The Caring Effect

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Patients with irritable bowel syndrome were told they'd be participating in a study of the benefits of a acupuncture—and one group, which received the treatment from a warm, friendly researcher who asked detailed questions about their lives, did report a marked reduction in symptoms, equivalent to what might result from any drug on the market. Unbeknokwnst to them, the researchers used trick needles that didn’t pierce the skin.

Now here’s the interesting part. The same sham treatment was given to another group of subjects—but performed brusquely, without conversation. The benefits largely disappeared. It was the empathetic exchange between paractictioner and patient. Kaptchuk concluded, that made the difference.

What Kaptchuk demonstrated is what some medical thinkers have begun to call the “care effect”—the idea that the opportunity for patients to feel heard and cared for can improve their health. Scientific or no, alternative practitioners tend to express empathy, to allow for unhurried silences, and to ask what the meaning patients make of their pain. Kaptchuk’s study was a breakthrough: It showed that randomized, controlled trials could measure the effect of caring.

Nathanael Johnson, Writing in Wired magazine

Loving too much

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It is probably impossible to love any human being simply 'too much.'  We may love him too much in proportion to our love for God; but it is the smallness of our love for God, not the greatness of our love for the man, that constitutes the inordinacy.

But even this must be refined upon. Otherwise we shall trouble some who are very much on the right road but alarmed because they cannot feel towards God so warm a sensible emotion as they feel for the earthly Beloved. It is much to be wished--at least I think so--that we all, at all times, could. We must pray that this gift should be given us. But the question whether we are loving God or the earthly Beloved "more" is not, so far as concerns our Christian duty, a question about the comparative intensity of the two feelings. The real question is, which (when the alternative comes) do you serve, or choose, to put first? To which claim does your will, in the last resort, yield?

CS Lewis, The Four Loves

What’s behind Anger

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According to Albert Ellis, the most common irrational ideas behind anger are the following:

1. I must do well and win the approval of others for my performances, or else I will rate as a rotten person.

2. Others must treat me considerately and kindly and in precisely the way I want them to treat me.

3. The world (and the people in it) must arrange conditions under which I live, so that I get everything that I want when I want it.

Mark Cosgrove, Counseling for Anger

The persecuted victim

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Conspiracy theorists perceive and present themselves as the victim of organized persecution. At the same time, they see themselves as brave antagonists taking on the villainous conspirators. Conspiratorial thinking involves a self-perception of simultaneously being a victim and a hero.

Stephan Lewandowsky & John Cook, The Conspiracy Theory Handbook

Here's what I'm thinking

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"If you walk into a room as a senior person and innocently say, 'Here's what I'm thinking about this,' you've already skewed people's thinking," says Marine Gen. Peter Pace. His approach: "Start out with a question and don't voice an opinion."

Why? Because people can't line up behind you if they don't know where you stand. And if you present subordinates with an intellectual challenge, they feel freer to offer their opinions without fear of giving offense. "If you are looking for answers, ask the question," advises Pace, and "if you are looking for an honest critique, you ought to be the first person to self-critique." 

Michael Useem writing in Fortune Magazine

The Creative Process

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The creative process is often not responsive to conscious efforts to initiate or control it. It does not proceed methodically or in programmatic fashion. It meanders. It is unpredictable, digressive, capricious. As one scientist put it, “I can schedule my lab hours, but I can’t schedule my best ideas.”

Creative individuals have the capacity to free themselves from the web of social pressures in which the rest of us are caught. They don’t spend much time asking “What will people say?” The fact that “everybody’s doing it” doesn’t mean they’re doing it. They question assumptions that the rest of us accept. As J. P. Guilford has pointed out, they are particularly gifted in seeing the gap between what is and what could be (which means, of course, that they have achieved a certain measure of detachment from what is.

It is easy to fall into the romantic exaggeration in speaking of the capacity of people of originality to stand apart. Those who are responsible for the great innovative performances have always built on the work of others, and have enjoyed many kinds of social support, stimulation and communication. They are independent but they are not adrift.

John Gardner, Self-Renewal

Healing in Freedom

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Being loving is far more therapeutic that being correct. People need first to believe that you are willing to let them be who they are. If you attempt to direct another person’s every move, you eventually lose your effectiveness, no matter how correct you may be. Freedom for each of us is to be who and what we are, that’s the cornerstone of an influential life.

When you give freedom to others, it doesn’t mean you are lowering your standards or that you don’t care about them. It means you are providing an atmosphere to let others think and feel and act without excessive pressure to fit your mold. The paradox is that when others sense the freedom you offer, they are more attracted to you. They key is to learn how to use this freedom.

Les Carter, Imperative People: Those Who Must Be in Control