Your brain also doesn’t like stress hormones. So when you have a secret to tell, the part of your brain that wants to tell the secret is constantly fighting with the part of your brain that wants to keep the information hidden, says neuroscientist David Eagleman.

“You have competing populations in the brain — one part that wants to tell something and one part that doesn’t,” he tells Fresh Air‘s Terry Gross. “And the issue is that we’re always cussing at ourselves or getting angry at ourselves or cajoling ourselves. … What we’re seeing here is that there are different parts of the brain that are battling it out. And the way that that battle tips, determines your behavior.”

Continue reading “‘Incognito’: What’s Hiding In The Unconscious Mind : NPR” →

The subsurface exploration includes waystops in brain damage, drugs, infidelity, synesthesia, criminal law, the future of artificial intelligence, and visual illusions–all highlighting how our perception of the world is a hidden and awe-inspiring construction of the brain.

Continue reading “Incognito” →

Why keeping your secrets is harmful

David Eagleman, a neuroscientist at Baylor College of Medicine, has developed one of the most widely known theories explaining how keeping secrets hurts the brain.

“The main thing known about secrets is that keeping them is unhealthy for the brain,” writes Eagleman in his book Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain. “The reason a secret is experienced consciously is because it results from a rivalry.”

According to Eagleman’s theory, two brain regions are responsible for harboring a secret, and they become engaged in a “neural conflict.” One region wants to get the information off your chest to relieve stress and the other wants to bury it deep into your subconscious. Ultimately, one region wins, but all that fighting wears your brain down. Mic reached out to Eagleman for greater detail regarding the exact neurobiology, but he declined to comment.

Continue reading “Why keeping your secrets is harmful” →

Why an Agenda Cleanse Is Good Life Hygiene:

The problem with hiding your real motives is that you’re essentially keeping a secret, and as neuroscientist David Eagleman has written,”The main thing that is known about secrets is that keeping them is unhealthy for the brain.” When we begin to weave webs of deception, we need to expend enormous mental energy to prevent them from tangling. There’s less brain power left over for solving real problems, and we start to falter in other areas of our lives.

The problems may even show up in our bodies: Secrets and lies can weaken our immune systems. They’re also hell on rela­tionships, both personal and professional. People can feel the difference between a pure agenda (you kissing your baby) and a murky one (a politician kissing your baby). They find ulterior motives vaguely to intensely repulsive. As a result, impurely motivated actions tend to backfire. Lie for approval, and people disapprove. Try to control people, and you lose control. Pre­tend to be perfect, and you risk being caught by folks who’ll abhor your pretense of perfection more than your imperfections themselves.

Continue reading “How to Stay True to Yourself – Live an Honest Life” →

Honesty and seeking the truth is always the way to go. Honesty engenders confidence, faith, empowers our willpower and represents us in the best way for others to see and witness our example. Honesty improves our vitality. In an honesty experiment conducted by two University of Notre Dame professors, results showed that telling the truth is good for our health:

Telling the truth when tempted to lie can significantly improve a person’s mental and physical health, according to a “Science of Honesty” study.

The above <a class="bo dd io ip iq ir" href="http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2012/08/lying-less.aspx&quot; target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: inherit; text-decoration: none; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; background-repeat: repeat-x; background-image: url(" data:image svg+xml;utf8, “); background-size: 1px 1px; background-position: 0px calc(1em + 1px);”>results were presented at the American Psychological Association’s Annual Convention four years ago.

Continue reading “Honesty- How it Benefits You and Others – Mission.org – Medium” →

“Faith” and “self-determined goals” can easily be fundamentalist or self-serving, unless they are situated in a genuine social concern for the whole. In other words, to be religious or not (faith element), or to create your own story of your life or not (self-determined goals element), are not the most central question we can ask if what we want is healthier, happier and more meaningful lives. To give or not to give – that seems to be the question.

Positive psychology often (but not always) focuses on creating positive emotions. Existentialism tends to deal with the things that make us unhappy in life (grief, guilt, tragedy), trying to reconcile these with the feeling that life is still worth living.

Both positions are important in order to examine the spectrum of human emotions and living. Yet, beyond being “happy” or “sad”, it seems, is to give. Only through being generous to one another, it seems, will we achieve our full human potential for individual and collective well-being.

Continue reading “Happy? Consider how giving builds a life of meaning” →

Fortunately, we don’t just have to go through intense suffering to experience these effects. There are also certain temporary states of being when we can sense meaning. I call these “awakening experiences”.

Usually these experiences occur when our minds are fairly quiet and we feel at ease with ourselves. When we’re walking in the countryside, swimming in the ocean, or after we’ve meditated or had sex.

Continue reading “The meaning of life – a psychologist’s view” →

Continue reading “False Reports” →

Under s 5(2) of the Criminal Law Act 1967 (CLA 1967), it is an offence to cause a wasteful employment of the police by knowingly making a false report – either orally or in writing – to the police or anyone else that:

• an offence has been committed;
• there is a real threat to the safety of any persons or property; or
• they have relevant information concerning some police enquiry

If you are caught wasting police time you could be jailed for up to six months and/or fined. Instead of taking you to court, the police might issue you with a fixed penalty notice under the Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001 (CJPA 2001). This means you will have to pay a £90 fine but you won’t get a criminal conviction (the details will still go on the police computer though).

Related offences

Perverting the course of justice

If a false report you made has particularly serious consequences, the police could charge you with perverting the course of justice instead, which carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment. Police are more likely to charge you with this more serious offence, rather than wasting police time if:

• the false report was motivated by malice;
• you continued to stick to your false story, even when there were ample opportunities to retract;
• you falsely accused someone of a crime and they were charged and remanded in custody or tried, convicted and / or sentenced;
• the person you falsely accused suffered major damage to their reputation;
• you have a history and/or previous convictions of making false reports.

Continue reading “Wasting police time” →

If you are accused of child abuse, whether sexual or violent in nature, or abuse that is supposed to have occurred in front of your children, you may find yourself on the receiving end of a ‘visit’ from Social Services, which may seem casual and friendly but is actually recorded on a computer and remains on a social services file indefinitely.

If Social Services decide not to do anything about it, there will be ‘no action taken’. It is well worth checking what is on the file in these circumstances to make sure that what has been recorded is accurate. You are unlikely to get an apology or thanks for your cooperation.

Further Action

If Social Services decide that they need to take further action, they can hold a ‘core assessment’ meeting where they can direct you to do certain things as a parent. Your child could be put on the ‘at risk’ register. If this happens, it could be that your authority over your child’s welfare may be shared with Social Services, or your child could be taken into care, or adopted into another family.

Your Child’s File

Whatever information is on file about your child, it can be seen by medical professionals, health visitors, teachers and school staff, housing authorities, police, public and some voluntary workers who have contact with children, and youth workers. That is why it is important to ensure that whatever is recorded is correct. Continue reading “Being Falsely Accused of Child Abuse” →