Originally, I had a sound plan for finding therapeutic blogs to study for my dissertation. Using a ping site, I would read, say, every fifth blog to see if it was a journal style blog suitable for my study. However, since I am now looking specifically for blogs being used for self-therapy (or for confessional, coping, or other therapeutic purposes), using this process will take much, much longer. Just to get an idea for how difficult it may be to track down blogs being used for this function, I did a few searches on ixQuick and Xanga to see what I could find. It didn’t take much searching to find a few by using the keywords “trauma survivor” “cancer survivor” “molestation survivor” “confession blog”. I skimmed the blogs, and (aside from the one confession blog that I found, which had a lot of juicy gossip-type details) the material was pretty superficial. Still, it would work for my study. There was an abundance of blogs written about surviving cancer, and I was considering using only blogs about this topic when the thought hit me: what about the bloggers who didn’t survive cancer. So I did a search for blogs written by people with terminal illness. I read one of them and after only a post and a half I wanted to cry. For most of this study, 
I have been taking a methodical, technical approach to this topic. I was enjoying the literature that informs one of how to literally break healing down to science. I’ve had my methodology loosely planned out for years now. What I wasn’t prepared for was the human aspect of what I have been working on: I had forgotten about the people who are suffering. Intellectualization is an easy way to distance oneself from emotions. And now, as I begin to analyze real therapeutic blogs, I need to prepare myself to reconnect with my goal for doing this: people. People and their pain. And hopefully, how I can help them with it.
Finding Therapeutic Blogs- Suddenly this study becomes real
I like to believe that it was my idea first
During my undergraduate years, I was fascinated with computers and social media (or what was then the precursor to today’s social media). Even though I was not a computer science major, I worked as a lab consultant in the CIT (Center for Information Technology)’s computer 
laboratories. I majored in Psychology, and kept computers as a hobby.
While at a social gathering my senior year, I entered into a heated debate about web technologies with an older attendee with whom I had never met. He turned out to be Charlie Knoll, the founder of Andera. He offered me a job on the spot. I had already enrolled in graduate school, and did not accept his offer. However, I never lost my interest in social media. Fast forward a few years to the early days of weblogging. I was in graduate school when the blogging boom happened. A number of my contemporaries were very familiar with writing therapy- which fascinated me to no end. Therapy. Done without a therapist. To someone with my background in computers, I immediately saw Internet Therapy. Blogging was huge- there had to be a connection between the two. I explored the idea with professors, I searched the literature, and I scoured the Internet. No one had put together what I considered to be the most “2+2″ since arithmetic had been invented.
I pitched the idea of doing my dissertation on writing therapy done through blogs to my professors, and none seemed thrilled with the idea. Maybe it’s because they were skeptical of therapy done over the Internet, or the lack of trust for such an open medium, but I felt defeated. I pressed on with my idea anyway, but dragged my feet because I didn’t have much confidence in the concept. Searches through the literature didn’t help either: I had to craft this study from the ground up because no one had done anything similar. Ever.
Years passed, and while I was dragging my feet, other people had finally put two and two together. This past spring I dug my face back into the literature to discover that people were now buzzing about doing therapy using blogs! Take for example this Scientific America article I discovered today.
One the one hand, it’s validating to see that my idea wasn’t as ridiculous as my professors first made it sound. Just because I was new to the field of Psychology didn’t mean that I didn’t have anything to contribute. However, I can’t stop kicking myself for having this idea years before I had seen it in print or on the Internet elsewhere. If I only would have had more confidence in myself, I could have had my dissertation done years ago, and would then have a legitimate claim to what may or may not have been my idea “first”.
Is This Bad News or Good News About Weightloss?
Here’s some validating new for all of you people struggling to lose weight: No, you are not lazy. And no, you are not a pig. Some new research explains why you are having such a hard time. Basically, after you shed a ton of weight, the body knows how much you used to weigh. It thinks that you need to weight that much again, and it 
fiercely battles to get you back up there. How does it do this? In two ways. The first is by making you hungry. Even when you are full, your body will tell you that it is still hungry. Second, the body “saves” its energy and does not burn off calories as easy as it used to when you were heavier. The researchers found that even after a year has passed since all that weight was lost, the body will still be fighting to get back to its old weight.
So how could this possibly be good news? Two reasons. The first is that you have the knowledge that it is not your fault. Your body has been tricking you into eating more food than it needs, and it has been making you work harder than needed to burn a few calories. For people who have felt guilty about being overweight for many years, that must come as a relief. The next good thing that this article tells us is that dieter can expect their hunger to be wrong. It will be a difficult thing to curb hunger, but at least being aware that you will face that challenge lets you prepare mentally and emotionally for the battle. I’m a big fan of mindfulness, that might be a tactic that people trying to keep weight off might try. Meditation can do amazing things, and while it may not be powerful enough to levitate your body, it may be just enough to dull cravings. I will let some who has tried it be the judge of how possible it is.
How Learning Can Reduce What We Know
A new UCLA study was recently published: Hippocampus plays bigger memory role than previously thought. At the conclusion of the article, the author collect responses from the researcher about what was learned from the study. The point that they dance around is: “We studied the Hippocampus hoping to increase what we knew about it. As a result, we now know less”.
Technically, we didn’t learn less. But what we did learn was that what we knew about it before was wrong. Socrates would be so proud. 
This article reminds me of my frustration with neuro-physiology: the function of brain regions are not clearly defined like that of a cell or somatic organs. Even the anatomy is ambiguous: we have regions of the brain that meld into the other regions. The neurons are intertwined, and neural functions are carried out throughout various parts of the brain. The concept of neural plasticity furthers this ambiguity of partitioning. It has been shown that damaged brain centers can be recreated with neural tissue from other parts of the brain. The effect is that someone who lost motor centers for their left side of the body because the right side of the brain was damaged can eventually regain that motor control. This is because neurons on the left side of the brain changed their functions. When trying to memorize the functions of brain centers, I used to get frustrated because ever brain structure seemed to be responsible for a myriad of things. Discovering that the Hippocampus’s role in memory is broader than we thought adds to the frustration that I had in college. My hyperbolic summery: EVERYTHING in the brain is responsible for EVERYTHING.
Veteran Suicide Increases
Veterans are at far greater risk for dying from suicide than than civilians who have never been exposed to combat. This is true even for those veterans not suffering from depression, PTSD, or any other psychological troubles. Why is this? It is because of their exposure to killing. There is a certain degree of desensitization that is required required for one human to kill another human. In the case of civilians, this desensitization can come from exposure to repeated abuse, violence, or other such stressers. For a soldier to effectively complete his or her job, this desensitization must take place in his or her military training. Once the psychological barrier that normally prevents typical people from easily killing another person is overcome, the gateway for successful suicide is unlocked.
The only thing more difficult than killing another person is to kill oneself, and this difficulty is the thing that typically thwarts suicide attempts. Interviews with people who have survived suicide attempts (In working in the field that I do, I have had several of my own conversations with people who have survived suicide) reveal that the person’s body has a tendency to “protect” itself, independent of what the person’s intellectual intentions are. The body seems to “take over” and act on it’s own in a physiological self-defense. Exposure to death, abuse, and killing dull the body’s protective response to suicide, leaving combat veterans in a position of vulnerability.
Once other war-caused psychological problems are thrown into the mix, ( such as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Major Depression, and otherwise benign Adjustment Disorders) we have a population that is alarmingly prone for suicide.
This article from the Huffington Post speaks about the increasing number of veteran suicides, and speculates on how the numbers will only increase as more soldiers return from combat. We need more mental health services to keep these soldiers functioning in civilian society. We owe it to them to keep us alive. Right now, state governments are engaged in whole-sale slashing of Mental Health Care budgets. Because of the economy and the way that state and county funding is handled, school districts, mental health, and all of the other money earmarked for public services is shrinking. Everyone is fighting for a progressively smaller piece of the pie, and people like our veterans are the ones who are suffering. I don’t know if I agree with the aimless organization of the Occupy Wallstreet Movement, but I empathize with their sentiments. Something is wrong with a system that puts the services designed to nurture and care for the Citizens at an absolute low priority. What can be more important than teaching our children, healing our sick, and keeping our soldiers alive? After our U.S. service men and women risked their lives to protect us, the least we can do is protect them.
Abduction and the Elephant
Staged Abduction video- NBC News
My girlfriend point this out to me after watching a video that one of her friends posted on YouTube. As you can see from the video, there is a staged child abduction. This abduction was repeated over and over again for hours. Every single person passing by ignored the girl’s plight. Some glanced, but none took action. Finally, two men came to her rescue. If you haven’t watched the video yet, watch it now and see if you can notice anything peculiar about it.
See it? Again, my girlfriend immediately took note that the only black guys featured in the video were the ones who turned out to be the heroes. Could this be careful or unintentional editing? It’s possible. It’s also possible that this could be a coincidence. However, the simplest solution is most often the correct one, and it seems very likely that the rescuers’ culture played a big role in their decision to take action.
First off, a basic assumption must be made: the video was taken in a New York suburban city. The black men in the video were dressed differently from the other white people featured in the video and were probably from an inner-city background (again, an assumption). Maybe they themselves did not grow up in NYC, but there was probably cultural influence from the big City that helped to shape their developing years. My girlfriend, who grew up in Oakland (a predominantly black city), gave a lot of input and shared her experiences of growing up in inner-city culture. What we were able to conclude from the discussion was that inner-city black culture is very community orientated. Raising children is a group effort, and even a complete stranger understands the expectations and limits that are expected of another person’s child. This also applies to the nurturing and protection that is given to members of their community. In other words, it would not be terribly out of place for a parent to give a scolding to another child that was not their own, nor would it be odd for a parent to feed a neighbor’s kid if he was around the house at meal time (I’ve witnessed this myself while visiting a friend of mine in a barrio of South Central Los Angeles). This is the first element that probably contributed to the action that the men in the video took.
The second element was the element of bravery. There is an inherent fear that one must overcome when confronting another person. Whether this confrontation takes place in conversation, such as interrupting someone that you are talking to, or challenging a person who cut in front of a line. Those with less social inhibition will have an easier time making this confrontation. Loud, boisterous conversation and actions are valued, 
particularly in men, in black urban culture. Youth practice how to “holla” at girls, so that when they approach a girl who is a serious contender for romantic interaction they don’t appear shy. To “holla” is to brashly approach a unknown young lady with a verbally aggressive cat call. As soon as one stumbles over one’s words, allows a silence to carry for too long, or any other indication of nervousness, then the attempt is considered a failure and the exercise must be repeated again. The approach is practiced until it can be delivered smoothly. Nervousness in that community is considered weakness and disqualifies one as a quality romantic partner. Contrast this with other cultural communities, where a male’s nervousness might be considered endearing. The value of aggressiveness is amplified when applied to physical confrontation. A male who backs down from the opportunity to either reclaim his dignity (after an affront) or to protect the honor or physical corpus of a loved one is considered weak and treated with great disdain. Again, while these observations of the value of the dissolution of social inhibition might be generalizations to some degree, they represent the frequent experience of people raised in this culture.
The fostering of bravery in the inner city black community can also be attributed to the crime associated with residential neighborhoods of lower socioeconomic status. Many of my past patients have experienced traumatization because of a lack of physical safety. Slow police response and a general fear (or disrespect) of the law has left an element of lawlessness in these communities. This leaves the leaders of the families as the guardians of the weak. When there are no higher authorities responsible for preventing injustice, children learn at a young age that they are responsible for the safety of their relatives. Drug addiction is another plague of the inner city that frequently leaves children, in my experience, as the caretakers of their families. I have had grammar-school aged children that find themselves responsible for their younger siblings because their mother is too high to function or their father is out of the home on an alcoholic binge. These experiences have the culminating effect of teaching individual responsibility and inhibit tendencies to defer to higher social authorities.
Put that all together, and it would make sense that two young men raised in a black urban community would be the first people to step up to become heroes where their white suburban counterparts failed. They didn’t appear to be slowed by social inhibition, and their quick, aggressive action was synchronous. Their inclination to defend was not shadowed with doubt: “What if that guy is her farther?” “Maybe someone else knows what’s going on?” They recognized this as a very real event, and took action. In the eyes of a person who has never witnessed crime, there is typically a moment of disbelief, “Am I really seeing this?” And then the reality of the horror invokes our psychological defenses to shield us from the uncomfortable realization that this child may get hurt. The result? Denial. Judging from the fact that these men showed no evidence of such denial, I am lead to believe that they have witnessed crime in their past, and therefore have been raised with some degree of inner-city influence. Again, a huge assumption is being made by presuming that they did not grow up in a predominantly white, middle classed neighborhood. But the logic behind such a presumption seems sound.
So what are the implications of this video, and what can be learned? First and foremost, the values of a community-minded culture must be applauded. My experiences in South Central Los Angeles brings up the idea that black communities are not the only culture minded communities found in the inner-cities. Centuries ago, Irish communities looked out for one another in a similar manner. Anyone familiar with large cities are also aware of the giant Latino and Asian communities prevalent in localized neighborhoods. Culturally segregated communities exist even in neighborhoods of higher socio-economic status, as I discovered while living near the East Side of Providence Rhode Island. There, one can find Jewish residential communities distinct from Italian neighborhoods (although the physical boundaries between these middle to upper class communities are not as distinct as those separating communities separated by economic standards of living). These cultural communities don’t draw as distinct of a hard between one family and another, and often have boundaries that would be described by mainstream white American culture as loose. Here in mainstream “white” American culture, the attitude of “rugged individualism” has defined us. One of the obvious dangers of this cultural attitude is the resistance that people have to help out a stranger in need. This was a CHILD that was in danger, clearly shouting “This isn’t my father”. She did everything that we teach children to do to prevent their victimization, and yet, it wasn’t enough. Maybe what needs to change is the isolated cultural that we live in.
All of the major theorist of Family Therapy, or Systems, school of thinking are from cultures other than mainstream American culture. When doing therapy, they see the problem as arising from the system that they troubled person lives in. In most cases, the family is the heart of this system, but other influential people are included as well. The client is not seen as an isolated individual who is broken, instead, they are viewed as the result of an ineffective system. Therapeutic change takes place by fixing the system (which is done by changing the way that the members of the family interact).
Depression is rampant throughout our country, and psychopathology worsens as the U.S. ages. Is it possible that our rugged individualism is severing us from the living communities that sustain us? Are we as people being choked off from the life-giving emotional nurturance that communities provide? As the video above suggests, this emotional choking may be affecting us physically, as well. If we exist only to provide for and protect ourselves, then as a country we must slowly be dying.
Dissertation Update
A quick post to let all the people supporting me know how awesome things are going. I have been meeting regularly with my Dissertation Chair instead of my Coach. This is a good thing, because it means that I am no longer paying for a Coach (holla!). He did his job, and now I’m ready to take the next step on my own.
I have a finalized draft for a couple of sections now, and in doing the work for those sections, I learned a little about myself. If I have two weeks to accomplish a task, I will only actually work the final few days of those two weeks on the task. So why not shorten the time between deadlines? I shared this information with my chair, and she agree that we should pump out as much as I could early on. As a result, I have had two deadlines this week (one of them is tomorrow at 5:00 PM) and have been attacking this thing. Life is great when you’re productive!
Coming up, I am going to need some help. As much as I love statistics, it has been a while since I have had a class. Rather than spending copious amounts of time refreshing myself, I would like to pick the brain of anyone who works in research. I have an idea of what stats I would like to run, but I need some consultation. Badly. Next, I need to find some people with clinical skills. I have a Qualitative component of my study, and I need raters to make judgements about the nature of some writings. In order to do that, I need some people competent in their clinical skills (read: high emotional intelligence) to do some rating. Last of all, I need anyone who has time to sift through the many many blogging networks out there to find therapeutic blogs. A therapeutic blog is any blog where the person is blogging to develop themselves or deal with past issues. Self-help groups are a sure-fire score. I can use people’s help in scouting these things out. I have a methodology for the latter two groups of people to follow, but it’s not too complicated. If you are interested, drop me an email, text, call, Google+ me or Facebook (as a last resort).
Irrational Beliefs (by Albert Ellis)
1. It is essential that one be loved or approved by virtually everyone in one’s community.
2. One must be perfectly competent and achieving to consider oneself worthwhile.
3. Some people are wicked or villainous, and therefore should be blamed and punished.
4. It is a terrible catastrophe when things are not as one wants them to be.
5. Unhappiness is caused by outside circumstances; the individual has no control over it.
6. Dangerous or fearsome things are causes for great concern, and their possibility must be continually dwelt upon.
7. One should be dependent on others and must have someone stronger on whom they rely.
8. One should be quite upset over people’s problems and disturbances.
9. There is always a right or perfect solution to every problem; and it must be found or the results will be catastrophic.
From Game Play by Loren Ford
