September 2017

Review: The Influential Mind: What the Brain Reveals About Our Power to Change Others. By Tali Sharot. Henry Holt. 231 pages. 978-1627792653 Facts alone don’t change people’s minds or behavior. Emotions do. That’s the basic takeaway from cognitive neuroscientist Tali Sharot’s highly accessible exploration of why and how we succeed, or fail, in our quest to influence, persuade, or alter the opinions and actions of others. Understand how the brain works, she argues in The Influential Mind:...

Without yoga and coffee, I'm kind of a jerk. These are my personal "puppy uppers and doggie downers" and prevent me from being cranky, quick to cry, and ready for conflict. Coffee and calming make life more manageable. Humans even seem tolerable. Without them I might veer into hating humans for being so needy which is not a great trait for a parent, partner or a professional. Or a self. My partner says coffee and exercise are acts of kindness, service as promote public safety. In other...

Byron Hamel, (AKA Trauma Dad ), is a filmmaker , children's rights and men's wellness advocate. He's also a father with "ACEs through the roof," who survived child torture at the hands of a man now on death row for infanticide. Before the Father & ACEs chat started last week (see full chat transcript ), we discussed if and how to give a trigger warning. Hamel's experienced horrific trauma during childhood. He didn't want to traumatize those on the chat but wanted to be honest.

Sometimes, just when you’re about to leave, you see the past in a new way. For My-Linh Le, she was about to fly to Europe when she thought of her mom. Le is 30, about the same age her mom was when she got on a boat to leave Vietnam. “There was no food and no water and people were dying left and right,” Le remembers her mom telling her. “And every time somebody died, they were just thrown overboard.” Le wasn’t born yet. Her mom was divorced and had two young daughters at the time, but only...

"It is relatively early on a summer evening, just after sunset. From my bed, I notice a shadow of a spindly branch dancing across the corner of the bedroom wall. I get up and close the curtains tightly to make it disappear, careful not to step on my daughter, who’s camped on my bedroom floor, lying stiffly under the weighted anxiety blanket I’d made her. I don’t mind the shadow, but I know it will make it impossible for her to fall asleep. This is the fourth night in a row she’s spent here.

"Boys aren't meant to even cry, but I can assure you I've seen plenty of them do it - and I've even been to that point myself," Wally Newman, a farmer for over 40 years, says as he vows to do his bit to tackle the high suicide rates in rural WA. Financial stress, remoteness, loneliness and isolation are the factors that see more people taking their own lives in the country than in metropolitan WA. Topping a national average, suicide is the leading cause of death for West Australians aged...

“Don't Drive Like My Brother!” Sound familiar? “Car Talk” is the highly popular, long-running radio show hosted by two brothers who dispense colorful advice to callers to help them solve their car problems. Imagine for a moment a similar show where men – and those who care about them – called in every Sunday morning to ask how to tune up their mental health, to keep their emotions from overheating, or their mind running smoothly? Traditionally, men are raised to be self-sufficient, tough,...

"A new study found immigrants reported fewer potentially health-harming adverse childhood experiences, such as abuse, violence, or divorce, than native-born Americans. The findings, which will be highlighted in an abstract presentation during the American Academy of Pediatrics 2017 National Conference & Exhibition, suggest immigrants may experience different forms of stress early in life than do those born in the United States. The abstract, "Adverse Childhood Experiences Among...

As child abuse survivors, we work really hard to do the best we can with our children. We want them to have what we didn’t. So we try to create a healthy, nourishing environment to help our kids grow and thrive in the best way possible. But after working all day, sometimes there isn’t much left of us for our children. That used to bother me a lot. I felt like I wasn’t giving my kids 100% of what they needed from me. Finally, I realized I was trying to give them what “I” felt they needed, not...

[Editor's note: Dr. Harise Stein at Stanford University edits a web site -- abuseresearch.info -- that focuses on the health effects of abuse, and includes research articles on ACEs. Every month, she will post the summaries of the abstracts and links to research articles that address only ACEs. Thank you, Harise!! -- Jane Stevens] Altamimi D, Almuneef M, Albuhairan F, Saleheen H. Examining the relationship between child maltreatment and school performance in public schools in Saudi Arabia: A...

Of the tens of thousands of communities across the U.S. (cities, counties, regions and states), we think a few hundred have launched ACEs initiatives so far. Two common obstacles that initiatives run up against are: What do we do once we all agree that everyone should know about ACEs science ? And, how do we measure our progress? Today we’re officially rolling out new guidelines, tools — and an app! — for that! Growing Resilient Communities 2.0 answers question #1. If the initiative’s goal...

It would be so much easier if emotionally neglectful parents wore a sign on their heads. And although many, if they are more obvious, like narcissistic, authoritarian or addicted parents, may be far easier to identify..., most emotionally neglectful parents are generally well-meaning. They want to be good parents, but they simply do not know what to do. They do not know that they need to validate their children’s emotions, or how to do it. Here’s the most important point: it does not matter...