Category: Blog Posts

Cyber bullying. The 2013 Youth Risk Behavior Study (of high-school students) found that “19.6% had been bullied on school property in the previous 12 months, and 14.8% had been electronically bullied.”

Smartphone addiction. Nomophobia (NO MObile PHOne phoBIA) is a 21st-century term for the fear of not being able to use your cell phone or other smart device. (Take an online quiz to see if your child has it.) One National Center for Biotechnology Information study identifies 4 features of smartphone addiction: compulsion, functional impairment, tolerance, and withdrawal.

Wasted time. Roberts, Yaya and Manolis (2014) found that college students spent almost nine hours daily on their cell-phones. Those are hours spent that can never be recovered. Were they spent wisely? You decide.

Injuries and death. A 2010 study by the Pew Research Center said nearly one in three 16- or 17-year-olds said they have texted while driving. According to Pew, fifty-nine percent of people between the ages of 18 and 33 reported texting while driving. In midtown Manhattan, 42% of pedestrians who walked through a “Don’t Walk” signal were distracted by an electronic device. A 2013 study found a tenfold increase in injuries related to pedestrians using cell phones from 2005 to 2010.

Mental health and sleep disorders. Another NCBI study indicates that depression, anxiety, and sleep quality is associated with smartphone overuse.

Behavioral and personality shifts. Jean Twenge, a professor of psychology at San Diego State University and author of iGen, explains how today’s super-connected teens are less happy and less prepared for adulthood. They are “different from all previous generations in how they spend their time, how they behave, and in their attitudes toward religion, sexuality, and politics. They socialize in completely new ways, reject once sacred social taboos, and want different things from their lives and careers. More than previous generations, they are obsessed with safety, focused on tolerance, and have no patience for inequality. iGen is also growing up more slowly than previous generations: eighteen-year-olds look and act like fifteen-year-olds used to.”

Psychosocial and cognitive impact. Some research links media multitasking—texting, using social media and rapidly switching among smartphone-based apps—with lower gray-matter volume in the brain’s anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). This is the region involved in emotion processing and decision-making. Researchers from Korea University in Seoul, used brain imaging to study the brains of 19 teenage boys who were diagnosed with internet or smartphone addiction. Compared with non-addicted teenagers, their brains had significantly higher levels of GABA than levels of glutamate-glutamine, a neurotransmitter that energizes brain signals. GABA is a neurotransmitter that slows down the neurons. This results in poorer attention and control, so you’re more vulnerable to distractions.

Security issues. A 2012 Pew Research Center survey reports that 6% of teens 12-17 use the services to share their location. Their 2016 survey found that 28% of U.S. smartphone owners say they do not use a screen lock or other features to secure their phone. Although a majority of smartphone users say they update their phone’s apps or operating system, around four-in-ten say they only update when it’s convenient for them. And 14% say they never update their phone’s operating system, while 10% say they don’t update the apps on their phone.

You, as the parent, are in the best position to determine if your child is mature enough to properly use a smartphone. If your child is personality type A experiencing high stress levels and low mood, he or she is highly susceptible to smartphone addiction. Positive stress coping mechanisms and mood management techniques can be very beneficial for helping your child overcome this addiction. If you live near Portland, OR/Vancouver, WA please contact my Jantzen Beach office and schedule an appointment. I also offer online therapy if that works best for your busy schedule.

Learn more on my website: Smartphones Damage Relationships.

Are you happy? Are you waiting for your family, your lover, your lifestyle to make you happy? Then you’re going to wait forever. Because truth to tell, you’re the only one who can make YOU happy. Happiness depends on achieving an inner harmony between your mind, body and spirit. But how do you do that?

Make your mind happy.

Acknowledge, not control your thoughts. Just as a crying baby needs to be heard before it can quiet itself, your thoughts need to be acknowledged before you can quiet them. If you don’t ever “hear” your thoughts, you won’t deal with the underlying issues causing them.

Challenge negative thoughts. Turn “I’m a failure” into “I don’t fail at everything. Yes, this is a setback but I can learn to do better.”

Ask yourself these questions:

• What evidence do I have for this feeling?
• Is my bias clouding my judgment?
• Do others view this similarly?
• If my best friend did this, would I tell him he’s a failure?

Strive for optimism. Optimism can be learned, if it doesn’t come naturally to you. Oftentimes journaling will help you change your perception of yourself. As you note what your struggle is, put an optimistic spin on your thoughts and write encouraging comments to yourself just as would for a friend with the same problems.

Make your body happy.

Breathe. Breathing deeply helps reduce symptoms of anxiety, insomnia, post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and attention deficit disorder. Controlled breathing also promotes concentration.

Move. Activity goes hand-in-hand with better health and greater happiness. A study about how physical activity affected moods found that people experienced the most happiness if they had been moving in the past 15 minutes.

Have you seen the Temple Grandin movie? She’s a high-functioning autistic who has built a life helping others understand autism. (She also specializes in understanding what spooks cattle). She’s written a book about thinking in pictures because that’s the only way she relates to the world around her. There are a number of good YouTube videos, like this one if you start at the 9 minute mark, that give you some insight into her visual thinking process.Temple has an interesting example on how people think about church steeples. Most people think of a generalized image, but her mind flashes through images of existing churches at specific locations that she’s seen in the past. She never sees things in a generalized way, but sees very detailed examples.

Of course, we can all visualize to a degree. At least we call it that. We might see a color in our “mind’s eye” when told to see red. What about a checked tablecloth? Or your first car? But we don’t generally “think in pictures.” We tend to use pictures, or little movies as methods of organizing data, along with words, emotions, feelings, and other types of thought.

Autistics on the other hand rely much more on pictures. This explains why they have a photographic memory or can focus on the minutest detail. As handy as thinking in pictures can be for certain tasks, it can be a disaster for interpersonal communication. Without words to go along with those pictures, we’re left wondering what they’re thinking about. Without empathy, they may ramble on about their topic of interest without realizing we can’t see their picture.

For our Aspies it’s also extremely troubling that we can’t see their pictures. How can they convey what they are feeling or experiencing?

If you’re a member of Asperger Syndrome: Partners & Family of Adults with ASD Meetup

, please join us for the free international teleconference on Thursday, December 14th, at 2:30 PM PT. Our topic is:

What does it mean that autistics think in pictures? Bring your own examples of how your Aspies think in pictures. But if it makes no sense to you yet, don’t give up. We’ll keep translating for you.

If you’d rather have a one-on-one session with me and you live near Portland, OR/Vancouver, WA please contact my Jantzen Beach office and schedule an appointment. I also offer online therapy if that works best for your busy schedule.

The second, third and fourth steps require taking into consideration the source of the abuse and developing a treatment plan specific for the person. With Aspies it’s a blend of anger management (or domestic violence treatment), and the kind of coaching that teaches them the Rules of Engagement.

For the NT, as you can imagine, the treatment involves a protection plan, plus psychotherapy to restore your confidence and teach you skills to cope with life better.

Like I said this is a tough subject but it’s time to bring it up, isn’t it? That’s why we’re talking about this at our next videoconference.

If you’re a member of Asperger Syndrome: Partners & Family of Adults with ASD Meetup, please join our videoconference on Thursday, December 7th at 9:00 A.M. The topic: Is it abuse or is it Asperger’s? We’ll discuss how to assess the situation when the diagnosis alone doesn’t help. In other words, let’s find practical ways to communicate and problem solve with your Aspie, even if you have to make it up!
(If this time slot if full, I’m holding another one of December 20th.)

If you’re not a member and want to join here are the qualifications: you are a NT trying to deal with life with someone on the Autism Spectrum. That’s it. If that’s you, request an invite. It’s free to join the group and it has a lot of perks, like this low-cost video conference or free international teleconferences.

If you’d like to learn more of the science behind Asperger’s Syndrome, download a free chapter from my book, Out of Mind – Out of Sight. Or click the image below.

For too long, women and men have suffered in silence as victims of sexual assault and harassment. As the recent stories about celebrities, such as Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, and Louis C.K. unfold, women and men are finally admitting “Me Too”.Many people feel it began on October 15, 2017, when actress Alyssa Milano tweeted:

Me too.
Suggested by a friend: “If all the women who have been sexually harassed or assaulted wrote ‘Me too’ as a status, we might give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem.”

But the #MeToo movement didn’t start this year. It started more than 10 years ago with activist Tarana Burke. However, the celebrity connection has caused a flood of women pouring out their stories of hurt, fear, and isolation on Twitter and Facebook.

We are victims no longer! We are telling our stories and enacting change.

For example, on November 15th, a bipartisan group of Senators and Congressional members introduce the ‘METOO Congress Act‘ aimed at reforming how Congress handles sexual harassment.

I’m ready to tell my story now too.

Amid the flurry of these news stories, I was listening to an OPB newscast and heard a familiar name, Jim Jacks. He’d been forced to resign in 2011 for “inappropriate behavior” toward a young female staffer (verified this week by the Washington State Democratic House Majority Leader Pat Sullivan). Hearing his name made my stomach lurch.

No, I wasn’t sexually assaulted by him, but his unfounded actions forever changed my life.

In 2004, Jacks was part of a ring of three Vancouver government employees, who set out to destroy me with a defaming memo. His single untruthful memo set off a decade-plus witch hunt that cost me half a million dollars in legal fees; many emotionally frightening nights; and the loss of my children. Jim Jacks stole from me just as he stole peace of mind from his more recent victim. Not only is he guilty of defamation, he’s guilty of never giving me a chance to defend myself (just as many women suffer in silence about their sexual assaults).

It’s the silence that kills one’s spirit. As for me, I won’t be silenced anymore about Jacks or the rest of the scoundrels in Vancouver, Washington. Victims shouldn’t have to stand by watching their abusers and others cover up these injustices.

Throughout my lifetime, I’ve also encountered many males who have crossed the line into sexual harassment and they’ve left me speechless and afraid. I detail these experiences in my recent exposé in the US Observer.

My newest book, “WHEN EMPATHY FAILS: How to stop those hell-bent on destroying you,” is about people like Jim Jacks. If you’ve felt powerless in the face of abuse by someone with severe Empathy Dysfunction and are ready to take back your power, please grab a copy as soon as it’s available. To stay up-to-date on it’s release, please sign-up for my newsletter.)

If you need to talk with someone about how to standup for yourself, please contact my Jantzen Beach office and schedule an appointment. I also offer online therapy if that works best for your busy schedule.

1. Look at your circumstances objectively. Don’t blame anyone else for pushing you into a career, not pushing you hard enough, or for doubting you. Don’t blame your “giftedness” either. You have the power to change yourself and your circumstances when you make a conscious decision to do so.
2. Identify the right business for you. Maybe you’ve had business ideas in your head since you were a child. Great! Revisit and explore those childhood dreams. But also give yourself permission to explore. Look at the many different facets of yourself and listen to your intuition. Ask yourself: “What gives me energy?” “What brings me joy?”
3. Make a plan. A business plan will help you gain clarity, focus, and confidence. Write down your goals, strategies, and actions.
4. Work out the details. Consider your target audience. Secure funding. Build a support network. Get the word out about your product or service.