#it permanently rewired my brain structure

[cookiesandcantarella]

we r besties

[ID: picture of Kermit and animal from the muppets hugging. Kermit is captioned with “me” and animal is captioned with “the beloved piece of media I would never ever recommend to anyone under any circumstances” end ID]

[roseverdict]

And You May Ask Yourself, "How Did I Get Here?"

Mikey had been following up on a potential lead on what might have been an EPF bunker for several reasons- the EPF could be doing anything down there with no one the wiser, of course, but he'd also needed some time to himself while Leo and Raph argued, and there was always that tiny glimmer of hope that maybe he'd find-

But he hadn't.

He'd gotten about a mile from where the bunker was supposed to be before the entire thing had erupted in a massive mushroom cloud and the ground had started sinking.

(or, I AM NOT IMMUNE TO SAINW PERMANENTLY REWIRING MY BRAIN. GOOD LORD.)

anyway how do you think the turtles went from "hiding in the shadows because humans are terrified of the unknown" to "freedom fighters of varying edginess that human rebels are literally fine with"

ao3 link in rb's bc i don't trust tumblr to not hide this. my turtle sideblog is still shadowbanned for reasons unknown and i'm not letting this exercise in "how keenly can a character's absence be felt while avoiding using their name" disappear into the void

〜

"-reports coming in telling us that there had been no prior warning-"

"-still mystified about the origins of the fireball that destroyed the middle of Staten Island and destabilized the-"

"-currently sinking into the sea. Survivors are advised to only take what they can carry on their-"

Mikey swallowed and kept flicking through radio stations as he ran, though he repeatedly had to divert his attention from the radio in his belt to the rooftops he was sprinting across.

It was hard enough to keep one's balance when doing parkour, let alone when you only had one hand and were already using it to multitask.

And when the ground beneath you was dropping into the Atlantic. That, too.

He'd been following up on a potential lead on what might have been an EPF bunker for several reasons- the EPF could be doing anything down there with no one the wiser, of course, but Mikey'd also needed some time to himself while Leo and Raph argued, and there was always that tiny glimmer of hope that maybe he'd find-

But he hadn't.

He'd gotten about a mile from where the bunker was supposed to be before the entire thing had erupted in a massive mushroom cloud and the ground had started sinking.

Hence the frantic rooftop parkour.

He'd made an abrupt about-face and started sprinting back the way he'd come, as much as something in his chest had shrieked and clawed at him to keep going, to dig through the rubble for any possible clues it could have contained.

A tiny part of him, dark and dense and growing every day, grimly reminded him that any evidence the EPF might have had was now either ash in the wind or sinking to the bottom of the sea, and that he needed to pick up the pace if he didn't want to join it.

He mentally blew it a raspberry and hurled himself to the next roof.

On the ground below him, he caught sight of the fleeing human population of the island.

He wrenched his concentration back to his own escape.

He couldn't afford to be distracted by the humans running past beneath his feet, screaming in fear and shrieking for parents and siblings and brothers-

Mikey's foot hit the gravel atop the next roof at an odd angle, nearly sending him sprawling before he recovered and scrambled forward again.

The shadow of the mushroom cloud was faint now, but it still loomed from behind and cast the path ahead of him in vague darkness.

Distantly, he figured he should be glad he didn't need to run directly into the sun to survive this.

"-sailing in on their own boats to supplement the ferries in an unprecedented show of solidari-"

"-azzano-Narrows Bridge is beginning to strain-"

"-those of you in the surrounding area are advised to-"

Mikey felt his heart sink as he quickly flipped the station back and turned his gaze towards the bridge he needed to reach to escape the sinking island.

"-weight of the destabilized island. Current estimates predict that structural failure is imminent, and fleeing citizens are urged to avoid the bridge and board one of the ferries now diverting to the eastern shore. Private citizens are also offering up their own vessels, as well."

Welp, Mikey couldn't very well do that. With the sheer number of people that would be swarming the ferries, the odds that one dazed businessman or traumatized kid would look up and see him would be through the roof.

The failing bridge it was.

Mikey pushed his legs to run faster, his hand to clamp against his side as a stitch stabbed through his lungs, and his feet to stay steady as he leapt from the last building on his route to swing up into the shadows between both levels of the road leading to the bridge.

He needed to pull his hand from his side to keep his balance as the ground beneath him lurched downward.

This meant he had no way of catching it when his radio slipped from his belt and plummeted to the ground far below.

"-starting to see visible strain against the cables of the-"

(That radio had been in the workshop when Mikey had first found it months ago.)

(His brother had once told him about his plans to touch it up and give it to April for her shop.)

(He had never gotten the chance to put that plan into action.)

The sound cut off with a distant smash as the radio's innards clattered across the groaning asphalt.

Mikey hung there for longer than he'd care to admit, staring at the broken remains of one of the last pieces he had of his lost brother.

Only when the broken shards began to slowly skid down the road did he manage to shake himself out of it and keep running.

(It felt like he was abandoning his brother to whatever fate had befallen him.)

(It felt like boiling, icy slime crawling up the inside of his skin.)

(In an ugly, selfish sort of way, he desperately hoped his brother hadn't vanished of his own free will. Even if doing so would cause Mikey to need to reconsider every single interaction the two had ever had, he would never wish this sensation on even his worst enemy.)

(…well, okay, the Shredder could deal with this sensation. Everybody else was still off-limits, though.)

Everything felt sore.

Mikey kept running.

There came a distant crashing sound, and Mikey whipped his head back around to gawk as water started rushing inland without passing him on the bridge. A quick look to one side told him that there must have been some part of the shore that had simply…cracked.

There was no other way for the water to have started pouring into the sinking island at such an alarming speed before the outer edges had truly begun to sink.

The metal and asphalt of the bridge groaned and shifted beneath Mikey's feet, spurring him further out over the water.

For a moment, he let his body go on autopilot. Whirling between supports with lighter fingers than usual to put as little stress on the doomed cables as possible, desperately putting as much distance as possible between himself and the beginning of the bridge before it inevitably snapped-

A human's shriek from off to one side cut through the haze. "DOMINIC! NO!"

Mikey chanced a look.

There, on one of the overcrowded ferries, clutching at the rail, held back from the open rear end of the ferry by the press of the crowd around her, a woman leaned dangerously over the side with one arm stretched as far as she could reach towards a still-growing ripple in the water. "HE CAN'T SWIM! DOMINIC!"

Mikey was changing directions before he even realized what he was planning to do.

He hit the water in his best approximation of a swan dive and started kicking for where 'Dominic' had fallen, peering through his third eyelids as he got close-

-there!

The kid had already drifted down a good yard or two into the water, but his eyes were still open and his arms were still clawing against the pull of the deep- he was still fighting.

Mikey swam for him with his arm outstretched, and the boy stared at him for a second before Mikey grabbed on tight and kicked for the surface, holding him to his plastron.

As soon as they breached the waves, Dominic hacked and coughed as what seemed like lungfuls of seawater came pouring from his mouth.

"There you go, kid, get that nasty harbor water out of your system," mumbled Mikey, already searching for the ferry Dominic's mother had been on.

Dominic managed a creaky gasp after several seconds of nothing but horking up the ocean, then shifted to look at Mikey's face. "You're-!" A cough. "Tur-?"

"Yep, I'm a turtle," admitted Mikey. "Gimme a sec, I swear your mom was on one of those things-!"

"DOMINIC?!"

Well, then, speak of the devil.

Mikey zeroed in on the ferry she stood on, then shifted in the water. "Hey, kid, I'm about to go pretty fast. You wanna hang onto my shell?"

Dominic coughed up a last paltry mouthful of water, then nodded.

The kid let Mikey shuffle him onto his carapace, then grabbed onto the ridge that rose just past Mikey's shoulders. "Okay."

Mikey nodded back, brought his arm up behind his back to catch Dominic if he slipped, pressed his stump against his side, and kicked.

They quickly picked up speed as they followed the ferry, though Mikey stayed just to the side of the wake left behind so the flow of the water wouldn't inadvertently suck him in and knock off his rhythm. As they approached, he had to hold back a wince- with so many humans aboard, there was no way he was going to be able to pretend to be some figment of everyone's imagination.

Leo and Raph were gonna kill him.

They came close enough to the boat that Mikey was able to see it when the humans' faces shifted from shock, to horror, then to confusion.

Confusion was good. Confusion meant conflict, and conflict meant they weren't dead-set on being freaked out.

"MOM!" called Dominic, lifting a hand for a moment to wave. "MOM, I'M OKAY!"

Mikey kept swimming for the ferry, jolting in surprise as a life preserver plopped down on the water just ahead of him. "Huh-?"

"Grab on!" called a new voice, a boy with a hat sitting backwards on his head.

"You got a good grip, Dominic?" asked Mikey.

"Yeah," said he. "Why?"

Mikey lifted his stump for a bit before pressing it back to his side. "Because I'm all-right, but I gotta make sure you're alright."

"Oh," said Dominic.

Mikey felt the kid's grip tighten slightly, and the next time the life preserver dangled into reach, he flung his arm forward and grabbed on.

He gave himself a moment to just breathe as the ferry towed him and Dominic along, then pulled himself forward to tuck the curve of the ring under his arm instead of gripping it with his hand. "Almost out of the woods, kid."

The sound that made the metaphorical hair on the back of Mikey's neck stand on end was unassuming.

Quiet.

Distant.

It was a snap akin to the noise made by a rubber band pulled too tight.

He felt his blood freeze.

He didn't even need to look back for confirmation- to the side, the bridge had started wobbling in a way it could only have done when given too much slack on its support cables.

Dominic's grip on Mikey's shell grew almost painful. "Oh, no."

"Pull us up," breathed Mikey. Then, again, at the top of his lungs, as he looked up at the humans on the ferry, "PULL US UP!"

The kid who'd thrown the life preserver was frozen, staring at the sight behind Mikey, but a woman next to him (his mom, maybe?) went into action, grabbing the line and reeling it in as fast as she could. Dominic's mother shouldered through the crowd to join her, but then Mikey had to focus entirely on not letting go of the preserver.

The water began to dip beneath him, but as soon as the preserver got close enough to the ferry, Mikey swung his feet forward to give himself even the slightest bit of traction and help boost the two of them up.

Only then could he afford to look back.

Just as he'd feared, the bridge had given way, and the last remaining parts of Staten Island were sinking out of sight…though it wasn't as though they'd dropped below sea level even faster than before.

Rather, the sea had risen up around the falling bridge, causing a wave that was already blocking Mikey's view of Staten Island, and even though his vantage point wasn't really the greatest…

…he didn't want to think too hard on what would happen if he and Dominic were still in the water on their own.

He gulped, then dug his toes into the tiny ridge of floor that poked out from under the safety wall and used his newfound leverage to hurl himself over the edge and onto the floor with a shout, keeping on his side to avoid crushing Dominic.

"Mr. Turtle!" squawked Dominic worriedly.

"I'm okay, kid," Mikey assured him, pushing himself upright and glancing back over his shoulder as he finally let go of the life preserver. "What about you?"

Dominic managed a weak grin. "I'm good."

Dominic's mother quickly descended on them and hugged her son tight to her chest, but before they could do much else, the ferry lurched beneath them.

The waves had arrived.

They didn't seem quite as big from Mikey's new viewpoint on the ferry, but that minor difference didn't mean all that much when they were still big enough to rock the boat and send several people sprawling.

Life Preserver Kid's mom(?) yelped and nearly fell overboard, but Mikey lunged forward and clasped one of her arms with his own, pulling her back. "I gotcha, ma'am!"

The woman blinked, then smiled. "Th-thank you!"

Mikey shot her a nod, then, once the ferry seemed stable again, took his hand back in favor of whipping out his shell cell and dialing the first number he could think of.

"Mikey!" called April's voice. "Where are you? Did you see the news-?"

"Don't gotta see it when I'm living it," Mikey said grimly.

"Wait, you're there?!"

"I was," he corrected. "April, you and Casey were gonna be at Dyker Beach Park today, right? Please tell me you're not still there!"

"We are-! Mikey, what's going on?"

"The Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge just went down, and the waves are coming right for you!" Mikey burst.

"Oh, shit-! CASEY! CASEY, GET THE BIKE RUNNING!" April's voice grew distant for a moment, then came back to the microphone. "We're evacuating now! Where are you?"

At that, Mikey met the eyes of Life Preserver Kid's mom (confirmed, now- the kid himself was hugging her with a death grip) and grimaced. "You gotta promise not to be mad at me. And also to back me up when I have to tell the others."

"Mikey…"

"So, uh, I may or may not have been on Staten Island when the explosion went off," Mikey started, "and I may or may not have barely managed to escape before the bridge went down-"

April's voice was stern. "Mikey."

The rest of his sentence came out all in one burst. "-and it's not entirely out of the question that I kept a kid from drowning but now I'm on a ferry and there's too many people here to pretend to be a figment of their imaginations?"

Over the phone, he heard Casey's bike engine start, but April just raised her voice to be heard over it. "I-! Okay. Okay. Is everyone there alright? Are you in danger?"

"Seem to be, and I don't think so," said Mikey.

"Okay," said April again. "We're getting inland now. Are your brothers okay?"

Mikey pressed his beak together thinly before trying to speak. "They were arguing again. I needed some space."

April hummed in frustration. "I gotta help Casey keep his eyes on the road. Do you wanna call 'em to make sure you all know you're alright?"

"Can…can I call you back after?" asked Mikey quietly. "The guys'll be fine as long as they stay put, I think, but…"

"Of course you can, Mikey." April's voice held an audible smile. "I'll see you soon, too, okay?"

"Okay."

The line went dead, and Mikey took a steadying breath before going to dial Raph.

He picked up before the first ring even ended. "MIKEY!"

"Are you and Leo done arguing for now?" asked he tiredly.

"Wha-? Er…yeah," said Raph, seemingly abashed. "Sorry, Mikey."

"It's fine," Mikey lied. "You saw the news about Staten Island, right?"

"Staten Island? What about Staten Island?" Raph asked. "Has it got anything to do with this earthquake?!"

"Probably. Are you and Leo and Dad still in the lair?"

"We were, but we made a break for the surface once the ground started shaking," said Raph. "We're hiding out in Central Park now- less stuff to fall on us. What about you? What's going on with Staten Island?"

"Well, for one thing, there is no Staten Island anymore," Mikey told him. "It went for a bit of a swim, and I don't think it's planning on coming back up for air."

Raph's voice came out in a stifled squawk. "It what?!"

Leo's voice trickled in, and Raph said, "Mikey says Staten Island's sunk!"

"WHAT?!"

"That's what I said!"

"Hi, Leo," Mikey deadpanned.

Dominic's mom met his eyes and raised an eyebrow.

Brothers, Mikey mouthed.

She, her son, Life Preserver Kid, and his mom all shared a sympathetic look and a nod.

Mikey mirrored it right back.

There was a brief moment of audible grappling on the other end of the line, then Leo asked, "Mikey, where are you? Are you safe?"

"I'm okay, I swear," Mikey said. "Just…don't freak out on me when I tell you where I am?"

The question came out flat this time. "Mikey, where are you?"

Here went nothing.

"On a ferry."

Mikey timed it in his head.

Half a second: Leo was probably processing the words in his head.

One second: Leo was likely remembering that, since Mikey only had one hand nowadays, Mikey's usage of the shell cell had to be because he was somewhere he didn't have to worry about falling.

One and a half seconds: Leo could probably hear the chatter of the humans around Mikey- nothing too worrying, save for the fact that they were right next to him.

Two seconds, and Leo took a breath.

Mikey pulled the cell from the side of his head.

"MIKEY, ARE YOU INSANE?!"

Leo's demand- whispered, but only barely, and close enough to the microphone to be loud enough for Mikey to hear from a foot away- caught the attention of Dominic, Life Preserver Kid, and their moms, as well as a few other humans right around them.

Mikey just grimaced and lifted the phone back to his head, drawling, "Oh, I'm sorry, next time I'll let the kid who fell off the ferry and can't swim drown in front of me."

Leo made a choked-off noise, then sighed. "No, no, you were in the right to save them."

"That's what I thought." Mikey let a ghost of a smirk rise to his face. "He survived, by the way. Not sure how I'm gonna meet back up with you and Raph once the ferry reaches what's left of the shore, but him, his mom, and a few others seem to be chill enough with me being here."

"Wait, Raph?" asked Life Preserver Kid. "You know Raph?"

Mikey blinked. "You know Raph, kid?"

"A kid knows Raph?" asked Leo. "How would-?"

"Whaddya mean, a kid knows me?" came Raph's voice.

"He helped me save my mom from some mob goons a few years back!" declared Life Preserver Kid. "It's me, Tyler! I got to be his eyes for some of it!"

Mikey's eyes widened. "Ooh, that does ring a bell. Hey, Raph, you remember Tyler? Says you helped him save his mom from the mafia at one point? He was your eyes?"

Raph laughed disbelievingly. "What?! Aw, no way! Put him on! Leo, gimme back my shell cell!"

Mikey grinned and handed Tyler the phone. "It's for you."

Tyler beamed and took it, pressing it to his ear. "Raph!"

Raph's voice came through too quietly for Mikey to make out any words, but with a delighted tone he was glad to hear.

"Yeah! She's actually on the ferry with me! Mom, Mom, say hi to Raph!"

Mikey let the conversation fade to the back of his mind as Dominic tugged at his hand. "Thanks for saving me, Mr. Turtle."

"No prob, dude." Mikey leaned back against the rail and hooked his stump over the side. "And just call me Mikey. All my friends do."

"Mikey, Leo, and Raph…" mused Dominic's mom. "There's a connection between those names, I just can't quite think of it…"

"Renaissance artists," Mikey supplied. "Our father wanted us to never come off as 'completely uncultured.' Leonardo, Raphael, Dona-!"

Mikey's voice closed off, and he swallowed before finishing in a strained, cracking voice, "…a-and Michelangelo."

Something in Dominic's mother's face twisted. "Oh, kiddo."

"You did find your dad?" asked Tyler, blissfully tuned out of the grim conversation around him. "Thank goodness! I'm glad your family's back together again!"

Mikey brought his hand to his mouth to stifle a sob, then turned to look back at where Staten Island used to be.

Tyler's voice was horrified, now. "Wh…what do you mean, 'your brother's gone?'"

One of the other nearby humans gingerly placed a hand on Mikey's shoulder. "I'm…I'm sorry, son."

"Staten Island was our last lead," Mikey admitted blankly. "It's been…it's been years, and our last lead just went up in smoke and sank to the bottom of the ocean."

Tyler's mother came up next to them, concern etched into her face. "What…was his name?"

Mikey clenched his fist. "His name is Donatello."

Tyler's mother tried for a reassuring little smile. "If your brother is still out there, I'm sure you'll find him."

If.

Mikey locked his gaze on the collapsing bridge- namely, the part of it he'd been standing in when the radio had fallen and shattered against the ground.

"That's what I'm afraid of."

[tklpilled]

Akiangel will literally be the death of me like im so obsessed with them. Like Angel being way too cautious to touch Aki despite how much he wants too and Aki who will touch Angel with genuinely no hesitation. Im so ill over them it’s unreal. Like Akiangel tickles genuinely like change my brain chemistry theyre so…

(-🍂)

akiangel permanently rewired my entire internal structure like.. fujimoto the things you've done to me

[pjharvey]

i think having an emo phase in middle school permanently rewires your brain i really do. i no longer listen to fall out boy regularly but like it changed my brain structure

[kaypeace21]

El and “post institutional syndrome” (psych analysis)

Before I go in depth with this condition. I wanted to discuss the unique real life case of Genie (whose experiences most closely resemble El ‘s) . And , because of this , could possibly give us insight on how El’s past may affect her psychosocial development .

“Genie had spent almost her entire childhood locked in a bedroom, isolated and ab*sed by her father for the first 13 years of her life. The social worker soon discovered that the girl had been confined to a small room, and an investigation by authorities quickly revealed that the child had spent most of her life in this room. The windows were curtained and the door was kept closed.” 

“At this time, she could only speak a few words -- including "stopit" and "nomore." 

“While her circumstances until that point were undeniably tragic, they also presented an opportunity for psychologists, linguists, and other researchers to study psychosocial, emotional, and cognitive development in an individual who had suffered from severe social isolation and deprivation. In particular, the discovery of Genie presented an opportunity to study whether a child who was past the so-called "critical period" for language acquisition could learn to speak a first language.”

“The case was important, said psycholinguist and author Harlan Lee, because ‘our morality doesn’t allow us to conduct deprivation experiments with human beings; these unfortunate people are all we have to go on.’

* Brenner not only kept her in isolation via her room but even put her through severe deprivation via solitary confinement as punishment. Putting her in a completely barren dark room for hours.UN Special Rapporteur Juan E. Méndez warned ,”Considering the severe mental pain or suffering solitary confinement may cause, it can amount to t*rture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment when used as a punishment,  indefinitely, or for a prolonged period, for persons with mental disabilities or juveniles.”

“After assessing Genie's emotional and cognitive abilities, Kent described her as ‘the most profoundly damaged child I've ever seen … Genie's life is a wasteland.’ She began to experience more developmental progress,  but remained poor in areas such as language.Susan Curtiss worked with Genie to teach her English. Genie soon developed a rather large lexicon and was able to express herself. But despite extensive training, she remained unable to produce grammatical sentences. Here is a transcript of one of her reports of her time in the hands of her father:

Father hit arm. Big wood. Genie cry ... Not spit. Father. Hit face—spit ... Father hit big stick. Father angry. Father hit Genie big stick. Father take piece wood hit. Cry. Me cry.”

“According to Lenneberg, the critical period for language acquisition lasts until around age 12. After the onset of puberty (at 13), he argued, the organization of the brain becomes set and no longer able to learn and utilize language in a fully functional manner.The case of Genie confirms that there is a certain window of opportunity that sets the limit for when you can become relatively fluent in a language. Of course, if you already are fluent in another language, the brain is already primed for language acquisition . If you have no experience with grammar, however, Broca's (an area of the brain) remains relatively hard to change: you cannot learn grammatical language production later on in life. But the abilities to understand language and produce language in ways that do not rely on grammar largely make use of Wernicke's area in the temporal lope. This area is capable of expanding and rewiring throughout life—even after the teen years. The case of Genie confirms this. Grammar was beyond reach for her. But language comprehension and storytelling were not.”

So El struggling with grammar in some sentences but not in others and  improving in grammar unlike Jennie- could possibly be because unlike Jeanie, El was 12 when rescued  vs Jeanie who was 13?

“Researchers were also  left to wonder whether Genie had suffered from cognitive deficits caused by her years of severe neglect or if she had been born with an ‘intellectual disability’.  Most believed,  the permanent mental impairments and ‘developmental delays’ Genie exhibited (upon being assessed ) were the result of the isolation and deprivation she was subjected to.”

For those confused about certain terms just used. “Developmental delays appear before 22 years of age. They are life-long disabilities that affect one or both physical and cognitive functioning. ‘Intellectual disability’ encompasses the “cognitive” part of this definition, that is, a disability that is broadly related to thought processes. People with intellectual disabilities are known for having below-average IQ/cognitive abilities . ID can be caused by a myriad of things- including physical and genetic factors, problems during pregnancy or at birth, health issues at an early age, exposure to environmental toxins, or non-physical causes such as lack of stimulation.”

*DISCLAIMER before we begin: I’m saying this now, cause I expect bad actors to try and cancel me. El , even if she has an intellectual disability- is still a human being with many aspirational character traits- that people can admire or aspire to have . She’s kind, selfless, brave, and resilient.  People with ID can still function and have jobs, make decisions, and learn new skills too. And they have human emotions like everyone else. if you are “offended” that I say a character you like  may have ID - and are pissy you related and empathized to a character that you would otherwise have  ‘othered’ cause they have an intellectual disability. Me, an autistic person, (who the fandom has bullied for being autistic) is not the ableist one for simply saying she may have an Intellectual disability .Being angry by the very idea a character you like has a condition  , and saying it’s “offensive”/”insulting to them” (is ableist). And  in a sense dehumanizes these people who are greatly underestimated and mistreated by society already. you don’t have to agree of course- but don’t try to smear me for stating my opinion based on the psych papers I’ll be discussing. I love El, and have a cousin with ID, so no this isn’t me insulting El. The Duffers said they wanted to give a voice to those “othered” by society- and people who aren’t neurotypical could easily be on the list. The Duffers having us love, relate, and  empathize with a character such as this wouldn’t be a bad thing- but good rep .So now I’ll continue with the evidence that alludes to El possibly having ID.

Post institutional syndrome

“In clinical and abnormal psychology, POST INSTITUTIONAL SYNDROME- refers to deficits or disabilities in social and life skills, which develop after a person has spent a long period living in remote institutions (such as orphanages). “

“Growing up in such an environment can change the brain for good.Institutionalization in early childhood can alter a child's brain and behavior in the long run.The ongoing nature of chronic neglect significantly impacts the brain in infancy and early childhood. It suggests that the specific ages of approximately 6−18 months old , may be especially sensitive to developing deficiencies in orphanage environments. “ (*Making El who was raised in such an environment since birth quite susceptible ).

“According to Perry (2002), neglect at this phase impedes formation of neurological pathways essential to communication in the brain. They found that early institutionalization changed both the structure and the function of the brain. Any time spent in an institution shrunk the volume of gray matter, or brain cell bodies, in the brain. Kids who stayed in the orphanages instead of going to foster care also had less white matter, or the fat-covered tracts between brain cell bodies, than kids who, at a young age, moved in with families.Staying in an orphanage instead of foster care also resulted in lower-quality brain activity as measured by EEG.”

“Neglect may be the most detrimental maltreatment type on brain development.A child’s neurocognitive and emotional development rapidly moves towards a downward spiral following extended time in an institution.Normal development may be disrupted by deprivation associated with neglect and can result in dysregulation of neural systems during vulnerable periods of brain development, leading to pronounced neurocognitive deficits due to maltreatment.There are many outcomes related to this disruption in brain development: delays in development of IQ , delays in language, cognitive delays that impact learning, and difficulty with behavioral inhibitions,  social emotional functioning and well as impaired attachment (Wilkerson, 2009; Barkley, 1997).”

 “Low-stimulation environments can lead to lower scores on intelligence and language tests. Neglect is the type of maltreatment most strongly associated with delays in expressive, receptive, and overall language development.interpersonal interaction is necessary for the acquisition of early language, and these interactions may be limited for children that have been in institutional settings or have experienced physical or emotional neglect.Speech and language delays along with social-emotional delays are very common as the child continues in the institutional environment.”

“Compared with youth that were not neglected, children demonstrated lower cognitive and language scores and more behavioral problems.Higher IQ could be predicted by language scores and an absence of externalizing behavior problems. When comparing the neglected children: shorter time spent in a stable environment, lower scores on language skills, and the presence of externalizing behavior problems predicted lower IQ.”

“The cognitive development of institutionalized children has been studied for more than 60 years. Between 1930 and 1950 a first wave of studies documented that children in institutions often showed a low IQ and severe language delays (Crissey, 1937; Durfee & Wolf, 1933), and children’s orphanages have been considered “natural experiments” on the necessary conditions for intellectual growth (MacLean, 2003).For example, Rutter (1998) found that the mean IQ of children leaving institutional care in Romania shortly after the fall of Ceausescu was about 50 (population mean = 100). Similar results were shown with Dennis in (1973) who addressed the question of how large the cognitive delay of children in orphanages was compared to children adopted into families. He studied children who were abandoned immediately after birth and were reared in children’s homes in Lebanon.Dennis found that at age 11, the average IQ of the adopted children was within the range of normally developing children, whereas the non-adopted 11 y old orphans still living in these institutions were diagnosed as Intellectually disabled.At his followup, when they were 16, these same girls at the Zouk institution had an average IQ going just above 50. While, In a meta-analysis of 75 studies, van IJzendoorn et al. (2008) found that children living in institutional care scored on average 20 points lower on intelligence tests than children who were raised in families.”

“These later studies also revealed that the percentage of time spent in institutional care was significantly and negatively correlated with full scale IQ, verbal, and memory scores. And that 12 years of institutional care, from birth to 12 years of age, showed placement into foster care did not increase iq points .The only cognitive improvement of placing these children in foster care at age 12 -was on working memory. While the only cognitive improvements of taking the children out of the institution by 8 years old was on processing speed. “

pics for proof if you don’t believe me-

* Meaning realistically El who was in such an environment (from birth to 12 years old)  may learn new things after being placed in foster care (like with Hopper or the Byers)-but her Iq would never improve to the point of being neurotypical-  she’d always have an intellectual disability.

Intellectual disability

“People with intellectual and learning Disabilities may have deficits in speech production . Impairment of speech production is among the most commonly reported difficulties in children, adolescents and adults with ID . The children,  including some with mild and moderate intellectual disabilities may lack in phonological development in their speech. These children also exhibit many articulatory deficits, delays in expressive language and show significant limitations in grammar and syntax development  compared to  those their age (without an iD). They often speak in subdued tones or use explosive voice modulations .Some speak quietly, while in others vocal intensity varied from utterance to utterance. “

“Intellectual disability is identified as mild , moderate, severe or profound.”

So, if based on average of Iq of children raised in orphanages (from birth to 11,12, or 16 years old). El would have a mild intellectual disability (and an Iq possibly around 50).Of those affected with ID, about 85% fall into the "mild" category.

Mild intellectuality disability disorder symptoms:

-”being fully independent in self-care when they get older (brushing teeth, dressing themselves, cooking, taking public transport, etc)”

-having problems with reading and writing (having math/reading skills between a 3rd- 6th grade level).

-having an IQ range of 50 to 69

-social immaturity

“Iq below 70 isn’t the only marker for diagnosis. But, also issues in adaptive functioning are usually used for diagnosis. Three areas of adaptive functioning are considered:According to the DSM-5 (APA, 2013), the signs and symptoms of adaptive functioning deficits across 3 domains (conceptual ,social and practical) for a mild intellectual disability are:

Conceptual Domain

”Slow language development (children learn to talk later, if at all). Or problems learning to talk or trouble speaking clearly.”

”Difficulties in academic learning ( such as having math/reading skills between a 3rd- 6th grade level).”

* El can read but still struggles with proper grammar ( verbally and through her writing) .She’s even reading an english-learning book.  Her unsteady handwriting/ lack of apostrophes hint she’s still learning to write (despite her reading abilities) .  And at 14 she doesn’t know what a state is-specifically  Illinois which she visited 6 months prior.

”Difficulty understanding  academic and abstract concepts of time “

*She didn’t start learning how to tell time until 12, and only seemed to master it at 14.

 “childish behavior inconsistent with the child’s age.”

*14 y old El and 5 y old Holly both having a thing for teddy bears, in s3/2.

”Problems with abstract thinking,  short term memory, and cognitive flexibility”. (”Abstract reasoning tasks include the ability to understand subjects on a complex level through analysis and evaluation and the ability to apply knowledge in problem-solving.”)

(”Cognitive flexibility has been described as the mental ability to switch between thinking about two different concepts, and to think about multiple concepts simultaneously.”)

*This one is a bit iffy, cause there’s a few explanations to the s3 example. El and Mike lie to their friends about her curfew.Yet the next day she is confused and says Mike wouldn’t lie to her - cause “friends don’t lie” All despite the fact she and Mike lied to Dustin, Max, Will, and Lucas the day before. So either she doesn’t understand the concept of hypocrisy because she lacks cognitive flexibility (or just doesn’t care about the hypocrisy)- aka her and Mike can lie to their friends, but she’s upset when they lie to her,  (and she’s fine if Mike lies to everyone but her) ?  Personally,I think she doesn’t grasp the concept of hypocrisy yet. Or she didn’t even realize she was lying and believed Mike was right about her curfew. Or bad writing. But given the concept of lying being prevalent to the season- I lean to Mike accidentally lying to her about her curfew (and El thinking her curfew was 4:00) . Or (more likely) El lies and doesn’t have the cognitive flexibility/abstract reasoning to understand that being upset Mike lied to her but not upset Mike (and her) lied to their friends is hypocritical.  She also lied to Mike and pretended she didn’t hear the confession at the cabin for 3 months. She ‘forgave’ Mike but she never noticed Mike didn’t even apologize for lying just being ‘jealous of Max’ (despite lying being the thing she was upset and dumped him over in the first place).  Anyways back on topic-

Social Domain

“Receptive language that may be limited to comprehension of simple speech and gestures.These students struggle to differentiate concrete and abstract concepts. Figurative language (metaphors, similes, idiomatic expressions, etc.) is typically quite confusing to them.”

“trouble understanding social cues”

“Limitations in language and communication skills.More concrete and less complex spoken language (if used), compared with peers. Limited vocabulary and grammatical skills.”

Practical Domain:

“May function age-appropriately in personal care (brushing teeth, dressing, going to the restroom etc).”

Early signs and symptoms of intellectual disability:

El has most of the signs...

-”Have trouble speaking or experiencing delays in speech, trouble understanding social norms,Challenges with problem-solving and logical thinking, Behavioral problems like extreme temper tantrums (breaking windows, pushing max, throwing food on Hopper and the girls in the mall), Having difficulty understanding the results of his or her actions (for instance like not understanding why spying on an ex is wrong).”

“If your child has ID, they may experience some of the following behavioral issues:aggression, Dependency, lack of impulse control passivity, stubbornness,low tolerance for frustration ,difficulty paying attention (She’s exhibited all of these).”

Other traits of Post institutional children

 “poor self concept” (One's self-concept is a collection of beliefs about oneself. Generally, self-concept embodies the answer to "Who am I?".)

“problems with coping and regulating emotions ,poor impulse control, and aggressiveness.”

“Studies have repeatedly shown that children with disrupted attachment who have experienced neglect have problems coping and managing emotions, “

“inappropriately demanding and clinging”                          

“indiscriminate friendliness”

“44% of institutionalized children showed high levels of indiscriminately sociable behavior as contrasted with 18% of children who had never been institutionalized.children who were indiscriminately sociable as 8-year olds were not indiscriminately sociable toward adults as 16-year olds; however, these children were indiscriminately sociable in their relationships with peers (those their own age). Thus, it is possible that indiscriminate sociability serves as a marker of later problems in social relationships, even though manifesting differently by the teen years.That friendliness was probably an important coping technique in their socially starved early lives. What's interesting is it just doesn't go away.Indiscriminate friendliness may also be tied to the amygdala. In a study using fMRI, Aviva Olsavsky, MD, at the University of California, Los Angeles, and colleagues found that when typical children (4-14 years old) viewed photos of their mothers versus photos of strangers, the amygdala showed distinctly different responses. In children who had been institutionalized, however, the amygdala responded similarly whether the children viewed mothers or strangers. That response was particularly notable among kids who exhibited more friendliness toward strangers. Attachment and behavior problems, indiscriminate friendliness, and lower IQ seem to go together in the same children.”

(We have to admit she attached herself rather quickly to Max, and Kali after only a few days, same goes for Mike and the boys she knew for only a week).

“cognitive delays, particularly speech and language deficits.” (we’ve covered that)

“quasi autism (is a term used to describe autistic-like difficulties and traits following very severe social deprivation in the first year of life.) About 10 % percent of the children adopted from Romanian orphanages after 6 months of age were diagnosed with autism sometime in childhood. And of those who stayed in the institution to age 11, 8.5% with an IQ >50 , fit the “quasi-autism” profile (meaning they fit some but not all autistic traits). The results showed  children with ‘autistic features’ usually experienced longer durations of severe psychological privation, than other orphans.”

El does have a few traits that some people on the spectrum have.

-” Many children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) use echolalia, which means they repeat others' words or sentences. They might repeat the words of familiar people (parents, teachers, friends), or they might repeat sentences from their favorite video.”

(X)

-”Some children with ASD also have delayed speech and language skills.some children are even selectively mute. “

- ”Talk in a flat, robot-like tone” (obviously not all asd people. But I do think El’s voice in conversation can often be quite monotone).

 - Many autistic girls on the spectrum also have disordered eating patterns . This can include simply eating the same foods over and over again (cough her eggo obsession). And although “disorder eating” and “eating dis*rders” are different.”Previous research has found that autism and eating disorders can occur together, as 20-30% of adults with eating dis*rders have autism (despite being only 2.2% of the US population).”

-“Has obsessive interests” (her whole room is covered in Mike related stuff like he’s her special interest- my gay ass has no idea if a whole room covered in bf related stuff is ‘straight little girl normal’ or a bit obsessive- but I lean to the latter, especially when compared to Max’s room XD)

-” difficulty understanding social cues .” (covered that)

- “And she is sensitive to certain noises (thunder etc)”

 Alright, thanks for listening. Of course, this analysis is if the Duffers went the realistic route-which I do lean to them doing.  One of the stephen King movies “dream catcher” was cited as inspiration for Stranger things . It  even had a boy with ID who spoke in broken english, carried around stuffed animals, and had the superpower of being able to track people (just like El)  . And he retained broken english/his interest in stuffed animals in adulthood.Of course her fitting the psych criteria I listed could have other explanations.El can most certainly learn and improve in academic skills, language, and social skills even with an Intellectual disability. But honestly, even if El had an Iq of 160 she would (at least initially) struggle tremendously given the lack of education and neglect/ab*se she’s dealt with.But, I’m excited to see El gain independence as she learns more about herself and  the real world (and maybe heal from some of her tr*uma).

But if we’re talking academically-she doesn’t know basic geography or what a state is at 14.She’s still learning how to speak and write with correct grammar at 14.She only just mastered how to tell time at 14 . Does she even know how to add, subtract, multiple, and divide, let alone algebra (knowledge needed for highschool) ? Or basic science knowledge also needed ? No way would she’d be ready to go to highschool in s3 (like the others already attending, during the ending-time skip). If we were being realistic- she’d be held back a few years and or in remedial classes, or special school, etc. The kids in middle or highschool who don’t know her circumstances wouldn’t be understanding of why she has little knowledge of social norms, expressions, language issues,etc. El  has only interacted with 4 kids her own age for 3 months (9 months with Mike) and was in a year of isolation with Hopper (being taught social norms via tv- which is not the best teacher) .This was hardly ‘typical socialization for a kid her age’. Unlike, the rest of the gang who interacts with many kids on a daily basis.How will she be in an environment with this many kids? I wouldn’t be surprised if she was sadly bullied.Regardless, I’m looking forward to El’s character arc of trying to assimilate to the ‘real world’ as she grows into her own person-most likely  there’s some good in her journey and not just bullies along the way. :)

[atouchofgreen]

Weed & Mental Health (adolescent)

Mom and Dad,

In the recent months I have experienced cognitive decline that I attribute to my use of weed cartridges. I started smoking weed cartridges when I was in my senior year of high school, and  became addicted. I hated it but for some reason I couldn't stop I smoked daily. Although I took month long breaks often, I continued to smoke in college during my first 2 years. Towards the second semester of sophomore year, I used legal delta 8 carts instead of delta 9 carts. The only negative aspect of using up to my sophomore year was my lack of motivation and any minute cognitive changes went away following abstinence. I should have quit or asked for help. In high-school I asked for help by leaving my stash on the laundry machine and gave a singular puff to mom one time (she thought it was an e-cigg though). In highschool in my AP Chemistry class, I saw a kid at the end of class do a hit from a similar weed cart in front of his friends. It would have been so easy for him to get caught, he was standing up giggling with his back turned but the teacher was on the computer and didn't notice. I recognized then that this kid was so alone with his addiction that he did it in front of his friends at school out of pain and solidarity. He had an expressionless face most of the day and seemed distraught, I knew from the grapevine he smoked a lot. He was like me, addicted, and did a hit in school subconsciously screaming for help. After class I asked coach Jacobs his thoughts on using weed. He said, sitting on his computer desk chair with his hands behind his head, " I think after 25 half a joint does the same damage as having a martini, but before then its really bad for you physically, mentally, and your development as a human being. You should wait until after your brain is fully developed to try anything." I remembered this for the rest of my life. I didnt have the courage  to directly ask for help but I needed it and should have asked anyone. I couldn't quit it although I should have had the courage to do so. I tried quitting many times but I was too far down the drain mentally. But now, I am scared for myself. I quit completely following moving jethin in because I was noticing cognitive decline in myself. It was terrible. One morning, I woke up and nothing entered my brain its like I was a zombie. That is why I quit. I hoped I would regain my functionality like before, but to no avail. My iq seems to have dropped 10 points at least. My short term memory has regressed so much that learning new information is difficult for me. Reading is harder and to recall something takes me much longer than before. I have a harder time making long term plans and imagining things. I had a hard time with understanding and expressing English as well though this has been improving. My mind is nothing like it was before. Now, my memory, pattern recognition, recall, imagination, has diminished to a much lower degree. I was fine last year and the year before that, my mental health and cognition were good, but recently it seems like a switch turned off for me. When I walk in the world I don't absorb information the same. I don't abstractify what I am seeing as easily, and my short term memory is really shot. Its like I'm just walking in the world blind deaf and dumb. I am scared I won't be able to pass my classes even though compared to highschool these classes are an absolute breeze relatively speaking to when my brain was sober. I can't do quick calculations anymore and I am acutely aware that my senses are just senses. Seeing touching hearing are just that, I can't calculate the same way i used to to create a coherent experience of what's going on around me. I don't have appreciation for life anymore. I  am telling you all of this now because i have really experienced cognitive decline and I am extremely depressed, unhappy, and anxious. I am afraid that my prefrontal cortex and hippocampus is permanently damaged. Weirdly, I've had a dull ache in my head ever since I've quit, in the middle and front of my brain, that's been getting slightly better with time. The slight discomfort or pain is always there its terrible. It also gets better temporarily when I cry, meditate, or sleep for an extended period. I hope that after a few months this dull pain would subside and my mental capabilities would return. Even my dreams are less complex and have less emotion. All of this is what I talked to that therapist about.  It's not like I am sad ALL of the time, but a lot of it. But I am pretty sure my mind will never be what it was before. I experienced life to its fullest extent while I was not using any drugs, and now that I've been sober for 2 months now and my mind is not returning close to what it was. I still feel like a zombie when exercising, and I develop a deep sense of sadness right after I work out because i recognize my short term memory and mental capability are weakened which makes it hard for me to make good memories and I get anxious about my future. I am pretty emotionless, even fear is hard for me to experience. When I am unhappy, at times I break out into a sob, but because my emotions have dulled probably from the weed, I only start to sob momentarily and then return to a face of stoicism. This makes it hard to achieve catharsis for my sadness and it gets bottled up inside. I don't really mind the mental health difficulties from quitting weed - that can pass over time with proper behavior - but it's the cognitive difficulties that makes me afraid. I am afraid that I will never be able to view the world the same way that I used to before weed. I am afraid that I won't be able to become a doctor unless my brain heals over time. I have read many studies about the use of marijuana during adolescents. Although there is conflicting research, my experience suggests the worst for me - that what I am experiencing may be permanent. I also read that smoking weed during adolescence can delay prefrontal cortex maturation, meaning I would never be able to absorb information and process it  the same way ever again. If only I had read the dangers of early marijuana use earlier and understood I would have quit immediately. It is entirely my fault my life is like this now, I was too weak. Both of you have given me everything and helped me the most you could. Especially Dad. Dad, I feel so bad because you have lowered your expectations of me so much. If I hadn't started smoking, I know I would be a completely different person.  Mom and Dad, I have been thinking about committing suicide for some time. I've been thinking about it at least once a day actually for a few months. Its not that I think life and the world is terrible and bad, I actually think the opposite. Before smoking I loved life and loved myself. I could feel the world like a thumping heartbeat or a quivering harp playing soulful music. I feel like killing myself because my current and future experiences will be inorganic. My brain structure/chemistry probably changed forever and I don't want to live with this brain anymore. I cant understand everything going on around me thus I can never understand the world the same way like I used to. I feel like i can't learn new things, everything I do now is because I am just accessing what I learned before starting to smoke weed and during freshman and sophomore year of college. My emotions have waned. I can't calculate complex things anymore and put it into context sufficiently. I can't move my body and think strongly at the same time. Right now, meditation and thinking about my long term memory is my only friend. My short term memory is shot which affects my learning and ability to make meaningful experiences or connections. It's like I have pseudodementia though not as bad. The only joy I get is accessing my long term memory and talking long walks in places and with people that used to bring me joy. I loved Turkey so much and the time we spent I go there in my head all of the time. I love Africa, I love India, I loved my friends at swimming and during highschool. But if that's all I am living for I don't know what the point is. I curse myself everyday for making the mistake of smoking weed or not quitting when I could have. I could've become a beautiful person had I continued developing normally. I am so sorry for being a bad son. I am so sorry that you came from India to America to have a child that fucked up like me. I am sorry for the stress this places on both of you. You both did nothing wrong in raising me, I just fucked up. I am sorry for how this may affect your work dad. And I am sorry for being a liability for the family. While I am drowning I don't want you both to drown with me. Maybe I can get a job somewhere or go into the military. At this point cognitively, unless my brain is capable of rewiring itself (maybe that's what the dull persistent ache is in my head) I don't think I can learn the information necessary to safefully treat patients. My therapist said it would take 3-4 months to a year to feel normal again but I don't know what I will do if I can't return to baseline. I used to live with such a thirst for life and understanding but if that doesn't return I feel like I am dragging life down and owe it to my memory of what life was before weed to take my own.  Currently my plan is to wait a year and a few months before seriously thinking of committing suicide if I don't heal because the pain I am feeling is so immense. I want to live life FEELING everything organically regardless of what it is. Also my smarts are gone and that gave me tremendous joy. I know what life was like before using weed and I know how it should feel. But I cannot properly life, my sense of self, empathy, and life around me currently. I am walking around blind deaf and dumb I don't know if I want to live this way for the rest of my life. I would have loved to become a doctor.

I just don't know what to do anymore, I don't want to kill myself and I don't think I will have the balls to frankly but that saddens me even more if I can't feel or process what I am experiencing for the rest of my life. Life is too short to waste, any life really even if I'm dumber than what I used to be. I think of people who are paralyzed, people who have cancer, who have nobody left to care for them, people who are homeless and have physical ailments. They don't give up, but their minds are still natural. I am young and the only reason I am thinking of this is because I don't want to go the rest of my life with derealization of the world around me. I don't want to live the rest of my life blind deaf and dumb. No new experiences since the latter parts of my weed addiction have given me any meaning in life compared to what I had learned before smoking weed. I am grateful I got to experience and learn the meaning of life from my perspective and others when I was younger, thank you for that. I love you both so much. I am sorry and don't worry I am not going to kill myself its just that I am angry with myself, angry with my cognitive decline, and angry that I can't experience what life ought to be currently. I am hoping for better in the future though. I just thought you should know.

Love, Your son

Before Weed: 

I am telling you this because I am scared for myself although it may be too late. Before I tell you what I've been going through, I want to tell you about my life experience up until junior year of highschool. Although I wasn't exactly extremely smart from your perspectives, I was acutely aware of my surroundings. In school I was more focused on how things were organized and what every single person in the room was thinking and what their plans were rather then what they were teaching. It's like my brain was calculating 20 things at once and i was living existentially all the time. I was incredibly happy just to be alive. I could recall the exact positions of people and things around me, what I was thinking, and the sutle muscle movements of people over a reasonable amount of time. I used to know what people were going to say before they said them, and know someone's personality outlook on life, habits mentality etc.  just by watching for 10 seconds to an incredible degree of accuracy. The longer a person was in my focus I learned more about them exponentially. I could learn things very well and had a memory based on the things that I was focused on that was so precise and better than almost everyone I had ever met. People in high school who knew me well knew this and would be shocked how i could know things about them. Some things like sexuality and gender insecurities, presence of autism/ Asperger's as a child, family life back home, and who liked who, I could tell about people after observing them for a little. I had  respect from people at school and some teachers because they knew what I could learn about a situation or people just by being in the same room. I could learn new words in the blink of an eye if I heard it just once, I was constantly calculating. With dad, I could not learn what he tried to teach me though just because I was so scared of him that my focus wasn't there and panic was always set in I was scared to be beat frankly (i wasn't scared of the pain but just scared what it meant which was hard for me to fully realize because I would slightly repress the memories and I don't like to do that). But it's from him I learned how to analyze people and the world. But he is one of the only people I've ever met where I could not track his mind to a satisfying degree. For most people I would now what they were thinking, what they were incubating in the back of their head, and their current plan of action in a glance by looking at the eyes and body. I could not do this with dad because his mind is faster than mine it was too hard to keep up. He has mind palaces that are so structured and he can jump around his mind so easily I couldn't keep up with the mind palaces he created and how he navigates them. It was harder for me to do this with people who had a very high iq but I would practice everyday and would cherish analyzing introverts for practice. I walked on a street with a hundred people I would make an observation about each of them and could later recall exactly what I saw and what I was thinking. My kinesthetic sense was very good so physical distances was easy for me to calculate and remember. I truly believed that before starting weed I would become a doctor because all my strengths coincided with it. This ability, although most ppl might be able to do it, peaked for me right before starting weed. I was very much in tune with spirituality and enjoyed reading storybooks, meditation, and socializing. I was never focused on myself but what was around me, I kept my thoughts and feelings in a box in my mind to help me learn as I recorded what others were doing and thinking. I had balls - I asked out girls in highschool, and honestly wasn't afraid of much because both of you enabled me to experience life by taking me everywhere.

[ziracona]

Sorry if this has been asked before but, I'm really curious about how you would have written Max in the story if he were to be there? He's one of my personal favorite characters and finding redemption stories about him is kinda hard (You have no idea how happy I was when I read Claudette threw him a scarf to stay warm, like yes please; he's a feral child in a killer's body, but please stay warm)

I don’t think I have been, and no problem!

If Max had had a larger role in ILM, I am not 100% sure how I’d have written his perosnality, since I haven’t had to do it yet in-depth, but I know he’d be very angry and both defensive and aggressive towards everything, warry, skittish, hostile. Not bad necessarily, but humans will raise hackles and be ready to lash out and bite if they’ve all they’ve ever known is abuse the same way a mistreated cat or dog would, or like, most any living thing. I think he’s very lonely and unloved, and it’s hard for humans to survive without positive contact and affirmation and physical affection. I mean, if we’re left alone totally, we literally just die. But since his only experience with humans—and his parents/the people who should have loved him most no less—was nothing but danger and abuse and isolation and imprisonment, I think it’d be very hard for him to be approached. Not at all impossible, but man, it is really, really hard to convince someone who’s been through torrential rains of abuse that there’s something else to be given.

I do have ideas on how you could get through, but let me think about personality first. Well, aside from aggressive, defensive, skittish, warry, and hostile, like inborn traits to go along with learned, I think he is a very volatile person. He must be enduring and strong to survive what he did and live, and so determined and tenacious. —Oh! Hang on, big one before I forget. So, I am not a forefront authority in Disability as it relates to narrative, but I know quite a bit and was lucky enough to have a professor whose central areas were Disability, Horror, and Disability in Horror. I don’t know who exactly popularized the idea of Max as having basically a child’s mind in an adult’s killer body, though I think I’ve been told it was one person or story? Maybe it was just a big fandom take. But that’s one of the most prevailing and harmful disability stereotypes, especially for mental disabilities, and horror is a massive offender in general with both disabilities and disorders, and we need to do better & listen to the communities themselves more. I don’t mean this in a harsh way at all—I don’t even know if you meant ‘feral child in a killer’s body’ that way, or meant like, ‘this feral man in a killer’s body is my child TuT’—which is a totally different statement—and even with the former, I know people have had that idea of Max super popularized and are inundated with it, and most people I think just don’t know it’s a very harmful and prevalent stereotype period—I didn’t until I was in my 20s. But I think it’s important to bring attention to it when it’s brought up. Many of the bad things done to people with disabilities come from treating them as not fully actualized humans (I guess I should say ‘us’), and some of those ways are easy to spot, because they’re cruel, and some are harder, because they seem positive. The ‘child mind in an adult body’ is a huge one for disabilities that doesn’t seem awful at first glance, but actually is a huge problem. Unfortunately, human children also get treated by and large as not fully realized humans (as in autonomous & worthy of respect and self-determination—obvs there are some differences that are important, but a child is still an entire ass human & should be respected as such). The painting a physically and mentally disabled character as childlike or mentally trapped as a child is used to control and take autonomy and gravity from our opinions and lives. It’s also just like, not accurate. But the biggest thing is that it takes agency from individuals and paints them as less intelligent, less capable of wanting or pursing more ‘adult’ things [such as jobs or sex or protesting for their rights or having informed opinions on current events and doing something about it], and tries to paint that permanent, life-long dehumanization as a positive thing by making it cute or innofenssive at first glance. While still discounting disabled as kids, passing off autonomy and decisions to their caregivers, and ignoring our status as equal and actualized individuals. Stunted learning or growth or different ways of speaking, moving, and limitations understanding certain things don’t actually make disabled people like children. They’re just adults who sometimes have some very different ways of speaking or thinking or seeming or being. But it’s super important that we’re still adults and like, have the actualized self of adults, even if our speech patterns seem weird. There’s a huge and extremely important difference between an adult with social hangups around sensitive areas and social norms, and being a child. If you didn’t know any of that, don’t feel too bad, again like, people who aren’t disabled almost never talk about disability theory or issues, and I didn’t know this till I was in my 20s. But I feel really bad for Max and bad about how he is usually characterized, so it is important to bring this up.

Okay! That all said, I think personality wise, Max would be really fun to write. Because you have two levels—you have the taught things—fear, aggression, etc, and his inborn perosnality. There is very little canon about Max, but we know he never left home after freeing himself, he steals clothes from scarecrows or whatever he can find, and he’s probably in his early 20s or maybe to his mid 20s now. Since he never left home, I’d think he’s probably a little more cautious and anctious by nature, even with all that rage. I think he’d be sentimental if he ever was given something to love. He must have attachment to things pretty easily, and would I think have liked people a lot because of that, if life had been different. Would have been a shy but friendly and hopeful farm boy. Now, he’s kind of a broken mess, sadly. He’s had it super pounded in by family he is worthless and horrific and disgusting and a monster and an abomination, so I think he expects all humans to take one look and violently feel the same towards him. Taught humans are cruel, and he isn’t safe with them, and the only thing that will stop them and protect himself is unchecked aggression.

So, when it comes to like, getting close enough to him to redeem him, it’s rough, because again, he’d be very very aggressive. I mean, even after killing his parents, he mutilated the animals on the farm in rage, and continued to viciously hurt and then kill anything living he could find on the farm, so he’s got a lot of danger, and he really leaned into violence to protect himself. It’s what he knows now. I think he’s still lonely — like, so lonely he’s sick with it — but unlike Anna and Michael, he’s never known love, so I don’t think he’s even aware of that, and it’s on a pretty subconscious level. Plus, he has even less understanding of human communication and rules and gestures than the other feral killers, so it’d be really hard to get through to him. I think about the only plausible way is really, really, really fuckin slowly, through repeated gifts and kindnesses for no reason (like Claude with the scarf but every day for three years)—the same way you’d try to get through to a feral cat, since like other living things, humans also are wary and mistrustful when hurt, but can be socialized into new situations and do have a pretty set list of gifts and actions we appreciate. I mean, if I was feral, I would start to soften if repeatedly left chocolates and big warm coats and picture books to look at, pretty rocks. I have a crow heart.... >.> Or, the much more likely option, you’d have to catch him or find him captured and helpless, and then be kind instead of doing anything bad at all, and help him for a somewhat extended period of time, nurse him back to health or such, so he’d be forced to actually realize this person isn’t trying to hurt him—they’re trying to help.

I think Max would get less hostile slowly and cautiously because like, if you’ve ever been horribly abused you know you’re afraid to be hurt again. But also, if you’re alone, there’s a battle between wanting some kind of constact and love, and the fear of trying to trust someone only to be brutally torn up again and cast aside. It’s a painful place to be. But I think once he made it over that initial trust hurdle, and could bring himself to stop shuddering at a touch and to believe the person helping him was just trying to give him food, not poison or something to choke on, he’d be absolutely overcome, becuase if you’ve never been shown kindness and then are, overwhelmingly, it’s really hard to process. There’s a lot of psychology stuff about how we form our understandings and processing of each other and the world that I’m not gonna go into much bc convoluted, but it’d be like the opposite weirdly of a Just World break. The realization some things are less awful than your cemented life understanding structure. It would feel wrong and be hard to process (and rewireing a brain takes some time), but he’s been so alone for so long, I think the longing for people would get through, and he would cautiously start to trust and be just bowled over and kind of intimidated by the strength of like, the love and affection and gratitude and belonging he’d start to feel. I think he’d be afraid, becuase it’s not how life is meant to go, and jumpy, but he’d also just be lost to the happiness of actually having some kind of positive human connection, and become fiercely protective of whoever (or whichever people) was/were helping him. Got something he doesn’t want to lose now.

He’s young, so he’s going to still be figuring stuff out, and he had an awful upbringing, so lots of confusion and anger and un-learning too, but I’m really glad you liked that scene!! 😭 and that you like Max too, because he needs more love. I like him a lot too, that’s why he ends up with an undetermined fate instead of, like, dead in ILM. I’d like to give him a fully story role sometime, when there’s more space for it. He’s such a complex and unfortunate guy, he deserves a chance to grow more right and find people who are different and have a better future. TuT. It ain’t fair how his life was.

[selflife-hacks-blog]

Different Ways Your Childhood Shapes You

To realize the influence of our childhoods on the adult we become Like the foundation of a house, our childhood experiences are the foundation on which the rest of our lives are built. And if the foundation is not solid has emotional cracks and wounds these affect the structure of our adult lives.

Each of has a story that we walk out of our childhoods with  about the way our parents always argued, that our brother was abusive, that our sister was supportive, that our grandmother the rock that kept us stable, that school was hell. We fill in the story with memories of that awful argument when our father punched a hole in the wall, that time our bullying brother held us down on the playground until the teacher made him get off, the kind attention of our sister when we lost a toy, the way our grandmother listened when we were upset one Christmas, how we felt lonely when we switched schools in the 6th grade. The memories reinforce the story, and the story reinforces our sense of the story of why we are who we are now.

There are broader impacts of childhood that affect us all.

Birth order

There are decades of research on birth order and its impact on child/adult development. It has suggested, for example, that by and large the oldest children or an only child are likely to grow up and be good leaders, do well in school and be high achievers, be “good” kids, the ones who follow the rules. They can also often be anxious, can walk on eggshells around others, be sensitive to authority, can be self-critical.

Why? Because they bear the full brunt of the parents’ expectations and emotions. They have no siblings to serve as barriers. With this 2 against 1 scenario they adapt, are sensitive to what the parents expect, and to emotionally survive in the family, step up and accommodate.

The second child: Often rebellious pushing the boundaries, questioning authority, bucking the system. But just as the first-born is reacting to the parents and their expectations, the second born is bouncing off the first-born. Their identity comes from being unlike the first the anti-good child and from this stance they are able to grab the parents’ attention.

The middle child: The middle child often described as struggling to grab the parents’ attention at all. They are often labeled the forgotten child, the lost child, the one who gets overlooked in the shuffle between the first and second or the attention heaped on the baby. Where the first-born may leave his childhood sensitive to pleasing others, the second sensitive to power and objecting to rules, the middle child may be sensitive to being overlooked, not being appreciated, not feeling important.

The youngest : The stereotype of the youngest children is that they are spoiled. everyone in the family paid attention to them because they were…the youngest, so cute, etc. Getting used to having so much attention without much effort can lead to them feeling entitled as an adult and angry when they don’t get what they expect. But it can also lead to anxiety because others were always stepping in take care of them, they never were able to build up the strong self-confidence that comes from handling things on their own. As an adult they can get overwhelmed and then instinctively lean on others to bail them out.

Emotional Wounds

Emotional wounds are about what you particularly learned to be sensitive to in growing up. It is usually one or two of 5 things: criticism, micromanaging, feeling neglected, not feeling heard or feeling dismissed, not being appreciated. We all walk out of our childhoods with something.

As a child, your only ways of coping are to get good á la firstborn, get angry, á la second born, or withdraw, á la often the middle born. And like the birth order you bounce off your siblings —my brother is the good one, my sister the angry one, I’m the quiet one. The consequences here are that you bring these coping styles into your adult relationships and when you feel wounded, do what you learned. The problem is that this often triggers the other guy’s wound you withdraw because you feel criticized, the other get angry because he feels neglected and the cycle feeds off each other, with each feeling wounded and operating out a childhood brain.

And if these wounds come from trauma — abuse, severe neglect, grief, and loss — this adds another layer: When we are traumatized we instinctively, though often unconsciously, decide how we need to be in order to protect ourselves from such pain in the future. Here we decide not to get close to others, to not trust, to cling so others don’t leave, to try and be perfect, to put up a wall of anger.

Family climate

This is often the childhood default for growing up in an unsafe environment: your parents arguing all the time or your mother being anxious and yelling; your dad drinking and knowing his moods could change in a nanosecond; there never-ending tension though you could never quite figure out the source. And so your only defense as a child is to always be on guard — to stay on your toes and try and adjust to the emotional weather.

Role models

We usually develop a black and white reaction to our childhood role models. You either identify with the aggressor – I become my mom and can easily yell when I’m stressed or become aggressive like my dad — or I move towards the opposite: I decide sometime in my teen or early adult years not to be like them and instead I never get angry and hold things in, or if my dad drank, I don’t.

The problem here is that your solution is too simple because it is viewed through a child’s eyes. You don’t yell or drink but instead, internalize all your emotions and get self-critical and depressed. Or you don’t drink but instead, act like a dry drunk.

The point here is that all these come together to become the person you are. Your coping styles become your default when you become emotionally triggered, your sensitivities don’t go away and you easily fall back into your childhood feelings and coping styles, your hyper-vigilance doesn’t get turned off and you develop a generalized anxiety disorder, the decision you made to protect yourself from further trauma limits your adult life. You try your best to change your past, but find yourself falling back into the same potholes and behaviors as your parents despite your efforts.

Changing the pull of the past

The foundation that was laid down don’t have to be permanent and can be repaired. The coping styles you developed for a lot of good reasons don’t have to be your defaults now that you are an adult. The challenge for each of us to have ways of redoing and repairing our childhoods, repairing those cracks in the foundation, noticing the triggers, upgrading the software of our brains.

Ways Of Redoing And Repairing Our Childhoods, Repairing Those Cracks

Understand the impact

If you know why and how you became the person you are, you now have an opening to begin to change it. This is self-awareness, the counter to going on auto-pilot — that I do what I do because I do it. If you know you tend to walk on eggshells, can too easily flare up with anger, can withdraw or are sensitive to feeling overlooked or can become passive and feel entitled, you now have a key to unlock that door that is holding you back.

Change your reactions

Psycho-dynamic approaches help you do this by helping you unravel your past and gain insight into the sources of those old wounds. With this, you can begin to consciously separate the past from the present and then now make different and choices in the present. But you can also do this without all the drudging into the past. You can do it in the present, in your current relationships.

Here you notice and focus on your reactions or over-reactions. You use your self-awareness of your triggers, your wounds, and now proactively decide to do something different; this is what cognitive-behavioral therapy focuses on. Here you slow down and calm your automatic emotional reactions so that your rational adult brain can step in and help you see other options: that you need to speak up rather than accommodating; that you listen to your wants rather than your shoulds; that instead of being angry and rebellious and angry, you use your anger as information to let others know what you need; you move forward rather than retreating and avoiding, you tackle a problem on your own rather than waiting and expecting for others to take care of it for you.

You move against your grain; you do now what you couldn’t do as a child.

Take baby steps

And it’s important that you go slow; you don’t have to do the one-week makeover. Take small steps to redo your reactions: Start with those who don’t trigger you as strongly, whose reactions you care less about. The situation is not as important as your response. This is about rewiring your brain, stepping outside your comfort zone, building your self-confidence by finding out through experience that what your childhood brain is telling could happen doesn’t.

Decide on who you want to be

Often, we leave our childhoods only aware of negative space, who were don’t want to be: not the yelling mother, the drunk father. Instead go proactive, towards the positive, and as an adult define who you want to become based not on your fears, but your image of what a solid good adult can be. This is about defining your values, rather than just following the should s, about deciding what role models you want to follow or what role model you want to be for your own children, rather than just struggling to avoid becoming your own parents. Rather than thinking about how you need to be to avoid repeating history, instead think about the history you want to create, right here, today, right now.

Our childhoods are a part of us. While we can’t change the past, we can choose to look at it through a different lens; we can move forward in the present in spite of our childhood wounds, and in the process heal them. Step back, look at what you’ve walked out with, see what you’ve learned, decide what to keep and what to ignore (source). (source)

Conclusion:

While the experiences we have in childhood can greatly impact the rest of our lives, human beings are constantly in a process of development and change. If you are not happy with an aspect of your life that may be connected with your childhood, do not despair. Change can be hard, but it is almost always possible.

[paleorecipecookbook]

How to Use Positive Psychology to Improve Your Health

What if it’s chronic anger, frustration, anxiety, sadness, or grief? Do those emotions also affect your health? And how can you let go of them?

The short answer is yes—positive or negative, your emotions do impact your health. The good news is that through positive psychology, you can retrain your brain to follow healthier, more beneficial emotional patterns and learn to let go of negative ways of thinking.

Here’s how you can use positive psychology to rewire your brain and improve your mood and your health.

Anger, sadness, frustration, or grief can, if left unchecked, wreak havoc on your health. That’s where positive psychology can help. Check out this article for more about positive psychology and get tips on how to change your thinking. #healthylifestyle #wellness #changeagent

What Positive Psychology Is and What It Can Do for Your Well-Being

Positive psychology is an evidence-based area of psychology famously championed by Martin Seligman. While president of the American Psychological Association, Seligman publicized positive psychology as a way of joining the more clinical, conventional side of psychology—the part that focuses on what’s “wrong” with a patient—with the people-oriented side of the discipline. (1) According to Seligman:

The aim of Positive Psychology is to catalyze a change in psychology from a preoccupation only with repairing the worst things in life to also building the best qualities in life. (2) [emphasis added]

Seligman—and followers of the positive psychology movement—build those qualities through character strengths. Character strengths are patterns of behaving, thinking, and feeling that we all have within us.

Why You Should Know Your Character Strengths

Seligman, together with psychologist Chris Peterson, described 24 different character strengths in their exhaustive work, Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification. While the unique combination of character strengths differs from person to person, they can include traits like:

Creativity

Bravery

Fairness

Kindness

Humility

Gratitude

Hope

Zest

And many, many more

Your individual character strengths color how you see the world and how your brain processes new experiences. Understanding your personal strengths can give you a greater sense of authenticity, and using your strengths in your day-to-day life can help you feel more engaged, productive, and positive.

If you’re curious about your character strengths, I recommend taking this free survey from the VIA Institute on Character. If you need help, a health coach trained in positive psychology can assist as you identify your strengths and learn to embrace a more positive mindset.

Why It’s Worth It to Refocus Your Thoughts

Practicing positivity and embracing character strengths—even for a short period of time—have been shown to lessen feelings of depression and increase a sense of happiness. (3) Research also shows that happiness has a positive impact on your overall health and longevity. (4) Positivity has been linked to: (5)

Immune system health

Cardiovascular health

Lower levels of cortisol and a healthy hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis

Better wound healing

Potentially protective effects on telomeres, the end caps on your DNA that prevent damage during replication

Positive emotions also appear to be connected with a person’s ability to bounce back from a stressful event. Experiencing positivity—even from watching a short, happy film clip, for example—can undo some of the cardiovascular effects associated with stress and anxiety, like increased heart rate and blood pressure. (6) Imagine what long-term positivity could do to improve your body’s resilience.

The Driver behind Positive Psychology: Neuroplasticity

Neuroplasticity is the ability our brains have to change based on stimuli like thoughts, behaviors, and emotions. The structure of your brain and the synaptic connections between your neurons can grow stronger or weaker based on your habitual patterns. In their book, The Emotional Life of Your Brain, Richard J. Davidson, Ph.D., and Sharon Begley state that neuroplasticity explains why expert violinists show extra development in the brain regions that control dexterity, why cab drivers in London tend to have great spatial memory—and why your thought patterns and emotional habits can affect your health. (7, 8)

Positive psychology builds on that concept by encouraging you to switch your mindset. If you traditionally focus on the problems you’re facing or the things that feel “wrong” in your life, changing this one aspect of the way you interact with the world can make a difference.

Three Small Steps to Rewire Your Brain for Positivity

Sometimes, just taking one small step toward positivity is enough to make a difference in your life. With that in mind, here are three easy techniques you can try out today to change your focus.

1. Choose Your Words Carefully

If you’ve been stuck in a pessimistic pattern for a while, it will start to come out in the way you think and speak. You may tend to frame everything negatively, or you instantly consider what could go wrong in any given situation.

Think about a recent challenge you encountered, remember how you thought and spoke about it, and take a look at the table below. Which column did you fall under? Can you try changing your internal dialogue to a more positive view?

Pessimistic Thinking Optimistic Thinking Your problems are permanent.

“This is always going to be a problem for me.”

Your problems are temporary.

“This will pass.”

Your issues are pervasive.

“This is catastrophic.”

Your problems are local.

“This isn’t the end.”

Your problems are personal.

“It’s all my fault.”

Your problems aren’t personal.

“This is a common problem for many people.”

Your problems are uncontrollable.

“There’s nothing I can do.”

Your problems are at least somewhat controllable.

“One step at a time.”

Changing the way you think isn’t a simple endeavor—but it’s well worth the effort. Mindfulness can help you challenge negative thoughts as they occur to you.

Being mindful means you’re aware of your body, your sensations, your thoughts, and your feelings as they occur. Mindfulness can improve your positive emotions while lessening feelings of negativity or stress. (9) The practice also helps you feel more compassionate—toward others and yourself. (10)

For tips on how to start practicing mindfulness, check out my article “How to Avoid a Near-Life Experience.”

2. Remember Your Past Wins

Positive psychology is a success-focused movement. Instead of thinking about all of the things that could you wrong in your current situation, you focus on what could go right—and you develop a clear plan to help you reach that success.

One of the best ways to do this is by thinking about a past success you enjoyed. It could be a promotion you earned at work, a time you overcame a fear or apprehension, or the last time you felt healthy and fulfilled. With that memory in mind, ask yourself:

What led to your success?

What did you learn?

Who helped you reach your goal?

What resources did you use back then, and can you use them again?

Often times, the same strategies that worked for us in the past can work for us again. Even if your past success doesn’t directly apply to your current situation, giving yourself credit for a time when you overcame obstacles to reach your goal can motivate you to keep trying now.

3. Try a Happiness Intervention

A happiness intervention is a simple writing exercise that can be helpful if you’re struggling with something that’s particularly challenging. It’s a great way to stop negative thoughts from taking over and reorient yourself toward positivity. Here’s how to do it—and be sure to get a pen and paper ready, as you’ll be writing by hand for this.

Think about what your life looks like several years in the future. Imagine yourself as reasonably successful. You’ve accomplished some of your big goals, and your life has improved.

Set a timer for five minutes and write about your future life until your time is up. Don’t worry about grammar, punctuation, or sloppy handwriting. Just get as many details down as possible in the given timeframe.

After you’re done, take a look at what you’ve written. How do you feel now? Did you learn anything about the challenges you’re currently facing? Do you feel motivated to take any small steps now to get to the future you wrote about?

If you enjoyed that happiness intervention, there’s no need to stop there. Try one of these techniques:

Write down three things that went well every day for one week. Be sure to note the reasons they went well too.

Determine your top five signature character strengths. Over the course of a week, try to use each strength in a new way every day. Record your results.

Write a thank-you letter. Take time to express gratitude to a friend or family member who helped you in the past.

The more often you complete a happiness intervention, the more effective it will be for you.

Need Help? Work with a Health Coach

If you’ve given these techniques a try to no avail or you’re fighting against years of negative habits, it may be time to work with a health coach.

A health coach can act as a guide as you learn how to reframe your thoughts and adopt a different mindset. And that mindframe switch can make a huge difference in your health and happiness. That’s why, in the ADAPT Health Coach Training Program, all of our health coach graduates are trained in positive psychology and character strengths.

Even if you’re facing serious negativity, a health coach trained in positive psychology can help reorient you toward a more success-focused conversation.

Now, I’d like to hear from you. Have you tried using positive psychology before? Do you plan on implementing any of these tips in your daily life? Leave a comment and let me know!

The post How to Use Positive Psychology to Improve Your Health appeared first on Chris Kresser.

Source: http://chriskresser.com December 05, 2018 at 01:50AM

[windwardstar]

Silent Feathers

Part 2 of your (super early) b-day present @writer-and-artist27

(8k, Naruto SI Fanfic. Also a Sea and Stars Fanfic.)

There are somethings that scar the mind forever, events that rewire the brain and affect its very structure. Soul scars I had called them. Something, that like the very essence of who a person was, would carry over across lifetimes.

Turned out I was right.

Not that it made me feel any better, not when I came to consciousness unable to move, confined, surrounded by liquid I couldn’t escape from. Some things transferred over apparently, and my hypersensitivity to touch and fear of confinement counted.

It didn’t take long for me to meltdown.

I was still autistic. I was still me.

It didn’t take long for me to figure out where I was, what was going on, that instead of simply disappearing into the entropy of the universe, I was being reborn, flesh and blood, with all my memories intact. I’d survived so much shit in my life, apparently survival was just written into my soul as well. Not even death could really kill me.

Fortunately the inside of a womb was blessedly free of loud noises and bright lights. But the sense of liquid touching me, constant, incessant, was too much. The feel of something new too, energy flowing through my body like electricity. It was the energy from when I was manic, but it was constant, tangible, and never went away, even when I was so exhausted I couldn’t stay awake.

I stimmed, in what ways my developing fetus of a body allowed me, and paid as much attention to the outside world as I could. My new parents spoke to me frequently, and something about growing a new brain made my mind exceptionally good at figuring out what they spoke.

Ah, to have the neuroplasticity and language acquisition skills of an infant. I was learning Japanese! At least they provided me with the human interaction required to keep my solitary confinement from being isolation.

I still melted down. I still kicked and squirmed and cried. All things babies were supposed to do, so at least I didn’t face the ableism I had as an adult in my previous life.

At least my parents found it amusing. “Wow! Such a strong kicker! You could grow up and be a ninja!” they’d say when I flailed my arms and poked back when they poked me.

At least all the meltdowns made me exhausted so I slept. I think they appreciated that. When I went still and didn’t kick internal organs. It let them rest.

At least their voices and excitement and constant talking to me kept me up to day on my impending arrival. I’m not sure who was more excited for me to be born, me, or them.

I do have to say, their sheer joy at my existence, the knowledge I was loved already, it was healing. I loved them back, fiercely,  the moment their blurry blurry faces came into my existence.

They named me Otoha. They were Haha and Chichi, mom and dad. Our last name was Kuroki. They owned a bookstore. Kuroki Books. (I read everything I could and felt very much like Matilda.)

They taught me a lot more words after that. And I learned them, my brain soaking up everything like a sponge. It was a dream come true. I’d be able to learn everything.

I already knew how a lot of the world worked, and I was still me. I was also Otoha, loved child of Haha and Chichi. I knew if I had soiled my diaper or was hungry my parents would take care of me. I knew that. They loved me and were attentive. So I didn’t make much of a fuss. I didn’t get scared when they left me alone. I pointed when I needed something. I didn’t make them play fetch while I learned about gravity and object permanence.

Somehow though, playing peekaboo is always fun. It doesn’t matter if you’re the baby. Anyone who plays with you, they’re excited, and happy. It was an odd experiment, a sociologists dream, of being a baby and seeing how people suddenly become softer at my presence, where stern old men in green vests break into smiles and funny faces when noone but me can see.

Overall, I was a pretty calm baby. I let them sleep. Through the night. They were excited about that. Everyone else was really jealous. But hey, it was the least I could do when they took care of my every need, and as a baby, I wasn’t capable of doing it myself.

Other things they were proud of: I learned to sit up, crawl, and walk early. I listened when people told me things. I ate my food - when I wasn’t be incredibly picky and finickey, but I loved my vegetables. I even ate carrots! I loved carrots! Nobody loved carrots!

Things that worried them though: I babbled, I picked up words and repeated them, and did so as soon as I could get my mouth to cooperate, but surrounded by a sensation I hadn’t habituated to, I was nearly nonverbal. I rarely spoke. I stimmed. And I remained quiet. And they worried. When I didn’t keep up with my peers in speaking, when I continued to listen, but not respond, only speaking nonsense syllables and sounds, they worried.

I told them not to, that sometimes it was just hard, but they worried.

Still, I excelled in other areas. My balance and hand-eye coordination was something I had to relearn, but with the patience of an already adult mind, I mastered walking and running and jumping and climbing. The last two made Haha and Chichi get really worried about me, constantly trying to keep me from hurting myself, but I wanted to learn.

The green vests and black and navy uniforms. The headbands with a metal brace and a leaf on them. I knew what those meant. And I knew where it meant I was. Sometimes Haha and Chichi would put them on and disappear for a while, but one of them always remained at home.

Five years of my previous life had been steeped in the Naruto Universe thanks to my best friend. I didn’t know everything, and there was a ton I didn’t know or understand, but I knew enough.

I knew enough to know the ceaseless current of energy running through my body was chakra. That I was in Konoha. That regardless of how I ended up here, I had the knowledge, and thus the obligation, to change things for the better.

I just had to figure out when I was. And what version.

-------

Unlike with my old body, my new one wasn’t disabled by genetics. I won the genetic lottery this time around. I could run, I could climb, I could swim, I could skip, I could tumble and fight. I could do anything I wanted.

I could be a ninja.

Which, if I were to help change things for the better, I’d need to be anyway.

I was lucky, I guess, that my new parents were ninja. I was super lucky that Haha as a kunoichi had been trained how to use fans. In my last life, they had been a special interest. In this life, they still were. And I got to learn how to fight with them! Tessenjutsu? Hell yeah!

Anyway, having ninja parents gave me a headstart on everything. And with my desire to learn? Well, I guess I became another one of those child geniuses who would garner attention.

So, that was how I ended up handing my parents the academy entrance form with everything already filled out.

(My handwriting was so much better this time round! Lucky me!)

I was young, five, but it was the same age I had entered kindergarten in my other life, and unlike last time, I knew how to spell my name. And well, basically a lot more things. I was also more than prepared.

So, that was how I, Otoha Kuroki, walked in for my first day at school. Soft shirt, stretchy pants, and my notebook in my arms because my backpack was filled with books. (At least the nice thing about my parents owning a bookstore was they knew where to get new ones, and so long as I didn’t break the spine, they could sell the books after I finished reading them. I think they ended up buying and selling used books as well to keep up with my reading.)

I’d always been called a genius, always been considered smart, so when I effortlessly passed every test with flying colors, I simply looked to fly higher.

I wanted to learn though. Which was why I remained in class while the other “natural geniuses” quickly appeared and graduated. I think I saw his white hair once? I’m not really sure. People talked about him, but I didn’t pay that much attention. I was a little busy reading. Anyway, I’m pretty sure that was the ever famous and popular Kakashi Hatake.

Still, there was only so long the academy could entertain me, and only so long I could put off graduation when every adult said I was ready. And, well, I mean, when I purposefully did the math and got just enough questions wrong on the final graduation tests to keep myself from graduating so I could keep studying… well, it wasn’t a popular decision and everyone knew what was happening.

I’m pretty sure they decided I’d graduate before I did. I was too smart. I was too skilled. I was wasting my talent. The village was wasting a valuable resource by letting me remain in the academy. My parents were urging me to pursue things that would challenge me. Haha had an anbu tattoo on her arm, so she knew a thing about ambition and challenge.

Which, I guess means I shouldn’t have been surprised when ANBU showed an interest. And it made sense. I was exceptional, and I wasn’t tied to any clans or village powers. I had been trained since birth by a -possibly retired- ANBU agent. Otoha Kuroki was a ripe plum for the picking.

As for my genin team? Well, I met them after classes ended for the day. We were in different years, but once we became genin, it didn’t matter. We were a team. And I had to meet them, and our Jonin Sensei.

So, I picked up my books and my fan - this one was metal and lace, the perfect combination of fashion and function. It also made a really really lovely sound when I opened and closed it. It was by far my favorite. And the fact I had learned nature manipulation - mine happened to be wind- to make the edge sharp enough to give people a killer papercut with just a paper fan… well. I was a huge fan of fans.

“The silent shinobi, Otoha Kuroki,” one of my teammates said, his voice clearly meant to mock me.

Shinobi? Bah. I was gonna be an airbender. A mini Avatar Kyoshi - except with just wind… a second elemental manipulation much less a third or fourth.. Yeah, not gonna happen.  So I was more like a nonbinary Kyoshi Warrior who could airbend. Ok really, there’s not that good enough of an analogy. I was a shinobi trained in tessenjutsu with a wind nature manipulation.

(And I may have gone for another fan wielding person as a favorite echolalia. Get off the roof, get off the roof, get off the roof. )

I closed my fan, slipping it into my pocket and jumped down from the roof of the building to meet my new teammate. Katsuo Uchiha. 9 years old. Top of his class, except he really wasn’t. He was good at Taijutsu and Ninjutsu, but he had passed most of his written exams by copying off others. Still, at least when we took the Chunin Exam I could count on him to get the information.

Our third teammate arrived shortly after that, without any quippy comment, just silent respect. Hibiki Hyuga, 8 years old, was a branch house member and as obedient in school as he was expected to be towards the main house members. He had earned his exam scores. All of them.

And then there was me. Otoha Kuroki. 7 years old. Technically top of the class, and functionally mute. I could talk, sometimes, but it was easiest just to let people think I couldn’t. They tended to react better when it was an “all the time” thing than a “some of the time” thing.

Our team was loaded. If someone wanted to stack the deck during a chunin exam. Well, our team would do it. An Uchiha with their sharingan (which had developed early for reasons I immediately wanted to punch someone’s lights out for) and a Hyuga with the byakugan. And then a clanless ninja who wore glasses. Guess someone had to pick up the slack for the great eyesight. But hey, I could hold them onto my face with chakra via the leaf trick!

“Oh good, you’re all here!” A loud boisterous voice called out, right as a burst of smoke made me hide my nose in my shirt collar. Our sensei, Akemi Sarutobi, appeared in the space between my two teammates, slamming her hands down on each of their shoulders. “We need to get to know each other, so we’re gonna have a chat.” She grinned, and turned her head to look at my two very unimpressed teammates. “I need coffee. Shall we?”

All three of us stared at her. She winked at me.

“Nagareboshi Cafe,” she said, “don’t be late,” and disappeared in another puff of smoke and burst of chakra.

-----

While Kastuo Uchiha took off, loudly proclaiming he would get there first, I simply turned and ran. Easily crossing the streets and dodging through the crowd in a game I had made up before the academy as training, I reached the cafe before either of my teammates. Although that was likely because I knew the cafe and I’m not sure either of them did.

So, I perched on a roof across the street, in clear view of the table Akemi-Sensei had claimed, and waited to see who arrived. And I pulled my fan out, stimming with it.

Sck schk schk schk

My Hyuga teammate arrived soon after I did, politely asking for directions and bowing when he received them. The Uchiha arrived long enough after that I had considered simply going in without waiting to see if he made it.

I hopped off the roof the moment his posture shifted and he noticed the cafe with the large sign out front.

“Next time you get lost, Katsuo, ask for directions. Getting help isn’t weakness,” Akemi-Sensei said as we entered. “And Otoha, you may be good at gathering information, but you need to learn to share it with your allies. Intel does nothing if the people who need it don’t have it.”

I nodded, and sat down at the table in the spot between sensei and Hibiki.

“You are all excellent shinobi on your own,” Akemi-Sensei said, as she handed out the menus. “But you are on a team now. You have missions. You need to learn to work together and use your skills for the benefit of all.”

She paused as the waitress came over, taking our orders. I pointed at the menu to communicate, and the others spoke. Once our drinks, and treats, arrived, (green tea and strawberry mochi for me) our sensei pulled out files and paper.

“These are your files,” she said, handing one to each of us, “I want you to look at them, recognize your strengths and weaknesses, then tell me how you can work together as a team.”

While the pianist, Tomoko, the daughter of the cafe owners, played in the background, and her chakra flared in my peripheral senses, I opened my file. That friendship was a previous life. This life was written down on paper right in front of me.

Otoha Kuroki

I skimmed over my height and weight. I was small for my age. Teeny tiny. At least puberty promised a growth spurt in a few years. But both my parents were short in this life as well, so genetics meant my growth spurt didn’t promise too much.

My stats were… well, I thought I’d be better. But I guess talent was relative. Compared to academy students, I was great. Compared to the rest of the shinobi, I was well, a genin. My parent had shinobi, which had given me more of an advantage than civilian kids. I’d been a natural at manipulating chakra, thanks to being hypersensitive to it and everything else, but I was small. My strength and stamina were abysmal. I was fast, but again, speed was relative. I was fast for a seven year old, but an adult could easily run circles around me.

Ninjutsu: 3. Thanks to my ability to do wind release no doubt. Taijutsu: 2.5 Thanks to applying myself and getting an early start. My tessenjutsu also likely bumped up this score.

Genjutsu: 2. That probably should have actually been lower. My chakra control was good, but I still had the habit of accidentally dispelling my own genjutsu.

Intelligence: 4.  Thanks, Brain.

Strength: 1 But hey, I could do a pull-up. I could do a lot of them actually. Woo ninja muscles.

Speed: 2.  Just wait until I get longer legs.

Stamina: 1.5 It was probably realistically higher, I just went through more of my chakra than others having meltdowns. But, thankfully those got fewer the older I got.

Hand Signs: 3. Well, at least stimming by making them helped me somewhere.

Total: 19

But stats didn’t show the whole picture. They didn’t explain why I had the scores I did. They didn’t cover the ability to retain and recall anything I read or saw or heard. They didn’t cover my prodigic chakra control. They didn’t cover my personality. They didn’t cover my ability to cope.

The notes that followed it did. They read like what I’d imagine a CIA file would, with lines blacked out and all that. Except nothing was actually blacked out.

It ran down a list of observations that clearly hadn’t been made solely by my academy instructors. They had the notes from my academy instructors, things they would have easily gathered by observing me in class and reading my exams.

The rest, they were from other sources. Someone, or many someones, had been observing me. A quick scan of the area, searching for any chakra flares didn’t turn up anyone suspicious, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there. After all, if they were careless enough to be caught by a kid, they weren’t very good.

It covered my independent studies. My breakthrough on applying my nature manipulation to senbon, kunai, and fans. In learning a few wind release jutsu. The hours I had spent after school and homework practicing my tessenjutsu.

A handful of words were scattered about. Key words. Things they were looking for in potential recruits. Resolve. Determination. Adaptability. Skilled. Talent. Sensor. Observant. Dedication. Discipline. Ingenuity. Innovative. Superior Memory. Resiliency. Things that would make me an exceptional shinobi.  Things that showed I was already able to cope with the violence and death that came with being a shinobi. Which was half just living for two decades in my old life in literal hell, and half having been given access to actual therapy. Mental Health. It’s Important.

It didn’t take me long to read through it, and I looked up at my Jonin-Sensei while my teammates finished looking over theirs so we could swap.

She was buff, and wore her sleeves rolled up to her elbows. Headband over her bicep. Her spiky brown hair was short, and her eyes watched all three of us for reactions.

So, this was part of the test too.

I gave a small smirk once she locked eyes with me. I know. Sensei gave me a small nod and took another sip of her coffee.

Already aware of my strengths and weaknesses, I closed the file before I leaned back and observed the room.

Tomoko, the pianist, was effortlessly playing the music by memory, and the tune tripped something in my mind, some forgotten song I’d known once upon a time. Vy, the person she had been in a previous life, had had widely different tastes in music than I did. The song she played was likely from some video game I had never played or anime I never watched but had heard clips from.

I shook the thought from my mind and resumed my study of the room, and my teammates.

Katsuo stared at his file, brow knit together and sharingan spinning. He was trying real hard to figure it out.

Look beneath the underneath.

At least he had figured out there was something more to see.

Hibiki meanwhile was staring at me. “Uh, would you like to trade files?” he asked.

I slid mine across to him. It was definitely one way to gather information, and share it.

“Wait, are you allowed to do that? Sensei!”

“Katsuo,” I said, and both my teammates turned to me. “This is about information. We have it. We share it. We don’t know each other, so this is how we learn to work as a team.” We needed to know each other’s strengths and weaknesses in order to learn how we worked together.

“I was not aware you could talk,” Hibiki said, glancing up from my file.

“That is why we are sharing files,” I said, and glanced down at Hibiki’s file.

His intelligence and Taijutsu stood at a solid three, the rest of his stats were solid if slightly lower. What the stat block didn’t cover was his byakugan and ability to see the chakra system, to target the points. He could be more accurate than I could be with attacks. And he didn’t need a weapon to do it. The Gentle Fist Style was powerful.

“Katsuo,” I said, and held out the file to switch.

“You’re done already?” Hibiki asked.

“Perfect Memory,” I quoted from my file, and traded.

Katsuo Uchiha. His Ninjutsu was a 4. His taijutsu and genjutsu were both a 3. His stamina was a 3.5. His Hand Signs sat at a respectable 2.5. His intelligence was a 1.5. His speed and strength were low as well. But it still resulted in the highest total out of our group.

I had definitely underestimated him.

“Wow, Hibiki, your scores suuuuuuuck!” Katsuo said.

Well, tact was definitely not one of his skills.

“The total is only one point lower than yours,” I said, and flipped to the notes on his.

Sharingan. He had activated it a year ago, an in the time since then had collected an impressive list of jutsu. He had fire release. He was even more of a physical threat than Hibiki.

I was, well, I wasn't a clan kid. I didn’t have any kekkei genkai that made me stand out from the crowd with special abilities nobody else had. Theoretically, both my teammates could learn everything I could do. Hell, if we sparred enough Katsuo was likely to pick up my tessenjutsu. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t a threat. I had been trained by my parents, one of which who had definitely belonged to ANBU at some point.

But whatever those additional notes had been for, Katsuo wasn’t a good fit. He was well, loud and obvious. The notes had focused on stealth and well, not being obvious.

Hibiki wasn’t a good fit either. His personality was a little too, well, he was a doormat.

Neither of them had the additional, out of classroom notes. Nothing that couldn’t have been observed from the academy.

So, whatever the extra thing I was meant to find was only for me. My scores were the lowest, and frankly on paper I didn’t look like much of anything. I was firmly in the middle in terms of being a shinobi. But my other skills, the ones that made me stand apart. Those were the same things somebody was looking for.

I kept that bit to myself though, and shared the rest with the class.

We’d work well together. Assuming our personalities didn’t clash.

Chapter 2:

I didn’t return to Nagareboshi Cafe for a while after that. I focused on training. I did my mission. I pushed myself, I tried to find as many applications for wind release as a I could. And with a whole slew of fantasy series to pull from, I made a pretty good substitute for an airbender.

I also learned who had been watching me and what my mysterious tests over the previous months were for: ANBU. Of course, I wasn’t even eight yet. So they just watched me. And if I wanted to join them, I needed to impress them.

But, until then, I went on missions with my team and Akemi-sensei. There was a Chunin exam six months after our graduation, and while it was certainly unusual for a genin team to be entered into one that close to their graduation, well, it wasn’t unheard of. And also? We were ready.

And with tensions rising between the nations, well, Konoha wanted to appear strong. So, they allowed us. Genin, fresh out of the academy, willing and able to pass the chunin exam.

My team demolished the tests. I think I unnerved some of the people, going in knowing the tricks for the written exam. I didn’t get nervous. I didn’t show any confusion. Just calm, quiet, patience as I waited for my team members to do the work.

I also somehow got super lucky by being placed right next to one of the plants. Guess the universe decided it was already going to be a cake walk so they just gave up.

The big free for all battle survival test in the field thing, we crushed that too. It was significantly harder than going in already knowing the trick for the written test, but well, this was about skills we already had.

It was funny, I thought, as I sat watch in another village. I knew basically nothing about them, only what I had been taught in the academy. That was at least a little interesting for me. The maladaptive parts of my brain, the ones that made me hyper aware of my surroundings, made me react to any threat before I even was consciously aware of it, they made me excel.

PTSD was a survival mechanism after all. And I was right back in the environment it had rewritten my brain to survive.

Well, at least I didn’t have to worry about developing it in the field. And I’d already had two decades worth of experience coping with it, on top of learning in the ninja world. And hey, even though I’d had plenty of near death experiences in my past life, I’d actually died once, so that’s one point of experience I’m not sure too many other ninja had.

But despite my thoughts and morbid humor, I came out of the experience with a nice green flak jacket. Its weight was wonderful. Super great for pressure stimming. And making my chest flat.

I may have spent more time than anyone who wasn’t some middle school protagonist staring at myself in the mirror after that. Brown hair cut short and messy, brown eyes, glasses, and the standard shinobi uniform. I looked perfectly androgynous.

And then, I got stuck with paperwork. Which was perfectly fine with me. As Chunin Otoha Kuroki, I worked in the administrative building filling out forms, filing paperwork, generally navigating the maze of bureaucracy. I think they started liking me. I was always happy to do their paperwork. (Reading all those thing, I learned a lot. A lot of things they probably shouldn’t have let me access, but when you volunteer to do someone's paperwork they’ve put off for a month? Well, let’s just say sometimes clearance levels don’t matter.)

But with a war brewing, Konoha wouldn’t let one of their brightest minds squalor away helping make sure all the triplicate forms were actually filled out in triplicate. No.

They put me to work. I went into the field. They sent shinobi- chunin- to the borders as hostilities ramped up. I knew these skirmishes and fights would eventually result in the Third Shinobi War and I tried to get as much information as I could back to Konoha in hopes maybe someone somewhere who had died in a version I wasn’t there could live.

Somehow I just ended up with a reputation for knowing things. For learning things. I had an entire elaborate system for writing my notes in a code nobody could crack. (Did I mention English isn’t even a language in Naruto Land?) I picked up new skills and worked on creating my own.

After all, I had plenty of things in fiction to inspire me. They’d all required some kind of magic, and well, now that I had ninja-magic-bullshit powers, I could take a stab at them.

Wind release? As I said, I made a pretty good impression of an airbender. While I couldn’t technically fly, I could definitely glide with style. At least once I recreated Aang’s glider. With metal reinforcements. Temari and her fans in canon had proved the theory worked in this world. Even if she probably wouldn’t be born for another few years.

It took a bit to figure out how to make it work, and the design definitely needed more work. Not being able to use my hands was kind of a big drawback (I attempted figuring out sealless jutsu but some things you just can’t work around). But I did have one thing they probably didn’t: the knowledge of how to make things fly. I’d spent a quarter of a century in a world that had long since mastered airplanes and was working on space travel. And, unlike most people, was a nerd and knew seemingly useless things, like how to make a glider.

Turns out that knowledge wasn’t actually useless.

I could fly. Go me!

I pushed my wind release skills as far as I could, and both my mother and my fans helped tremendously in it. I could shield myself with wind from oncoming projectiles. I could clear smoke and fog. I could manipulate the air currents around me. And I could sharpen the tip of a senbon enough I could send it through the trunk of a tree and out the other side. Which was great, because as well as allowing me to play a game of pickup sticks, I could fit a whole lot more of them in a weapons pouch than kunai.

And that was all before war officially broke out.

When it did?

Being able to fly wasn’t enough. So I picked up fuinjutsu. I made exploding tags. I made bombs. I sealed them inside scrolled and released dozens and hundreds at a time. I did my best impersonation of a cactuar with 1000 needles. I moved the ninja world into modern warfare and conducted aerial bombing (ok not really, they needed more than just a single person for that). At least the enemy didn’t have anti-aircraft missiles.

I technically created a mini bag-of-holding. Well, scroll of holding. Technically it just let me store shit in seals and wasn’t an endless alternate dimension but well, I still called it that. Oh? Also? They don’t rip a hole in the fabric of the universe if you stick em inside each other. I had a certain Keisuke Gekko to thank for the inspiration to create one.

But it also allowed me to do things like pick up corpses and transport them back to ANBU R&D for study. Often a lot of corpses my team and I had been sent to kill. Enemies who posed a greater threat because they possessed unique abilities.

That got me recruited into ANBU after years of being watched, which was how the owl (that’s me!) ran into the snake.

That’s right. I landed my ass in Orochimaru’s good graces. He liked me. Eeeeee yelch.  

And, to make things worse, I ended up working with him.

Otoha Kuroki, airbender impersonator, organ donor courier, Orochimaru’s lab assistant.

Fortunately, Orochimaru liked me for my mind, not my body. So I was safe. Relatively. Mostly. Not really. It was fucking Orochimaru. Nobody who was anywhere near him was safe.

Well, at least the position allowed me to do one thing I knew needed to be done: bring Orochimaru down.

I knew how he worked. I knew not to trust him. I knew not to be blinded by the progress he was making and everything.

And I knew to ensure nothing happened to me, I needed to become Otoha Kuroki again. I needed to become someone who would be missed if they went missing. So, I took extra shifts in the administration building, I studied while I manned the counter at my parents bookstore.

I braved the one thing I had avoided, inserting myself into the lives my friends from another life had established here, without me. And I wasn’t even doing it because they were once my friends. It was because of the people she knew in this life.

Keisuke Gekko. Student of Minato Namikaze. Soon to be host to Isobu if everything went as it did in the fanfiction we had written so many years ago.

I shook my head and stared at the two girls hugging each other and laughing inside the Nagareboshi Cafe. They were happy. Things were better. They had made things better. And what had I done? Created a new way to kill people? Helped Orochimaru with his experiments? I was responsible for so many of the heartbreaks she was going to face. Obito would die in a few months, get captured by Madara.

She likely would have no idea who I was. What was I to say? “Hello Keisuke Gekko, I’m your best friend, but you don’t remember me.” And to Tomoko? She was created before I really became friends with Vy. “Hello, Tomoko, I know you have no idea who I am, but I was friends with Vy, a Vy who didn’t die and instead read this fanfiction of a story I created with a version of Kei named Lang who didn’t die.”

Yeah. That would go great. Mostly because they’d want to know more. Or they’d hate me. Hate me for all the pain I’d already put them through and all the pain I knew they’d end up with in the future.

Kei swore Kishi’s name when something bad happened from canon. Her entire life. I was responsible for that. I wasn’t really any better than Orochimaru was. Sure, I hadn’t thought the creations on a page I wrote with my best friend were real people, but they were real in my head. I was worse than Orochimaru.

I was the very god I called an asshole.

Everything happens for a reason. Yeah. And that reason is I’m a fucking dick. “It’s all for the story.” I was a hypocrite that’s what I was.

Well, I needed the protection of  Minato Namikaze because if I was going to survive Orochimaru, I needed allies strong enough to cause a riot if I went missing.

I rolled my shoulders and stuck my hands in the pockets of my black ninja pants, running my thumb over the butt end of my fan for the tactile sensation. I clicked my teeth.

Well, if I was going to become friends with the self insert version of my best friend in a fanfiction I wrote with her, the least I could do was bring a book.

So of course I went for another layer of “this is just so many levels of meta” and brought her a travel book for Mount Soragami, Sorayama-no-sato and the Chinatsugumi.  Plus side to my parents owning a bookstore I guess. It was an old copy of mine, one I had read through a million times and written so many notes in English in the margins, desperately missing the connections from my old life.

And now, here they were, in front of me, just a few steps away, inside the building, the cafe, the nagareboshi cafe, the cafe where Tomoko worked. And I was avoiding actually going inside by repeatedly thinking the same thing.

Ugh. My hands wanted to hold the fan and flip them open and shut. I wanted to get lost in that sound.

So many people whose lives I wanted to be a part of but couldn’t. It wasn’t my place.

Maybe it would be better if I did what I had to, and let whatever happened to me happen. Aaaaand I was doing that thing again where I made my chakra functionally undetectable, pulling it back within myself. Shrinking. Hiding.

No self. We gotta do this. Slimy snake-man is going down and you gotta be around long enough to see it happen.

Why was this scaring me more than mother-fucking Orochimaru?

Whatever my chakra was doing, well, it was certainly enough to get Kei’s attention. Her own chakra laid over the area, heavy like a mist, and I shook the nerves out of my arms. Her sense was like radar, pinging off things and giving her information. Mine was more like well, sitting in a field and watching fireflies. A shark, smelling blood in the water. A ship looking for the lighthouse.

Aaaaaaaa. I was such a coward.

Yup. This was why I had spent a decade of my new life avoiding the versions of my friends that existed.

I took out a slip of paper and wrote a quick note: Hello, Keisuke Gekko. My name is Otoha Kuroki. Come visit me at the Kuroki Bookstore.

Well, I was always better at writing things down than saying them. Slipping it into the back of the book, I determinedly walked forward.

The door is a pull. The door is a pull.

Ok, managed that. Now, for the hard part.

Tomoko and Kei sat at the piano, talking over something I couldn't quite make out. The extra noise from the music made it hard and I didn’t feel like staring long enough to read their lips. Yeah, that thing I said about soul scars? Social Anxiety was still a thing. And in this life it applied to people it hadn’t in the previous one.

But really? There really isn’t any protocol for walking up to a person as a complete stranger and handing them a book revealing you’re a botched reincarnation as well. Like, there simply weren’t enough cases for a protocol to be a thing.

Ugh. Why couldn’t there be a socially acceptable script for this.

Fortify, Otoha. Fortify. You got this.

And Kei went to go get something. Ok. I could do Tomoko alone. I could do that.

I walked right up to Tomoko and I probably intimidated her a bit, or a lot. I mean, I was short and lean, but I was also a Shinobi in a green vest staring very intently at her. My deer-in-the-headlights look always came off as more a if-you-cross-me-I-will-murder-you look so yeah. Useful in the field, not so much when trying not to scare the living daylights out of a civilian pianist. Killing intent, it was killer.

“Could you please give this to Kei,” I said, and shoved the book into her hands. Without another word I ninja-ran-away.

Heart beating a million miles an hour, I ended up back in my parents bookstore.

“Otoha, honey, are you ok? Is something wrong?” Haha asked as I stumbled into a shelf and knocked the display down.

“I’m fine,” I called out, hands shaking, voice shaking.

What a mess I was.

“Ok, well, let me know if you need anything, I’m going to be in the back.”

“Will do, mom.”

At least there were unequivocally good things in this life, and a loving family was one of them.

Resetting the display was a nice distraction, and by the time I was done setting up the travel guides my nerves had calmed down. Which meant all that was left was to take advantage of my long weekend off and man the counter. Wait for Kei.

Yep. Not hard at all. I had been on tougher missions. Longer stake outs. Worse conditions.

Did I mention I was nervous?

Maybe I should have just given her a book titled: How To Tell Your Friend You’re Reincarnated Too.

I pulled out my fuinjutsu supplies and started making exploding tags and smoke tags and basically anything else that let me fall into a zone of repeating the same strokes over and over and over again. At least my habit for making them when I got nervous, and getting nervous a lot, meant that I always had plenty on hand.

I was a better Tenten than Tenten. Well, except for the fact she could fight with practically any weapon and utilized wire and string. So I wasn’t really her at all. I just stored a lot of senbon and exploding tags in my scroll of holding and was able to release them a whole butload at a time.

I spread out a large piece of paper over the counter top and formed a hand seal. Wind Release: Paper Cutting Jutsu. And just like that I turned the air into my scissors, cutting the paper into smaller tag sized pieces.

That had taken a while to learn. Learning to make razor wind? Easy enough. It was one of the earlier stages of my wind release stuff. But making it precise enough I could cut paper cleanly and accurately? Well, let’s just say I made a lot of confetti. Which was also a pretty good thing to unseal in a burst and confuse your opponent while you escaped, or shanked them in the neck.

I was still working on making it strong enough to turn a log into splinters. Unsealing Jutsu: Splinter Confetti. That’s what I was gonna call it when I unsealed all the results of my attempts to do so.

And the ability to cut people to shreds with a garbage disposal made of air? Well, that sounded pretty useful too. Probably wasn’t going to store shredded people in a thing to unseal later. Although, now that I thought of it, that would probably freak some people out.  Unsealing Technique: Flesh Confetti. Yeah… Might be a viable tactic. I’ll have to get back to you on that.

And it was about that time that Kei walked in.

“Kuroki-san?” Kei asked.

Yeah. That’s. Yeah. Nope. My mouth wasn’t working. At least I didn’t duck behind the counter? Yet. My chakra though? Yeah, that was doing it’s best to retreat in on itself. Kei’s stare. That was still the same. Chuckling nervously, I cleaned up the paper in front of me. Wouldn’t do to have Kei’s stare make it spontaneously catch fire.

“Kuroki-san?” she asked again.

Oh. Right. I’d never actually introduced myself to her. I’d been too busy hiding. Hehe.

“Uh,” I said, desperately searching for something to say, lifting an ink stained left hand to wave. “Uh, hi, Lang Lang.”

Yeah. That made Kei stare at me funny. But the wheels in her head were turning. I mean, there were only so many people who would know who the Chinatsugumi really were and who had called her Lang Lang, so that narrowed down … I hadn’t actually told her who I was.

She figured it out thought. “Os?”

“Yeah,” I breathed out. And like that the anxiety fluttered away, replaced by happy smiling me. “Looks like I’m not in Kansas anymore.” And another nervous chuckle. Heh.

“Must've been some tornado that dropped you here,” Kei responded dryly.

I shrugged. “Well, you know, my tea kettle sounded like the siren so I didn’t notice it.” With all that out of the way, I took a deep breath, set my shoulders, and continued on with the metaphor. “Anyway, I need some help dropping a house on a wicked witch.”

And what else was I supposed to say “we represent the anbu lab, the anbu lab, the anbu lab, we represent the anbu lab and welcome you to konoha?” I may have hummed it. And then I vaulted over the counter and squished Kei in the biggest hugs of all hugs to make up for all the time we had missed. I’m pretty sure the word ‘glomp’ applied. And I was still short enough for her to use my head as an armrest. Lovely.

Kei smirked. “So, what took you so long to find me?”

I’ve been watching you since I realized I was in a timeline you existed but I avoided you because reasons? Yeah, that’d go over swimmingly. So I skipped over that and gave a different excuse, breaking off the hug to scratch the back of my head. “Oh, you know, being a ninja, becoming a chunin, becoming an airbender, joining ANBU, getting a tattoo, getting assigned to be Orochimaru’s lab assistant…”

One of these is not like the other, one of these just doesn’t belong.

Kei visibly paled at the mention of Orochimaru’s name.

Yeah, I had expected that. Even as the famed Tidal Blade she was still scared shitless of him. And that was a good decade off for her. Right now, she was just a girl who was really good with a sword.

And I was going to be working alongside him for the foreseeable future. Lucky me.

“Soo…” I said, “I obviously need help to not get all disappeared. And someone to give all the dirt I dig up to.”

“Orochimaru,” Kei said.

I nodded. “Super creepy snake guy. That Orochimaru, in case there was another one running around who also ran human experiments in an ANBU basement.”

Error message 404 page not found. Kei.exe has stopped working. So I sighed, crushed her in another hug, and said, “Come on, we should let Vy know about this too. It’ll be good to see her again.”

“...Again?” Kei asked as I took her hand and started pulling her out of the bookstore.

“I’ll be back later,” I called out to my parents in the backroom as I left. “Yeah, I uh… knew her back when I was Os.” We met because Lang and I wrote your story as a fanfiction and Vy was a fan. Yeah, that’d go over well.

But hey, I was a chunin. Also ANBU. I had resources.

This was like realizing I was “the adult” all over again.

Responsibilities suck.

“Hey, Kei, did you find the person who gave you the book?” Tomoko asked as we entered, her attention on the piano. But once she looked up she kind of stopped playing, and talking.

I ran forward and gave her a huge hug before any of her other reactions could happen. “I missed you two so much, I’m so sorry I took this long to say hi.”

Tomoko kind of patted me on the back and waved her hand. “Uh.. it’s uh, good to see you too?” She had no idea who I was. Tomoko came into existence before Vy and I had become friends.

I released her, ready to tell her I was Beta and then froze. Because that’d mean telling Kei she didn’t really exist. And that’d mean I was the one with future knowledge of the plot and I really didn’t want to have to carry that.

“Uh, we haven’t met yet,” I said, fiddling with the loose fabric of my wind-sleeves. “We met after you became Tomoko. Like, an alternate timeline were Vy was still alive.” Yeah. That’d work. “But you’re still her and you and… yeah.”

Tomoko laughed and waved it off. “That’s ok. I’m just confused is all. It’s nice to meet you…”

“Otoha,” I finished. “Kei and I were best friends in that other timeline. You and I were too.”

[entreprenergy]

Brain Rules – by John Medina

RULE #1 : Exercise boosts brain power.

The human brain evolved under conditions of almost constant motion. From this, one might predict that the optimal environment for processing information would include motion. That is exactly what one finds. Indeed, the best business meeting would have everyone walking at about 1.8 miles per hour.

Researchers studied two elderly populations that had led different lifestyles, one sedentary and one active. Cognitive scores were profoundly influenced. Exercise positively affected executive function, spatial tasks, reaction times and quantitative skills.

So researchers asked: If the sedentary populations become active, will their cognitive scores go up? Yes, it turns out, if the exercise is aerobic. In four months, executive functions vastly improve; longer, and memory scores improve as well.

Exercise improves cognition for two reasons: – Exercise increases oxygen flow into the brain, which reduces brain-bound free radicals. One of the most interesting findings of the past few decades is that an increase in oxygen is always accompanied by an uptick in mental sharpness. – Exercise acts directly on the molecular machinery of the brain itself. It increases neurons’ creation, survival, and resistance to damage and stress.

RULE #2 : The human brain evolved, too.

The brain is a survival organ. It is designed to solve problems related to surviving in an unstable outdoor environment and to do so in nearly constant motion (to keep you alive long enough to pass your genes on). We were not the strongest on the planet but we developed the strongest brains, the key to our survival.

The strongest brains survive, not the strongest bodies. Our ability to solve problems, learn from mistakes, and create alliances with other people helps us survive. We took over the world by learning to cooperate and forming teams with our neighbors.

Our ability to understand each other is our chief survival tool. Relationships helped us survive in the jungle and are critical to surviving at work and school today.

If someone does not feel safe with a teacher or boss, he or she may not perform as well. If a student feels misunderstood because the teacher cannot connect with the way the student learns, the student may become isolated.

There is no greater anti-brain environment than the classroom and cubicle.

RULE #3 : Every brain is wired differently.

What YOU do and learn in life physically changes what your brain looks like – it literally rewires it. We used to think there were just 7 categories of intelligence. But categories of intelligence may number more than 7 billion — roughly the population of the world.

No two people have the same brain, not even twins. Every student’s brain, every employee’s brain, every customer’s brain is wired differently.

You can either accede to it or ignore it. The current system of education ignores it by having grade structures based on age. Businesses such as Amazon are catching on to mass customization (the Amazon homepage and the products you see are tailored to your recent purchases).

Regions of the brain develop at different rates in different people. The brains of school children are just as unevenly developed as their bodies. Our school system ignores the fact that every brain is wired differently. We wrongly assume every brain is the same.

Most of us have a “Jennifer Aniston” neuron (a neuron lurking in your head that is stimulated only when Jennifer Aniston is in the room).

Theory of Mind : The ability to understand the interior motivations of someone else, and the ability to construct a predictable “theory of how their mind works” based on that knowledge. We try to see our entire world in terms of motivations, ascribing motivations to our pets and even to inanimate objects. The skill is useful for selecting a mate, navigating the day-to-day issues surrounding living together, for parenting. We have it like no other creature. It is as close to mind reading as we are likely to get.

People with advanced Theory of Mind skills possess the single most important ingredient for becoming effective communicators of information.

If someone does not feel safe with a teacher or boss, they may not be able to perform as well.

If a student feels misunderstood because the teacher cannot connect with the way the student learns, the student may become isolated.

RULE #4 : We don’t pay attention to boring things.

What we pay attention to is profoundly influenced by memory. Our previous experience predicts where we should pay attention. Culture matters too. Whether in school or in business, these differences can greatly effect how an audience perceives a given presentation.

We pay attention to things like emotions, threats and sex. Regardless of who you are, the brain pays a great deal of attention to these questions: Can I eat it? Will it eat me? Can I mate with it? Will it mate with me? Have I seen it before?

The brain is not capable of multi-tasking. We can talk and breathe, but when it comes to higher level tasks, we just can’t do it.

Driving while talking on a cell phone is like driving drunk. The brain is a sequential processor and large fractions of a second are consumed every time the brain switches tasks. This is why cell-phone talkers are a half-second slower to hit the brakes and get in more wrecks.

Workplaces and schools actually encourage this type of multi-tasking. Walk into any office and you’ll see people sending e-mail, answering their phones, Instant Messaging, and on MySpace — all at the same time. Research shows your error rate goes up 50% and it takes you twice as long to do things.

When you’re always online you’re always distracted. So the always online organization is the always unproductive organization.

If a teacher can’t hold a student’s interest, knowledge will not be richly encoded in the brain’s database.

Brains in wild animals are 15%-30% larger than tame, domestic counterparts. The cold, hard world forced the wild animals into constant learning mode. It is the same with humans. The more activity you do, the larger and more complex it can become.

The brain cannot multi-task. It is a myth. The brain focuses attention on concepts sequentially, one at a time. Switching takes time.

RULE #5 : Repeat to remember.

The human brain can only hold about seven pieces of information for less than 30 seconds! Which means, your brain can only handle a 7-digit phone number. If you want to extend the 30 seconds to a few minutes or even an hour or two, you will need to consistently re-expose yourself to the information. Memories are so volatile that you have to repeat to remember.

Improve your memory by elaborately encoding it during its initial moments. Many of us have trouble remembering names. If at a party you need help remembering Mary, it helps to repeat internally more information about her. “Mary is wearing a blue dress and my favorite color is blue.” It may seem counter-intuitive at first but study after study shows it improves your memory.

Brain Rules in the classroom. In partnership with the University of Washington and Seattle Pacific University, Medina tested this Brain Rule in real classrooms of 3rd graders. They were asked to repeat their multiplication tables in the afternoons. The classrooms in the study did significantly better than the classrooms that did not have the repetition. If brain scientists get together with teachers and do research, we may be able to eliminate need for homework since learning would take place at school, instead of the home.

The first few seconds of encoding new information is crucial in determining whether something that is initially perceived will be remembered.

The more elaborately we encode information at the moment of learning, the stronger the memory. When encoding is elaborate and deep, the memory that forms is much more robust than when encoding is partial and cursory.

The neural pathways initially used to process new information end up becoming the permanent pathways the brain reuses to store the information. (Like the college professor that made no sidewalks in the new campus. He waited to see where students would walk anyway, then later paved the paths.)

The more a learning focuses on the meaning of the processed information, the more elaborately the encoding is processed.

When you are trying to drive a piece of information into your brain’s memory, make sure you understand exactly what that information means. If you are trying to drive information into someone else’s brain, make sure they understand what it means.

Don’t try to memorize by rote and pray the meaning will reveal itself!

The more repetition cycles a memory experienced, the more likely it is to persist in your mind. The space between repetitions is the critical component for transforming temporary memories into more persistent forms.

Spaced learning is greatly superior to massed learning.

Deliberately re-expose yourself to information *more elaborately*, in fixed spaced intervals, to make retrieval the most vivid it can be.

Learning occurs best when new information is incorporated gradually into the memory store rather than jammed in all at once.

Physically, “student” neurons need to get the same information from the “teacher” neuron within 90 minutes, or its excitement will vanish. The cell will literally reset itself to zero and act as if nothing happened.

Information must be repeated after a period of time has elapsed. If the information is repeatedly pulsed in discretely timed intervals, the relationship between teacher and student neuron begins to change, so increasingly smaller and smaller inputs from the teacher are required to elicit increasingly stronger and stronger outputs from the student.

Forgetting allows us to prioritize events. Events irrelevant to our survival will take up wasteful cognitive space if we assign them the same priority as events critical to our survival. So we don’t.

In school, every 3rd or 4th day would be reserved for reviewing the facts delivered in the previous 3-4 days. Previous information would be presented in compressed fashion. Inspect notes, comparing with what the teacher was saying in the review. That would result in a greater elaboration of the information. A formalized exercise in error-checking.

RULE #6 : Remember to repeat.

It takes years to consolidate a memory. Not minutes, hours, or days but years. What you learn in first grade is not completely formed until your sophomore year in high school.

Medina’s dream school is one that repeats what was learned, not at home, but during the school day, 90-120 minutes after the initial learning occurred. Our schools are currently designed so that most real learning has to occur at home.

How do you remember better? Repeated exposure to information / in specifically timed intervals / provides the most powerful way to fix memory into the brain.

Forgetting allows us to prioritize events. But if you want to remember, remember to repeat.

RULE #7 : Sleep well, think well.

When we’re asleep, the brain is not resting at all. It is almost unbelievably active! It’s possible that the reason we need to sleep is so that we can learn.

Sleep must be important because we spend 1/3 of our lives doing it! Loss of sleep hurts attention, executive function, working memory, mood, quantitative skills, logical reasoning, and even motor dexterity.

We still don’t know how much we need! It changes with age, gender, pregnancy, puberty, and so much more.

Napping is normal. Ever feel tired in the afternoon? That’s because your brain really wants to take a nap. There’s a battle raging in your head between two armies. Each army is made of legions of brain cells and biochemicals –- one desperately trying to keep you awake, the other desperately trying to force you to sleep. Around 3 p.m., 12 hours after the midpoint of your sleep, all your brain wants to do is nap.

Taking a nap might make you more productive. In one study, a 26-minute nap improved NASA pilots’ performance by 34 percent.

Don’t schedule important meetings at 3 p.m. It just doesn’t make sense.

Students given a series of math problems that all had a shortcut that was not revealed to them. Only 20% found the shortcut if answers had to be given same-day. But if asked after sleep, 60% found the shortcut. No matter how many times the experiment is run, the sleep group consistently outperforms the non-sleep group about to 3 to 1.

RULE #8 : Stressed brains don’t learn the same way.

You brain is built to deal with stress that lasts about 30 seconds. The brain is not designed for long term stress when you feel like you have no control. The saber-toothed tiger ate you or you ran away but it was all over in less than a minute. If you have a bad boss, the saber-toothed tiger can be at your door for years, and you begin to deregulate. If you are in a bad marriage, the saber-toothed tiger can be in your bed for years, and the same thing occurs. You can actually watch the brain shrink.

Stress damages virtually every kind of cognition that exists. It damages memory and executive function. It can hurt your motor skills. When you are stressed out over a long period of time it disrupts your immune response. You get sicker more often. It disrupts your ability to sleep. You get depressed.

The emotional stability of the home is the single greatest predictor of academic success. If you want your kid to get into Harvard, go home and love your spouse.

You have one brain. The same brain you have at home is the same brain you have at work or school. The stress you are experiencing at home will affect your performance at work, and vice versa.

RULE #9 : Stimulate more of the senses.

Our senses work together so it is important to stimulate them! Your head crackles with the perceptions of the whole world, sight, sound, taste, smell, touch, energetic as a frat party.

Smell is unusually effective at evoking memory. If you’re tested on the details of a movie while the smell of popcorn is wafted into the air, you’ll remember 10-50% more.

Smell is really important to business. When you walk into Starbucks, the first thing you smell is coffee. They have done a number of things over the years to make sure that’s the case.

The learning link. Those in multi-sensory environments always do better than those in uni-sensory environments. They have more recall with better resolution that lasts longer, evident even 20 years later.

– students learn better from words and pictures than words alone – students learn better when corresponding words and pictures are presented simultaneously – students learn better when corresponding words and pictures are presented near to each other rather than far from each on the page or screen – students learn better when extraneous material is excluded rather than included – students learn better from animation and narration than from animation and on-screen text

RULE #10 : Vision trumps all other senses.

We are incredible at remembering pictures. Hear a piece of information, and three days later you’ll remember 10% of it. Add a picture and you’ll remember 65%.

Pictures beat text as well, in part because reading is so inefficient for us. Our brain sees words as lots of tiny pictures, and we have to identify certain features in the letters to be able to read them. That takes time.

Why is vision such a big deal to us? Perhaps because it’s how we’ve always apprehended major threats, food supplies and reproductive opportunity.

Toss your PowerPoint presentations. It’s text-based (nearly 40 words per slide), with six hierarchical levels of chapters and subheads—all words. Professionals everywhere need to know about the incredible inefficiency of text-based information and the incredible effects of images. Burn your current PowerPoint presentations and make new ones.

RULE #11 : Male and female brains are different.

What’s different? Mental health professionals have known for years about sex-based differences in the type and severity of psychiatric disorders. Males are more severely afflicted by schizophrenia than females. By more than 2 to 1, women are more likely to get depressed than men, a figure that shows up just after puberty and remains stable for the next 50 years. Males exhibit more antisocial behavior. Females have more anxiety. Most alcoholics and drug addicts are male. Most anorexics are female.

Men and women handle acute stress differently. When researcher Larry Cahill showed them slasher films, men fired up the amygdale in their brain’s right hemisphere, which is responsible for the gist of an event. Their left was comparatively silent. Women lit up their left amygdale, the one responsible for details. Having a team that simultaneously understood the gist and details of a given stressful situation helped us conquer the world.

Men and women process certain emotions differently. Emotions are useful. They make the brain pay attention. These differences are a product of complex interactions between nature and nurture.

RULE #12 : We are powerful and natural explorers.

The desire to explore never leaves us despite the classrooms and cubicles we are stuffed into. Babies are the model of how we learn—not by passive reaction to the environment but by active testing through observation, hypothesis, experiment, and conclusion. Babies methodically do experiments on objects, for example, to see what they will do.

Google takes to heart the power of exploration. For 20 percent of their time, employees may go where their mind asks them to go. The proof is in the bottom line: fully 50 percent of new products, including Gmail and Google News, came from “20 percent time.”

The post Brain Rules – by John Medina appeared first on Entreprenergy.

from Brain Rules – by John Medina

[jesseneufeld]

How to Use Positive Psychology to Improve Your Health

What if it’s chronic anger, frustration, anxiety, sadness, or grief? Do those emotions also affect your health? And how can you let go of them?

The short answer is yes—positive or negative, your emotions do impact your health. The good news is that through positive psychology, you can retrain your brain to follow healthier, more beneficial emotional patterns and learn to let go of negative ways of thinking.

Here’s how you can use positive psychology to rewire your brain and improve your mood and your health.

Anger, sadness, frustration, or grief can, if left unchecked, wreak havoc on your health. That’s where positive psychology can help. Check out this article for more about positive psychology and get tips on how to change your thinking. #healthylifestyle #wellness #changeagent

What Positive Psychology Is and What It Can Do for Your Well-Being

Positive psychology is an evidence-based area of psychology famously championed by Martin Seligman. While president of the American Psychological Association, Seligman publicized positive psychology as a way of joining the more clinical, conventional side of psychology—the part that focuses on what’s “wrong” with a patient—with the people-oriented side of the discipline. (1) According to Seligman:

The aim of Positive Psychology is to catalyze a change in psychology from a preoccupation only with repairing the worst things in life to also building the best qualities in life. (2) [emphasis added]

Seligman—and followers of the positive psychology movement—build those qualities through character strengths. Character strengths are patterns of behaving, thinking, and feeling that we all have within us.

Why You Should Know Your Character Strengths

Seligman, together with psychologist Chris Peterson, described 24 different character strengths in their exhaustive work, Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification. While the unique combination of character strengths differs from person to person, they can include traits like:

Creativity

Bravery

Fairness

Kindness

Humility

Gratitude

Hope

Zest

And many, many more

Your individual character strengths color how you see the world and how your brain processes new experiences. Understanding your personal strengths can give you a greater sense of authenticity, and using your strengths in your day-to-day life can help you feel more engaged, productive, and positive.

If you’re curious about your character strengths, I recommend taking this free survey from the VIA Institute on Character. If you need help, a health coach trained in positive psychology can assist as you identify your strengths and learn to embrace a more positive mindset.

Why It’s Worth It to Refocus Your Thoughts

Practicing positivity and embracing character strengths—even for a short period of time—have been shown to lessen feelings of depression and increase a sense of happiness. (3) Research also shows that happiness has a positive impact on your overall health and longevity. (4) Positivity has been linked to: (5)

Immune system health

Cardiovascular health

Lower levels of cortisol and a healthy hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis

Better wound healing

Potentially protective effects on telomeres, the end caps on your DNA that prevent damage during replication

Positive emotions also appear to be connected with a person’s ability to bounce back from a stressful event. Experiencing positivity—even from watching a short, happy film clip, for example—can undo some of the cardiovascular effects associated with stress and anxiety, like increased heart rate and blood pressure. (6) Imagine what long-term positivity could do to improve your body’s resilience.

The Driver behind Positive Psychology: Neuroplasticity

Neuroplasticity is the ability our brains have to change based on stimuli like thoughts, behaviors, and emotions. The structure of your brain and the synaptic connections between your neurons can grow stronger or weaker based on your habitual patterns. In their book, The Emotional Life of Your Brain, Richard J. Davidson, Ph.D., and Sharon Begley state that neuroplasticity explains why expert violinists show extra development in the brain regions that control dexterity, why cab drivers in London tend to have great spatial memory—and why your thought patterns and emotional habits can affect your health. (7, 8)

Positive psychology builds on that concept by encouraging you to switch your mindset. If you traditionally focus on the problems you’re facing or the things that feel “wrong” in your life, changing this one aspect of the way you interact with the world can make a difference.

Three Small Steps to Rewire Your Brain for Positivity

Sometimes, just taking one small step toward positivity is enough to make a difference in your life. With that in mind, here are three easy techniques you can try out today to change your focus.

1. Choose Your Words Carefully

If you’ve been stuck in a pessimistic pattern for a while, it will start to come out in the way you think and speak. You may tend to frame everything negatively, or you instantly consider what could go wrong in any given situation.

Think about a recent challenge you encountered, remember how you thought and spoke about it, and take a look at the table below. Which column did you fall under? Can you try changing your internal dialogue to a more positive view?

Pessimistic Thinking Optimistic Thinking Your problems are permanent.

“This is always going to be a problem for me.”

Your problems are temporary.

“This will pass.”

Your issues are pervasive.

“This is catastrophic.”

Your problems are local.

“This isn’t the end.”

Your problems are personal.

“It’s all my fault.”

Your problems aren’t personal.

“This is a common problem for many people.”

Your problems are uncontrollable.

“There’s nothing I can do.”

Your problems are at least somewhat controllable.

“One step at a time.”

Changing the way you think isn’t a simple endeavor—but it’s well worth the effort. Mindfulness can help you challenge negative thoughts as they occur to you.

Being mindful means you’re aware of your body, your sensations, your thoughts, and your feelings as they occur. Mindfulness can improve your positive emotions while lessening feelings of negativity or stress. (9) The practice also helps you feel more compassionate—toward others and yourself. (10)

For tips on how to start practicing mindfulness, check out my article “How to Avoid a Near-Life Experience.”

2. Remember Your Past Wins

Positive psychology is a success-focused movement. Instead of thinking about all of the things that could you wrong in your current situation, you focus on what could go right—and you develop a clear plan to help you reach that success.

One of the best ways to do this is by thinking about a past success you enjoyed. It could be a promotion you earned at work, a time you overcame a fear or apprehension, or the last time you felt healthy and fulfilled. With that memory in mind, ask yourself:

What led to your success?

What did you learn?

Who helped you reach your goal?

What resources did you use back then, and can you use them again?

Often times, the same strategies that worked for us in the past can work for us again. Even if your past success doesn’t directly apply to your current situation, giving yourself credit for a time when you overcame obstacles to reach your goal can motivate you to keep trying now.

3. Try a Happiness Intervention

A happiness intervention is a simple writing exercise that can be helpful if you’re struggling with something that’s particularly challenging. It’s a great way to stop negative thoughts from taking over and reorient yourself toward positivity. Here’s how to do it—and be sure to get a pen and paper ready, as you’ll be writing by hand for this.

Think about what your life looks like several years in the future. Imagine yourself as reasonably successful. You’ve accomplished some of your big goals, and your life has improved.

Set a timer for five minutes and write about your future life until your time is up. Don’t worry about grammar, punctuation, or sloppy handwriting. Just get as many details down as possible in the given timeframe.

After you’re done, take a look at what you’ve written. How do you feel now? Did you learn anything about the challenges you’re currently facing? Do you feel motivated to take any small steps now to get to the future you wrote about?

If you enjoyed that happiness intervention, there’s no need to stop there. Try one of these techniques:

Write down three things that went well every day for one week. Be sure to note the reasons they went well too.

Determine your top five signature character strengths. Over the course of a week, try to use each strength in a new way every day. Record your results.

Write a thank-you letter. Take time to express gratitude to a friend or family member who helped you in the past.

The more often you complete a happiness intervention, the more effective it will be for you.

Need Help? Work with a Health Coach

If you’ve given these techniques a try to no avail or you’re fighting against years of negative habits, it may be time to work with a health coach.

A health coach can act as a guide as you learn how to reframe your thoughts and adopt a different mindset. And that mindframe switch can make a huge difference in your health and happiness. That’s why, in the ADAPT Health Coach Training Program, all of our health coach graduates are trained in positive psychology and character strengths.

Even if you’re facing serious negativity, a health coach trained in positive psychology can help reorient you toward a more success-focused conversation.

Now, I’d like to hear from you. Have you tried using positive psychology before? Do you plan on implementing any of these tips in your daily life? Leave a comment and let me know!

The post How to Use Positive Psychology to Improve Your Health appeared first on Chris Kresser.

How to Use Positive Psychology to Improve Your Health published first on https://drugaddictionsrehab.tumblr.com/

[edsenger]

How to Use Positive Psychology to Improve Your Health

What if it’s chronic anger, frustration, anxiety, sadness, or grief? Do those emotions also affect your health? And how can you let go of them?

The short answer is yes—positive or negative, your emotions do impact your health. The good news is that through positive psychology, you can retrain your brain to follow healthier, more beneficial emotional patterns and learn to let go of negative ways of thinking.

Here’s how you can use positive psychology to rewire your brain and improve your mood and your health.

Anger, sadness, frustration, or grief can, if left unchecked, wreak havoc on your health. That’s where positive psychology can help. Check out this article for more about positive psychology and get tips on how to change your thinking. #healthylifestyle #wellness #changeagent

What Positive Psychology Is and What It Can Do for Your Well-Being

Positive psychology is an evidence-based area of psychology famously championed by Martin Seligman. While president of the American Psychological Association, Seligman publicized positive psychology as a way of joining the more clinical, conventional side of psychology—the part that focuses on what’s “wrong” with a patient—with the people-oriented side of the discipline. (1) According to Seligman:

The aim of Positive Psychology is to catalyze a change in psychology from a preoccupation only with repairing the worst things in life to also building the best qualities in life. (2) [emphasis added]

Seligman—and followers of the positive psychology movement—build those qualities through character strengths. Character strengths are patterns of behaving, thinking, and feeling that we all have within us.

Why You Should Know Your Character Strengths

Seligman, together with psychologist Chris Peterson, described 24 different character strengths in their exhaustive work, Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification. While the unique combination of character strengths differs from person to person, they can include traits like:

Creativity

Bravery

Fairness

Kindness

Humility

Gratitude

Hope

Zest

And many, many more

Your individual character strengths color how you see the world and how your brain processes new experiences. Understanding your personal strengths can give you a greater sense of authenticity, and using your strengths in your day-to-day life can help you feel more engaged, productive, and positive.

If you’re curious about your character strengths, I recommend taking this free survey from the VIA Institute on Character. If you need help, a health coach trained in positive psychology can assist as you identify your strengths and learn to embrace a more positive mindset.

Why It’s Worth It to Refocus Your Thoughts

Practicing positivity and embracing character strengths—even for a short period of time—have been shown to lessen feelings of depression and increase a sense of happiness. (3) Research also shows that happiness has a positive impact on your overall health and longevity. (4) Positivity has been linked to: (5)

Immune system health

Cardiovascular health

Lower levels of cortisol and a healthy hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis

Better wound healing

Potentially protective effects on telomeres, the end caps on your DNA that prevent damage during replication

Positive emotions also appear to be connected with a person’s ability to bounce back from a stressful event. Experiencing positivity—even from watching a short, happy film clip, for example—can undo some of the cardiovascular effects associated with stress and anxiety, like increased heart rate and blood pressure. (6) Imagine what long-term positivity could do to improve your body’s resilience.

The Driver behind Positive Psychology: Neuroplasticity

Neuroplasticity is the ability our brains have to change based on stimuli like thoughts, behaviors, and emotions. The structure of your brain and the synaptic connections between your neurons can grow stronger or weaker based on your habitual patterns. In their book, The Emotional Life of Your Brain, Richard J. Davidson, Ph.D., and Sharon Begley state that neuroplasticity explains why expert violinists show extra development in the brain regions that control dexterity, why cab drivers in London tend to have great spatial memory—and why your thought patterns and emotional habits can affect your health. (7, 8)

Positive psychology builds on that concept by encouraging you to switch your mindset. If you traditionally focus on the problems you’re facing or the things that feel “wrong” in your life, changing this one aspect of the way you interact with the world can make a difference.

Three Small Steps to Rewire Your Brain for Positivity

Sometimes, just taking one small step toward positivity is enough to make a difference in your life. With that in mind, here are three easy techniques you can try out today to change your focus.

1. Choose Your Words Carefully

If you’ve been stuck in a pessimistic pattern for a while, it will start to come out in the way you think and speak. You may tend to frame everything negatively, or you instantly consider what could go wrong in any given situation.

Think about a recent challenge you encountered, remember how you thought and spoke about it, and take a look at the table below. Which column did you fall under? Can you try changing your internal dialogue to a more positive view?

Pessimistic Thinking Optimistic Thinking Your problems are permanent.

“This is always going to be a problem for me.”

Your problems are temporary.

“This will pass.”

Your issues are pervasive.

“This is catastrophic.”

Your problems are local.

“This isn’t the end.”

Your problems are personal.

“It’s all my fault.”

Your problems aren’t personal.

“This is a common problem for many people.”

Your problems are uncontrollable.

“There’s nothing I can do.”

Your problems are at least somewhat controllable.

“One step at a time.”

Changing the way you think isn’t a simple endeavor—but it’s well worth the effort. Mindfulness can help you challenge negative thoughts as they occur to you.

Being mindful means you’re aware of your body, your sensations, your thoughts, and your feelings as they occur. Mindfulness can improve your positive emotions while lessening feelings of negativity or stress. (9) The practice also helps you feel more compassionate—toward others and yourself. (10)

For tips on how to start practicing mindfulness, check out my article “How to Avoid a Near-Life Experience.”

2. Remember Your Past Wins

Positive psychology is a success-focused movement. Instead of thinking about all of the things that could you wrong in your current situation, you focus on what could go right—and you develop a clear plan to help you reach that success.

One of the best ways to do this is by thinking about a past success you enjoyed. It could be a promotion you earned at work, a time you overcame a fear or apprehension, or the last time you felt healthy and fulfilled. With that memory in mind, ask yourself:

What led to your success?

What did you learn?

Who helped you reach your goal?

What resources did you use back then, and can you use them again?

Often times, the same strategies that worked for us in the past can work for us again. Even if your past success doesn’t directly apply to your current situation, giving yourself credit for a time when you overcame obstacles to reach your goal can motivate you to keep trying now.

3. Try a Happiness Intervention

A happiness intervention is a simple writing exercise that can be helpful if you’re struggling with something that’s particularly challenging. It’s a great way to stop negative thoughts from taking over and reorient yourself toward positivity. Here’s how to do it—and be sure to get a pen and paper ready, as you’ll be writing by hand for this.

Think about what your life looks like several years in the future. Imagine yourself as reasonably successful. You’ve accomplished some of your big goals, and your life has improved.

Set a timer for five minutes and write about your future life until your time is up. Don’t worry about grammar, punctuation, or sloppy handwriting. Just get as many details down as possible in the given timeframe.

After you’re done, take a look at what you’ve written. How do you feel now? Did you learn anything about the challenges you’re currently facing? Do you feel motivated to take any small steps now to get to the future you wrote about?

If you enjoyed that happiness intervention, there’s no need to stop there. Try one of these techniques:

Write down three things that went well every day for one week. Be sure to note the reasons they went well too.

Determine your top five signature character strengths. Over the course of a week, try to use each strength in a new way every day. Record your results.

Write a thank-you letter. Take time to express gratitude to a friend or family member who helped you in the past.

The more often you complete a happiness intervention, the more effective it will be for you.

Need Help? Work with a Health Coach

If you’ve given these techniques a try to no avail or you’re fighting against years of negative habits, it may be time to work with a health coach.

A health coach can act as a guide as you learn how to reframe your thoughts and adopt a different mindset. And that mindframe switch can make a huge difference in your health and happiness. That’s why, in the ADAPT Health Coach Training Program, all of our health coach graduates are trained in positive psychology and character strengths.

Even if you’re facing serious negativity, a health coach trained in positive psychology can help reorient you toward a more success-focused conversation.

Now, I’d like to hear from you. Have you tried using positive psychology before? Do you plan on implementing any of these tips in your daily life? Leave a comment and let me know!

The post How to Use Positive Psychology to Improve Your Health appeared first on Chris Kresser.

How to Use Positive Psychology to Improve Your Health published first on https://brightendentalhouston.weebly.com/

[shapesnnsizes]

How to Use Positive Psychology to Improve Your Health

What if it’s chronic anger, frustration, anxiety, sadness, or grief? Do those emotions also affect your health? And how can you let go of them?

The short answer is yes—positive or negative, your emotions do impact your health. The good news is that through positive psychology, you can retrain your brain to follow healthier, more beneficial emotional patterns and learn to let go of negative ways of thinking.

Here’s how you can use positive psychology to rewire your brain and improve your mood and your health.

Anger, sadness, frustration, or grief can, if left unchecked, wreak havoc on your health. That’s where positive psychology can help. Check out this article for more about positive psychology and get tips on how to change your thinking. #healthylifestyle #wellness #changeagent

What Positive Psychology Is and What It Can Do for Your Well-Being

Positive psychology is an evidence-based area of psychology famously championed by Martin Seligman. While president of the American Psychological Association, Seligman publicized positive psychology as a way of joining the more clinical, conventional side of psychology—the part that focuses on what’s “wrong” with a patient—with the people-oriented side of the discipline. (1) According to Seligman:

The aim of Positive Psychology is to catalyze a change in psychology from a preoccupation only with repairing the worst things in life to also building the best qualities in life. (2) [emphasis added]

Seligman—and followers of the positive psychology movement—build those qualities through character strengths. Character strengths are patterns of behaving, thinking, and feeling that we all have within us.

Why You Should Know Your Character Strengths

Seligman, together with psychologist Chris Peterson, described 24 different character strengths in their exhaustive work, Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification. While the unique combination of character strengths differs from person to person, they can include traits like:

Creativity

Bravery

Fairness

Kindness

Humility

Gratitude

Hope

Zest

And many, many more

Your individual character strengths color how you see the world and how your brain processes new experiences. Understanding your personal strengths can give you a greater sense of authenticity, and using your strengths in your day-to-day life can help you feel more engaged, productive, and positive.

If you’re curious about your character strengths, I recommend taking this free survey from the VIA Institute on Character. If you need help, a health coach trained in positive psychology can assist as you identify your strengths and learn to embrace a more positive mindset.

Why It’s Worth It to Refocus Your Thoughts

Practicing positivity and embracing character strengths—even for a short period of time—have been shown to lessen feelings of depression and increase a sense of happiness. (3) Research also shows that happiness has a positive impact on your overall health and longevity. (4) Positivity has been linked to: (5)

Immune system health

Cardiovascular health

Lower levels of cortisol and a healthy hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis

Better wound healing

Potentially protective effects on telomeres, the end caps on your DNA that prevent damage during replication

Positive emotions also appear to be connected with a person’s ability to bounce back from a stressful event. Experiencing positivity—even from watching a short, happy film clip, for example—can undo some of the cardiovascular effects associated with stress and anxiety, like increased heart rate and blood pressure. (6) Imagine what long-term positivity could do to improve your body’s resilience.

The Driver behind Positive Psychology: Neuroplasticity

Neuroplasticity is the ability our brains have to change based on stimuli like thoughts, behaviors, and emotions. The structure of your brain and the synaptic connections between your neurons can grow stronger or weaker based on your habitual patterns. In their book, The Emotional Life of Your Brain, Richard J. Davidson, Ph.D., and Sharon Begley state that neuroplasticity explains why expert violinists show extra development in the brain regions that control dexterity, why cab drivers in London tend to have great spatial memory—and why your thought patterns and emotional habits can affect your health. (7, 8)

Positive psychology builds on that concept by encouraging you to switch your mindset. If you traditionally focus on the problems you’re facing or the things that feel “wrong” in your life, changing this one aspect of the way you interact with the world can make a difference.

Three Small Steps to Rewire Your Brain for Positivity

Sometimes, just taking one small step toward positivity is enough to make a difference in your life. With that in mind, here are three easy techniques you can try out today to change your focus.

1. Choose Your Words Carefully

If you’ve been stuck in a pessimistic pattern for a while, it will start to come out in the way you think and speak. You may tend to frame everything negatively, or you instantly consider what could go wrong in any given situation.

Think about a recent challenge you encountered, remember how you thought and spoke about it, and take a look at the table below. Which column did you fall under? Can you try changing your internal dialogue to a more positive view?

Pessimistic Thinking Optimistic Thinking Your problems are permanent.

“This is always going to be a problem for me.”

Your problems are temporary.

“This will pass.”

Your issues are pervasive.

“This is catastrophic.”

Your problems are local.

“This isn’t the end.”

Your problems are personal.

“It’s all my fault.”

Your problems aren’t personal.

“This is a common problem for many people.”

Your problems are uncontrollable.

“There’s nothing I can do.”

Your problems are at least somewhat controllable.

“One step at a time.”

Changing the way you think isn’t a simple endeavor—but it’s well worth the effort. Mindfulness can help you challenge negative thoughts as they occur to you.

Being mindful means you’re aware of your body, your sensations, your thoughts, and your feelings as they occur. Mindfulness can improve your positive emotions while lessening feelings of negativity or stress. (9) The practice also helps you feel more compassionate—toward others and yourself. (10)

For tips on how to start practicing mindfulness, check out my article “How to Avoid a Near-Life Experience.”

2. Remember Your Past Wins

Positive psychology is a success-focused movement. Instead of thinking about all of the things that could you wrong in your current situation, you focus on what could go right—and you develop a clear plan to help you reach that success.

One of the best ways to do this is by thinking about a past success you enjoyed. It could be a promotion you earned at work, a time you overcame a fear or apprehension, or the last time you felt healthy and fulfilled. With that memory in mind, ask yourself:

What led to your success?

What did you learn?

Who helped you reach your goal?

What resources did you use back then, and can you use them again?

Often times, the same strategies that worked for us in the past can work for us again. Even if your past success doesn’t directly apply to your current situation, giving yourself credit for a time when you overcame obstacles to reach your goal can motivate you to keep trying now.

3. Try a Happiness Intervention

A happiness intervention is a simple writing exercise that can be helpful if you’re struggling with something that’s particularly challenging. It’s a great way to stop negative thoughts from taking over and reorient yourself toward positivity. Here’s how to do it—and be sure to get a pen and paper ready, as you’ll be writing by hand for this.

Think about what your life looks like several years in the future. Imagine yourself as reasonably successful. You’ve accomplished some of your big goals, and your life has improved.

Set a timer for five minutes and write about your future life until your time is up. Don’t worry about grammar, punctuation, or sloppy handwriting. Just get as many details down as possible in the given timeframe.

After you’re done, take a look at what you’ve written. How do you feel now? Did you learn anything about the challenges you’re currently facing? Do you feel motivated to take any small steps now to get to the future you wrote about?

If you enjoyed that happiness intervention, there’s no need to stop there. Try one of these techniques:

Write down three things that went well every day for one week. Be sure to note the reasons they went well too.

Determine your top five signature character strengths. Over the course of a week, try to use each strength in a new way every day. Record your results.

Write a thank-you letter. Take time to express gratitude to a friend or family member who helped you in the past.

The more often you complete a happiness intervention, the more effective it will be for you.

Need Help? Work with a Health Coach

If you’ve given these techniques a try to no avail or you’re fighting against years of negative habits, it may be time to work with a health coach.

A health coach can act as a guide as you learn how to reframe your thoughts and adopt a different mindset. And that mindframe switch can make a huge difference in your health and happiness. That’s why, in the ADAPT Health Coach Training Program, all of our health coach graduates are trained in positive psychology and character strengths.

Even if you’re facing serious negativity, a health coach trained in positive psychology can help reorient you toward a more success-focused conversation.

Now, I’d like to hear from you. Have you tried using positive psychology before? Do you plan on implementing any of these tips in your daily life? Leave a comment and let me know!

The post How to Use Positive Psychology to Improve Your Health appeared first on Chris Kresser.

[denisalvney]

How to Use Positive Psychology to Improve Your Health

What if it’s chronic anger, frustration, anxiety, sadness, or grief? Do those emotions also affect your health? And how can you let go of them?

The short answer is yes—positive or negative, your emotions do impact your health. The good news is that through positive psychology, you can retrain your brain to follow healthier, more beneficial emotional patterns and learn to let go of negative ways of thinking.

Here’s how you can use positive psychology to rewire your brain and improve your mood and your health.

Anger, sadness, frustration, or grief can, if left unchecked, wreak havoc on your health. That’s where positive psychology can help. Check out this article for more about positive psychology and get tips on how to change your thinking. #healthylifestyle #wellness #changeagent

What Positive Psychology Is and What It Can Do for Your Well-Being

Positive psychology is an evidence-based area of psychology famously championed by Martin Seligman. While president of the American Psychological Association, Seligman publicized positive psychology as a way of joining the more clinical, conventional side of psychology—the part that focuses on what’s “wrong” with a patient—with the people-oriented side of the discipline. (1) According to Seligman:

The aim of Positive Psychology is to catalyze a change in psychology from a preoccupation only with repairing the worst things in life to also building the best qualities in life. (2) [emphasis added]

Seligman—and followers of the positive psychology movement—build those qualities through character strengths. Character strengths are patterns of behaving, thinking, and feeling that we all have within us.

Why You Should Know Your Character Strengths

Seligman, together with psychologist Chris Peterson, described 24 different character strengths in their exhaustive work, Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification. While the unique combination of character strengths differs from person to person, they can include traits like:

Creativity

Bravery

Fairness

Kindness

Humility

Gratitude

Hope

Zest

And many, many more

Your individual character strengths color how you see the world and how your brain processes new experiences. Understanding your personal strengths can give you a greater sense of authenticity, and using your strengths in your day-to-day life can help you feel more engaged, productive, and positive.

If you’re curious about your character strengths, I recommend taking this free survey from the VIA Institute on Character. If you need help, a health coach trained in positive psychology can assist as you identify your strengths and learn to embrace a more positive mindset.

Why It’s Worth It to Refocus Your Thoughts

Practicing positivity and embracing character strengths—even for a short period of time—have been shown to lessen feelings of depression and increase a sense of happiness. (3) Research also shows that happiness has a positive impact on your overall health and longevity. (4) Positivity has been linked to: (5)

Immune system health

Cardiovascular health

Lower levels of cortisol and a healthy hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis

Better wound healing

Potentially protective effects on telomeres, the end caps on your DNA that prevent damage during replication

Positive emotions also appear to be connected with a person’s ability to bounce back from a stressful event. Experiencing positivity—even from watching a short, happy film clip, for example—can undo some of the cardiovascular effects associated with stress and anxiety, like increased heart rate and blood pressure. (6) Imagine what long-term positivity could do to improve your body’s resilience.

The Driver behind Positive Psychology: Neuroplasticity

Neuroplasticity is the ability our brains have to change based on stimuli like thoughts, behaviors, and emotions. The structure of your brain and the synaptic connections between your neurons can grow stronger or weaker based on your habitual patterns. In their book, The Emotional Life of Your Brain, Richard J. Davidson, Ph.D., and Sharon Begley state that neuroplasticity explains why expert violinists show extra development in the brain regions that control dexterity, why cab drivers in London tend to have great spatial memory—and why your thought patterns and emotional habits can affect your health. (7, 8)

Positive psychology builds on that concept by encouraging you to switch your mindset. If you traditionally focus on the problems you’re facing or the things that feel “wrong” in your life, changing this one aspect of the way you interact with the world can make a difference.

Three Small Steps to Rewire Your Brain for Positivity

Sometimes, just taking one small step toward positivity is enough to make a difference in your life. With that in mind, here are three easy techniques you can try out today to change your focus.

1. Choose Your Words Carefully

If you’ve been stuck in a pessimistic pattern for a while, it will start to come out in the way you think and speak. You may tend to frame everything negatively, or you instantly consider what could go wrong in any given situation.

Think about a recent challenge you encountered, remember how you thought and spoke about it, and take a look at the table below. Which column did you fall under? Can you try changing your internal dialogue to a more positive view?

Pessimistic Thinking Optimistic Thinking Your problems are permanent.

“This is always going to be a problem for me.”

Your problems are temporary.

“This will pass.”

Your issues are pervasive.

“This is catastrophic.”

Your problems are local.

“This isn’t the end.”

Your problems are personal.

“It’s all my fault.”

Your problems aren’t personal.

“This is a common problem for many people.”

Your problems are uncontrollable.

“There’s nothing I can do.”

Your problems are at least somewhat controllable.

“One step at a time.”

Changing the way you think isn’t a simple endeavor—but it’s well worth the effort. Mindfulness can help you challenge negative thoughts as they occur to you.

Being mindful means you’re aware of your body, your sensations, your thoughts, and your feelings as they occur. Mindfulness can improve your positive emotions while lessening feelings of negativity or stress. (9) The practice also helps you feel more compassionate—toward others and yourself. (10)

For tips on how to start practicing mindfulness, check out my article “How to Avoid a Near-Life Experience.”

2. Remember Your Past Wins

Positive psychology is a success-focused movement. Instead of thinking about all of the things that could you wrong in your current situation, you focus on what could go right—and you develop a clear plan to help you reach that success.

One of the best ways to do this is by thinking about a past success you enjoyed. It could be a promotion you earned at work, a time you overcame a fear or apprehension, or the last time you felt healthy and fulfilled. With that memory in mind, ask yourself:

What led to your success?

What did you learn?

Who helped you reach your goal?

What resources did you use back then, and can you use them again?

Often times, the same strategies that worked for us in the past can work for us again. Even if your past success doesn’t directly apply to your current situation, giving yourself credit for a time when you overcame obstacles to reach your goal can motivate you to keep trying now.

3. Try a Happiness Intervention

A happiness intervention is a simple writing exercise that can be helpful if you’re struggling with something that’s particularly challenging. It’s a great way to stop negative thoughts from taking over and reorient yourself toward positivity. Here’s how to do it—and be sure to get a pen and paper ready, as you’ll be writing by hand for this.

Think about what your life looks like several years in the future. Imagine yourself as reasonably successful. You’ve accomplished some of your big goals, and your life has improved.

Set a timer for five minutes and write about your future life until your time is up. Don’t worry about grammar, punctuation, or sloppy handwriting. Just get as many details down as possible in the given timeframe.

After you’re done, take a look at what you’ve written. How do you feel now? Did you learn anything about the challenges you’re currently facing? Do you feel motivated to take any small steps now to get to the future you wrote about?

If you enjoyed that happiness intervention, there’s no need to stop there. Try one of these techniques:

Write down three things that went well every day for one week. Be sure to note the reasons they went well too.

Determine your top five signature character strengths. Over the course of a week, try to use each strength in a new way every day. Record your results.

Write a thank-you letter. Take time to express gratitude to a friend or family member who helped you in the past.

The more often you complete a happiness intervention, the more effective it will be for you.

Need Help? Work with a Health Coach

If you’ve given these techniques a try to no avail or you’re fighting against years of negative habits, it may be time to work with a health coach.

A health coach can act as a guide as you learn how to reframe your thoughts and adopt a different mindset. And that mindframe switch can make a huge difference in your health and happiness. That’s why, in the ADAPT Health Coach Training Program, all of our health coach graduates are trained in positive psychology and character strengths.

Even if you’re facing serious negativity, a health coach trained in positive psychology can help reorient you toward a more success-focused conversation.

Now, I’d like to hear from you. Have you tried using positive psychology before? Do you plan on implementing any of these tips in your daily life? Leave a comment and let me know!

The post How to Use Positive Psychology to Improve Your Health appeared first on Chris Kresser.

How to Use Positive Psychology to Improve Your Health published first on https://chriskresser.com

[smartoptionsio]

The Smart Memo Method – Rewire your Brain for Bitmex Trading

Once upon a time, I came across a book. I think it is from the 60s or so – written in a very old-fashioned way. Its name was “How to get what you want” by Raymond Hull. I don’t believe in these self-help books in general, though this one is different, as it pictures a very clearly described method to hammer things into your brain and teaches your mind to focus on your goals.

Being in the chat rooms of all these Bitmex signals, I observe many people that get all these trading setups but manage it, still to stay on the losing side. Is it the signals? Or is it you? We monitor these groups for consistency in their trading performance, but many try to use them for overnight riches. This won’t happen. They can give you the setups, but you have to manage the responsibility to take this trades in a very disciplined manner. Mistakes I can observe very often:

Using more than 10% of the total equity per trade (we suggest 5% max, 3% if a losing streak is happening or in difficult market environments)

Using more than 10x leverage (we suggest to cap at 5x)

Revenge trading to recover losses, ignoring money management rules to recover with the next trade

Not taking profits at given TPs, aiming only for the highest targets

Using too wide/too narrow stop-loss’ or not using stop-loss at all

Not moving stop-loss to the entry point once TP1 has been achieved

Take our Bitmex Quiz to learn about your current state and how likely it is to get rekt with your current trading behavior. One thing to note: The moment you doubled your account, you want to take out your initial deposit. From then you are trading basically risk-free and this is the first big milestone for you, which will change how you feel about your trades. You cannot lose your hard-earned investment anymore. This gives peace of mind and decreases fear of loss and hard feelings that drive you to wrong moves.

This method as explained in this post is focused on how to prepare yourself for trading Bitmex signals, though you can adapt it easily for your needs if you want to learn technical analysis and trade on your own.

Prepare Your Mind For Trading – A Stringent Method To Become A Disciplined Trader.

Trading crypto on leverage can be a tough game. Discipline & Patience are key to success, and if you lose your shit – you will burn your account. Though, based on the mentioned book above, we developed a real mind flipper that will form the way you think about your trading over time. It is hard work of preparation and maybe you think that it is tedious. We have to say – yes it is! Trading should be boring, trading must not be exciting. You are here to reap profits not adrenaline. We just can hand you over the most effective toolset to bring your mind in form – follow it, it is a big first step into the direction of becoming a disciplined trader. Prepare a pen and a notebook (yes! oldschool, with real paper *sigh*) – this is all you need to get your brain adjusted. Let’s rock!

Step 1: The Equipment & The Basics

For this method to adjust a trader mindset, you will need a notebook and a pencil and every day about 5 – 10 minutes of your time. We are going deep into your subconsciousness with this method as you will need a rock solid mental strength for the future. Trading is all about the mindset so don’t avoid the efforts: you have to hammer the right behavior into your brain. This method is very old and has been adopted by us for trading. It consists of three pillars, you want to follow to a T:  daily write work & daily think work & daily loud reading. For all the writing work: Write as neat and tidy as you can. Write with your most clear handwriting possible for you, also write as small as you can. Why that? Writing small and tidy will make you focused and concentrated – and that is key to massage the message deep into your brain. You will really anchor your new trading behavior in your brain, so make sure to take the next step ultra carefully.

Step 2: Define Your Goal

The first real step to take action against permanent loss is to set up the direction by setting a goal for your trading efforts. We want to force our mind to work in a direction that is in our favor. IMPORTANT: Don’t set your goals too high. You will alter this goal later on, again and again,  each time you reached it. If you write down a goal like “I want to become a millionaire with crypto trading living on my own island, surrounding it with my Lambo”, forget about it. We set a serious goal like “I trade Bitmex Signals with strict money management”

Here is a checklist for your first goal:

My goal is objective, realistic and workable

My goal is phrased in a positive way, stating what you want to achieve – not what you want to avoid

I can reach my goal within a foreseeable timeframe

My goal can be specified in many little steps and characteristics I can achieve

Step 3: Creating Your Custom Setup

Now you take your notebook and put the goal we created in step 2 on top of the page. Write small and tidy and concentrate on the writing. Below that you will start a numbered list and break down how the goal shall be achieved. For the example above you would write down:

1. I trade solely the signals of my channel. 2. I enter the signals as described (entry, stop-loss, take profit targets) and let them run like that. 3. I follow my money management plan strictly and use only 5% of my available equity. 4. I take a loss as a loss and a profit as a profit. I accept the outcome of my trades. 5. I note all trades in a trading log to get a clear picture. 6. If I notice emotions, I will take a break from trading for at least 3 days. 7. I will use a maximum leverage of 5x. 8. I aim for small and consistent profits. 9. I do everything possible to protect my capital. 10. I stay out of trades, I doubt.

Make sure that each and every step is phrased in a positive way. Look at #6: Often people will tend to phrase it like “I won’t let my emotions take over when trading.” – Don’t do this, as you will hammer in your brain that you are letting emotions take over. Our brain is wired to exclude negations – so if you see yourself using words like “never”, “don’t” or similars check back how the sentence would sound without them – as this is the message that gets wired into your mind.  The positive way is to formulate what you want to have it like. You want to stay clear and focused and simply take a break if you notice emotions to take over your actions. We all have a natural loss aversion. The reason is our lizard brain, which just can’t deal with it – it deactivates our ratio and give control to your emotions to perform actions. Something you need to get rid of in trading.

Step 3: Write It Down Daily

Once you specified the goal and the itemized description of it, you will start your day by writing this down. Everytime clear and tidy in small letters. Sometime you will recognize that you want to alter this or that point of your list – Do it! This means your brain starts to work on your goal and becomes more and more clear with it. Every time you want to change a point, set up a new clear copy of the whole list. Take your notebook with you. Start your day with this writing exercise, along with your first coffee – and do it offline/manually. There is a reason for that: The process of writing it by hand is much complex brain-wise than just typing it into a keyboard. This method is all about the perception of the message in a multi-channel way. When you write it by hand, you take in the message, repeat in your mind, and put it out again with your hand. By doing it with an excellent handwriting and tiny letters, you force yourself to pick up the message even deeper.

Step 4: Read It Out Loud Three Times A Day

We want to hammer this information into your brain and to anchor it, you will have to find three times a day, where you read it out loud to yourself. Be sure to be alone while doing that, as you want to keep your goal and list as a secret to yourself. It can be distracting if other people confuse you with their doubts – so this is crucial. Whilst you read it, focus on really reading the words one by one from your copy (also a reason why it is so important to have a clear and tidy written copy).

Step 5: Think About Your Goal

As much often as possible, start to think about reaching your goal. How will it be to increase your bitcoin? How great will it be if you doubled your account and you can take out that initial deposit? Imagine yourself how you aim for consistency, how you act like an emotionless robot and how this discipline will grow your account as a reward for this tidy preparation process. Think of disciplined persons you know and idolize them.

Step 6: Creating A Smart Memo (and write less!)

Once you recognize that your specification list stagnates and doesn’t change anymore you achieved a clear structured itemized goal for your efforts. Congratulations – your goal is now perfect. Now go over the list and try to pack the most important characteristics into a smart memo. In our example, it would be: “I trade along with my coach and execute the signals emotionless and numbers-based with a reliable money management.” From the point of time your smart memo has been created you don’t need to write & read oud the whole list daily anymore. We will replace it now with your powerful smart memo. So from now you will start the day by writing down your smart memo, and then reading it out loud three times a day. Think as often as possible about your smart memo and how to improve it.

Step 7: 1st Goal Achieved – And Now?

Once you reached your first goal and became the disciplined trader you need to be it is time for reflection. Start a new page where you write down which baby steps you have achieved, how and when you did do that and how it felt for you. Now it is time for the next higher level. You may ask “But now I can set the goal of becoming an millionaire with my own island?” No, sorry! Now before you decide to go live as you proofed to yourself a profitability, you want to set a reachable goal which is in the near. An example could be “I will double my account and take out my initial deposit”. Once you reached this you will set a higher number or with other additional stuff in the goal, you recognized that you need to have in your skill set. This is not a one size fits all kind of thing, it is very personal and you need to learn yourself to know in trading conditions to find the matching, perfect goal.

Step 9: Repeat From step 3

Now you run through the process again, back from step 3 with your new goal. You will find psychological hurdles when trading live. Analyze yourself after each session, what did go wrong and what does this mean for your specification list? Alter it! You want to eliminate every hurdle given to you by your mind and your emotions. Remeber: altered list = complete fresh and tidy copy!

Have fun reaching your goals and enjoy the taste of success!

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