The Chemical Mind - Crash Course Psychology #3 - YouTube

The Chemical Mind - Crash Course Psychology #3 - YouTube

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How to Ruin a Perfectly Good Relationship | Psychology Today

The second behavior that predicts divorce with over 90% accuracy, according to John Gottman's research and the experience of most couples' counselors, is stonewalling. Different from an occasional timeout to calm down or collect your thoughts, stonewalling is absolute refusal to consider your partner’s perspective. If you listen at all, you do it dismissively or contemptuously.

The common songs of the stonewaller are:

• “Just leave me alone…”
• “Do whatever you want...”
• “End of conversation…”
• “Stop talking...”
• “Get out of my face…”
• “That’s enough…”
• “I’ve had it!”

The other divorce-predictive behaviors – criticism, defensiveness, and contempt - are gender neutral, i.e., men and women do them more or less equally. Stonewalling, according to the research of Gottman and others, as well as the experience of most couples' counselors, is far more likely to be a male thing. When women stonewall, it’s typically a function of temperament – they’re shy, inhibited, or introverted. More commonly, it’s a learned behavior – engaging in conflict or emotion-laden conversation has exposed them to put-downs or abuse in the past.

Stonewalling is more natural to males. In general, males - of all social animals - have a more rapid arousal level – stonewalling is a way of shutting out stimulation that spikes arousal. They also have a smaller corpus calossum, the tissue that connects the brain’s hemispheres and facilitates communication between them. It’s easier for males to cut off information from the emotional part of their brains when things get hot, a practice they begin as little boys.

Of course, cultural reinforcement plays a large part, as the icon of the “the strong, silent male,” reinforces stonewalling.

Men are less likely than women to know when they stonewall, because it seems so natural for them. A sure sign that a man is stonewalling is if he believes his partner nags him. That means he’s not listening. The nagging partner is an unheard partner.

Frustrating vs. Painful

The experience of being stonewalled tends to be different for men and women. Men who are stonewalled feel frustrated – their goal of resolution is blocked by the stonewalling. But the experience is downright painful for women who are stonewalled, as they are apt to feel isolated – a sense that no one cares about them. To understand the effects of stonewalling on most women, a man need only think of how bad humiliation feels. That’s how isolation feels to his partner, which is why she tries so hard to break through the stone wall

Aggressive vs. Defensive Stone Walls

In aggressive stonewalling, the stonewaller knows that the silence, cold shoulder, and emotional isolation hurt his partner. He stonewalls to gain leverage or power. This is a common tactic in battering relationships, in which the more powerful partner systematically controls or dominates the less powerful one.

In defensive stonewalling, conflict seems overwhelming to the stonewallers. It seems that their only choice is to shut it out (stonewall) or crush it with aggression. So shutting it out seems the better of the two. Of course, treatment teaches them that there are other choices, such as emotion regulation, engagement, and connection.

Looks Different on the Outside

While stonewalling can look aggressive, mean, or childish from the outside, if feels very different on the inside. The defensive stonewaller feels like he’s trying to protect himself. He can also think that he’s protecting his family. Not only have I observed this countless times in my clients, I experienced it my personal life. For about 10 years or so, before becoming a therapist, I regularly stonewalled my wife when things got hot. I was afraid of my anger, having grown up in a severely violent home. I never wanted my wife or daughter to see that kind of rage or know that kind of chaos. In truth, I never had that kind of anger, but there was always the fear.

I had to learn, as all stonewallers need to do, that we need to step outside ourselves to see our behavior more objectively. We stonewall to avoid feeling inadequate. We’re convinced that we’ll fail if we try to engage - fail as communicators and, more important, as husbands and boyfriends.

Like all avoidance strategies, stonewalling only proves that we are inadequate and unlovable, or else we wouldn’t need to do it. Thus the more we do it, the more it seems that we need to do it.

The trick in overcoming feelings of inadequacy is to realize that everything we’ve ever done (that required a certain level of skill), we were inadequate at doing when we first started. The discomfort of inadequacy motivated us to learn to do the task, at which point we gained a feeling of competence and mastery. We can use feelings of inadequacy in love in the same way, as motivation to learn how to be better partners and parents.

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Bio125 NervousSystem

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Bio132 EndocrineSystem

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Anatomy of a neuron | The neuron and nervous system | Khan Academy

(3) Anatomy of a neuron | The neuron and nervous system | Khan Academy:



'via Blog this'

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Daniel Goleman Explains Emotional Intelligence

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Unit 3A: Neural Processing and the Endocrine System

1. Introduction
   1. You cannot totally separate the mind from the body.
   2. Biological psychologists study the linkage and interplay between the body and the mind.
   3. Even more broadly, there is a biopsychosocial component. This concept believes we do the things we do because of (1) our bodies, (2) our minds or thinking, and (3) the culture that we live in.
2. Neurons
   1. Neurons are nerve cells. There are a few types to know…
      1. Sensory neurons – Take messages from the body, up the spinal cord, to the brain. There are millions of these.
      2. Motor neurons – Take messages from the brain to the body. There are millions of these.
      3. Interneurons – Are neurons within the brain that “talk” to one another while thinking or processing information. There are billions and billions of these.
   2. Parts of a neuron
      1. Cell body with a nucleus in the middle.
      2. Dendrites are feather-like fingers sticking out from the cell body. They bring info in to the cell.
      3. Axons are long “arms” that send info away from the cell body to other neurons or body parts.
         1. Axons are insulated by the myelin sheath. This insulation helps control the impulses and speeds their travel.
         2. Messages travel along neurons at between 2 and 200 mph (depending on the type of neuron). This may seem fast, but is very slow compared to computers.
      4. Neurons “fire” when stimulated by a sense or other chemicals from another neuron. When it fires, it’s called the action potential. This is a slight electrical charge.
         1. A chemical reaction generates the electricity, like with a battery.
         2. This is an all-or-nothing event, the neuron either fires or it doesn’t fire.
         3. Axons have negatively charged ions inside, positively charged ionsoutside. There is a selectively permeable membrane in between (it selects what to let in/out).
         4. When firing, a neuron allows the positive ions in. For a moment called the refractory period, it can’t fire, until it pushes the positive ions back out and “resets” itself.
         5. Neurons get mixed signals. Excitatory signals tell it to fire.Inhibitory signals tell it to not fire. When the excitatory signals outweigh the inhibitory signals by a certain amount, the neuron fires. This is called the threshold.
3. How neurons communicate
   1. A synapse is the place where the axon of one neuron meets the dendrites of another. There is a very slight gap in between (the “synaptic gap”).
   2. Neurotransmitters are chemical messengers that take the impulse of one neuron across the synaptic gap to another neuron.
      1. During what’s called reuptake, the extra neurotransmitters return to the original neuron and are ready again.
4. How neurotransmitters influence us
   1. Neurotransmitters affect people in many ways such as: depression, happiness, hunger, thinking, addictions, and therapy.
   2. An example is acetylcholine (ACh). ACh tells muscles to contract. When it’s blocked (as in some anesthetics), the muscles won’t contract and we’re paralyzed.
   3. Another example is endorphins. These are like natural morphine that our bodies produce. They improve our moods and reduce pain. They’re released either in times of pain or heavy exercise.
      1. When a person uses drugs like cocaine, heroine, or morphine, the body will produce less endorphins of its own.
      2. Drugs that act like neurotransmitters and bridge the synaptic gap are called agonist molecules. Opiate drugs produce a “high”. Black widow spider poison produces muscle spasms.
      3. Whereas agonists connect the synaptic gap, antagonists block transmission. For example, Botox blocks a muscle from contracting.
5. The peripheral nervous system
   1. People are said to have two nervous systems:
      1. The central nervous system consists of the brain and spinal cord.
      2. The peripheral nervous system consists of our sensory receptors, muscles, and glands.
   2. The peripheral nervous system has two parts:
      1. The somatic nervous system can be voluntarily controlled, like moving your legs.
      2. The autonomic nervous system runs on its own, like your heartbeat. The autonomic nervous system also has two parts:
         1. The sympathetic nervous system which activates and exerts energy – like preparing to run away or to fight. Specifically, it increases your heartbeat, blood pressure, blood sugar, and slows digestion. It gets you ready for action.
         2. The parasympathetic nervous system kicks in when the “crisis” is over – it calms you down by doing the opposite things. It helps you chill out.
6. The central nervous system
   1. Our bodies are amazing, but without the brain, we’re like robots. The brain is what makes us human. 400 trillion synapses “talk to one another” in our brains.
   2. Neurons group themselves together into neural networks. This helps them communicate even faster.
   3. The spinal cord connects the brain with the peripheral nervous system. Reflexes are a good example of sensory information going to the brain and motor information going from the brain to a muscle.
      1. A single sensory neuron and a motor neuron working together form an interneuron.
      2. A person whose spinal cord is cut and is paralyzed still has the knee-jerk reaction. The brain is not involved with an interneuron.
7. The endocrine system
   1. The endocrine system secretes hormones which impact interest in sex, food, and aggression.
   2. Like neurotransmitters, some hormones have molecules that act on receptors in the body. Hormones move slower than neurotransmitters, but last longer.
      1. For example, suppose you think you’re about to get into a fight. Theadrenal glands secrete epinephrine (AKA adrenaline). It increases the pulse, blood pressure, and blood sugar.
      2. After the crisis is over, it takes a while to calm down and return back to normal.
   3. The pituitary gland is the most influential. The pituitary is controlled by the hypothalamus part of the brain. The pituitary’s hormones influence growth and secretions by other glands (it’s the “master gland”). These hormones, in turn, then influence the brain.
      1. The chain-reaction could be represented as: Brain->Pituitary->Other glands->Hormones->Brain

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