Can you imagine what is would be like to have your beautiful young son or daughter come to you with such hatred for their appearance that they are begging you to take them to a plastic surgeon?
I think from time to time we all check out our image in the mirror and make an evaluation of it. Some people (young and old) make such critical evaluations of their appearance that they start to believe that they are unable to contribute to any sort of life because of their appearance. When this becomes debilitating, we usually consider a diagnosis of Body Dysmorphic Disorder.
Meltdowns – We’ve all had them. Some of us have had them more recently than others. Some might live with someone (grown up or little) who frequently melts down.
In psychology, we understand that melt downs are the letting out of built up emotions – frustration, excitement, disappointment, anger, despair, grief….
The world is not always a predictable place. Sometimes it can be just cruel and awful. This week, the incident involving the Malaysian Airlines passengers flying above the Ukraine has been a terrible example of the unexpected side of the people of our world. Our special wishes need to be extended to all of those who are some way involved or related to those who lost their lives in the tragedy.
News of such a tragedy usually starts to flood our heads and our homes via screens or over the sound waves. Often, the updates are accompanied by graphic pictures on the television and in the papers. Special updates interrupting normal viewing or listening habits. Our conversations and our tones of voice change. So, it is important that we are mindful of our children’s responses to these kinds of events. The way that we react can affect the way that they react and how they learn about the world and coping when tragedies occur.
Every day, the phone rings at our psychology practice with a range of calls about children with problems. Parents, carers, doctors, psychiatrists, paediatricians, teachers and welfare workers all call about children that need help. We get calls about tots, teens and “tweens”.
Looking at the types of calls coming through can tell us a bit about what is going on for kids out there these days. The health and happiness of our children is a great measure of how we are doing as a society. So, if children aren’t healthy and happy, what are the things that are not working for them? What is it they need?
The human brain never ceases to amaze me. It is truly an amazing piece of equipment made up of miniscule and precise parts that coordinate and move our body in ways we think about and ways we don’t even have to think about. You would think that having had a brain for as long as humans have existed, we might know a bit more about it by now. Technology and machines that go “ping” are helping us to advance our knowledge further and further each day. In the meantime, I find it easy to explain a lot of human behaviour by thinking about the brain being made up of sections or parts that each have a an important job to do when we react to things.
The brain seems to have some really quite primitive parts and some really extra clever bits. The primitive parts are the bits that look after our essential survival – things like breathing, eating, pooing and running away from dangerous things.
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