Grandiositet och självförakt

”Det som är mest karaktäristiska för den narcissistiska personligheten är den paradoxala klyvningen mellan två konträra självbilder; en grandios och en skamfylld, hatisk” (Johan Cullgerg i Skaparkriser).  Den grandiosa delen söker hela tiden bekräftelse för att kunna hålla stånd mot den negativa självbilden. Detta gör att människor eller företeelsen i omgivningen idealiseras, men bara så länge detta tjänar personens eget syfte. På samma sätt nervärderar man och den människan som tidigare idealiseras får uppleva nedvärderingen i samma stund som idealiseringen tar slut. Samma gäller idéer och engagemang som man tidigare har idealiserat men som av någon anledning har hamnat i ”onåd” och inte längre ger något narcissistiskt tillskott till självbilden.

Personer som lider av denna problematik är ofta på olika sätt begåvade och talanger och de kan vara charmiga och ofta ser de även bra ut. Eftersom de är målmedvetna går karriären ofta spikrakt uppåt och man ser dessa personer ofta som framgångsrika; man ser ju bara de ytliga framgångar men inte de inre misslyckanden som dumpas på omgivningen. Narcissisten har aldrig fel utan det är hans eller hennes medarbetare eller annan närstående som får stå för felet. Narcissistens medarbetare, make eller maka och vänner ses som förlängning av den egna personligheten och dess behov. Och när de inte längre duger  till det har de inget värde och narcissisten vill inte längre veta av dem mer än möjligen som syndabockar. Narcissistens samvete är flexibel och detta möjliggör att han eller hon kan utan problem ha ”hemligheter” som till exempel dubbelbokföring samtidigt som den moralen personen visar utåt verkar ligga på hög nivå. Bakom allt detta döljer sig en inre tomhet som måste fyllas med andras beundran. Narcissisten vill inte på några villkor komma i kontakt med sin negativa självbild och därför söker personen hela tiden nya personer och engagemang som fyller tomrummet och ger den grandiosa självbilden näring. Ibland kan självbilden vara starkt hotad av något som leder till raseri som annars ligger djupt inne i denna människa. Då kan narcissisten kränka någon även om han eller hon annars har en god impulskontroll.

Detta är narcissistens liv: att visa sin grandiosa sida utåt och gömma självföraktet och skammen in i det innersta hörnet i psyket och bara ibland kan man se en liten glimt av denna sida. Men om man inte känner människan bra tänker man oftast: Vilken framgångsrik och charmig människa!

The Fundamental Attribution Error

This means that we explain others’ behavior as due to internal causes, and this means that we explain our own behavior as due to external causes.

We do that every day without thinking about it, without noticing it. This has nothing to do with your intelligence, or your personality. Actually, intelligent people seem to go into this trap more often than others.

You go into this trap, even if you know it’s a trap: If a person behaves friendly, your conclusion is that this is a kind person. And if the person behaves the way you feel is problematic, your conclusion is that this is a difficult person. But you don´t think that you yourself can consciously behave as a difficult person or you can behave friendly no matter how you actually feel. Or can´t you?
Now you should be aware of that you interpret others’ behavior like your mind tells you it should be; a good man and a bad man.

Imagine a social event and you have to be there. You feel nervous, but everyone else looks like they are very relaxed. Your conclusion is that everyone else is relaxed; it’s just you who are nervous. But your nervousity is probably not visible, no one can see it, and all the other are thinking the same about you: what a relaxed man.

If someone runs into the ditch with his car you immediately think that the person must be a bad driver.
But if you run into the ditch, you have an explanation; it is because it was a bad road, ice, or there were other external circumstances that caused the accident. Maybe not every time but quite often. This is because we see things from different perspectives depending on who is acting:
when you are doing something yourself, you often see the surroundings, ice on the road etc., but when another person does something stupid, strange, whatever, you see that the person is causing what happens.

If we would see ourselves in a different way, we should understand that even we ourselves affect the things happening more than our experience tells us. But we all have a certain image, true or not, about ourselves and the image is controlling our own experiences. If there are changes in the environment, we don´t see them.

We now feel that a person who behaves friendly is friendly and for example, the vendors can use it, and they DO use this information; they know that a personwho sounds happy is selling more than a person just using few words. This is something we all know and they know it too.

And you see the errors if you are looking for errors … but if you do not want to see an error somewhere (in yourself) you will not see it.
So; my bad luck depends on the circumstances but my neighbor is a son of a bitch who made himself unhappy buy buying the expensive house, having a bad job, behaving like an idiot… etc.

Are Aliens visiting you during the night

by Ulla Sarj”The hypnagogic and hypnapompic hallucinations are both a product of the unconscious and our unconscious is playing very real and agonizing scenes for us; we can see aliens, dead people, monsters, religious beings like the devil, angels, demons, or Jesus and other strange things when you are in this alternate state of consciousnessHypnagogic and hypnopompic hallucinations can give rise to extremely horrible experiences. The experience can occur for you and for me and it has nothing to do with the ”victim´s” normal state of mind. It is only after the experience, you may have benefits if you are a skeptical thinker. The actual experience may at worst be described as terrible horror movie.

Hypnapompic hallucinations with attached sleep paralysis are often those that make people most scared, because the person usually wakes up to the physical reality rather brutally after having this kind of experience. At the very awakening just before the paralysis release, you may experience extreme horror at the same time as your heart rate is speeding because of pure and primitive fear.

Should this occur in the middle of the night and you are a very imaginative person, you may very well experience such an event as quite real, while a skeptical-minded person, at best, realize that it was the subconscious that played a prank. But it may take several minutes after waking before logic and common sense gives an explanation for the tumultuous event. It is thus not surprising that there are people who swear that their experiences are real, it’s actually the way they have understood it all. To convince these people that it was only their brain that played them a trick can be an impossible task.

Religious manifestations, ”alien abductions” and perceived ghosts are common manifestations of this type of hallucination. If the ”victims” say they have been paralyzed and completely unable to move, while being able to describe the event in detail, it should be pretty easy to uncover the cause. The experience can often be very unpleasant but also show up on normal everyday events that in retrospect, of natural reason are not experienced as being important but quite natural. You can e.g. ”hear” bells or someone calling your name, you can see a family member coming into the bedroom, etc. It is very common that you are experiencing that you are falling down and then when you ”hit the ground” it generates a great pressure throughout the body that makes waking up suddenly and quite brutal. Have you ever experienced this scenario, it has also partly seen and known as the hypnapompic hallucinations.

This condition is quite much same as Night Terror (Pavor Nocturnus), a panic attack that children can have during the night, the sleeping child suddenly sits up and screams, or even start to go around (Sleepwalking). It may take several minutes before the child calms down and it seems that the child doesn´t even recognize his parents, or the child can even be afraid of his own parents. This panic attack usually lasts a few minutes and the child probably doesn´t remember this in the morning.

All of these conditions, and speaking when sleeping, and other similar experiences seem to have genetic base, which means that if a parent is a ”Sleepwalkers”, a child may experience the ”Night Terror”.

I have myself experienced all these states and even Lucid Dreaming but I am a skeptical nature and I am sure that the things I have seen are coming from my own brain. I have even been a sleepwalker and sleeptalker and one of my children has had Night Terror attacks, only when he was sick and had fewer.
My own hallucinations use to come when I am very tired and paralysis is not a very comfortable experience but you can actually learn techniques how to break it and once you know what all is about there is no reason to be afraid. And Lucid Dreaming can be real fun.

It is all about to be aware that our brain can create all these things.

Borderline - a lost soul in the wind

Borderline - a lost soul in the wind

by Ulla Sarja

Psychiatry Center in Karolinska Sjukhuset, which is running the Borderline Unit in Stockholm, writes on their website:

”Patients with borderline are often impulsive, intense and emotionally unstable. They often have a negative mental image of themselves, and their images of people in their immediate surroundings tend to alternate between black and white. Their mood is often rapidly changing, emotions tend to be intense and they are triggered very easily and the environment can have difficult to understand the borderline patient’s response patterns. Self-mutilation, suicide attempts, and comorbidity by, for example depression, eating disorders, addictions and anxiety disorders is common.

Patients with borderline personality disorder are usually impulsive and emotionally unstable people. Impulsivity and instability pervades most of the borderline patient’s inner and outer worlds. Self-image is often unstable, and people with Borderline Personality Disorder often have beliefs, meaning, deep-seated opinions about themselves, which in most cases are about that they are ”worthless” or ”impossible to love.”

Their relationships tend to be stormy, intense and chaotic, and their perceptions about others commute often between idealization and devaluation. This often gives rise to problems when they are in health care, perhaps particularly in psychiatric care. If the attending staff is not really aware of the patient’s difficulties with the integration of ”good” and ”bad” sides in the patients thoughts, the care may be troubled and difficult to handle without conflicts. Although the patient is rapidly changing moods, it can cause a lot of difficulties.

People with borderline are extremely emotionally vulnerable. Some little thing can get them completely out of balance, and often it is very difficult to understand what it is having triggered the strong emotional reaction. The emotional vulnerability, combined with impulsivity often leads to self-mutilation or even suicide attempts. People with borderline often stay in relationships because of their extremely strong fear of separation, separation anxiety. Separations are painful for most people but a person with borderline often perceive separation as a bottomless pit of despair, a feeling of total abandonment and a bottomless emptiness that seems impossible to live with, quite often involving self-mutilation and suicide attempts because of the fear to be left alone.

The mortality rate by suicide is very high. Approximately 90 percent of patients with borderline who have been treated at a psychiatric clinic have one or more serious suicide attempts. 10 percent of people with borderline die by suicide.

Patients with borderline have a very high comorbidity compared with other psychiatric disorders. The most common triggers include depression, anxiety disorders, eating disorders and addiction, in the end, leading to death. Comorbidity and suicide attempts are the most common reasons that people with borderline want to have psychiatric care. They understand that otherwise, the whole thing is going to end…
Patients with borderline often describe that they have difficulty in managing to get others to understand how they feel. It may appear if they are wearing a ”mask”, which makes it difficult to understand them. For example, a deeply depressed, suicidal borderline person can on the surface seem to be almost neutral, so the therapist doesn´t even get the idea to ask about suicidal thoughts. Self-injury behaviors and suicide attempts can sometimes be triggered by the patient’s difficulties in communicating their inner pain to the world. Here we find the young girls who are cutting themselves.

”I thought I had everything I could ever wish for me,” complained Sara, ”but now I feel just emptiness. There is no longer anything I think is important.” She described the waves of boredom followed by tension, which escalated to such intensity that she just could banish it by causing the pain. So she began beating on his ankles with a mallet, just enough for it to hurt. This time, she had underestimated the power of the beat.

This is about Sara in the book Vilse i speglingar by Richard A. Moskovitz (I don´t remember the English title just now).

Dissociation and splitting are the defense mechanisms that are used by a person with borderline personality disorder, BPD. The painful memories are locked up in a corner and there they can stay. If they come out, the anxiety is coming with the memories. Some of borderline patients cut themselves, some use alcohol and drugs.

In extreme cases, the dissociation is so severe that it develops a multiple personality and the child (and later an adult) is living in the same body, as two, and possibly some more personalities, and they live there without knowing about each other’s existence.

The person with BPD doesn´t knows who she/he is. Instead, he or she feels a chronic sense of emptiness and the mood is swinging very much and all the time. Paranoia may occur as well as impulsive and suicidal behavior. It is likely, but not sure, that the person has sometimes been a victim of abuse, but this is too painful to remember. Instead, the person keeps it away by having a self-destructive behavior.

There are many varieties of this disorder, but these persons use to need medication before beginning therapy. Otherwise the therapy doesn´t work.
Sara in the book could accept her experiences and she became a functioning individual. This does not apply to everyone but not everyone with BPD is in the condition she was.

Goodbye Norma Jean

The photo from:http://www.mobieg.co.za/articles/borderline-personality-disorder/

The Whole is Always Greater than the Sum of It´s Parts

A very important reason for difficulties in resolving conflicts is the fact that the parts
involved have quite different imaginations of what the whole situation is about. They have
different stories about what happened, what was the main point in the thing happened, what is
important and what should happen next.
Because os my own story seems so obvious and so sensible, it is easy to overlook that the other persons story also may be
reasonable, though in a completely different way.
I have to always remember that what I see and hear is NOT the absolute and objective truth!!!!!There are as many truths than there are participants. That is why it is unnecessary to try to understand what happened when the parts involved are not there in person.

Difficult talks are difficult when/if each of the involved parts insist that their own description of what the conflict is about, is the only authentic way to see the things. Seeing the things from your own viewpoint is often the only reason for you to think that the other is not more flexible, that they are malicious, reckless, stupid or something else negative.
Then, how can we talk to each other about what happened and what should happen without going to personal attacks, filled with debt, negative testimonials, sarcasm and other meaningless things?
Experience shows that the discussions can be more difficult than needed because of the people involved are going into the the discussion with false assumptions
There are three kinds of false assumptions that are extra ordinary:
1. My picture of the situation is the true picture.
2. I know what the assumtions behind your actions were.
3. Someone is to blame for what happened, and it is not me.

These assumptions have harmful effects on the discussion because they are not on a conscious level.
We simply assume that it is so and therefore do not want to find out if it is true or not. An important part of the art of bringing constructive talks in conflicts is to transform these three assumptions.
If you instead assume the following basic settings, chances are greater that the problems you have can be handled constructively:

1. I do not know how the other's thoughts of the whole situation are, therefore we must begin with finding out the main features of everyone's story.

2. I know what effect the other's behavior had on me, but not the intentions of the other guided by in different situations.

3. To determine who is to blame for the problems is an ineffective way to avoid similar problems in future. It is more interesting to
find out how all contributed to the point where an unfortunate situation occurred, so that
we can find ways to prevent it happening again.

Never do the mistake you are sure about what another person thinks!!!!!

Never do the mistake to interprete the other persons intentions before you have asked him/her!!!!

There do not need to be someone to blaim; no one can discuss or argue alone!!!!

And never use the power of i.e. your higher position in the profession to claim your opinion is the right opinion!!!!



The truth gets its meaning through the story it is the part of.

Draft conflicts can often be solved by simply defining what
the facts are. The conflicts that seem difficult to solve do not arises because the of involved parts can not agree on facts, but because they have different experiences of the
facts important in the situation and the facts insignificant in the context. So why do not find out what the other part means?????

A very important prerequisite for the art of the constructive talks is you being aware that different people's perception is filled with completely different things.
Everyone has their own story about what happened and is happening. It is the story as a whole, that gives the individual facts a meaning: The whole is always greater than the sum of its parts.

Relationship of Eating Disorders to OCD | OCD Chicago

Relationship of Eating Disorders to OCD | OCD Chicago

The Whole is Always Greater than a Sum of It´s Parts

A very important reason for difficulties in resolving conflicts is the fact that the parts
involved have quite different imaginations of what the whole situation is about. They have
different stories about what happened, what was the main point in the thing happened, what is
important and what should happen next.
Because os my own story seems so obvious and so sensible, it is easy to overlook that the other persons story also may be
reasonable, though in a completely different way.
I have to always remember that what I see and hear is NOT the absolute and objective truth!!!!!There are as many truths than there are participants. That is why it is unnecessary to try to understand what happened when the parts involved are not there in person.

Difficult talks are difficult when/if each of the involved parts insist that their own description of what the conflict is about, is the only authentic way to see the things. Seeing the things from your own viewpoint is often the only reason for you to think that the other is not more flexible, that they are malicious, reckless, stupid or something else negative.
Then, how can we talk to each other about what happened and what should happen without going to personal attacks, filled with debt, negative testimonials, sarcasm and other meaningless things?
Experience shows that the discussions can be more difficult than needed because of the people involved are going into the the discussion with false assumptions
There are three kinds of false assumptions that are extra ordinary:
1. My picture of the situation is the true picture.
2. I know what the assumtions behind your actions were.
3. Someone is to blame for what happened, and it is not me.

These assumptions have harmful effects on the discussion because they are not on a conscious level.
We simply assume that it is so and therefore do not want to find out if it is true or not. An important part of the art of bringing constructive talks in conflicts is to transform these three assumptions.
If you instead assume the following basic settings, chances are greater that the problems you have can be handled constructively:

1. I do not know how the other's thoughts of the whole situation are, therefore we must begin with finding out the main features of everyone's story.

2. I know what effect the other's behavior had on me, but not the intentions of the other guided by in different situations.

3. To determine who is to blame for the problems is an ineffective way to avoid similar problems in future. It is more interesting to
find out how all contributed to the point where an unfortunate situation occurred, so that
we can find ways to prevent it happening again.

Never do the mistake you are sure about what another person thinks!!!!!

Never do the mistake to interprete the other persons intentions before you have asked him/her!!!!

There do not need to be someone to blaim; no one can discuss or argue alone!!!!

And never use the power of i.e. your higher position in the profession to claim your opinion is the right opinion!!!!



The truth gets its meaning through the story it is the part of.

Draft conflicts can often be solved by simply defining what
the facts are. The conflicts that seem difficult to solve do not arises because the of involved parts can not agree on facts, but because they have different experiences of the
facts important in the situation and the facts insignificant in the context. So why do not find out what the other part means?????

A very important prerequisite for the art of the constructive talks is you being aware that different people's perception is filled with completely different things.
Everyone has their own story about what happened and is happening. It is the story as a whole, that gives the individual facts a meaning: The whole is always greater than the sum of its parts.

More about positive thinking or how stress affects the performance

Low level makes us tired and we are sleepy. When the stress level rises, we are alert. When we have reached the optimum level (positive stress) we are performing our best. When the stress level rises further we begin to experience anxiety and finally become totally confused.
As long as the stress is on the optimal level a person is functioning as best, can work and stress level drops naturally in the evening.
It is only when you have gone over this level the negative effects are beginning to show itself.
You can not relax, you have trouble to go to sleep and you may suffer other stress symtom.

No stress - nothing gets done
A little stress - you feel sprightly
Optimal stress level - you perform well
Too high stress level - you start to feel agitated and possibly anxious
Long term high stress level - clear symtoms of stress. Burnout

Bernie Siegel, a surgeon who has written books drewing attention to believe that every disease has a message that we must pay attention to. This in itself is nothing new, even Freud explained several diseases with mental health grounds. While Freud's teachings are considered obsolete, at least in some circles, there is the same idea behind Siegel approach to health and disease.
And not just his ideas but every idea that sees body and soul / consciousness as a whole.
Siegel says that we can learn something about each illness and he thinks that although we can not control everything that happens in our life, we can control our own reactions.
And of course we can. If someone says that we can not, I would like to ask the person; "whose thoughts are you thinking. My thoughts are my own and I can actually choose to think what I want.
There are also various techniques such as meditation, to learn to put the focus of things you like.
This can be used as a preventive "medicine", you need not wait until they are already ill or burn-out.

About good and evil and Paulo Coelho

I have recently been reading many books written by Paulo Coelho. These books have brought up a lots of thoughts, especially as I have been reading other literature at the same time, everything from Freud's collected works to Andrew Taylor's The Four Last Things. The question these books have raised again is about the difference between good and evil, madness and non-madness.
Do we have any obvious definition of these labels even though we live in 2008? No, we do not. How can the justice say that a certain person needs psychiatric care and the other not? Sure, those classified as psychopaths possibly associated with the narcissistic disorder are considered to not be insane. And as one who has seen almost all types of disturbed personality, I can agree; they are suffering of a personality disorder that can not be cured and they often know exactly what they do but they just do not care. They lack empathy.
But what is that we call evil? Are there evil people? I think there actually are not even if we are shown this evil in a number of films letting us to understand this is the case. That evil is something that relates to Bible, the devil and other similar things.
In fact, it can be a vicious congenital deviation in human neurology and then there is surely no reason to involve the whole religion in this. Neurological abnormalities have been shown to play a major role in behavior but we should not forget the parents who, in turn, ensures that the "deviant" personality may get as good upbringing as possible. IT can make the difference between mass murderers and economic criminals. Where I wanted to come? Nowhere, more than once more to point out that the world is not always like it looks like to be ....

Some traps when trying to use positive thinking style

The victim:
You have a feeling that you do not control your life yourself, but it is controlled by someone from outside. Especially this is used to happen in adverse events, which just happens but you feel you just have to let it happen. And for positive events, you may see is as a "pure luck" that the good thing happened. Anyway, you feel there is no idea to do anything but be passive. We can still do not control the future and not get past obstacles.

Yes, but ...:
Your answers to all possible solutions is "yes, but" because of a myriad reasons why it proposes, can not and will not work.


Exercise to try:
Write your negative thoughts, thoughts that are so automatic that you no longer even thinks about them.
Do the same with your positive thoughts and try to find them and actually dare to write them up. Opposition to see the positive things in yourself tends almost to be more than to see the negative things.

And finally: anything can happen at any time!

Take control of your mental processes

To be able to take control of your mental processes requires that you can notice them. Rita Mae Brown, once said: "To do the same thing over and over again and expect a new result, is equal to the madness."

Sure you know that the result is wrong after a while, of course, you can see it. But it is difficult to understand what you're doing wrong. You are trying just to take what you think seem to be the fastest way to get the best results.

How does it work?

You experience the reality by your five senses and make an interpretation of it. Your interpretation is not the same as reality itself, but your own picture of it. It is what YOU imagine is reality.

The problem occurs when your own "subjective" reality does not match so well with the "objective" reality. You try to do something you feel as good or right, but it does not work. You may then choose to try to change the objective reality to suit your thoughts, or to change your own reality to suit the objective reality. What do you think is easiest? Moving the mountain to Mohammed, or moving Mohammed to the mountain?

We go a little deeper

To be able to be happy, sad, angry, irritable, calm, etc.., the body must mix the right chemicals. In this way, you are actually your own bartender. The only question is what do you mix of drink. What do you feel?

If you are going out and play the game, race or mush on the green when 100 people stand and watch, you can feel stressed out, pressured or nervous. What will you do?

Stress, pressure and nervousness, and all other permits are not real. Have you ever seen a high level of stress lying on the ground in front of your feet when you're out and play or compete?

Stress, pressure and nervousness are mental processes that you create and they are usually unconscious. But if you become aware of them, you can also detect when they are on the way and stop them.
Easy? Yes and now we do it!

Create your own experiences

We all always have an internal dialogue with ourselves. The dialogue may contain positive or negative things. If the negative outweighs it may sound like:
I'm not smart enough to cope with this
I am not as good as the others
I can not succeed and will not do it
I always give up
It does not matter what I do, it is still not going to be better
They will discover how stupid I am
I am woman, and they will not listen to a woman
I am too young and they will not believe me
I am too young to do this
I am too old to do this

At the same time as you think the thought, you have already chosen the consequence - I will not do this, therefore there is no idea that I even try, which in turn leads to you actually will never know if you had passed it.
Brain function is so amazing that the brain actually does not see the difference between what happens in real life and what you think. So while you're thinking, 'I can not do this, your brain thinks that you KNOW that because you have already tried.
Of course this also works with positive thoughts: if you think 'I can do this and see it happening in your imagination, the image of how you do it, the brain think that you have already passed it.

If the internal dialogue, positive thoughts sounds like:
I am very clever
I am at least as good as the others
I will succeed in whatever I do
I will not give up
If it does not work in the beginning, it will be better
I am a woman but it does not matter
I am young but it does not matter
I am old but it does not matter
The age at all does not matter

Now you have already given the brain a picture where it thinks you ARE you like you describe yourself in your thoughts.

Now it's YOUR choice: to think positive thoughts or to think negative thoughts.

THAT MAKES THE WHOLE DIFFERENCE!

It is just a thought, nothing to be afraid of

When you have an experience of difficult emotions they always are accompanied by sensations and feelings in the body. Then we tend to automatically react negatively, instead of friendly attention right into the areas of the body where we feel pain or discomfort. If we do so, note them immediately, the long-term effects start immediately. By doing this we are shorting the reaction patterns in the brain that trigger avoidance. We also disrupt the automatic neural connections between body, emotion and thought that consolidate vicious circles and depressive spiral. In the long term we are going to develop more constructive and sensible way of dealing with these experiences that have been considered negative. We no longer see them as evil and scary, because if we see them that way we trigger avoidance. This in turn means that we get stuck there. But if we begin to see the unpleasant experiences as they are, take them for what they are; transient mental phenomena or events, feelings and thoughts, showing interested to examine them, being curious, rather than to be afraid of those things we regard as abhorrent events and that we have learned to hate.We might as well invite them because they are already there.
Although anxiety is actually just a feeling, a creation of your own brain, nothing to be afraid of ...

Begin today

Beginner´s mind means to see everything as you were looking at it the first time.

The richness of the present moment is the greatest gift of your life. Our thoughts on what we already know, often obscuring the view to see things as they actually ARE. Without any bias. We use to take everything for granted and thus fail to see much of reality. The unique is the everyday life. If you see everything as if you saw it for the first time, you can suddenly see things that you have not seen before, even if they've been there. Every moment is a unique opportunity to experience something new or experience present in a new way. Do you see things and people around you as they really are or you see them only as reflections of your thoughts? If we do not trouble us, we see everything like we have always seen and then we do not see the reality. If I get angry so probably it's about something in the person’s behavior that has made me angry at some point. But if I see all these things in new ways, see the man as he is, maybe I no longer have any reason get upset because of his / her behavior, people are just like they are and it's not for me to change this . What I can change is my own way of seeing it.

About leadership

The authoritarian nature is not devoiding to want to be active, to have courage and faith. But these features of meaning for them is something else than the meaning for a person no longing after submission. In the authoritarian nature the desire of activities is based on a profound sense of powerlessness, as that is what it strives to overcome. Activities in this sense means to act in the name of something that is higher than their own self. It can be done in God´s name, in the past´s name, the nature´s or the duty´s name, but never in the name of the future of the unborn, right of them whot have a non power, or of life itself.

For the authoritarian character a lack of power always is a sign of guilt or inferiority, and the authority on which the person believes is showing signs of weakness, has released the love and the charity for resentment. This character lacks the aggressive spirit that can attack recognized powers without first having to enter into service in the second and stronger powers.

The courage of the authoritarian character is essentially courage to suffer the fate or something the personal representative or "leader" has decided. To suffer without complaint is the highest virtue - not the courage to try to end the suffering, or at least reduce it. They don´t like to change fate, but submit to it, it is the heroism of the authoritative character.

Read more: Erich Fromm: Escape from freedom

Meditation is good for you

Mindfulness is a form of meditation adopted to reduce the number of different clinical and non-clinical problems, including stress. Randomized controlled trials until the spring of 2006 have been made in fibromyalgia and other chronic pain conditions, various cancer forms, cardiovascular diseases, psoriasis, multiple sclerosis, traumatic brain damage and depression.
Mindfulness training has in these studies resulted in significantly better results than methods used of controlgrroups. Studies where healthy people participated have shown that mindfullnes training and other
forms of meditation has a positive psychological impact and reduces stress.

This is what you can read in Swedish Läkartidningen 20061018.

Mindfulness is good for everyone, increasing your daily well-being!
Try it!

Nourishing steps

Walking meditation is like eating. With each step, we nourish our body and our spirit. When we walk with anxiety and sorrow, it is a kind of junk food. The food of walking meditation should be of a higher quality. Just walk slowly and enjoy a banquet of peace.


-Thich Nhat Hahn

The power of your thoughts

The feelings that the situation I described before, when meeting a person on a street, arouses in you, depends entirely on how you see yourself and how you feel at that moment. Often we do interpret the situation seeing it from our own poit of wiev and when doing so we do not take into account that you can never actually know what the other people think.

The reaction to the other's behavior depends on the story we tell ourselves, the internal discussion within us that constantly interpret what we see and hear. If you do not feel good when the situation occurs, you probably interpret it as that the other person deliberately ignores you, he doesn´t want to see you. That is probably your inner monologue telling that. However, if you feel well that day, you might think that the other person probably did not see you because he was sunk in his thoughts or something like that. Yet, this is about exactly the same situation, it's just your inner voice, which acts as a critic or as a friend and informs you what to feel.

Since this works like this it should of course be perfectly possible to determine what the inner voice, or "old man in the machine" may issue. If your answer is no, it means you can not choose what you think of ... right?

Remember: your thoughts are your thougths and only thoughts, not a reality, and you are the one who is controlling your own thinking!

Mndfulness is not good only for depressive and stressed persons

Everyone can get benefits from mindfulness, regardless of age, sick or healthy. You can prevent depression and you are not caught up on a sense of sadness, trying to take place in your mind if you use mindfulness thinking style.
This is possible because you are trying to develop an attitude, patience and compassion for yourself, be gentle with yourself. You will not solve any problems, like trying to not feel bad and it's OK not to do so. You allow you feel bad but you change your thougths about feeling bad.
We are all different and it can take some time to discover how mindfulness meditation works. But the only way to know is to start practicing it now and continue doing it. Although it would seem that nothing happens, it will happen something in your mind, sooner or later.

So why should you wait?

Pain

If you, in the middle of your pain look up to the pure presence, if you only do this for a brief moment it is possible that your relationship with the pain changes in that particular moment. It is impossible that it would not be altered, because by keeping it in mind, even if you only manage to do it one or two seconds, the pain is revealed immediately in larger dimensions. When your relationship to the experience changes you can think outside the box and act more freely in any given situation, what ever it may be ... even if you do not know what to do...

The pain itself is not the main thing, it is how you relate to it.