Focusing on the "Be"

Although the title of this blog post, "Free to fully be yourself in 2010" is a bit hokey, I think it is a good message and one that we often forget. Many of us tend to get wrapped in on what we should be, what we should look like, how we should act that we simply forget to just "be." We become so fearful of how we are perceived, that we will disappoint, that we are never enough, etc. Sometimes, that leads to never taking risks, to always denigrating or self sabotaging ourselves, etc. In the end, it just doesn't get us anywhere and makes us feel even worse about ourselves.

I know for me this topic has been really difficult all my life, simply because I've always had expectations whether they were placed on me or I placed them on myself. Sometimes, those expectations panned out, but other times, they did not at all. And when that happened, I became disappointed, said I was worthless, that I was just a loser, that I was just a huge disappointment. Besides all the self-berations, in essence, what I was doing was solely focusing on what I could not do, what I was not doing, what I should be doing, rather than focusing on what I COULD do.

Sometimes, I think if I had focused on that all along, then maybe I would have learned a long time ago to simply "be"--to be accepting of myself as I was to others. Maybe that'll be my long termish goal. It's certainly not easy, takes a whole heck of a lot of time to get all that negative mumbo jumbo out of my head, but it's still something to strive for--something maybe we should all look at a little more closely.

In closing, from the post, there was this video that explained it nicely. I see this all the time with clients, so it's easy for me to point out in dogs and kids, just harder in myself. I don't know whether it was the song or the song + video, but it made me all teary-eyed.

Is our sense of body labile?

image: Physorg

I came across this fascinating article today called "Sleight of hand and sense of self." We all know that many people with eating disorders have body distortions. Sometimes the distortions become so focused that individuals have a difficult time sensing ownership of their bodies. It can lead to a mind-body dissociation. Normally, one of the goals in treatment is to bring back self-awareness, so individuals can feel whole both in body and mind.

Researchers at Oxford University wanted to see if they could replicate this type of experience in two ways. Through the mind, they wanted to see if they could manipulate a sense of ownership of the body. Physically, they wanted to see if there was any detection of a temperature change.

From the article,

The rubber-hand illusion involves placing a rubber hand in front of the participant in their field of vision and near to their real hand. The real hand is then concealed behind a partition. If the real hand and the rubber hand are touched or stroked in the same way and at the same time, the participant tries to co-ordinate what they are feeling (their own hand being stroked) and seeing (the rubber hand being stroked). They can experience a shift in where they believe their hand is to the position of the rubber hand.

Participants said they felt like they owned the rubber arm. With this type of result, researchers concluded that it was like they were "disowning" their real arm which resulted in a temperature drop in that hand.

Dr. Mosley, one of the researchers said, "The rubber-hand illusion is a beautiful device to manipulate our sense of self. It tells us that our sense of our bodies, our sense of who we are, is labile."

I just think this is a very interesting study and really shows the adaptability of the mind. I'm not as well versed in the physiological aspect of temperature change with regard to body distortion, but it is an avenue worth consideration for researchers.

What are your thoughts?