you, keep track of how often you have them and what has happened to you during the day that could have caused them.

The best cure for getting rid of hypnic jerks is getting on a regular sleep schedule.

Do your best to get seven to nine hours of sleep a night. Even better, try to fall asleep and wake up at the same time every day. This allows your body to fall asleep more slowly.

While sleeping in on the weekends is tempting, it can easily throw off your sleep schedule. You’ll have a harder time getting to sleep in the evenings, and you may not feel rested during the week.

You can also benefit from increasing the quality of your sleep.

If you are sleeping regular hours and you are still having hypnic jerks, you will want to assess the quality of your sleep. Breus uses this advice with his patients, “I suggest eliminating alcohol, reducing caffeine especially closer to bedtime, and trying to get to sleep and wake up at the same time every day.”

If this still doesn’t end the hypnic jerks, you may want to set up an appointment with a sleep specialist. Together, you can talk about your sleeping patterns and figure out what is happening. The specialist will likely address your hypnic jerks as a symptom, not a cause, of your sleep problems.

Your other option is get used to falling off a cliff every once in awhile.

The National Sleep Foundation estimates that about 60 to 70 percent of people have hypnic jerks. That is a whole lot of people who are woken up unexpectedly! If you want to try some other methods to sleep better before calling a specialist, the National Sleep Foundation has some helpful tips for you.

First, as we mentioned, try to stick to a sleep schedule with a consistent bedtime and wake up time. Keep your schedule as consistent as you can, even on the weekends. Your body clock should respond with an expectation of falling asleep at a certain time, and you should start naturally feeling tired.

Second, create a bedtime routine to perform nightly. Do the same relaxing things every night before you fall asleep. Turn off electronics, dim the lights, get your pajamas on, read a good book, and do whatever you need to get yourself ready for bed.

Third, cut out naps if you have a hard time falling asleep at night. While naps are extremely tempting if you’re tired during the day, they could be throwing off your body clock. If you can’t get through the day without a snooze, try a power nap in lieu of a long nap.

The National Sleep Foundation has a few more tips for people having difficulty sleeping.

Next, daily exercise has been shown to help you sleep better at night. Rigorous activity is preferable, but any activity is better than none at all. The time of day shouldn’t matter, as long as it doesn’t interfere with your bedtime.

Additionally, you should take a look at the room you are sleeping in to make sure it is conducive to restful sleep. You want your room to be inviting with calming colors and objects that are soothing to look at. Keep your room free of clutter so you don’t have anything you can trip over in the middle of the night.

The temperature should be between 60 and 67 degrees, and the room should be quiet during sleep time. Try to keep your room as dark as possible, using blackout curtains or eye shades if needed.

If you have a partner that keeps you awake, you may wish to use earplugs or a white noise machine to help you sleep better. Humidifiers and fans have also been shown to create an environment conducive to sleeping.

Finally, sleep on a firm mattress with comfortable pillows. A supportive mattress that is less than 10 years old is recommended. It helps to wash your sheets weekly in warm water to cut down on allergens and dust mites. You’ll also sleep a lot better knowing you’re sleeping in fresh, clean sheets.

As we close in on the end of the year, many people begin to give up, slow down, or cruise on through knowing that at the beginning of the New Year they get a “fresh start.” However, I want to challenge you to think differently. I want to challenge you to finish strong—to attack the last few weeks of this year with the same power and hustle that you started the year with. Now is not the time to throw in the towel. Now is the time to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and get after it.
1. Revisit your original resolutions or goals. Chances are pretty high that earlier in the year you made either a list of resolutions or goals that you wanted to accomplish this year. Take those out and look at them. How many have you stuck to or accomplished? Are there any that you abandoned that you could recommit to right away?
2. Write out a few end of the year goals. In addition to revisiting your goals from earlier in the year, could you write some fresh new goals that you would like to accomplish before the new year begins? Make these goals realistic and attainable with the time left in the year. This will help you keep motivated to move forward and not let anything slow you down.
3. You don’t need a date to start. Jan. 1 is just another day like any other. Yes, it’s an awesome time to remind us that we can set new goals and achieve new things, but there is no reason that day is any more special or purposeful in setting and achieving goals. You literally can set goals any day of the year. That same mindset is the one that is going to keep you focused to end the year strong.
4. How you end the year is how you start the year. The stronger you finish this year, the stronger you will start the new one. Want to put your best foot forward next year? Then really end this year as positive as possible! The more momentum you have now, the further it will take you later.
5. Get involved in a group. Nervous you won’t be able to finish the year strong with the holidays staring you down? Find others to keep you accountable. Join my DietBet challenge with friends and stay committed to ending the year fitter and stronger—both mentally and physically—than you started. It’s never too late.

Doctors recommend it. Personal trainers swear by it and fitness buffs love it. What is it? Exercise, of course. What do you do if you know you should exercise but hate everything having to do with exercise? Well, you’ve got several choices. You can keep hating it but exercise anyway. You can learn to tolerate it, or you can learn to enjoy—and even love—working out. 

If you hate exercise but know you should incorporate exercise into your daily life, here are some things to think about.

Do you really hate exercise?

So you think you hate exercise. I wonder if you really hate exercise or just the uncomfortable feeling you get when you exercise or the anxiety you feel when thinking about beginning an exercise program?

Think about it. Maybe it’s not so much that you hate exercise itself but you hate:

• Being sweaty after working out
• Getting out of your comfort zone
• The worry that you can’t follow an instructor’s directions
• The idea of exercise
• Feeling like you don’t fit in

Spend some time analyzing why you hate exercise. You may find that you are just fearful of the unknown, don’t want to be uncomfortable, or are creating barriers in your mind where there are none.

Do you perform activities you hate? 

Just because you hate an activity doesn’t mean you never do it. Think about your daily life. Do you sometimes hate going to work, cleaning out your car, or taking out the trash? Probably. But you do those activities anyway.

Now apply the same principle to exercise. Sure you might hate the idea of exercise, but you know it’s good for you, so you just have to do it anyway.

Are you exploring all your options? 

Exercise is much more than running a marathon or spending an hour in the gym every day. There are many ways to fulfill your activity quota for the week.

If you are reading this article, you may hate to exercise but know you want to begin an exercise program. Be open to trying a variety of activities in your quest to find one or two that speak to you.

Here’s a list of some common and not-so-common ways to exercise.

1. Walking
2. Skating
3. Cycling
4. Yoga
5. Zumba
6. CrossFit
7. Rowing
8. Hiking
9. Gardening or yard work
10. Weightlifting
11. Vigorous house cleaning
12. Dancing
13. Shoveling snow or pushing a lawnmower
14. Swimming
15. Stair climbing
16. Kickball
17. Soccer
18. Football
19. Water polo
20. Tennis

You see, there are a lot of ways to fill your exercise bank without joining a gym or running. You just have to do it.

Are the payoffs worth the pain? 

Starting an exercise program can be daunting, especially if you think you hate it. But consider the pain versus payoff ratio for a minute.

Sure exercise can be painful, challenging, and not always fun. But the payoffs you get from regularly exercising for 30 minutes several times a week can last a lifetime. You will be more flexible, be able to walk or run without getting winded, look better, and reap the medical benefits of exercise such as reducing your risk of heart disease and lowering your blood pressure.

And if weight loss is your goal, exercise goes hand in hand with a healthy eating program. For example, I never lost weight on a diet until I committed to exercising. It wasn’t just the exercise that helped me lose weight, but the willingness to change my outlook on exercise and make healthy changes.

As a word of encouragement to you, when I started to exercise at 305 pounds, I too hated exercise. Or I thought I did. But I made myself walk for a few minutes every day. Before long I didn’t hate it quite so much and over time I appreciated the sweat and the uncomfortable feeling of being out of breath and discovered that the temporary pain of exercise was well worth the rewards.