Whether you have undergone a major procedure that’s gone wrong or you’ve been treated badly by a medical professional, the experience can cause long-lasting trauma. 

The fact is that something like this can have a big impact. This kind of experience is highly traumatic, which can mean that it has an ongoing impact and causes a lot of trauma. 

Knowing how to move past that feeling of trauma and move forward with your life is not always as easy to do as you might wish it could be. Sometimes, moving past trauma can be extremely difficult to do; often knowing where to start can be the hardest part. 

Bearing that in mind, below we have shared some tips and suggestions for how you can approach dealing with a traumatic medical experience and how you can slowly move on. 

Understand that it wasn’t your fault 

It’s extremely common for victims of medical malpractice or medical mistakes to blame themselves, but it’s important to remember that you’re not at fault. Blaming yourself is only going to make coping with the trauma that you have experienced harder. So it’s important to try and understand that whatever happened to you, it’s not your fault. You weren’t the one in charge when you were seeking medical support, a medical practitioner was in charge, and therefore in control of the care and treatment, you received. 

Seek therapeutic support 

Often, it can be hard to move past what you may have experienced – whether it was birth trauma or a negative experience while undergoing a simple procedure – but talking about what happened to you can help to make things a little easier. 

Talking, and unwrapping what happened to you, can help to make dealing with the pain from said trauma easier. It can also make gaining an understanding of why it happened to you easier to understand. It might be hard to talk at first, but over time you should find

Get compensation 

If you’ve been negatively impacted by a medical experience, it’s important to think about what options you have. You shouldn’t have to live with daily trauma and anxiety around medical care. You shouldn’t have to deal with flashbacks and fear at the thought of seeking medical advice or care. 

Sometimes, seeking medical malpractice attorneys to take on your case and get compensation for what you endured, can be the best step forward you can take. You didn’t do anything wrong, and yet you’ve been left with this negative experience – and a lot of trauma and fear most likely – so you deserve compensation. 

Moving forward from a negative medical experience might seem impossible, but the fact is that it is possible to move on. It won’t be easy – and your medical trauma may always stay with you – but it is possible to take steps to move your life forward and move on. 

This is a collaborative post.

Melinda

IDEAS.TED.COM

Jun 8, 2018 / Rebekah Barnett

Our attention gets hijacked by everything from the stress in our lives to the ding of our phones. Neuroscientist Amishi Jha shows how we can cultivate the ability to focus on what really matters.

“I think, therefore I am distracted.”

If Descartes were writing today, this is what his famous aphorism might have become. We’re living in an age of distraction, battered by our own customized waterfall of notifications, alerts, texts, videos, bingeable TV, and more. It’s not surprising our minds often feel like a jumble.

But it turns out we’re not at the mercy of our runaway minds. Amishi Jha (TED Talk: How to tame your wandering mind), an associate professor of psychology at the University of Miami and the director of contemplative neuroscience for the UMindfulness Initiative, studies the brain’s attention mechanisms, and she’s found there are specific exercises we can do to strengthen our ability to pay attention. Here, she explains how you can get your wandering mind back under control.

Our attention is fragile. Jha likens our attention to a “a flashlight you can direct to whatever you choose.” Since research indicates our mind wanders 50 percent of our waking hours, it means most of us are walking around with darting, flickering flashlights. Internal distractions — everything from job stress to a craving for alcohol — and external distractions — like a thunderstorm weather alert on our phone screen — easily disrupt our attention. Whether the interruptions are significant or silly, they are “a basic hijacking of our attentional resources away from the task at hand,” she says. This lack of attention has serious consequences for all of us, but especially for people in high-stakes fields like medicine, the military and criminal justice.

So, how do we gain control of those flickering flashlights and achieve focus? “That’s where mindfulness training comes in,” says Jha. She describes this training as a “portable brain fitness routine to keep our attention strong.” She has tested the effects of such training on subjects in high-stress groups, like athletes and military personnel. Her research has found that the attention of someone who hasn’t had mindfulness training declines when they’re under intense stress, but in people who’ve had training, their attention remains stable. What’s more, in people who regularly do mindfulness exercises, their attention actually gets better over time — even when they’re under stress. According to Jha, researchers have started to uncover other benefits associated with mindfulness, including reduced anxiety, protection from depression relapse, and improved working memory.

What is mindfulness? It’s about paying attention to the present moment with awareness and without emotional reactivity. “It doesn’t require any particular worldview or spiritual or religious belief system,” says Jha. Mindfulness training can be broken down into two major categories: focused attention and open monitoring. They’re very different, yet complementary, practices.

Focused attention exercises cultivate your brain’s ability to focus on one single object, like one’s breath. To do mindful breathing, sit in a comfortable, upright position and focus all your attention on the sensation of breathing — “for example, the coolness of air moving in and out of your nostrils or your abdomen moving in and out,” says Jha. “Focus on something that is tied to your sensory experience. When your mind wanders away from that sensation to internal mental content or an external distraction, gently return it to the breath-related object.” Don’t be surprised or disappointed if you find yourself retrieving your mind hundreds of times during a 15-minute session. Think of your brain like a puppy you’re training to walk on a leash. Gently redirect it every time it darts away.

Another focused-attention exercise is mindful walking. Notice the sensations of walking — “your feet on the ground, the wind caressing your skin, sounds in the air,” says Jha. Walking can take place either indoors or outdoors. You might find this activity easier than mindful breathing; go with whatever exercise works best for you.

One final focused-attention exercise is the body scan. Remember the idea of your attention being like a flashlight? “A body scan is essentially taking that flashlight and directing it systematically through the entire body,” Jha says. Start by focusing your attention on your toes, taking note of whatever sensations might be there. Tightness? Tingling? Warmth? Cold? Next, you can move on to the soles of the feet and the heels, then the legs, stomach, and so on, slowly moving your flashlight up your body. After you have a good grounding in focused attention practice and can keep your attention on a particular object or set of sensations for a period of time, you can move on to open monitoring.

Open monitoring helps you learn to pay attention to what’s happening around you without becoming attached to it. This practice is not about paying attention to a particular object or objects. Instead, it’s about remaining open to any experience — internal or external — that arises, and allowing it to wash over you. “You don’t process it, you don’t think about it,” Jha says. “You just notice its occurrence and allow it to dissipate.” To do this, sit in a comfortable, upright position and try to be aware of any sensations, thoughts or emotions that emerge, without holding on to them. It might help you to label what comes up by using words like “planning,” “worrying,” “judging,” “remembering.” You can do this silently or out loud. After you name it, let it go. Think of what you’re doing as like watching clouds move in the sky and observing the different shapes they make — but in this practice, you’re watching your thoughts travel through your mind. And yes, there will be times when you feel like you keep getting hooked on a particular thought or sensation and can’t seem to drop it. Says Jha, “If you find you’re so lost in thought that you can’t do the open monitoring practice, go back to doing a focused attention exercise to steady yourself again.”

People generally start to see benefits when they practice for about 15 minutes a day, 5 days a week, for around 4 weeks. “If you do more, you benefit more,” she says, “but if you do less than 12 minutes a day, we don’t really see any benefits.” If you try any of these exercises and have trouble keeping your mind still, know that that’s a common experience. Jha urges people not to feel discouraged — as with any new activity or sport, you need to practice. “The mind will wander, and that’s completely fine. It’s not about not letting the mind wander; it’s when the mind wanders, to gently return your attention,” she says.

Start small. “Begin with whatever you consider a reasonable goal and cut it in half, and make a commitment for some period of time,” says Jha. Your goal might be as simple as vowing to stop every day and take the posture of one of the practices, says Jha. Chances are, once you sit (or walk), you’ll decide to stay for a while. Whatever your initial goal, commit to that for a month — and congratulate yourself for making it! — and then gradually increase your practice time until you’re doing it for 15 minutes, 5 days a week. Finding a mindfulness community, whether virtual or in person, can help you stick to the activity. What’s most important, says Jha, is to make sure “you really support yourself to create the habit of practicing,” whether that means setting multiple reminders for yourself or finding a quiet spot and time at your home or workplace to sit.

Jha has seen the positive impact of mindfulness training on the many people she’s worked with over the years. One thing that struck her is how much the military personnel say it has improved not just their ability to work under pressure but also their home lives. Many told her that they’d struggled to be present with their families after returning from deployment. But after mindfulness training, they found they were better able to be present with their loved ones — which is something most of us would like to do, too. “This idea of being present to the people around us when we really want to be present — it often escapes us how to do this,” says Jha. By reclaiming our own attention, we can more fully connect with the people who matter to us.

To see a list of mindfulness resources from Jha, go here. To help you get started, she suggests trying the apps Insight Timer, Headspace and 10% happier. Additional resources for online and in-person mindfulness courses can be found at the Center for Healthy Minds, the Penn Program for Mindfulness, the Contemplative Sciences Center, Duke Integrative Medicine, Osher Center for Integrative Medicine at UCSF, the UCSD Center for Mindfulness, the UMass Center for Mindfulness, the UCLA Mindful Awareness Research Center and the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine at Vanderbilt.

https://embed.ted.com/talks/amishi_jha_how_to_tame_your_wandering_mind

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Rebekah Barnett is the community speaker coordinator at TED, and knows a good flag when she sees one.

More than any other animal, human beings suffer from mental and emotional stress – this is due to our psychological development and self-awareness. But it’s not only the mental side of things we need to look out for; our wellbeing is closely tied to our physical and emotional health as well. In this post, we take a quick look at some of the ways we can improve our overall health.

Physical Health 

Hair 

If you’re like most people, you wash your hair regularly to keep it clean and maintain a healthy outwards appearance, but washing your hair too often could be doing more harm than good. That’s because hair requires natural oil produced in the follicle glands that get washed away. 

Healthy hair is oily hair; it is not dry or brittle and should not contribute to a flaky scalp; if you find that your hair has any of these qualities, it’s time to do something about it. First, switch your hair products to chemical-free ones and consider washing your hair less regularly for more oil.  

Skin 

People spend a lot of time and money looking after their skin because it’s one of the first outward signs of wellbeing. However, all the skincare products in the world can’t help you if your skin is affected by your lifestyle or your moods; in that case, you need an alternative solution.

The good news is that skin is a responsive organ; it responds positively to diet, exercise, and natural skin care products that aim to rehydrate rather than dry out the skin. If you adopt a healthy stress-limited lifestyle, you will notice an immediate improvement in your skin quality.

Teeth 

Well-being isn’t always about what you do on the inside to maintain your optimal health; it’s also about how you appear to others. Human beings are social animals, and we are strongly affected by our interactions with others. That’s one reason people pay so much attention to their teeth. 

Excellent dental care, such as the kind you can receive from https://peninsulafamilydentist.com, can alter the way you feel about yourself and how much success you attain in the world. With a smile that is clean, shiny, and white, you can’t fail to impress your friends, co-workers, and boss.

Emotional Health 

Mind 

Now to the intangible aspects of your health that are just as important as the physical side. The mind is a set of faculties that are responsible for mental phenomena. In simple terms, the mind can be described as the imagination, memory, thoughts, individual will, and bodily sensations.

A healthy mind is a balanced mental and emotional state without any intrusive thoughts or memories. A healthy mind allows you to be productive throughout the day and to enjoy your life without feeling stress or ill-will; you can improve the health of your mind with mindfulness.  

Emotions 

Emotions are closely connected with the mind when thoughts, ideas, and impressions arise that create positive or negative emotions – sometimes a mixture of both, which leads to “mixed feelings.” Improve your emotional health by refining your mind with meditation and knowledge.

This is a collaborative post.

Melinda

Have you ever experienced cognitive dysfunction or sometimes called brain fog? If so you will know exactly what it is and what it feels like. In fact, most of us have experienced it at some point or another, and it is actually a very common experience. While at times it might go hand-in-hand with a mental health issue, it can also just happen as a response to temporary stimuli, and can soon pass in those cases. But if you are experiencing it too often, or you just want to know how you can avoid it, try out the ideas in this article. If you have chronic brain fog you should check with your doctor in that it could be a symptom of a medical condition and need more attention. 

What Is Brain Fog?

While brain fog is not a specific medical condition that is recognized, it is a common experience and it has entered the language in the past few years for that reason. Generally, it is characterized by cognitive dysfunction, including memory loss and a lack of clarity in the mind, and generally a poor concentration with an inability to focus. If you find yourself experiencing this kind of brain fog, you will find that it is hard to focus on anything for too long. It can be a surprisingly upsetting experience.

Avoiding Brain Fog

How to avoid or get rid of brain fog will depend on what caused it, so the first thing to do is to identify that as closely as you can. There are many common causes of brain fog, including overuse of smartphones and social media, lack of sleep, abusing drugs and alcohol, stress, hormonal alterations, and poor diet. If any of these are jumping out at you as possible issues that you might need to fix, then that should be your first port of call.

Beyond that, it is all about making sure that you are generally looking after yourself. If you do that, you might be able to avoid brain fog altogether.

Other Methods

If you are still experiencing brain fog on a regular basis, you might want to consider some other trusted options, such as meditation. With regular practice, meditation becomes easier and you will find that you have a better and better sense of what is going on in your mind, which will help you to stop brain fog in its tracks. That’s something that we can all look forward to.

Beyond Brain Fog

Life on the other side of brain fog is much clearer, happier, and more engaged, so it is absolutely worth trying to get rid of it as best as you can. If you try the options above and it’s enough, and you will find that you can enjoy life all the more as a result. If brain fog continues, please speak with your general practitioner about your symptoms. 

This is a collaborative post.

Melinda

IDEAS.TED.COM

Dec 2, 2021

Going through a global pandemic has brought us together in some ways, but it’s also separated many of us from our routine interactions with friends and acquaintances. And in doing so, it’s led us to look at our relationships and reflect on the ones we’d like to add to our lives — and the ones we’ve left behind. 

Voraciously curious data journalist Mona Chalabi has been thinking about her friendships too, and she recently explored this topic in her podcast Am I Normal?. Here’s an excerpt from that episode, where Chalabi speaks with renowned friendship researcher Robin Dunbar PhD, an evolutionary psychologist at Oxford University: 

Mona Chalabi: According to Dunbar, our apple basket of relationships has an average of 150 people in it. This 150 figure is referred to as “Dunbar’s number“. Now it might seem high, but what Dunbar is looking at is the number of relationships the brain can handle at one time. This includes family, best friends, acquaintances, workmates, even the bartender you know by name. So they’re friends of a wide range of types. 

Dunbar has studied social relationships since the ’70s, first in primates and then in humans. He developed the number while studying primates’ social networks. And that was when he noticed that the size of those social groups was relative to the size of the primates’ brains.

“Introverts prefer to have fewer friends,” says Dr. Dunbar. “They probably sort of hover around the 100 – 150 mark.”

Robin Dunbar: And so I just, out of idle curiosity, thought, “Well, what happens if we stick human brains into this equation?” And when we did that, it gave this figure of 150. And that number then just kept turning up all over the place. 

Chalabi: The figure popped up in surprising places — offices, communes, even Christmas card lists. 150 is also the estimated size of Neolithic farming villages in the Middle East and 11th-century Britain … Dunbar says 150 for simplicity, but really, it’s a range between 100 and 250, depending on several factors.

Dunbar: One is obviously personality. So introverts prefer to have fewer friends. They probably sort of hover around the 100 –  150 mark …

Chalabi: Another factor is age. 

Dunbar: The size of personal social networks over the lifespan increases as you grow through childhood, hits a peak somewhere in the late teens, early 20s at something approaching about 250. And then from about the 30s, surprisingly coinciding with reproduction, it drops to about 150 after which it remains very stable.

Chalabi: … You see, within that 100 – 250 friend range, there are layers or concentric circles. The first layer is about 1.5 people. That often represents your parents or your romantic partner.

Dunbar: Then the next layer out is somewhere around about 5 — we think of those as your intimate friends. The next layer out is 15 — those you might think of as best friends. Then there’s a layer at 50 — good friends. A layer at 150 — just friends. A layer at 500 —  which we think of as acquaintances.

Chalabi: 50 good friends! Five-zero! That feels like a whole lot of people! And I think this is the tier where I’m having the most trouble. 

… The more I think about it, part of the problem here might be that some of the people who were once part of that super-close friend group, maybe I just didn’t do enough to keep them there.

Dunbar: Certainly our research shows very clearly that if you fail to maintain that level of investment, friendships start to die slowly, but surely. Six months after you’ve not contacted them, they will have dropped down from being a good friend to maybe just a friend. And if it carries on for a couple of years, they will end up as an acquaintance.

Want to learn more? In her TED podcast Am I Normal?, data journalist, writer and illustrator Mona Chalabi dives into the numbers to get us answers to some of the most puzzling questions — like just how long does it take to get over a breakup and how bad is it to marry a cousin. But since statistics can’t tell the whole story, she also talks with experts, strangers and even her mother. Go here to listen to the irresistible episodes now. 

You can also watch this TED original video with Mona Chalabi here: 

A good friend is there to offer a shoulder to cry on when it’s needed. Indeed, simply being there for a friend when they come to you with a problem can, in and of itself, be helpful to them. However, there are correct and incorrect ways to respond to problems. It doesn’t mean that the solution is always the same, but that there are definite ways you can worsen the situation before you improve it. Before you jump to help that friend, consider looking at the way that you respond to problems.

One of the most frustrating things you can do to someone who is expressing their emotions about any given experience is rush past those emotions to try and promote a solution as quickly as possible  If someone is struggling with their mental health, the very first thing you should do is listen to them, take in their emotional response, and validate it. You might want to get to the solutions that can help them in no time, flat, but it’s not helping them to neglect their feelings.

Empathizing with your friend can be a good thing. It can help you develop some sense of shared perspective that can make it a little easier for them to open up about their problems. However, if you’re going to say something like this, you need to know the difference between empathy and compassion. Empathy is a quick reaction to a situation or emotional state that we see and can understand. Compassion is the deliberate attempt to understand their feelings and how they’re reacting to that situation or state. Don’t go off into stories about your own similar experiences or downplay their emotional response by stating that it affected you in a different and less harmful way. Even if you don’t mean to, you’re making it harder for them to be honest about their own feelings.

If you are a great problem solver and you do know a very concrete suggestion that will help them, you can share it. Make sure they’ve had the time to express their feelings and what they want to say, first. However, if you don’t have any great ideas for advice, then don’t feel like that you have to share them. Unsolicited advice can be a risky thing to give and that’s especially so if you don’t know what kind of advice to give.

Get an idea of “brutal honesty” out of your head. A lot of people go in with that mindset, but often what they get is brutality, not honesty. Even if you believe that your friend’s own mistakes led them to the predicament that they are in, who does it help to say as much? If you judge them when they are at their most vulnerable, that is what they will remember and, as a result, they’re less likely to come to you in the future. Check to make sure you’re not judgemental when trying to be helpful.

If your friend hasn’t opened up to you in such a way before then they can feel a little awkward and vulnerable about the way they have expressed themselves. You can reassure them that you are there to support them and that you are open to that kind of relationship by checking up on them and asking them how they are doing with the problem the next day. It shows that you’re genuinely interested in their wellbeing and can alleviate any feelings of guilt they might have about “burdening” you with their problems.

If you do think that you can play an active role in helping them with their problems, then that’s great. Rather than rushing to do it yourself, however, you should ask how you can support them. They might just want someone to listen to them, they might want someone to offer advice, or they might be open to more practical and hands-on assistance. The words “what can I do to help?” can be a very important step in making sure you’re not stepping on any toes.

Again, that you’re willing to listen to and help a friend is a great thing, by itself. But if you want to make sure that you are, indeed, being on the helpful side, you need to consider the above mistakes that you might be making.

This a collaborative post.

Melinda