Truth be told, the holidays can bring angst or remorse as well as happiness.

Changing a habit takes 66 days, but who has the time? Losing weight can take even longer. Over-indulging usually begins with mindless eating that spirals out of control. But where there is a will, there is a way to keep it all under control.

Thanksgiving is the beginning of fun times with family, friends, and significant others, but it is also the beginning of self-shaming, body-slamming, and beating up on ourselves. And this is just a start. There are holiday celebrations until New Year's Day or longer.

So what's a person to do between late November and mid January? How can we enjoy good food, family, friends, or celebrating on our own without breaking the bank or tipping the scales? Truth be told, the holidays can bring angst or remorse as well as happiness.  

Anticipating family visits comes with gratitude and excitement, but it can also come with the dread of possible family feuds.  Having an extra serving of Grandma's apple pie comes with pleasure and goodness but also threats of gaining a pound or two.  When it comes to good eating and merriment, there is no way we can not indulge because if people spent hours toiling over a meal, the least we can do is eat it--lots of it.  Afterwards, we can enjoy the guilt.

During the holidays, guilt is not the only possibility. In fact, if we take steps to balance our eating and our other behaviors, we can avoid the negative feelings that often result after over-indulging.  In a radio interview broadcast 11/28/15, Dr. Brian Wansink made suggestions that are included in his book, Mindless Eating, and he offered some good advice. Follow the link (below) for more information.

According to today's interview, there are several ways to condition ourselves toward eating less. Some of the suggestions include:

• Saying one thing you are grateful for before eating;

• Writing down what you eat;

• Plating two items at a time and returning for different items, two at a time;

• Taking a snack that equals 1/4 of what you usually eat and then distracting yourself by taking a walk, returning a phone call, or running an errand.

Before you start planning for the usual overeating, guilt and self-shaming that often follows the holiday season, think of ways to be proactive, planning for what and how you will eat, drink, and celebrate! Happy holidays!

For more on this topic, follow this link: "Beating Your Mindless Eating Habits" http://foodpsychology.cornell.edu/outreach/mec.html

Sometimes, we don't want to overcome the setback, and we don't want to get beyond the pain.

In present day society, we only want to feel happy, so why should we plan for negative events or sadness? Because of "positive psychology," we don't want to think about "setbacks" or troubles that threaten our progress. When a setback happens, we often find it hard to adjust. We don't know that negative thinking is normal, so some of us fall into patterns of negative behavior or guilty feelings. We ask, "Why this? Why me? Why now?" Yet, to some extent, we made a mistake in judgment, so we have only ourselves to blame.

Negative thinking protects us from harm, and negative experiences provide opportunities to learn. The best we can do is go with the flow, learn from our mistakes, and try to overcome any setbacks. But sometimes, we don't want to overcome the setback, and we don't want to get beyond the pain. Instead, we want to hold on to our misery, replay it all in our heads, and watch the sadness build up. 

The brain tends to provide more of what we expect, so if negative thoughts are feeding the brain, the brain begins to feed the negativity. This becomes a cycle of sadness creating more sadness. This is how depression starts, how it grows, and how it continues to live until it becomes overwhelming. That's when negative thinking can lead to depression and increase the risk of suicide. 

Negative thinking is important if you want to take some time to determine what happened to cause your misery. That way, you can give yourself a "reality check" to determine which of your negative thoughts are exaggerated or which are just wrong. This allows you to adjust your thinking and exchange the negative self-assessments for more positive ones. As long as you don't spend too much time reliving negative events, some negative thinking can be helpful.

Negative thinking is normal (at least for a couple of weeks or so) but incessant, overwhelming negative thinking creates sadness. If negative thinking controls your thinking during the day for weeks at a time, this might be a sign of depression, which requires a doctor's opinion and possible intervention.

"Jabberwocky": Sometimes words don't mean a thing.

Sometimes, words don't mean a thing and how could they when 93% of what we know about others or what they know about us is learned through nonverbal communication? According to studies, people watch what you do, how you carry yourself, your facial expressions, and listen to your tone of voice to determine what you mean. Only 7% of what you learn about others is based on words, so when you hear or read a nonsensical statement, phrase or poem, you must rely on what you already know about language, context, tone of voice, facial expressions, or anything other than words to determine its true meaning.

Understanding words and meanings is a balancing act which also requires knowledge of denotation (dictionary meaning of a word) and connotation (meaning that has become associated with a word). For example, the dictionary definition of the word, pretty, means "pleasing or attractive in a delicate way" whereas the word alluring means "very attractive or tempting, enticing or seductive" and suggests much more than passive attractiveness. The word, alluring, is richer in connotation because it is suggestive, rather than specific. It suggests deliberate intention and indicates emotional input which intensifies meaning. 

Understanding what we hear and read requires emotional input based on what we already know, but what if the words totally don't make sense? That's when we must rely on contextual clues which allow us to "feel" the meaning. For example, author, Lewis Carol wrote the following verse which seems to suggest meaning, but the words are nonsensical. Based on what you know about language and context, what do you think the poem is saying? In other words, how would you translate the following verse using standard traditional English, but not slang? 

(This can be written in your personal writing journal, but if you post a translation via this blog site, please indicate whether you'd like it published and if you make a grammatical error, don't worry; I'll edit before I post.) 

Note: Only original ideas can be posted. 

JABBERWOCKY

Lewis Carroll

(from Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, 1872)

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
  Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
  And the mome raths outgrabe.

Negative thinking can develop a life of its own, so don't let it boss you around.

Because there is a strong interest in what is called, "positive psychology," people don't want to hear about someones negative thoughts, especially if they last more than a moment or two, but if you're thinking negative thoughts on a daily basis, something is amiss, so keep track of how many times negative thoughts are controlling how you feel. A record of these thoughts might prove useful if you need to see your family doctor or if you are referred to a mental health professional. By all means, take control of your negative thoughts; don't let them boss you around!

Negative thinking is what our brain does naturally in order to keep us aware of possible danger, but it doesn't need to control our mood or our behavior. At the same time, negative thoughts don't need to be hidden or concealed. When we deny our negative thoughts, we are suppressing our emotions, and one way or another, emotions will be expressed--in constructive or in destructive ways.

As a society, we are most focused on happiness, often expecting but never planning for unhappiness, never planning how to overcome a setback, or never expecting to lose, but when it happens and we lose something, many of us find it hard to adjust. Some of us fall into patterns of self-sabotage or self-pity, crying the blues and lamenting, "Poor little old me," when at some point, we made an incorrect assessment about ourselves or about someone else and to some extent are partly to blame for the loss. 

Reflecting on what happened is not a bad thing.  If you want to take a moment and relive the misery so as to process its impact on your reality, on your life, or on your negative behavior, you do so at your own risk. Negative thinking is normal (at least for a moment or two), but incessant negative thoughts create more negative thoughts if allowed to persist for too long.  Ruminating over negative circumstances or unfortunate outcomes is an exercise in futility, but this is the way negative thinking lives, grows, and wreaks havoc.

If you experience negative thinking daily for two weeks or more, it might be time to consult your family doctor or a mental health professional.  Not every mental process is a major problem, especially if you catch it in time. However, you are the guardian of your emotional state, so if you see something, say something to someone who has the ability to help. Take control of your emotions, and don't let negative thinking boss you around!

Halloween: "Thrills, Chills or Other Zany Ill's."

In 2014, two-thirds of all Americans had plans to celebrate Halloween, spending an average amount of $77.52 on candy, costumes, and decorations. Half of Americans planned to give out two pieces of candy to 42.1 million trick-or-treaters, ages 5-14 (CNN.com). In other words, Halloween in America remains a significant celebration. But what is it about Halloween?

What is it about being terrified and fascinated at the same time, like watching for Freddy Krueger peeking from behind a door, fearing someone will die, but fascinated by the method to be used in the process? Halloween is a celebration that holds a similar mystique not only for children, but for adults as well.


With 66.7 percent of Americans decorating their homes and offices, Halloween exceeds Thanksgiving Day for most interest and creativity in the way it is observed. Only Christmas creates more interest and candy sales. "As one of the world's oldest holidays, Halloween is still celebrated today in several countries around the globe, but it is in North America and Canada that it maintains its highest level of popularity"(www.novareinna.com/festive/world.html).


When I was a child, we were not allowed to go outdoors on Halloween, but Trick-or-Treat happened the night before, and whatever distance we could travel before returning home by midnight was acceptable. We spent weeks eagerly planning which outfits we would ask our mother to make. On this important occasion before Halloween, my siblings and I would leave home, dressed to impress. We would then scout the best neighborhoods near our side of town in order to fill large decorated brown bags (made strong especially for trappings of Halloween like candy apples, oranges, bags of marshmallows, bubble gum, and candy bars of all types and sizes). We'd start out at dusk and return home by midnight, a tribe of five older children who brought home enough snacks to share with those too small for trekking through dark streets and following porch lights that signaled it was okay to knock on the doors and request, "Trick or Treat."


After returning home, it was a quick bath and off to bed, but in the morning, it was finding a separate corner in which to examine and categorize the goodies before deciding which treats would be shared and which would not. In separate areas of a bedroom, each of us would discard any unwrapped treats, tossing them into the trash no matter how delicious they looked. If caught eating anything unwrapped, the entire bag of goodies would be confiscated. Eating as much candy and junk food as a body could handle was gluttony, which was considered a sin, but on Halloween, it was allowed.


It was a frightening experience, following our brother and his twin sister because all we could see in the darkness was their backs and the houses on opposite sides of the street, so we simply followed and prepared for the worst as the two eldest led us through winding streets, around creepy corners, and past noisy, barking dogs. We expected giant spiders and gooey spider webs; green-faced witches and grotesque goblins; big, angry black cats trying to cross our paths; drooling monsters of all kinds. Along the way, we saw many action figures and superheros, and a few real-life bullies hoping to steal bags of goodies from the smaller children without doing any of the hard work. The only surprise was having a heavy bag split open, spilling candy all over the sidewalk and ground like gummy bear guts.


Arriving home with a bag of treats intact was a miracle in itself, and arriving home with no poisoned treats was even more so. That was the way it was throughout our years of trick-or-treating on our own--kids and the neighbors celebrating together--until somebody gave poisoned fruit to some kids and taking treats from younger children led to warnings and curfews being put into place. 

For me, Trick-or-Treat is an event that conjures fond memories that are as vivid today as they were yesterday, and even with all of the mystery and element of surprise, I wouldn't change a thing. What are your best memories of Halloween? 

Can love in intimate relationships exist without sex?

Can love exist without sex?

If you really think about it, love is a combination of subtle emotions, but the essence of love is a feeling of completeness. When we say we love someone, we are trying to describe an emotion that defies definition or description: completeness. "Completeness" is more a strong sensation than an emotion because it is different for each individual.  When someone fulfills our physical and emotional needs, we feel "complete" because important human needs are being met. 

According to Abraham Maslow's "Hierarchy of Needs," feelings of trust, safety, intimacy, and acceptance reflect important human needs, and fulfilling needs creates feelings of well-being, especially when combined with sexual fulfillment. But sexual intimacy creates a different set of needs, including the need for safety or permanence in the relationship based on feelings of love.

Love is defined as "an intense feeling of deep affection," and because of its level of intensity, such deep affection creates a desire for emotional and physical "completeness" or sexual intimacy. But once a relationship becomes sexual, there are hormonal changes that often lead to a need for greater emotional attachment, more often for women who usually work harder to ensure their object of affection remains connected and dedicated to the relationship. 

Sexual intimacy is reassuring and it creates an emotional bond, but it also can create anxiety or insecurity. Fulfilling our need for love or emotional "completeness" is a human need, but must it include sexual intimacy? Can love exist without sex? 

-mhjohnson

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See Also: Oxytocin: The Love and Trust Hormone Can Be Deceptive | Psychology Today https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/love-and-gratitude/201310/oxytocin-the-love-and-trust-hormone-can-be-deceptive

Do you know someone who needs her story told? I do. Her name is Martha.

Hi, My name is Martha, and I am a twin. My sister and I bonded in our mother's womb, and we kicked and played like any normal kids, despite the fact that our mother suffered physical, emotional, and verbal abuse and despite the fact that she even fell down on the porch in her eighth month of pregnancy.

It's been said, she was huge and we were a heavy burden, but she was proud to be having two of us, despite the fact that he worked late hours and sometimes stayed out all night after the restaurant closed. I could taste the bitterness of stress whenever she was upset, but after all was said and done, the three of us survived. 

I was born first and my sister followed, and all seemed well, but it wasn't long before they realized, something was wrong.  My speech wasn't developing, and I couldn't follow instructions when I was given something to do.  My appearance was normal (I think I looked prettier than my twin sister but she was pretty, too). My body was perfect. I had strong legs and a perfect shape for a little girl.  

My sister and I played and made cooing sounds in the baby bed all day and sometimes at night. We'd awake and one of us would start cooing, then it was both of us, then one of my big sisters along with my big brother would arrive to change the sheets, change our diapers, and feed us a bottle of milk while our mother tried to catch some rest. Those were the glory days, the land of milk and honey with a mother, father, and a houseful of kids who played with us and fed us when our mother was too exhausted.

Then one day it happened. I had to go away because I couldn't attend school and my mother had to work while the other kids went to school. They said I would never achieve more skills than a four-year old, even if my mother followed the doctors' instructions and treated me like any normal kid. But my mother didn't because she couldn't force me to do what didn't come natural. Even though I was just as big as my twin sister and old enough in years, I was still a baby in my mental abilities.

So they sent me away and my mother visited every week until I had to move two hours north. Then she saw me once a month. I'm fine, now and if you let me tell it, I don't think anything is wrong. In fact I'm better than many kids who were damaged at birth because at least, I don't know I'm mentally retarded (or mentally "disabled" is what they like to say), and at least I don't know about being normal coming out of the womb when that inexperienced intern applied too much pressure and used the forceps incorrectly as I was being delivered.  We didn't find this out until it was time for me to be admitted into my new home at age nine. My mother read the new doctor's report and cried, but I never knew why.

That's my story, and I think people like me need to be heard about. I can't write. My sister writes for me, but if you know someone who needs you to write their story, you can write it anytime. They'll appreciate it as much as I do.
Post her story here or at www.emomastery.com. mhjohnson