Grooming makes a comeback.

I showed up in class the other night, and a couple of other students expressed surprise at my appearance.

You see, I had showered. I had blown dry my hair. I had put on makeup. I wasn't wearing yoga clothes.

In other words, I received credit for doing something that normal people do every day.

Now, I am not doing this because all of a sudden I am less stressed or feeling better. I'm doing this as an adherent of reality therapy, which posits that it's a lot easier to change your behavior than it is to change your thoughts or beliefs; BUT, by changing your behavior, you can eventually change your attitude and beliefs (there's a lot of support for this in social psych too).

We choose our behavior - every single moment, every single day. Some of our choices are more mindful than others, some of us have fewer choices than others, but it is still our behavior that we have principle control over. As a friend once said, you return the phone calls you want to return. I choose whether or not to go to the gym. I choose whether or not to eat that cheeseburger. I choose who I am friends with, I choose who I stay in a relationship with. (stop correcting my grammar in your head)

So, if I am depressed (situational, chemical - yes these are all influences), then it is sustained by my acting depressed. If I feel like crap walking around in the real world, it does not help if I also look like crap - and I was starting to get really depressed that I look like crap all the time.

Anyway, my classmates noticed an instant difference, and I noticed that I talked to a lot more people that night (I can be highly socially avoidant as you probably know), and I was a lot more active in class discussion. So, there's some correlation there.

I'll let you know how it goes. My next steps are to re-introduce exercise and an early bedtime into my life. I mean, these are the things that I would tell a client to do - so I may as well walk the walk.


ps. I'm laughing more too. The other night on the Daily Show, Jon Oliver (my favorite) compared the Bush administration's groping around for another disaster as "trying to find a vein on a failure junkie." I had to pause Tivo and laugh for a good ten minutes at that.

I, for one, do not want to have sex with Sarah Palin

This is a charming little post on HuffPo, and I agree with most of its sentiments EXCEPT the part about wanting to see Sarah Palin naked. I do lurve the idea of Barak Obama sheets and shall look into purchasing immediately. (Sidenote: Pottery Barn Kids is currently selling the exact same Star Wars sheets that I grew up on - and I'm damn well sure my mother probably got them at KMart for pennies compared to what PBK is charging for them.)

Anyway - I'm pretty sure my liver can't take another 4 years of republicans. In fact, the only reason I'm not currently cirrhotic is the blessed state of denial that I entered after John Kerry's oh-so-quick concession speech in ought-four. (I also distracted myself with graduate school). But my liver surely can't take THESE republicans. I haven't even been able to discuss SP with anyone because it's been so impossible to take seriously. It's laughable, but of course it MUST be taken seriously. These assholes aren't joking. Refuckingmarkable. They would put a pig in the white house - yeah, I said it, and it's an insult to pigs.

Can I just say this - God Bless Tina Fey - for sooooo many reasons.

My only sharable/printable thoughts on the Charlie Gibson interview - SP's mispronounciation of nuCLE-AR isn't what worries me. We've had a despotic Rain Main in the white house for the last eight years - more evil in the hands of idiots will be par for the course. But when SP was completely unfamiliar with the Bush Doctrine - well, it would have been laughable if the implications weren't so terrifying. But even worse - The Spin. How can the media honestly say, well, most people don't know what the Bush Doctrine is so it doesn't really matter . The first part of that is probably true. If you had asked me last week, I probably would have needed some prompting in order to share my thoughts on the BD - and yes, I actually have an opinion on it - it's called See Minority Report. I think our "intelligence" capabilities and our government's ability to peer into tea leaves and see what they want to see is a pretty strong argument against the BD. Actually our invasion of Iraq - direct result of BD - is the strongest reponse against the BD. But, even after Charlie Gibson DEFINED the Bush Doctrine for her, she still didn't know what she thought about it - jesusfuckingchrist. Sigh. I'm ranting.

But my point is - Okay, so Jane Minivan doesn't know what the Bush Doctrine is. Fair enough. She doesn't need to. I'm not electing her Vice-Van-Fucking-President! I want the person I'm hiring to do a specific job to know the basic elements OF THAT FUCKING JOB. If I hire a psychologist, I would like her to have a passing familiarity with Freud, even if she doesn't agree with the tenets of psychoanalysis. If I have cancer, I would like my doctor to know a few things about oncology. I want my fucking gardener to at least know how to turn on the goddamn lawn mower.

But the media? They don't even blink. They just keep selling this shit about wanting to have a beer with the president. Trust me, I would LOVE to have a beer with Obama - or even some wine and argula. But if SP makes it into the white house? There ain't enough irish whiskey in the world to carry me through that.

re-joining the living

I have had a migraine since *wednesday*. Lots of (tmi) vomiting and huddling in dark corners, wanting to put my head in a vise so it would feel better. I haven't had one of these in about 17 years or so, and I haven't missed them at all. ugh. anybody else get these? what do you take for them? My vicodin was about as effective as a blaster against the death star.

Abnormal does not equal psychopathological

Annoying also: a professor asked for a one page piece on our definition of "abnormality." Then when I went to post it, she had changed it to our definition of "psychopathology." That's totally different!!!! I realize I'm being way too literal, but I always figure that people choose their words carefully and purposefully. Clearly I'm in the minority.

BTW, this is not my best work. My first draft was about 7 pages and was more of an editorial on the history of clinical psychology. I need to rein myself in with the opinion spouting. Well, except for here.

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“Abnormality,” by strict definition, is that which statistically falls more than two standard deviations outside of the norm. These deviations are gauged in part by measures of intensity, duration, and frequency. In the strictest sense, presumably, one could ideally place a measure of behavior somewhere along the statistical continuum and determine its normality. However, abnormality as a concept is dependent upon the definition and scope of “normal,” within whatever dimension is being considered. Normality itself is dependent on the population used as reference point, and is quite often completely subjective. What is “normal” in my experience is simply that: my world, my experiences, my exposure, my culture/subculture. Therefore, the definition of abnormality may be subject to a similar ambiguity as the definition of pornography found by the Meese Commission in 1984 – we might not know the definition, but we know it when we see it. There seems to be no strict dividing line between abnormal and normal, but rather an element of subjectivity that colors in the “shades of gray.” Clinically, however, one must also consider integral elements such as the violation of social norms (as fluid and variable as these are), intra- or inter-personal distress, and perhaps most importantly, impaired functioning. Considering a behavior (or cognition or emotion) along all these dimensions gives a fuller view of whether it can be considered “abnormal” or not. That being said, it is important to emphasize that “abnormality” does not in and of itself constitute psychopathology, a diagnosable disorder, or something treatable. Likewise, designating a behavior as “normal,” does not necessarily imply that it is healthy or ideal. Lastly, while personal distress can be an important indicator of “abnormality,” we must acknowledge that contemporary Western society – abetted by pharmaceutical companies marketing directly to consumers – has increasingly narrowed its tolerance of the various emotions and states of the human condition, and increasingly pathologized any element of distress that may be found within.

Sigh......

I've just about HAD it with Obama. Sure, we lost the election, but we sure are nice! We sure stayed polite!

He has waaaay too much faith in the American people. He already has the intellectual vote locked up. Time to go for everyone else. It's really beyond disheartening. John Kerry and Al Gore all over again.

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I'm loving Rachel Maddow's new show on MSNBC. I just love her to bits; rabid fan of her radio show and her appearances on Countdown.

Best line: "And now we have an assertion that god's will is being expressed through Sarah Palin's chosen political policies. I'm worried."

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Attended a lovely wedding in LA this weekend. Congratulations to Jani & Patc!

I know this sounds batshit crazy but....

4 years doesn't seem long enough for a doctoral program in clinical psychology - this is assuming I churn out my dissertation in a year. I could easily do it in seven years, but I promised eBoy I would only take 4. There just seems like so much to learn - although my psychometrics professor pointed out that he learned so much more AFTER his grad program than during. I have to remember that.

I'm currently reading an article about Religious Issues in Diagnosis, written by a professor at Regent University - you know, the christian university founded by Pat Robertson. Needless to say, I find the entire article incredibly biased and poorly referenced. I'm supposed to write an abstract on it, but I'm struggling with wanting to write a vitriolic response. That's probably not the best thing to do 2 weeks into school. But it's got my little gears grinding away, to say the least. I can probably come back to it at some point during the next couple of years when I write about the psychological and moral health conferred by atheism, but my goal for now is to not spout off in class about it next week.

So, what we're focused on in this initial week of psychopathology class is whether mental illness is something categorically different from mental health, or a difference of degree of normal behavior (i.e., normal sadness vs. a mood disorder - where's the line? usually we examine these elements in terms of duration, intensity, or frequency). I need to write up a short blurb on how I define abnormality (this after the professor went through her entire lecture on how to distinguish abnormality - what exactly am I supposed to write that isn't a restatement of her lecture?). What I *want* to write about is how we deal with someone that doesn't fall within any diagnostic category, but is definitely "odd" or "weird" or just plain "difficult." Diagnosis gives us a sense of control - I can put you in this box and it will explain you to me - which makes your weird behavior all about you and not about my response to you. This, of course, leads to over pathologizing all the variables in human behavior. The title of the essay I'd like to write is "'Asshole' is not a Diagnosis."

But it's probably a little soon to start down that road with my professors, don't you think?

How you know I'm back in school

Deciphering the following:

Taxometric procedures have received support from a small but growing body of simulation research, which shows that they are capable of discriminating between latent categories and dimensions with high accuracy given adequate sample size and indicator validity. This research also demonstrates that taxometric inference is quite robust under a variety of adverse psychometric conditions and that taxometric procedures discriminate latent structure as well as or better than mixture and cluster analyses....The existence of a taxon in this (anxiety) domain is rendered more plausible by taxometric evidence, replicated with mixture modeling, that inhibited temperment in childhood reflects a latent category.

My head has become just a giant, buzzing chamber......