SCIENTISTS SHOW HOW GRATITUDE
LITERALLY ALTERS THE HUMAN HEART & MOLECULAR STRUCTURE OF THE BRAIN
by Arjun Walia (Collective Evolution, February 14, 2019)
Gratitude is a funny thing. In some parts of the world, somebody who gets a clean drink of water, some food, or a worn out pair of shoes can be extremely grateful. Meanwhile, somebody else who has all the necessities they need to live can be found complaining about something. What we have today is what we once wanted
before, but there is a lingering belief out there that obtaining material possessions is the key to happiness.
Sure, this may be true, but that happiness is temporary. The truth is that happiness is an inside job. It’s a matter of perspective, and in a world where we are constantly made to feel like we are lacking and always wanting’ more, it can be difficult to achieve or experience actual happiness. Many of us are always looking toward external factors to experience joy and happiness, when really it’s all related to internal work. This is something science is just starting to grasp as well, as shown by research coming out of UCLA’s
Mindfulness Awareness Research Center. According to them:
Having an attitude of gratitude changes the molecular structure of the brain, keeps gray matter functioning, and makes us healthier and happier. When you feel happiness, the central nervous system is affected. You are more peaceful, less reactive and less resistant. Now that’s a really cool way of taking care of your well- being.
There are many studies showing that people who count their blessings tend to be far happier and experience Jess depression. For one study, researchers recruited people with mental health difficulties, including people suffering from anxiety and depression. The study involved nearly 300 adults who were randomly divided into three groups. This study came from the University of California, Berkeley.
All groups received counseling services, but the first group was also instructed to write one letter of gratitude to another person every week for three weeks, whereas the second group was asked to write about their deepest thoughts and feelings about negative experiences. The third group did not do any writing activity.
What did they find? Compared to the participants who wrote about negative experiences or only received counseling, those who wrote gratitude letters reported significantly better mental health for up to 12 weeks after the writing exercise ended.
This suggests that gratitude writing can be beneficial not just for healthy, well-adjusted individuals, but also for those who struggle with mental health concerns. In fact, it seems, practicing gratitude on top of receiving psychological counseling carries greater benefits than counseling alone, even when that gratitude practice is brief.
Previously, a study on gratitude conducted by Robert A. Emmons, Ph.D. at the University of California, Davis and his colleague Mike McCullough at the University of Miami randomly assigned participants to be given one of three tasks. Each week, participants kept a short journal. One group described five things they were grateful for that had occurred in the past week, another group recorded daily troubles from the previous week that displeased them, and the neutral group was asked to list five events or circumstances that affected them, but they were not told whether to focus on the positive or the negative. Ten weeks later, participants in the gratitude group felt better about their lives as a whole and were a full 25 percent happier than the troubled group. They reported fewer health complaints and exercised an average of 1.5 hours more.
Researchers from Berkeley identified how gratitude might actually work on our minds and bodies. They provided four insights from their research suggesting what causes the psychological benefits of gratitude.
- Gratitude unshackles us from toxic emotions
- Gratitude helps even if you don’t share it
- Gratitude’s benefits take time & practice. You might not feel it right away.
- Gratitude has lasting effects on the brain
The brain part is very interesting. The researchers at Berkeley used an fMRI scanner to measure brain activity while people from each group did a “pay it forward” task. During the task, the participants were given money by a “nice person.” This person’s only request was that they pass on the money to someone if they felt grateful.
They did this because they wanted to distinguish between actions motivated by gratitude and actions driven by other motivations like obligation, guilt, or what other people think. This is important because you can’t fake gratitude, you actually have to feel it. If you don’t feel grateful or practice trying to feel grateful by taking the necessary steps like keeping a gratitude journal, you may not experience as much joy and happiness.
In a world where emotions aren’t really taught in school and the importance is put on striving for high grades, it’s not abnormal to have difficulty feeling grateful. This is especially understandable if you’ve been brought
up in the western world, which is full of consumerism and competition, a world where we’re constantly made
to feel we are lacking so we need to strive for more.
Participants were asked to rate how grateful they felt toward the person giving them the money and how much they wanted to pay it forward to a charitable cause as well as how guilty they thought they would feel if they didn’t help. They were also given questionnaires to measure how grateful they felt in general.
We found that across the participants, when people felt more grateful, their brain activity was distinct from brain activity related to guilt and the desire to help a cause. More specifically, we found that when people who are generally more grateful gave more money to a cause, they showed greater neural sensitivity in the medial prefrontal cortex, a brain area associated with learning and decision making. This suggests that people who are more grateful are also more attentive to how they express gratitude.
Most interestingly, when we compared those who wrote the gratitude letters with those who didn’t, the gratitude letter writers showed greater activation in the medial prefrontal cortex when they experienced gratitude in the fMRI scanner. This is striking as this effect was found three months after the letter writing began. This indicates that simply expressing gratitude may have lasting effects on the brain. While not conclusive, this finding suggests that practicing gratitude may help train the brain to be more sensitive to the experience of gratitude down the line, and this could contribute to improved mental health over time.
It’s also interesting to note that a recent study just discovered a brain network that “gives rise to feelings of gratitude. The study could spur future investigations into how these ‘building blocks’ transform social information into complex emotions.”
What About The Heart?
The work and research above is great, but where do we actually experience these feelings? They are clearly not a product of our brain, they are products of our consciousness, and when we feel them the brain responds. Researchers are now discovering that the heart also responds and that it might actually be the heart that’s responsible for sending these signals to the brain.
A group of prestigious and internationally recognized leaders in physics, biophysics, astrophysics, education, mathematics, engineering, cardiology, biofeedback, and psychology (among other disciplines) have been doing some brilliant work over at the Institute of HeartMath.
Their work, among many others, has proven that when a person is feeling really positive emotions like gratitude, love, or appreciation, the heart beats out a different message, which determines what kind of signals are sent to the brain.
Not only that, but because the heart beats out the largest electromagnetic field produced in the body, the Institute has been able to gather a significant amount of data.
According to Rolin McCratey, Ph.D, and Director of Research at Heartmath:
“Emotional information is actually coded and modulated into these fields. By learning to shift our emotions, we are changing the information coded into the magnetic fields that are radiated by the heart, and that can impact those around us. We are fundamentally and deeply connected with each other and the planet itself.”
Another great point made below by the Institute:
“One important way the heart can speak to and influence the brain is when the heart is coherent – experiencing stable, sine-wavelike pattern in its rhythms. When the heart is coherent, the body, including the brain, begins to experience all sorts of benefits, among them are greater mental clarity and ability, including better decision making.”
In fact, the heart actually sends more signals to the brain than the brain sends in return. What’s even more amusing is the fact that these heart signals (from heart to brain) actually have a significant effect on brain
function.
Research findings have shown that as we practice heart coherence and radiate love and compassion, our heart generates a coherent electromagnetic wave into the local field environment that facilitates social coherence, whether in the home, workplace, classroom or sitting around a table. As more individuals radiate heart coherence, it builds an energetic field that makes it easier for others to connect with their heart. So, theoretically it is possible that enough people building individual and social coherence could actually contribute to an unfolding global coherence. McCratey.
So far, the researchers have discovered that the heart communicates with the brain and body in four ways: neurological communication (nervous system), biophysical communication (pulse wave), biochemical communication (hormones), and energetic communication (electromagnetic fields).
“HeartMath research has demonstrated that different patterns of heart activity (which accompany different emotional states) have distinct effects on cognitive and emotional function. During stress and negative emotions, when the heart rhythm pattern is erratic and disordered, the corresponding pattern of neural signals traveling from the heart to the brain inhibits higher cognitive function. This limits our ability to think clearly, remember, learn, reason, and make effective decisions. In contrast, the more ordered and stable pattern of the heart’s input to the brain during positive emotional states has the opposite effect. It facilitates cognitive function and reinforces positive feelings and emotional stability.”
Gratitude and Positive Feelings Can Change The World
It gets deeper: Every individual’s energy affects the collective field environment. The means each person’s emotions and intentions generate an energy that affects the field. A first step in diffusing societal stress in the global field is for each of us to take personal responsibility for our own energies. We can do this by increasing our personal coherence and raising our vibratory rate, which helps us become more conscious of the thoughts, feelings, and attitudes that we are feeding the field each day. We have a choice in every moment to take to heart the significance of intentionally managing our energies. This is the free will or local freedom that can create global cohesion. Dr. Deborah Rozman, the President of Quantum Intech
Overall, this type of work suggests that human consciousness in general can change the world.
One study, for example, was done during the Israel-Lebanon war in the 1980s. Two Harvard University
professors organized groups of experienced meditators in Jerusalem, Yugoslavia and the United Sates and
asked them to focus their attention on the area of conflict at various intervals over a 27-month period. Over
the course of the study, the levels of violence in Lebanon decreased between 40 and 80 percent each time a
meditating group was in place. The average number of people killed during the war each day dropped from
12 to three, and war-related injuries fell by 70 percent.
Another great example is a study that was conducted in 1993 in Washington, D.C., which showed a 25 percent drop in crime rates when 2,500 meditators meditated during a specific period of time with that intention.
This type of information is heavily correlated with quantum physics, as many experiments in that area as well as parapsychology (telepathy, remote viewing, distant healing) indicate similar findings.
This holds true as far back as 1999. Statistics professor Jessica Utts at UC Irvine published a paper showing that parapsychological experiments have produced much stronger results than those showing a daily dose of aspirin helps prevent heart attacks. Utts also showed that these results are much stronger than the research behind various drugs like antiplatelets.
This type of work has statistically significant implications, yet is heavily ignored and labelled as pseudoscience simply because it conflicts with long-held beliefs we have trouble letting go of… But times are changing.
For many years I have worked with researchers doing very careful work [in parapsychology], including a year that I spent full-time working on a classified project for the United States government, to see if we could use these abilities for intelligence gathering during the Cold War… At the end of that project I wrote a report for Congress, stating what I still think is true. The data in support of precognition and possibly other related phenomena are quite strong statistically, and would be widely accepted if it pertained to something more mundane. Yet, most scientists reject the possible reality of these abilities without ever looking at data! And on the other extreme, there are true believers who base their beliefs solely on anecdotes and personal experience. I have asked debunkers if there is any amount of data that would convince them, and they generally have responded by saying, “probably not.” I ask them what original research they have read, and they mostly admit that they haven’t read any. Now there is a definition of pseudo-science-basing conclusions
on belief rather than data!” – Utts, Chair of the Statistics Department, UC Irvine (Dean Radin, Real Magic)
The Takeaway
Emotions and other factors associated with consciousness have the power to transform our inner world in ways we don’t fully understand yet. These findings show how consciousness can actually transform the physical/material world, and that’s huge. This validates the idea that if we can change our inner world through gratitude, empathy, compassion, and meditation, we can make our outer world more peaceful.
AVOIDING RELAPSE TRIGGERS DURING THE HOLIDAYS
by
Rivermend Health Center
From busy schedules to the stress of family gatherings, the holiday season can get overwhelming. This time of year brings added challenges for those in recovery from substance use disorders. Parties involving alcohol can bring the temptation to drink or use drugs. The holidays can also be a lonely time, especially for those who see joy and merriment around them, while inside they’re struggling with depression or anxiety.
These emotions and situations are known as addiction relapse triggers. Relapse triggers are anything that brings back thoughts and feelings associated with past drug or alcohol use. Triggers cause people to think about using the drug, which can lead to them actually using the drug.
Here are some potential triggers to watch out for this holiday season, and ways to cope with them:
Parties Alcohol is a big part of many holiday celebrations, from office Christmas parties to champagne toasts
on New Years. Overindulging this time of year is common. But this doesn’t work for people in recovery from addiction, and the party atmosphere can be triggering for many people.
- Stress, Depression and Anxiety Holiday TV and Christmas cards depict the holiday season as a time of joy and family togetherness. But for people who are in recovery or dealing with co-occurring mental health conditions, their feelings may not match up with what’s going on around them. People may feel lonely if their relationships with loved ones were damaged by their drug use. They may feel ashamed, or angry, or nostalgic for easier times. Anxiety also picks up around the holidays. People may be trying to make the day “perfect” to make up for past holidays they missed. Or they may be worried that they’ll be able to handle any cravings or triggers that crop up.
- Changes in Routine
Sticking to routine around sleep, eating, meeting attendance and exercise is very beneficial to recovery. But the holidays often disrupt routines. End of year work and school deadlines, feeling pressure to shop or cook and make the holiday perfect for the family, travel and time off make it easy to skip meetings, meals and exercise. For people in recovery who find strength in sticking to a routine, the disruption can raise the risk of relapse. - Family Conflicts
Ah, family. The holidays have a way of stirring the pot with relatives. When family members drink, simmering arguments may bubble over, old conflicts may resurface. The emotional upset or anger associated with family members’ behavior can be very triggering for people, especially if they used alcohol or drugs as a way to escape in the past. - Ways to Protect Your Recovery
Staying sober during the holiday season may take added effort and attention. Here’s some advice for people in recovery and those who love them on navigating the holidays in recovery.
- Stick to your routine, to the extent possible. If getting up at a certain time and a daily walk have been important to your recovery, stick to it. Continue to eat right, meditate, and do the activities that help you feel balanced and relaxed. Everything else can wait.
- 2. Continue going to meetings. During this time, it’s especially important to continue going to 12-step
meetings. If you’re traveling, identify meetings in the area where you’ll be staying. If your sponsor is
out of town, make sure you have another sober buddy you can call in times of stress. - 3. Be prepared in situations where you may encounter drinking or drug use. One method of avoiding triggers is to say “no” to parties or family events where they may be alcohol or drugs. But it’s difficult to avoid the festivities entirely. If you go to a party where there is alcohol being served, decide ahead of time what you’ll say if you’re offered a drink so you don’t feel put on the spot. You can simply decline and ask for a soda or juice. Or bring your own fun, non-alcoholic sparkling drink if it feels more festive.
- 4. Find sober events to enjoy. From holiday performances to ice skating to hunting for the best Christmas light shows, there are many festive occasions that don’t include alcohol or drugs. Many 12- step groups also have holiday get-togethers.
- 5. Start new traditions. Go sledding, volunteer at a food bank, host a cookie exchange, take a family hike. Recovery is a time to break with the past and embrace positive change.
- Spend time with people who support your recovery. Whether it’s family, friends or your 12-step group, feeling connected at the holidays can ward off feelings of depression, anxiety and loneliness. Spend time with people who make you feel loved, accepted and supported. These friendships can help you get through any difficult days.
HOLIDAY SALES EMPLOYEE FRAUD COULD TOP $15B!
And Online Merchants Are Increasingly Vulnerable
by
Beth Dalbey (The Patch, November 19, 2018)
Retail experts predict holiday sales will bring in a record $1 trillion this season – an estimated $123.7 billion of it in online sales and if past years are an indication, workers will steal billions of dollars from their employers. The problem is growing as traditional brick-and-mortar stores move to online marketplaces, where their old responses to shoplifting and return fraud don’t work.
The problem is that many online businesses are so focused on professional criminals and dishonest consumers that they’re overlooking fraud committed by their own employees, said Monica Eaton-Cardone, the chief operating officer of Chargebacks911, which helps businesses prevent or reduce the credit card or bank statement disputes, minimize their losses and recover lost revenue.
“They know brick-and-mortar security, but online sales create a lot of loopholes, and they’re still rather new to the environment,” Eaton-Cardone told Patch. “They’ve been selling at a physical store for 30-plus years, and move into an environment they don’t completely understand.”
But even businesses that have always operated in an online space are vulnerable to fraud. A Wall Street Journal investigation found that Amazon employees took bribes from $80 to $2,000 to delete negative reviews, restore banned accounts or sell confidential data.
In one particularly egregious case of employee return fraud investigated by Chargebacks911, a call center worker’s theft went undetected for months. The employee knew of her company’s no-questions-asked chargeback policy and posed as a customer, ordering about $10,000 a day in televisions and computers only to seek refunds the next day.
When the pattern did finally did raise suspicion, “it looked like there were tons of refunds,” Eaton-Cardone said.
Here’s a look at the numbers:
- In 2017, retailers lost a total of $46.8 to employee theft, shoplifting, administrative errors, vendor fraud, cashier errors benefitting the customers and other losses lumped under Employees were responsible for $15.4 billion of the losses, according to University of Florida survey.
“retail shrink.” a National Retail Federation / - The same survey found that employee-related retail shrink rose to 33 percent in 2017, up from 30 percent in 2016.
- Nearly two-thirds (65.1 percent) of merchants said they’ve experienced employee return fraud, according to the National Retail Federation, and it’s increasing at a rate of about 5.5 percent each year.
- Losses are higher when employees work together. A report by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners found median losses of $74,000 from a lone perpetrator, $150,000 from two co- conspirators and $339,000 when three or more employees collude.
- he reasons employees steal vary. For the majority (58 percent), the opportunity simply presents itself because of loose or one-size-fits-all approach, according to the Certified Fraud Examiners April 2018 study, “Report to the Nations: 2018 Global Study on Occupational Fraud and Abuse.”
- Another 21 percent said they resorted to fraud due to pressure to perform. In those instances, employees who earn a commission on sales made on the phone may convince their friends to buy in exchange for a refund once the sale is credited, Eaton-Cardone explained.
- A smaller percentage 11 percent rationalize their theft.
“I’m not in their head, but I would imagine some are thinking they have been loyal employees and have devoted so many years that they think they’re owed additional compensation,” Eaton-Cardone said.
Some employees who would never think of stealing from another individual have the notion that “humans are not the same as a corporation, and a corporation isn’t humanized enough to create guilt,” she said. Employers should respond with smarter technology and policies before they graduate from petty theft to high-value crimes, and to weed problem employees out before they begin colluding with others, Eaton- Cardone said, adding that employee fraud typically increases the uptick in shopping after Black Friday, when employers hire temporary staff.
Employee fraud is nothing new. One scam at physical stores that involves collusion works this way: An individual purchases an item, such as a computer, then returns the empty box to a friend who works in customer service, who rings up a refund without checking the box.
“You just stole a computer not caught on security cameras,” Eaton-Cardone said. “That has been going on for years, but now it’s migrating online.”
One thing employers can do is build in layers of protection. The employee who asked for chargebacks on thousands of dollars of purchases a day was fully familiar with the company’s refund policies. A better approach would be to be stingy with that information and build in redundancies “so no one person knows exactly how it works,” Eaton-Cardone said.
“If you’re an employee, you know the inside scoop, how to navigate, where to look,” she said. “Your job is to know what kind of steps the company goes through to find fraud.”
SHOPPING ADDICTION AND EATING DISORDERS
DURING THE HOLIDAY SEASON
by
Crystal Karges, MS, RDN, IBCLC,
Special Projects Coordinator at Eating Disorder Hope/Addiction Hope
Individuals who struggle with and are in recovery from an eating disorder may be prone to developing another type of mental illness or disorder, such as substance abuse or a shopping addiction.
Because mental illnesses and addictive type disorders may have similar root causes, such as genetic influences and behavioral/personality traits, it is not uncommon for more than one of these disorders to develop or occur alongside each other.
A shopping addiction can be severely problematic if not dealt with appropriately and professionally. Many individuals who struggle with a shopping addiction spend money beyond what they can reasonably afford, which often leads to unnecessary purchases, hoarding of items, such as clothes, shoes, household goods, etc., and ultimately, the destruction of one’s finances.
Surmounting debt from a shopping addiction can handicap a person’s ability to live and thrive and life, and for these reasons, a shopping addiction should be approached professionally.
The holidays are often a guise for those dealing with a shopping addiction, as it seems justified to spend excessive amounts of money on gifts, food, drinks and the like. However, if you are in recovery from an eating disorder and find yourself turning towards habits and behaviors that are parallel to a shopping addiction, you may need to reevaluate your choices.
Look for Similarities
Often times, individuals struggling with a shopping addiction struggle with obsessive-compulsive behaviors that may be similarly observed in eating disorder behaviors. There may also be a sense of a “high” that is attained through “purchasing”, similar to what a person with anorexia may feel when restricting, or an individual with bulimia may feel when binging/purging.
Looking for commonalities between eating disorders and shopping addiction is crucial, particularly during the holiday season when these types of behaviors can go under the radar.
If you have been in recovery from an eating disorder and have found yourself dealing with behaviors associated with a shopping addiction, be sure to reach out for the necessary and appropriate help you need to get these behaviors under control.