A collection of postings on a range of issues is available on our website (www.mjacksongroup.ca). This month’s post is from Ken Pope’s listserv.
The article is as follows.U.S. News & World Report includes an article: “The Benefits of ‘Being in the Present’” by Maura Hohman, HealthDay Reporter.
Here are some excerpts:
[begin excerpts]
When you have a full schedule, multitasking might seem like the best way to finish your endless to-do list.
But the brain actually benefits from focusing on one activity at a time.
When you commit to training your attention and exerting control over your mind, you’re practicing mindfulness.
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The idea of mindfulness is that life should be lived in the present moment. In addition to improving your focus, the practice can bring stress and insomnia relief, and pain reduction.
How?
One explanation comes from a study published in the journal Psychiatry Research. The study found that mindfulness can change the concentration of gray matter in areas of the brain involved in learning, memory, regulating emotion and more.
Yoga and tai chi are two mind-body practices that help increase mindfulness along with their physical and relaxation benefits.
There’s also mindfulness meditation, a very focused approach developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn. He is creator of the Stress Reduction Clinic and the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care and Society at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.
However, you don’t need a formal program to incorporate mindfulness into your day. Here are some ideas:
When you start a task, imagine you’re doing it for the first time. Be curious. Feel sensations like you’ve never experienced them before.
Focus on your breathing. Take notice as you breathe in and as you breathe out. Follow your breath. It’s a reminder that you’re alive.
When you’re overcome with emotion, take a step back and trace the emotion’s origin and duration. Mindfulness teaches recognition that emotions are fleeting, which helps to reduce fear and anxiety.
Embrace imperfection. Once you understand that the world is filled with it, it becomes less upsetting.
Always try to immerse yourself in your surroundings; this helps you be present and connect with the world around you.
“The real meditation practice is how we live our lives from moment to moment. The challenges we face, the choices we make, the places we go, and the work that we do all become occasions for opening to the life we are actually living and the life that is ours to live if we show up fully and pay attention. You could say life itself is the meditation teacher, curriculum, and the gift that comes to us through showing up for life in its fullness and meeting it with our fulness…. The risk is that we will sleepwalk through large swaths of our lives on autopilot, unwittingly practicing mindlessness and getting better and better at it, and more and more remote from ourselves and the world: ‘The great escape’…. It is life itself that is the meditation practice, the real arena of mindfulness. In that spirit, everything and every moment becomes practice and an occasion for waking up…. Wakefulness, as best we can muster it, brought face to face with the human condition itself, this is the challenge of a life lived, and lived fully in the only time we ever get to live or learn or love: This moment, this now.”
—Jon Kabat-Zinn, passage I transcribed from a workshop
A collection of postings on a range of issues is available on our website (www.mjacksongroup.ca). This month’s post is from ADDitude, a reference I strongly recommend for people wondering about, or looking for help with, ADHD (ADD is the earlier term).
I will sometimes hear from people who don’t appear to have ADHD that they will read about it and feel that it defines at least part of how they deal with the world. To some degree this may be true at times. I find that lists of ways to cope better cognitively that have been fashioned for individuals with an ADHD diagnosis, may be helpful to us all, particularly as age, for example, may take the edge off our cognitive efficiency. The article is as follows.
12 Ways to Maintain Focus All Day Long
“Why can’t I focus?” You learned long ago that good intentions don’t magically translate into concentration — particularly when your task is boring, difficult, or extra critical. Designed for ADHD brains, these 12 strategies will help you develop the muscles for real, sustained attention.
You’ve crafted your to-do list. You’ve gathered your supplies. You know what you need to do. And yet when the time comes to actually complete the day’s tasks, your brain drifts off.
Why is focus — both finding it in the first place, and pulling it back when it starts to stray — so difficult for people with attention deficit disorder (ADHD)? The answer lies in brain chemistry: ADHD brains are naturally low on dopamine and norepinephrine, which control brain arousal and attention levels. Other people may find that, when the situation calls for it, they can “buckle down” and force their brains to focus. For people with ADHD, the advice to “just focus” is maddening; it simply can’t be done.
You can’t force focus, but you can create an ideal environment — both physical and mental — for it to thrive. The key is working with (not against) your ADHD brain, and combining the specific factors that help your focus flourish. When you’re wondering, “Why can’t I focus?” follow these 12 tips to get started.
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1. Remember the Zeigarnik Effect.
The “Zeigarnik Effect” is the principle that unfinished tasks are harder to get out of your brain than are tasks that haven’t been started. This means that starting a project — even if you work on it for just 10 minutes — will make it harder for your brain to forget or dismiss it. If you find yourself daydreaming instead of getting started, set a timer for 10 minutes and do something (anything!) during that time. Once you start, the big, scary project will turn into an unfinished task — meaning your brain will latch onto it and figure out how to get it done.
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2. Use a “daily focus list.”
Write down your major priorities at the beginning of each day. This is a great way to block out annoying distractions and periodically refocus your attention. A daily focus list — a short, bulleted outline of three major and three secondary priorities — isn’t just a “to-do list”; rather, it’s a grounding tool that keeps your head out of the clouds and focused on what’s really important. (Download an example of a daily focus list.)
Racing thoughts and hyperactive imaginations mean that ADHD brains are easily thrown off course by passing thoughts about dry cleaning or returning Aunt Linda’s phone call. Deal with sidetracking thoughts — and the anxiety they can create — with a “parking lot,” an easily accessible place to dump unneeded thoughts until a more appropriate time. The parking lot could be a notebook you carry in your purse, or a post-it note stuck to your desk; whatever it is, it will save you stress and keep your focus unbroken.
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4. Identify your “overwhelm” triggers.
When the ADHD brain gets stressed, it jumps into fight or flight mode. This looks like a lack of motivation: You abandon your piles of laundry or half-done taxes and binge-watch Netflix instead. Break this cycle by identifying the triggers that cause you to feel overwhelmed. For some, it’s hunger; for others, it’s too many conflicting priorities. Getting a handle on what causes your overwhelm won’t be enough to deter it every time, but you’ll be better equipped to anticipate its arrival and plan accordingly.
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5. Go with your flow — not just the flow.
ADHD comes with plenty of superpowers (like hyperfocus), but you can’t always predict when they’ll kick in. Respect your brain! Recognizing when you’re “in the zone” — and able to tackle tasks that require attention and focus — is just as important as recognizing when your brain is in a fog. When you’re totally out of it, give yourself permission to shift your attention to less-demanding tasks, like filing papers or folding socks. You’ll get more done in the long run!
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6. Look for “positive distractions.”
“Distraction” need not be a dirty word. Certain diversions can actually help you get more done in the long run. Take, for instance, exercise: stepping away from a project to go for a walk might seem like avoidance, but physical activity actually boosts the brain and can help you operate more efficiently when you come back. Seek out the “positive distractions” that work for you; good examples include meditation, a quick dance break, or a creative art project. If you’re nervous about getting lost in your distraction, set a timer — and stick to it.
Hyperfocus isn’t always a force for good. Sometimes, it can lead people with ADHD to obsess over small, unimportant details — and kill their real productivity in the process. Work on letting go of perfectionism and settling for “good enough.” This is a journey, not a destination, so don’t expect your perfectionist tendencies to disappear overnight — but you can expect to reduce your anxiety, build your self-esteem, and improve your productivity along the way.
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8. Buddy up.
Recruit an “accountability partner” — someone you talk to daily, weekly, or monthly — to help you prioritize goals, chart progress, and celebrate successes. Accountability builds focus — and, in the long run, creates change — because everyone (particularly someone with ADHD) thrives on being able to say, “Yep, I did it.” A partner — whether it’s an ADHD coach, a close friend, or even your mom — can help get you where you want to go.
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9. Set aside planning time.
Lack of planning is one of the biggest focus drains; it’s hard to stay in the zone when you don’t know exactly what you’re supposed to be doing! Even one minute of planning can save you as much as 40 minutes of work, so it’s important that you schedule regular, short planning sessions to sketch out priorities and deadlines for the upcoming days or weeks. Of course, nothing is set in stone — priorities can shift and emergencies can arise. But having even a general sense of your goals and how to plan to achieve them — even if you get thrown off course — works wonders for retrieving your focus from La-La Land.
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10. Find clarity.
The greater your clarity, the easier it is to stay focused and get things done. If you’re having trouble paying attention to a project, ask yourself these questions to expose the root of the problem: What do you want to achieve? Whose expectations are driving this project — your own or someone else’s? Do you understand what you need to do? Getting a handle on what’s expected of you will make it easier to ignore distractions and maintain a positive mindset.
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11. Set deadlines.
Ever wonder why you do everything at the last minute? It’s because deadlines are actually neurologically useful to the ADHD brain — they eliminate competing priorities and boost adrenaline, making it easier to dive into hyperfocus and crack down on a task. Not every task comes with a clear deadline, however — so you need to create your own. These could be deadlines for each phase of a project — “On Tuesday at 4 PM, I’ll pick up the paint supplies from the hardware store” — or for the project itself: “The bathroom needs to be painted by February 1.” Post your deadlines prominently and set frequent reminders — they’ll increase your likelihood of following through.
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12. Acknowledge — and then dismiss — negative thoughts.
Rumination is the enemy of focus. Repeatedly dwelling on, say, a recent argument with your spouse can block out other important thoughts, making it nearly impossible to get anything done. Trying to block out negative thoughts entirely, however, usually backfires. Instead, acknowledge your natural thought patterns, and plan a time when you can give them the attention they deserve. Tell yourself, “Yes, the argument last night upset me, and my feelings right now are valid” to help you manage strong emotions and circular thought patterns — without letting them hold back your focus.
There are times when my emotions really get in my way. When I perform on stage, fear of failure makes my heart race and throat clench. Or when a friend says something hurtful to me, I can’t stop ruminating about it.
When we get emotionally stuck like this, our first instinct may be to shove down our feelings or lash out at others. But neuroscientist Ethan Kross’s new book, Shift, offers another way forward that’s both respectful of our emotions and helpful for managing them effectively. Without ignoring our feelings, his book argues, we can learn to work with them in more positive ways, allowing us to gain relief and wisdom from them.
“The goal is not to run from negative emotions, or pursue only the feel-good ones, but to be able to shift: experience all of them, learn from them, and, when needed, move easily from one emotional state into another,” he writes.
Why we need emotional management skills
We all experience both positive and negative emotions that rise up in response to our experiences, and science is clear that these help us stay safe, healthy, and happy. For example, if we are out alone at night and hear a sudden noise, we’ll feel a rush of fear that focuses our attention and prepares us physically to respond to perceived danger.
But, while fear can be useful in dangerous situations, we can also overreact with too much fear—or not be able to recover from the emotion when it’s no longer needed. That’s why it’s important to find ways to be more emotionally nimble—honoring our feelings, but not being thwarted by them.
People who are good at emotional management and can tone down or amp up emotions as needed do better in many areas of life, says Kross. That’s because they know how to recover from what feels difficult and augment what feels good. Research finds that when people have good emotional skills, they enjoy more fulfilling relationships, do better at school and work, are physically and psychologically healthier, and find more life satisfaction, he writes.
“Simply put, the ability to control your emotions isn’t just about avoiding the dark side of life; it’s about enriching the positive, generative, and rewarding dimensions of existence as well.”
There’s another good reason to learn emotional management, according to Kross: Emotions are contagious, and they can spread to those around us. If we are more able to manage things like fear, sadness, and worry—and nurture feelings of happiness, excitement, or gratitude—we will affect people around us in positive ways.
Of course, no one can expect to feel good all of the time. Nor should we tamp down negative feelings indiscriminately using false positivity, he argues. It’s more about recognizing when we’re stuck (our emotions are too intense or lasting too long) and nudging ourselves in a different direction. While we can’t always control the things that happen to us that trigger difficult emotions, we can control the trajectory of our emotional response, says Kross.
“The appearance of an emotion is merely the beginning: What we do or say or think affects the ongoing nature and timeline of the emotional reaction.”
How to shift our emotions
Believing emotions are unstoppable can make them difficult to change, says Kross. But you can probably find evidence in your own life that suggests otherwise. For example, if you get a hug when you’re hurting, you feel less pain; if you listen to your favorite music playlist, you feel happier.
Kross recounts the stories of people who’ve faced very difficult situations triggering intense emotions—like his grandmother, who survived the Holocaust—to illustrate the effectiveness of various emotional management strategies. Some of these have a more internal, individual focus; some involve changing your outer circumstances (which, directly and indirectly, affect your internal state). Here are some things he recommends when you face emotional challenges.
1. Harness your senses. We experience our world through our senses—touch, taste, sight, sound, and smell—and our emotions are deeply connected to our sensory experience, often below our conscious awareness. If we want to shift our emotions, we can deliberately add sensory experiences to shift us in a different direction.
For example, if we are feeling lonely or sad, and we feel stuck in that emotion, we can put on happy music, take time to smell a rose, walk on the beach barefoot, watch a beautiful sunset, or take a bite of a delicious treat. Since it’s easy to engage our senses without a lot of thought, it can be a very effective way to take us out of a sticky emotion.
“When we use the primitive pathways of sensation, we access a relatively effortless way to shift,” writes Kross.
2. Change your focus. While many experts say that it’s bad to turn away from our distressing feelings, Kross disagrees with this as an overarching principle. As long as you are not chronically avoiding difficult emotions, he argues, it can be good to take a break from them by focusing your attention elsewhere.
Most emotions are short-lived and fade with time, he argues, and don’t require us to hold on tightly to them. So, distancing ourselves can help us to avoid reacting to difficult feelings by doing something we’ll regret later—like sending a nasty email when we’re angry or bingeing on snack food when we’re bored. Being flexible about using distraction to lessen the intensity of our emotions and allow time to pass can be a good way to help regulate difficult feelings.
When might turning away not be healthy? If you always avoid feelings and don’t learn from them, says Kross. In that case, distraction is unlikely to do the trick. But if that’s not the case, then walking away from a conflict or picking up a juicy novel may do you more good than you think. It might help you to later approach tricky situations more calmly and have an easier time figuring out what to do next.
3. Alter your perspective. Reframing how you think about an upsetting experience can help you alter your perspective and tone down emotional reactivity. For example, if your wife shows up late to dinner and you feel angry about it, consider the possibility that her lateness isn’t about disrespecting you but is rather about being kept late by her boss. That will likely make you feel differently about the situation.
Though reframing is a very effective tool—and is often used in cognitive behavioral therapy, for example—it can take time and effort we may not readily have access to, says Kross.
“To reframe a situation, we often need to look at it from a different vantage point so we can shift our thoughts about it,” he writes. “The problem is, when we are washed over by negative feelings, we tend to narrowly focus on the problem at hand.”
Because of this, Kross suggests a shortcut for reframing: talking to yourself as if you were someone else. For example, if you’re nervous about an upcoming interview, you might tell yourself something like, “Hey, I know you’re worried, but it’s also an exciting opportunity for you. And, if you don’t get this job, no worries. Something better will come along.”
Gaining Perspective on Negative EventsTake a step back and analyze your feelings without ruminating
“Self-distancing” like this has been found to help people tone down problematic emotions in many situations, such as “when people are reflecting on past heartache or future worries and when they grapple with negative feelings in the heat of the moment after a date or big interview,” writes Kross.
4. Change your location. Our outer circumstances are constantly affecting our emotions, both directly and indirectly, writes Kross. Therefore, learning ways to change them deliberately can affect our emotional reactions in positive ways.
For example, if you are stressed about a work assignment and unable to focus, taking a short walk in the woods or in a quiet neighborhood might calm you quickly, allowing you to think straight. Alternatively, you can add things to your space that soothe you, like a nice photo of a loved one or a beautiful flowering plant that sits on your desk.
If you have a chronic emotional issue that’s keeping you from reaching your goals, says Kross, you can ask yourself, “What [in your environment] is taxing you, draining you, tempting you, pulling you away from the things you want to do, the person you want to be?” Identifying these things can spark ideas of how to change it to better support you.
5. Reach out to the right people for guidance. We all need people in our lives to help us through hard times—someone to talk to who can make us feel better. But often, writes Kross, the people we choose to confide in add fuel to our emotional fire without offering perspective, which likely won’t shift us in the right direction.
“There are two key ways other people can help us when we go to them for emotional support: They can satisfy our core need for empathy and validation, on the one hand, and they can help us shift our perspective, on the other,” he writes. “We routinely balance this formula incorrectly, failing to strike a balance between these two critical elements.”
Kross says that identifying people in your life who provide you with the right blend of kind, empathic support and good advice is very helpful for managing difficult emotions. Of course, that’s what therapists are for; but if one isn’t available to you, then you can turn to a good friend or family member or anyone with those skills.
6. Find a culture that suits you. Our cultural backgrounds affect how we feel about our emotions and how we handle them, writes Kross. Whether we’re talking about a national culture or the culture of the groups to which we belong, we should be conscious of the messages we are receiving and whether or not they are helping us with our emotional lives.
In some cases, it might be good to find a culture that will support your own emotional needs—whether that’s a religious group, a sports team, a therapy group, or something else. Only you can decide what you need, though, and it may take some reflection and trial and error to figure that out.
7. Practice helps. Sometimes when we are overwrought, it may be hard to reach for these tools easily. That’s why Kross encourages people to practice the techniques in less emotionally charged situations, to see how they work for you. He also offers tips on what to do if you feel stuck or something isn’t working well.
His goal isn’t to provide a one-size-fits-all or to eliminate all negative emotion from your life, but to help you find the right tools to nudge yourself emotionally when that’s what you need. Learning to manage your emotions better will not only improve your own well-being and success in life, it will also help those around you.
“How we handle [our emotions] shapes everything from the unfolding of a single day in our own individual lives, to our children’s emotional world, to our workplaces and communities, to political conflicts that unfold around the globe,” he writes. “It’s for these reasons that I genuinely believe that understanding how to manage our emotions is one of the greatest challenges we face.”
A collection of postings on a range of issues is available on our website (www.mjacksongroup.ca). This month’s post is from The Greater Good Magazine (https://greatergood.berkeley.edu) a reference I strongly recommend. The article is as follows.
Can Social Activity Be a Form of Medicine?
There is a growing movement of health care providers prescribing social activities and community engagement to patients, not just pills. BY LEIF HASS | JANUARY 15, 2025
As a hospital-based physician, I almost always treat people with serious chronic health conditions. As a consequence of these conditions, they lose not just energy but also connection to much of what makes them feel alive. Such was the case with Mr. T., a 67-year-old man I recently cared for at Alta Bates Summit Medical Center in Oakland, California.
“Life with kidney failure is hard. Seems my life is just going to dialysis and that’s it. Sometimes I don’t know if I can keep doing it,” he told me. In fact, he was in the hospital due to not doing it. He had just been admitted with shortness of breath after missing one of his critical three-times-a-week dialysis sessions.
Health conditions can leave folks isolated; this inevitably leads to worse health and quality of life. For a few years now, I have been trying to address this with what I call my “Prescriptions for Health and Happiness”: paper prescriptions I write for things like helping others, writing a thank you note, singing in the shower or dancing, or walking in a beautiful place.
As for Mr. T., I asked him a question that is key to the “social prescribing” movement:
“Now that we have talked about ‘what is the matter with you,’ I would like to learn ‘what matters to you.’ What brings you joy? Doing what we love is an important part of staying healthy, and I want to encourage you to reconnect with the world in healthy ways.” “Well, doc, I’ve always loved music.” “Have you ever thought about joining a choir?” “I love to sing but haven’t in years, but you know the idea of doing it again? It’s kind of exciting to think about!”
I, too, was excited by that patient visit and excited later that week when I had the opportunity to talk to Hotz about her book on the social prescribing movement and how it is growing and evolving around the world.
Leif Hass: How would you define social prescribing?
Julia Hotz: Social prescribing utilizes the arts, nature, volunteerism, and local community organizations as “medicine” for patients of all ages. Social prescribing considers social health just as as integral to people’s well-being as their physical and mental health and an important tool to address a myriad of problems such as chronic pain, diabetes, hypertension, mental health conditions, and the loneliness epidemic.
LH: You say that our current pill-oriented form of health care became dominant only in the mid-20th century. Social prescribing is an effort to move medicine away from this “pill for each problem” paradigm toward a broader view of health and health care. What are its origins?
JH: The movement started in England, where researchers generated data to prove the obvious—poverty and poor social conditions lead to ill health and shorter lives. The structure of the British National Health Service allowed some unconventional thinkers to attempt some novel solutions to this problem—most notably, Dr. Sam Everington.
Early work showed that [the health system] prescribing and paying the cost of access to exercise programs saved money and improved health, at which point social prescribing, as it came to be called, received more attention and funding. Since the initial prescriptions were written four decades ago, the British government has spent £300 million on healthy living centers that do more than prescribe movement, art, nature, service, and belonging, but also can address basic needs like housing, employment, and education using health advisors or “link workers” to help people access existing community resources. A recent study suggests that social prescribing and related services have reduced demand on primary care by 24% and emergency room visits by 28%.
LH: You interviewed people involved with social prescribing all around the world. What did you learn from that? Could you share some of the types of activities prescribed?
JH: Well, the fact that providers and patients around the world want to give and receive this type of care demonstrates that it taps into something universal. When providers suggest that health comes from more than the absence of disease, but from doing things that bring joy and meaning—something patients, all of us, intuit about our health—we readily by in. Of course, people at times need nudging depending on the condition being addressed.
As far as the types of activities prescribed, I found cold water swimming for depression on the English coast, fishing groups for recovering drinkers in Northern England, a jogging group to engage people with housing insecurity in New York, hiking for ADHD in Vermont, art classes for anxiety in Denmark and Australia, volunteerism for the isolated in Canada, phone outreach for withdrawn vets in the USA, and farm work for people with dementia in Norway.
In its most evolved situations, the process moves beyond a doctor prescribing in their office to communities where there is outreach to struggling individuals and community centers that serve as a hub that help people make connections themselves or with the help of community workers. The diagnosis and the treatment can happen without your typical licensed health care provider.
At a societal level, these programs can create a ripple effect, strengthening social ties and supporting programs that benefit other people. The idea of what health and health care are can evolve as a result of the community witnessing the prescribed activities.
LH: What is the state of social prescribing in the USA?
JH: In many countries, there is a single payer for health and social services, typically the government. If they feel a program will save money, they are in the position to start it and reap the rewards in terms of better health outcomes and lower costs.
The United States is a big country with a complicated system for delivering health care. Currently, social prescribing is happening in more of a patchwork manner than in the U.K. For instance, the Veteran’s Administration has been an early adopter given the shocking rates of mental illness among vets, and the great data on benefits of outdoor programs and “buddying up” programs. HMO-like programs for the elderly have been using types of social prescribing for years now with great success.
We are starting to see broader efforts. For instance, the Massachusetts Cultural Council piloted the country’s first social prescribing initiative, CultureRx, which offers annual grants to cultural organizations to develop sustained partnerships with health care providers across the state to provide prescribed services. This addresses a key issue: There need to be social programs for folks to go to and people to facilitate bringing programs and patients together. In the U.S., we run into not just logistical problems but political or philosophical problems. Is it the job of government to get people to go for a hike? Is it money well spent?
Social prescribing isn’t about treating the symptoms; it is about creating health, creating a pathway to wellness, and in the process healthy communities.
LH: Is there any pushback against the movement of social prescribing?
JH: Some people say health care systems are setting up social prescribing due to failures in the way they traditionally have conceptualized and delivered care.
Cormac Russell, an outspoken critic of social prescribing, says, Whoa, what fails before the health system? It is the community. Yes, in the short term it makes sense to invest in social prescribing, but ultimately we need to think about what true connected communities would look like and devote resources to develop them. What we are seeing with the levels of anxiety of our youth, isolation of our elderly, and our high rates of substance use disorder is a society in distress. He uses the analogy of tears in the fabric of our society. With social prescribing, we are pulling people out as they fall through the tears, but fixing the fabric should be our goal.
He believes the way to create a connected community is to help people create a community asset inventory. Then give them resources to address the community’s gaps and improve access to the natural world, art, music-making, and other types of organizations that engage us in community—and then let people engage themselves!
I agree with Russell on this; we need to create systems to allow our citizens to find resources they need to get healthy in these ways without enlisting the help of the overburdened and expensive health care system.
This book is not antimedicine; medicine can be a powerful tool to address our symptoms. It is mostly a book—and part of a movement—about broadening our notion of health and what brings it to us.
LH: Social prescribing isn’t coming to every doctor’s office in the coming months, and I agree with you that ideally for most people the health care system doesn’t even need to be involved. How should folks proceed if the ideas ring true to them?
JH: My thoughts on how people take in the findings from this book have evolved. What is great about social prescriptions is that they can create more joy, more meaning, and improved relationships; it goes beyond treating symptoms in the moment but moves us in the direction of greater well-being. Everyone feels anxious, depressed sometimes; everyone feels distracted, burned out at times. Why not proactively start introducing doses of these proven “medicines” when these feeling start to arise? Or proactively, like we do with vitamins?
The tagline of the movement is about shifting from “what’s the matter with you” to “what matters to you.” But this question feels a little big, so I like breaking it down into smaller questions we can ask ourselves. When was the last time you experienced beauty, awe, flow, or deep human connection? You can use your answers to write your own “prescription.”
It is the movement’s hope that with time simultaneously our society’s idea of health and our society’s resources to access these activities will grow; more people will join clubs, go to parks, or paint without the idea of health even coming to mind. Of course, for our vulnerable populations, the health care system—or at least some community resources—are going to be needed to get them the care they need.
LH: Why do these activities improve our well-being and overall health?
JH: Social prescribing is about living in the direction of more connection, more awe, more flow states, and more joy. One of the researchers I spoke to talked about how these prescriptions work simply by getting us out of our homes and in front of new stimuli that change the engrained pattern of our thoughts, which can drive some mental health issues. Then the activities activate us and help us feel a part of something bigger or see the world in a new way.
For certain symptoms, certain activities appear to be more effective than others. Movement is good for stuckness, sadness, and many of the symptoms of depression. Art is good for symptoms of anxiety and being consumed by our worry. Nature is good when we are burned out, stressed, have a formal ADHD diagnosis, or are even just suffering from overstimulation. Service is great to help with loneliness. One of the doctors said she felt so privileged she could prescribe beauty.
At times, we all experience some of these symptoms. Wouldn’t it be great to know we have something in our back pocket for when this happens? I have come up with a list of 10 questions that can guide us toward potentially helpful activities and a “crowdsourced DSM,” an alternative take on the manual mental health professionals use, that offers suggestions to address common funks we find ourselves in.
I hope people learning about social prescribing will see it as a call to develop a group of activities to not only bring more joy to the present but as a method to preventively enhance our emotional well-being and overall health.
After a year that feels like it has pushed many of us apart, our selection of the top scientific insights of 2024 are nearly all about how we come together and how we’re interconnected—across time, distance, and difference.
Some insights speak to the ways we can connect with people with disagree with, and how this process isn’t as painful as we imagine. Others look at the effects parents have on children, teachers have on students, and plant and animal life have on all of us. One insight is simply about an easy way you can reconnect with someone, today.
The final insights were selected by experts on our staff, after soliciting nominations from our network of nearly 400 researchers. We hope they inspire you to reach out to others and model the kind of goodness you hope to see in the world.
1. We’re missing out on important happiness insights by overlooking Indigenous cultures
In the study, Galbraith and his colleagues surveyed almost 3,000 people in 19 small communities (mostly in Asia, Africa, and South America) about their life satisfaction, then compared their answers to their level of wealth. Since most didn’t live in a cash-based economy, their income was calculated based on the value of their assets.
Galbraith and his team found that people from these communities were very satisfied with their lives—6.8 on a scale up to 10—even though most of them lived on less than the equivalent of $1,000 per year. To put that in perspective, people in the 2022 Gallup Poll (used to create the 2022 World Happiness Report) weren’t generally that happy until they made at least $25,000 a year.
The researchers also found that living in a particular village mattered for life satisfaction, and it had nothing to do with the wealth of that village. This means other, non-economic factors likely contributed to the villagers’ happiness—like, perhaps, living in a more interdependent community, being closer to nature, or experiencing lower inequality.
Whatever the reason, these findings add more evidence to the debate about the role of money in life satisfaction—and hint at other lessons happiness researchers (and all of us) could learn if psychological research were more inclusive.
“Small-scale societies living in close contact with nature, on the fringes of globalized mainstream society, offer distinctly valuable perspectives [on the link between wealth and satisfaction],” the researchers write.
2. Old friends are an untapped source of connection and well-being
Given the pain of loneliness and the meaning we derive from relationships, you would think we’d be doing all we can to stay connected to others in life. But a 2024 paper reveals a big missed opportunity for connection: old friends.
How big is that missed opportunity? Across six studies with over 2,500 participants from the U.S., U.K., and Canada, Lara B. Aknin and Gillian M. Sandstrom found that fewer than one-third of people sent a message to an old friend when given time to do so—even though they said they would be happy to reconnect and thought their friend would appreciate it, too.
Why? According to surveys, the biggest barriers are worries that our friends won’t want to hear from us or that it would be awkward. These barriers are hard to overcome. Aknin and Sandstrom tried and failed to ease people’s hesitations by reminding them how much they’d appreciate such a note themselves, encouraging them not to listen to their second thoughts, and framing the message as an act of kindness. It turns out that old friends feel like strangers to us, potentially activating all our misgivings about talking to someone we don’t know.
“People are generally interested in connecting, but prefer that the other person initiate,” the researchers explain. At the same time, their research suggests, we overestimate how willing other people are to be the ones to initiate, putting us in a bind.
However, one tactic did work. If people started by sending a few messages to currentfriends and acquaintances—basically, practicing the act of reaching out—they were more likely to contact an old friend.
If you find it strangely hard to get in touch with someone after time has passed, you’re certainly not alone. But old friends might just be the low-hanging fruit of more connection in life—and they’re only a short “hello” away.
3. A simple 20-second practice can have lasting benefits for stress and mental health
Many of us lead busy, stressful lives that put us at risk for burnout. Though different well-being practices could help—like mindfulness meditation or gratitude journaling, for example—we may think we don’t have time for them.
But what if you could feel significantly better from just 20 seconds of a simple practice? Findings from a new study published in Behavior Research and Therapy suggest you can. Just 20 seconds of self-compassionate touch daily can calm your nerves and improve your mental health.
In this study, led by Eli Susman (a former Greater Good Science Center research fellow) and his colleagues, 135 young adults were randomly assigned to practice either self-compassionate touch or a dexterity exercise 20 seconds a day for a month. Self-compassionate touch involved placing a hand over your heart and the opposite hand over your belly—though people were told they could try other self-soothing touch. The dexterity exercise involved touching various fingers to your thumb in a particular pattern. Participants were also encouraged to pick a “cue” to help support their practice—something they did every day that might prompt them to do it.
Before and after they began practicing, participants filled out questionnaires measuring their self-compassion, positive feelings, anxiety and depression symptoms, and stress. The researchers also measured how much people adhered to their practice over time.
When analyzing the results, they found that among people who practiced at least 28 days of the month, those in the self-compassionate touch group had greater self-compassion, and they experienced less stress, anxiety, and depression, in comparison to the tapping group.
As the researchers concluded, “Daily micropractices have the potential for augmenting single-session interventions and for offering help when more time-intensive approaches may be less accessible.” In other words, you don’t need an hour a day to make a difference in your well-being. Even 20 seconds of self-compassionate touch—and perhaps other brief practices, as well—may do the trick.
4. We feel better emotionally when we’re in biodiverse places—not just basic “green spaces”
In the study, led by researcher Ryan Hammoud of King’s College, London, almost 2,000 people around the world used the Urban Mind App to record their physical surroundings and assess their well-being in real time over two weeks. Three times a day, they reported on where they were and if they could see any trees or plants, or see or hear any birds or water—indicating how diverse the environment was. They also reported how confident, relaxed, happy, connected to others, and energetic—and how stressed, down, anxious, lonely, and tired—they felt in that moment.
After analyzing the data, researchers found that people had greater mental well-being in spaces where they could see or hear natural elements, and this effect lasted up to eight hours. This was true regardless of a person’s age, gender, ethnicity, occupation, or education, pointing to the everyday benefits of being exposed to nature, even briefly.
But people who experienced more biodiversity in natural environments had even greaterwell-being, above and beyond the effects of being in nature alone. In fact, for every additional natural element in someone’s environment, like a duck or a stream, researchers found an average 0.91-point increase in mental health scores (on a scale up to 50 points).
This suggests that ecological diversity within urban spaces is important for people living there. City planners should take note if they want to promote better mental health, say Hammoud and his team:
“[Our] study highlights the importance of protecting and promoting natural diversity in our cities,” they write. “This means moving away from monocultural pockets and parks of mown grass . . . towards polycultural spaces which mimic the biodiversity of natural ecosystems.”
5. Learning to be more forgiving improves your mental health, no matter where you live
Two large studies in 2024 contribute to current research by finding that forgiveness has mental health benefits for people across the globe, and can be taught through community programs as well as individual practices.
The first study recruited almost 4,600 people living in places where there had been civil conflict or unrest in the recent past: Hong Kong, Indonesia, Ukraine, Colombia, and South Africa. Study participants were given a forgiveness training workbook on the REACH framework developed by Everett Worthington. Based on surveys before and after, the researchers found that practicing forgiveness reduced people’s unforgiveness, as well as their symptoms of depression and anxiety.
The second study found that forgiveness practices can also be effective when deployed at the community level. Researchers tested a community-wide forgiveness campaign at the Universidad de Sinú, a private, nonreligious university in Monteria, Colombia. Professors incorporated forgiveness-related content into their course materials, and the entire campus community was invited to engage in voluntary forgiveness-promoting activities for four weeks. The campaign included lectures, online discussions, videos, webinars, and physical installations, like a “forgiveness tree.”
Survey responses from nearly 2,900 students from before and after the campaign showed that they were more willing to forgive family, friends, roommates, and teachers afterward. Students also reported a deeper understanding of the meaning and impact of forgiveness, and, again, decreased symptoms of depression and anxiety.
While these are not the first findings that illustrate the advantages of forgiving over holding on to animosity, they suggest that learning to forgive can help people from all different backgrounds. Keeping in mind that forgiveness does not imply that you endorse someone’s harmful behavior or want to reconcile with them, forgiving past harms is a learnable way to buffer against the risk of feeling depressed and anxious—wherever you live in the world.
6. Empathy is passed down across at least three generations
Parents play such a meaningful role in their children’s well-being and the people their children become. In particular, a 25-year study published in Child Development this year showed how empathy can be passed down through three generations: from parent to child to that child’s future children.
First, researcher Jessica Stern and her colleagues measured mothers’ empathy for their 13 year olds during a conversation. Next, when the teens were 13 to 19 years old, they measured teens’ empathy for their closest friends during another conversation. Later, the researchers followed the teens into parenthood up until their own children were three to eight years old. At that point, they surveyed the second generation’s empathy for their children, asking about how they provided supportive responses when their children were distressed. Finally, the second-generation parents completed questionnaires about their own young children’s empathy.
The results? Teens who received greater empathy from their moms tended to show greater empathy to their close friends. In turn, those teens went on to have greater empathy for their children after becoming parents—and, in turn, their children tended to have greater empathy for others.
These findings suggest that empathy is “paid forward” across relationships and over time. Teens whose moms are sensitive, emotionally engaged, and supportive learn how to be the same for their close friends. What’s more, the researchers say, caring for a close friend as a teenager may act as a “training ground” to help strengthen teens’ empathy muscle into adulthood when they become parents. And from there, the cycle continues.
This study focused on mothers, but another 2024 study reminds us that fathers matter, too—in particular, that fathers’ sensitivity to their children’s needs seems just as important to children developing a healthy attachment style as their mothers’ sensitivity.
Empathy is key to cultivating and sustaining social connection across the lifespan. While it might be more common to hear about trauma passed down through generations, this research sheds light on the opposite phenomenon, where positive qualities like empathy can pass from parent to child to grandchildren—and likely beyond.
7. Humble teachers help students learn and feel accepted
How do we help all students admit what they don’t know—in other words, show “intellectual humility”—so they can learn better? The paper by Porter and her colleagues found that one powerful way to do that is for teachers to model intellectual humility themselves.
In a study at two high schools in the Midwestern United States, the researchers surveyed around 300 students about four of their classes. Specifically, they wanted to know if the students thought their teachers were intellectually humble: owned up to their mistakes, acknowledged they had more to learn, and were open to different ways of doing things.
The results suggested that when students saw a teacher as more intellectually humble, they were more comfortable expressing intellectual humility in that class themselves, felt more accepted by the teacher, and were more interested in the class overall. Not only that, the more humble they thought their teacher was, the more their grades improved from the first to the second semester.
Across four other studies, surveying both high school and college students about hypothetical teachers, the sense of acceptance students felt from humble teachers seemed to be key in inspiring their own humility.
Importantly, these benefits were stronger when teachers were showing rather than telling—modeling humble behavior rather than just reminding students to engage in it.
Doubt, confusion, questions, and mistakes are all an important part of the learning process, and anything that helps students tolerate them better is valuable. This study also serves as a reminder that who teachers are, and how they act around their students, matters a great deal—sometimes even more than the explicit lessons they teach.
8. Exposure to inaccuracies can “inoculate” kids against future misinformation
In our era of misinformation, what’s the best way to prevent children from picking up inaccurate information online? Is it smart to try to limit kids’ access to spaces where they could read fake news and other potentially misleading information?
Across two studies, researchers asked children ages four to seven to listen to a variety of animal facts, which were paired with pictures (to allow kids to determine whether the fact was true). Some of the children heard only statements that were true, but the other half heard incorrect information mixed in with real facts—such as “Zebras have red and green stripes.”
Next, children heard a sentence describing an alien species called a “zorpie.” They were told that every zorpie has three eyes and were given 20 pictures of zorpies they could click on to lift their glasses and reveal their eyes.
Children who had heard some incorrect facts earlier were also more skeptical of this new fact about the aliens—they clicked on more pictures to essentially fact-check the statement they heard.
The more inaccuracies they had heard in the original set of animal facts, the more extensively children tended to engage in fact-checking the new information about aliens. There was some (but not conclusive) evidence that children’s age made a difference—older children were especially likely to do more fact-checking if they had previously seen more incorrect information.
This study builds on prior work aiming to help teens and young adults detect misinformation, suggesting that we could start teaching this skill as early as elementary school. The researchers point out that learning to identify incorrect information may be more productive than stopping children from having any exposure to incorrect information, which would be difficult or impossible anyway. They write that efforts to prevent children from believing misinformation “should focus on helping children develop a broad skill set for evaluating information, rather than attempting to control their information diets.”
9. Having a conversation with someone we disagree with isn’t as awful as we think
We need to communicate with each other if we are to solve society’s pressing problems. But 2024 research suggests that we imagine disagreement to be more unpleasant than it actually is—which might contribute to us feeling confrontational and preferring to stay in silos with like-minded peers.
Three studies led by Kristina Wald found that people underestimate how positive conversations that include disagreement can be. She and her team asked people to imagine a conversation with a stranger who disagreed with them on a controversial topic like gun control or climate change, and then had a different group of people actually engage in those kinds of conversations.
The researchers found that people predict conversations with a stranger will be far less pleasant when they disagree rather than agree—but they actually end up enjoying their conversations quite a bit, and more than anticipated, whether they agree or not. People also like, feel liked by, and feel more connected with conversation partners than expected, regardless of agreement.
When her team asked people to recall a recent online debate, roughly half referred to a contentious one and characterized it as negative. But when university students were describing their own debate experiences in general in the past year, they primarily remembered in-person conversations with family and friends. They characterized these interactions in more emotionally nuanced ways, including feeling positive afterward. Surveys also found that we believe other people have more conflict in their lives than we do—suggesting that disagreement is also less rampant than we think.
“Three forces—the salience of online debates, the amplification of negative content online, and a negativity bias in human information processing—have together warped perceptions of how debate actually occurs among everyday Americans,” the researchers write.
In sum, these two papers provide important insight into “false polarization,” the widespread perception that society is gripped by contentious ideological conflict. If we have the courage to get past our assumptions, we might find that engaging in these dialogues is more constructive and enjoyable than avoiding them—and society may benefit.
10. There are research-tested ways to preserve democracy
The study’s two primary authors—sociologists Jan G. Voelkel of Cornell University and Robb Willer of Stanford University—collected more than 250 proposed solutions “designed to decrease American partisan animosity and antidemocratic attitudes” from 400-plus scholars and activists.
A panel of experts narrowed the field to the 25 most promising contenders, spanning a wide range: Some involve hearing the message that all voters share common economic interests or common moral values. Others involve watching a video of two people bonding despite their political differences, or an animation about how democracy allows politically diverse people to work together. In one activity, people play a trivia game that encourages bipartisan teams to cooperate.
The researchers then engaged more than 32,000 participants to test how these activities and messages could change attitudes in three important areas: partisan animosity, support for undemocratic practices like lying or vote suppression, and support for political violence. Of the 25 solutions, 23 reduced partisan animosity. But only six reduced support for undemocratic practices, and only five cut support for partisan violence.
The one that stood out as most effective was developed by researchers at UC Berkeley and MIT. Theirs used a simple question-and-answer format, with text and images only. They asked participants to what extent most people on the other side of the divide support undemocratic actions. Many people believed that their opponents were strongly hostile to democracy. But then they were given recent public opinion data that showed opponents’ support for democratic values and practices actually was much higher.
That one turned out to be the top-ranked solution for reducing anti-democratic attitudes. It ranked third in reducing support for political violence, and seventh in easing attitudes of partisan animosity. It also was among the most effective in reducing support for undemocratic candidates.
“People should be very happy to hear that voters on all sides really do support democracy,” says UC Berkeley political scientist Gabriel Lenz. “They think it’s important. And that’s really reassuring.”
First-line medications used to treat ADHD are among the most rigorously studied, with decades of supporting evidence. So why do fears about their use persist?
“To deplore the use of a tool that can not only relieve suffering, but actually turn it into success, health, and joy, well, that’s just plain ignorant, as well as cruel to the people who it scares away from ever trying medication.”This quote perfectly sums up the pervasive fear among adults and caregivers of children diagnosed with ADHD. And it remains as detrimental now as it was when authors Edward Hallowell, M.D., and John Ratey, M.D., first published it in their book ADHD 2.0(#CommissionsEarned).The first-line medications for ADHD are some of the most effective, best studied, most scrutinized, longest known, and safest drugs in all of medicine. They have been safely prescribed to children for decades. Nonetheless, no other class of medications in virtually all of medicine inspires more baseless fears, intentional disinformation, and wild beliefs as do the stimulants used to treat ADHD. Interestingly, these fears are almost entirely an American phenomenon that hardly exists elsewhere in the world.
ADHD and Stimulants: A Disinformation Campaign Begins
In the late 1970s, a public backlash against treating ADHD with stimulant medication began after groups launched nationally organized, and extraordinarily effective, disinformation campaigns. This instilled a climate of fear among physicians, parents, and educators, and sowed anxiety and confusion among the public. Moreover, it planted in the minds of Americans the otherwise nonsensical idea that it was the treatment of ADHD that was dangerous — not the untreated medical condition itself.It is also important to make a distinction between side effects due to stimulant medications and those unpleasant experiences caused by poor clinician training and experience. Finding a good clinician is much more difficult than it should be. Establishment medical education has failed miserably to prepare clinicians to diagnose and treat ADHD at all ages.[Free Download: The Caregiver’s Guide to ADHD Treatment]The goals of medication treatment include:Rule #1: The right medication and dosage matched to the right person should be dramatically beneficial and have virtually no side effects.Rule #2: Finely tuned ADHD medication should help you be “the best version of you.”
The Dangers of Untreated ADHD
Clinical neuropsychologist Russell Barkley, Ph.D., has demonstrated that untreated ADHD is not just highly impairing, it can be deadly. In fact, having ADHD lowers a person’s estimated life expectancy by 12.7 years.1 Barkley has noted that most of the contributors to this mortality are lifestyle-related and can be reversed with treatment.Research shows that untreated ADHD, with its impulsivity and inattention, raises the risks for serious traffic accidents, addiction, unsafe sexual practices, and self-harm, as well as challenges with academic performance, relationship difficulties, financial struggles, and chronic stress for children, teens, and adults.
ADHD and Stimulants: Facts Over Fears
Baseless fears about stimulant medication have scared caregivers away from seeking proper treatment for their children diagnosed with ADHD. The benefits of ADHD medication, based on decades of research and medical practice, used in conjunction with cognitive behavioral therapy, are profound for many people. The risks stemming from untreated ADHD are equally profound.[Read: What Are the Long-Term Effects of ADHD Medication on the Brain?]These are the fears I hear most from caregivers about ADHD medication, and my responses:
Fear #1: Will medication change my child’s personality?
The first-line stimulant medications affect a person with ADHD differently than they do a neurotypical person. Stimulant medications calm and soothe the hyperarousal and loss of emotional control associated with ADHD. A neurotypical person on an ADHD stimulant, by contrast, becomes more agitated, jittery, irritable, and unable to slow down.
Fear #2: Are stimulants addictive?
Having ADHD increases a person’s risk of substance use disorder, regardless of whether they take medication. However, one large study of adolescents found that “current pharmacotherapy for ADHD is associated with lower risk for substance use problems as long as medication treatment is maintained, indicating that pharmacotherapy is likely to be a key part of efforts to reduce substance use risk in those with ADHD.2
Fear #3: What if my child loses weight on a stimulant and doesn’t grow?
Appetite suppression is a common side effect of stimulant medications that goes away when the medicine is taken consistently enough to develop a tolerance to it. Most children ultimately gain weight and grow just as they did before taking medication.For a small portion of elementary school-age children, most of whom were already picky eaters, the side effect of appetite suppression does create a problem. If a child is losing weight, or just not gaining weight for more than one month, the protocol for reversing this is to:Lower the dose of stimulant.If that does not work, switch stimulant moleculesIf this is ineffective, use the lowest dose of a gentle antihistamine that is FDA-approved for children 3 years of age and older. While this is an off-label use, it often helps to maintain a very beneficial ADHD treatment until the child becomes tolerant of the medication. Antihistamines like cyproheptadine, for example, return appetite to previous levels for about six hours. They are usually taken 30 minutes before lunch and dinner.
Fear #4: What if a stimulant worsens my child’s anxiety?
ADHD shares a high comorbidity with anxiety disorder. Researchers conducted a meta-analysis of 23 studies of children diagnosed with anxiety who had started on ADHD stimulants and found that anxiety decreased significantly in almost all cases.3Arm yourself with knowledge. Read about the findings from research studies that have investigated ADHD medication. Then you can make a rational, informed decision about what is best for your child and/or yourself.
ADHD and Stimulants: Next Steps
Free Download: Reader Scorecard of ADHD TreatmentsRead: Treating a Child with ADHD Medication Diminishes His Future Risk of Substance AbuseRead: ADHD Medication Side Effects No One Should TolerateWilliam W. Dodson, M.D., is a board-certified adult psychiatrist. He was named a Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association in 2012 in recognition of his contributions to the field of adult ADHD.SUPPORT ADDITUDE Thank you for reading ADDitude. To support our mission of providing ADHD education and support, please consider subscribing. Your readership and support help make our content and outreach possible. Thank you.#CommissionsEarned As an Amazon Associate, ADDitude earns a commission from qualifying purchases made by ADDitude readers on the affiliate links we share. However, all products linked in the ADDitude Store have been independently selected by our editors and/or recommended by our readers. Prices are accurate and items in stock as of time of publication.
Sources
1 Barkley, R. A., & Fischer, M. (2019). Hyperactive child syndrome and estimated life expectancy at young adult follow-up: the role of ADHD persistence and other potential predictors. Journal of Attention Disorders, 23(9), 907–923. https://doi.org/10.1177/10870547188161642 Schepis, T. S., Werner, K. S., Figueroa, O., McCabe, V. V., Schulenberg, J. E., Veliz, P. T., Wilens, T. E., & McCabe, S. E. (2023). Type of medication therapy for ADHD and stimulant misuse during adolescence: a cross-sectional multi-cohort national study. EClinicalMedicine, 58, 101902. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eclinm.2023.1019023 Coughlin, C. G., Cohen, S. C., Mulqueen, J. M., Ferracioli-Oda, E., Stuckelman, Z. D., & Bloch, M. H. (2015). Meta-Analysis: Reduced risk of anxiety with psychostimulant treatment in children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology, 25(8), 611–617.
But while loneliness entails feeling that a need for social connection is going unmet, solitude is different. Most of us are able to spend periods of time alone, and not feel lonely or unhappy at all. In fact, research is showing that time in solitude can even be beneficial.
Unwind and destress
Time alone can calm us down. This is the message from studies by Thuy-Vy T Nguyen, now at the University of Durham, and colleagues. In one study, published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, the team found that just 15 minutes of solitude had an emotional ‘deactivation’ effect – lowering ‘high arousal’ emotions, including excitement and anxiety, and increasing ‘low arousal’ feelings, such as calmness. This effect did not happen when the participants were with another person.
Find your personal freedom
By taking the social pressure off, solitude can leave us free us to be who we ‘are’, according to a 2023 study in Scientific Reports by Netta Weinstein at the University of Reading and colleagues. The team asked 175 British and American adults aged over 35 to record what they did and how they felt for 21 days, then analysed these diary entries.
They found that on days when participants chose to spend more time alone, they felt not only less stressed, but also less ‘controlled’ or pressured to behave in a certain way. These benefits were cumulative – those who spent more time alone over the course of the 21 days were less stressed and scored higher on the ‘autonomy’ measures at the end. This work shows that solitude can help certain aspects of well-being, the team concluded.
Take the time to get creative
Some people don’t feel especially anxious in social situations, but also don’t necessarily go looking for opportunities to socialise, either. Research on 295 undergraduate students in Personality and Individual Differences, led by Julie Bowker at the University at Buffalo, found that for such ‘unsociable’ people, solitude not only did not harm their wellbeing, but allowed them to be more creative.
Studies conducted since support this idea. For example, a 2021 study of more than 1,200 French adults, led by Maxence Mercier at the University of Paris, focused on changes during a strict 55-day COVID-19 lockdown in 2020 in France. The team found a significant increase in ‘everyday’ creativity (measured by levels of agreement with statements such as ‘I come up with new and practical ideas’) during this lockdown.
Their results also suggested that people who were less creative beforehand enjoyed the biggest boosts to their creativity during lockdown. While the team certainly acknowledges that the lockdown had some negative consequences for physical and mental health, and that other factors were at play, this isolated time’s effect on creativity appears to have been positive.
Frame it correctly
Younger people tend to feel differently than older people during periods of solitude, according to a 2023 study of 426 American adults. This work by Alexander Danvers and colleagues, published in the Journal of Research in Personality, found that for younger people, there was no link between feelings of loneliness and time spent alone; they were just as likely to feel lonely – or not lonely – while with other people as while by themselves.
For participants aged over 67, though, it was a different story: they were more likely to feel lonely when they were by themselves, suggesting that solitude is more likely to have a negative impact on older people’s wellbeing.
However, a study published last year in the Journal of Personality did find that lonely people could “more readily reap the emotional benefits” of solitude when they were encouraged to view it as an experience that could enhance their wellbeing. Encouraging older people to view time spent alone in a not entirely dim light may, then, help them to cope with being by themselves.
Acknowledge your ‘aloneliness’
Though feeling that you’re not getting enough social contact is harmful for wellbeing, research suggests that feeling that you’re not spending enough time in solitude can also be damaging. Robert Caplan at Carleton University, US, and colleagues coined the term ‘aloneliness’ for negative feelings arising from insufficiency of desired solitude.
In their work on almost 1,000 US undergraduates, published in Personality and Individual Differences in 2019, they found that some people preferred solitude more than others, and that aloneliness was associated with higher levels of stress and depressive symptoms.
A particularly busy period at work or school, for example, could mean that people who crave periods of solitude don’t get them, and this could increase feelings of life dissatisfaction, causing stress and an increase in negative emotions, the team writes. They argue that their results mean the potential implications of too little solitude for our wellbeing and mental health should be considered.
Exactly why some people are happier alone than others is still being explored. But, unsurprisingly, research suggests that extraverts are more likely to choose to spend time doing activities with other people than by themselves, so solitude could be tougher on them. There’s also evidence from a study in the British Journal of Psychology by Norman P Li and Satoshi Kanazaq that, for more intelligent people, more time spent with friends is associated with lower levels of satisfaction with life.
Though the researchers don’t experimentally explore why this might be, it’s possible that smart people with long-term goals to pursue feel more satisfied when they can spend plenty of time pursuing these goals, even if that means less time spent seeing friends.
Do as you please
What should you do while alone, to ensure you get the biggest improvements to your wellbeing? To some extent, of course, the answer will vary from person to person – someone working on a creative project, for example, will likely benefit from time spent on that. Broader research suggests, however, that it doesn’t seem to matter too much what you do while alone, as long as you have chosen this activity, rather than having it forced upon you.
Certainly, this was the finding from a 2021 study led by Dwight C.K. Tse at Strathclyde University, in Social Psychological and Personality Science. In this study, the team also found that more time spent on unchosen solitary activities was linked to lower scores both on a measure of life satisfaction and on questions assessing whether their lives felt meaningful. So, the general answer seems to be: do whatever you want.
But don’t spend ‘too much’ time alone
Though different people seem to benefit more or less from shorter or longer periods of solitude, Danvers and colleagues’ 2023 study also found that, regardless of age, participants who were alone for more than three-quarters of their time felt the most lonely. The team concluded that, whoever we are, when the amount of time we spend alone passes this point, feelings of loneliness become difficult to avoid.
On the whole, the research suggests that solitude can have its benefits, though for some people more than others. And, for those who crave plenty of time alone, not getting it could potentially threaten their wellbeing in the same way that loneliness harms those more averse to solitude.
A collection of postings on a range of issues is available on our website (www.mjacksongroup.ca). This month’s post is from the Greater Good Magazine.
Eight Ways You Can Feel More Hopeful—Even in Dark Times
A new book makes the case that hope is the right response when we are facing difficulties in our lives. BY JILL SUTTIE | AUGUST 21, 2024FacebookXEmailSharePrintBookmarkShould we maintain hope in uncertain times? These days, this question is at the forefront of my mind—and probably many other people’s. Especially when we face political polarization, humanitarian crises at our borders, and the prospect of a warming planet, it’s easy to despair rather than hope.But, according to William Miller, professor emeritus at the University of New Mexico, this is the wrong approach to what ails us. In his new book, 8 Ways to Hope, he explains why we should hope and how to cultivate a hopeful outlook. “The essence of hope is envisioned betterment, and it serves us well,” writes Miller. “It comes hardwired in human nature to dream a better future, helping us to carry on and survive.”
Why we need hope
As Miller defines it, hope is not a naive approach to seeing the world, where we ignore problems and engage in “wishful thinking.” Instead, hope is a complex response, involving “feeling, thought, action, vision, a life force, and a way of seeing or being.” Having hope, as opposed to living in fear or being cynical, he argues, helps us to see possibility in present-day circumstances and not become overwhelmed. People who feel hopeful are good problem-solvers, more resilient and persistent, more engaged and productive at work, more creative and adaptable, and better at recovering from adversity. For these reasons and others, inculcating more hope in ourselves means we’re better equipped to handle problems and enjoy life more. “Given the plethora of positive characteristics with which it is associated, hope might be considered a master virtue,” writes Miller. “It is a positive orientation of mind and heart toward your own future or that of the world at large.”Being hopeful can be contagious, too, affecting how others look at what’s possible. For example, Miller recounts a study where staff at an in-patient alcohol treatment center were given the hopeful message that certain patients in their care were more likely to improve. After treatment was over, those patients did, indeed, have fewer drinking episodes, longer periods of abstinence, and higher rates of employment than other patients. But it turns out the staff had been duped—those patients actually had no better chance of improvement than any others. Just infusing hope changed the course of treatment.While some may doubt the benefits of hope, Miller suggests that a dour view of the future often becomes a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. For example, he says, believing that people are against you may cause you to act subtly (or not-so-subtly) more hostile toward them, and your behavior can actually cause them to react negatively toward you. Unfortunately, writes Miller, “[These negative] expectations, like a virus, can replicate themselves in an individual or group, often without awareness, and mightily resist effort to remove them.”
How to hope
Since there are good reasons to hope, it’s helpful to understand the many facets of hope, writes Miller. Each of these can play a role in creating or maintaining hope in ourselves and others.Desire. Hope involves wanting a future outcome that could potentially manifest (even if it seems unlikely). Miller, who spent much of his career helping people overcome alcoholism, found hope for success to be an important element of recovery—and desire to be an important precursor for hope. If his patients didn’t think it was that important to quit drinking—if they really didn’t desire sobriety—it was harder to get them to take the necessary steps to change. “Desire can create hope, and hope encourages us to take action,” he writes.In that sense, getting clear about what you desire may be an important starting point. One way to do that is to try the Magic Wand or Best Possible Self exercises.
Magic Wand
To find your purpose, imagine a better worldProbability. Since we can’t know what the future holds, there is always uncertainty. But, to some extent, believing that a positive outcome has a good probability of coming to pass can make us more hopeful about it.However, probability can also be deceiving. We’re all different in our need for certainty, which affects when we will allow ourselves to be hopeful—and it may vary depending on the situation, too. For example, if we’re entering a risky surgery, we may research every corner of the internet seeking reassurance before being hopeful or just trust our surgeon’s expertise.When it comes to assessing the probability of a hoped-for outcome, we should keep in mind our biases, such as the tendency to only seek information that confirms our views (like ignoring the science around vaccine safety) and our prejudices (like assuming our surgeon’s race or gender is a sign of their competence).We also shouldn’t assume what’s probable based only on past experiences. For example, women gained the right to vote in the U.S., and Northern Ireland brokered a peace agreement, despite past failures. Having hope can change our odds, he says, so we needn’t let probability determine it.“Hope not only anticipates but also shapes the future,” he writes.8 Ways to Hope: Charting a Path through Uncertain Times (The Guilford Press, 2024, 196 pages)Possibility. Hope is not just about what’s probable, but also what’s possible. Being willing to keep hope alive can affect everything from your health to a peace treaty, says Miller.For example, myriad research finds that keeping hope alive in medical situations can affect how much pain a patient feels and whether or not they’ll be “cured.” In fact, Miller cites an interesting review of many placebo studies that found people can experience significant pain relief on placebos if they’re hopeful about them, even though the placebo isn’t active.“In perceiving and pursuing possibilities, the seemingly improbable can happen because, at least in part, what you see is what you get,” writes Miller. “Seeing a possible pathway forward is both a source and a product of hope.” Optimism. While hope can be situational, optimism is a facet of being hopeful that is more like a personality trait, writes Miller. Optimistic people seem to experience a lot of benefits, including greater well-being and resilience, and better health and work performance. When optimists face negative news, they still look for hopeful information surrounding it, and that can inspire them not to lose hope. Pessimists, in contrast, can get lost in negative news and feel hopeless or helpless. But all of us might do well to not overly focus on negative news, as it can affect our mental health and discourage optimism in others, too.“Collective optimism can rise or fall within a group or population, affecting people’s willingness to invest in the future,” writes Miller. To practice more optimism, you can try the Finding Silver Linings exercise.
Finding Silver Linings
Change your outlook on a negative event—and enjoy less stressTrust. Trust might look like seeing people around you as generally trustworthy or believing that things will generally work out, even if sometimes they don’t. In that way, it requires something different from other facets of hope.“Probability is a calculation, possibility a vision, desire a wish, and optimism a predisposition,” writes Miller. “Trust is more like a decision, a risky choice to entrust your well-being to the safekeeping of another.”Trust can build relationships and encourage cooperation, which is good for collective action. While not everyone or everything is necessarily trustworthy, we often get better results if we allow ourselves to be vulnerable and accept the uncertainty that comes with trust, writes Miller. Giving into fear, in contrast, may keep us stuck and unhappy. “Mutual trust is closely related to happiness in personal relationships, organizations, and nations,” he writes. “You [can] choose to trust despite doubts and fear. If the risk is rewarded, trusting can open the door to further trust just as fear begets more fear.”Meaning and purpose. Having a sense of meaning or purpose in life can also foster hope, writes Miller. While different in tenor, they both help affect how we see ourselves in relationship to the world around us.“Perceiving meaning in life can provide a sense of coherence, recognition, and comprehension in whatever is happening,” writes Miller, while “purpose in life includes a personal role in the present and future.”When people have a strong sense of meaning or purpose, it helps them see a bigger picture and avoid giving up after facing obstacles or setbacks. For example, if you are a woman who’s faced discrimination, you may find meaning and purpose in the fight for equality and be less inclined to step away from that fight—even if you become discouraged. As with optimism, purposeful people seem to experience many benefits, including less chance of developing dementia and better mental and physical health. Purpose can give us the fuel to hope (and work toward) something better, as can meaning. “Meaning draws on your deeply held beliefs and values, painting a larger picture than the particulars of the present,” says Miller. “It provides a larger context within which to understand current adversity, a bit like zooming up to a certain altitude that affords a broader view.”For cultivating a sense of purpose, you can try the Affirming Important Values or Life Crafting practices.
Life Crafting
Sharpen your sense of purpose by defining and committing to your goalsPerseverance. While other facets of hope are more about how we think and feel, perseverance is more about action, writes Miller. “To persevere is to continue trying despite obstacles or opposition, to pursue what is difficult even after many optimists and realists have long since lost hope,” he writes.While hope can spark action, action can also spark hope. For example, when people are depressed (and feeling hopeless), one of the treatment approaches is simply to activate them—to get them to move or engage in pleasant activities, whether or not they feel like it. Doing those activities can provide hope, as people see that their mood is not permanent but can fluctuate. When we persevere, we are more likely to succeed, because we are willing to consider alternate paths if the path we’d hoped to take was blocked, writes Miller.Hope beyond hope. While all entryways into hopefulness can be good, there is something to be gained from having hope even when the cause seems lost, writes Miller.“The core characteristic of hope beyond hope is a refusal, regardless of current reality, to give up and succumb to hopelessness, cynicism, or despair,” he writes.While it may be hard sometimes to imagine hoping when things are so rough, one can look to exemplars from history who overcame the odds by keeping hope alive, writes Miller—for example, Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, or Mother Teresa. Not only did these people keep hope alive, they worked in community to help bring about the changes they wanted to see. Practicing hope is particularly important when we face difficulties that seem insurmountable, writes Miller. Visioning what we want, collaborating with others, practicing patience, and being dogged in our actions can make all the difference in what happens in our future.“Ultimately hope seeks to keep faith with deeply held values and without regard to attachment to immediate outcomes,” he writes. “It is a conviction that something better is ultimately possible for us collectively.”
How to Get Things Done Without Getting Bogged Down
What’s keeping you from crossing things off your to-do list? Learn how to get things done with these solutions to everyday productivity problems that slow down people with ADHD.
By Judith KolbergVerified Updated on January 17, 2024 Click to Read 11 Comments ???? SAVEEvery day we are confronted with endless information, interruptions, distractions, work, and social media updates that feel impossible to ignore. All of this butts up against the one thing that remains finite — time. Getting things done with ADHD, therefore, is problematic.Here are some of the biggest challenges that people with ADHD struggle with daily, and my solutions for not letting them prevent you from getting things done.
How to Get Things Done: 13 ADHD Problem Areas and Solutions
Productivity Problem #1: Too Much Information
Information comes at us all the time; capturing it is essential — and difficult. We used to say, “Write it down, write it down,” but in the era of too much information, there are better ways to write things down — besides writing on your hand.[Get This Free Download: How to Break the Procrastination Habit]If you need to save verbal information, little bits of advice, websites people throw at you, or things you want to remember, call it into your voicemail and leave yourself messages. You can also use the recorder on your smartphone. Another option is to convert verbal information into text, using an app like Dragon Dictation.
Productivity Problem #2: Too Distracted To Finish
Distractibility and executive function challenges prevent individuals with ADHD from completing chores and tasks. I recommend that you finish something — a small task or even something larger that you were working on yesterday — early in the day. The truth is that there will be seven new tasks for every one task you finish. To keep yourself in balance, strive for a realistic ratio between closings and openings. When you get closure on something, it makes the rest of the day meaningful. You can say, no matter how the rest of the day goes, that you finished a task.If interruptions — a phone call or a request from your spouse or child — distract you from a task, hold on to a physical artifact (or keep one in your line of sight) to remind you of what you were doing. It will focus your attention more quickly, when you return to the task. An unopened envelope may remind you that you were opening mail before you got interrupted. A Post-It note, even if it’s blank, will remind you to return to what you were doing before.
Productivity Problem #3: Too Boring to Bother With
If you’re putting off cleaning out a closet — is there anything more boring? — think about what you’ll gain. Better yet, write the gains down – reclaiming money you left in those handbags, making the space to see what you actually own, getting a tax deduction for donating clothes to charity are all ways to invest yourself in the outcome.[Take This Quiz: How Seriously Do You Procrastinate?]
Productivity Problem #4: Ignoring a To-Do List
An old organizational standby is to schedule tasks. You have your to-do list, but you have to link getting things done to committing a time to do them. It’s important to make a list of things to do, but it’s equally important to enter your to-do list into your calendar.If you make a to-do list only, you have about a 40 to 50 percent chance of doing the tasks, but if you schedule a task, the chance increases to 70 percent or so.
Productivity Problem #5: All Chores Seem the Same — Boring
Do different kinds of things in different kinds of places. It’s an ADHD-friendly way to optimize your focus and attention. My client, Marsha, gave up doing her taxes at home. It was a setup for failure. From April 1 through April 3, she moves to a local hotel. She hauls all of her records into the room with her, logs on to her laptop, and spreads the receipts and papers on the bed and on the floor. She stays there until her taxes are done. She breaks for exercise and to relax in the pool. Changing the environment made a big difference to her.I know some people with ADHD who go nuts in the quiet of a library. They would be more productive at a place like Starbucks, with some background noise. Brainstorming a new marketing plan requires a different environment from a hotel room or a conference hall. You might need a lot of windows, a place to pace, space to put stuff up on the wall. Entering your data into Quicken could be done in a small, tight, quiet spot with no windows. Different tasks need different levels of focus.
Productivity Problem #6: “It’s Me Versus The Clutter”
It’s important to organize a support team. Sari Solden, author of Women with Attention Deficit Disorder(#CommissionsEarned), says, “Expand your idea of organizational help to include other people.” Stop trying to be an ordinary person who keeps it together in the same way that people without ADHD do. Support might mean another set of hands, someone to keep your morale up, or someone to function as a passive body double.A body double is somebody who is physically present as you do a task but doesn’t do the task with you. The body double is the person to whom you say, “Here’s what I’m doing now. This is what I’m concentrating on.” Your body double anchors you to the task at hand. This has to be somebody who is non-judgmental, somebody who is not going to say, “Throw it all away.”
Productivity Problem #7: Troubles Beginning a Task
It often doesn’t matter where you start a decluttering task. Begin at any spot in a room. After you start, though, continue in some kind of logical order. If you start on the left side of the room, keep going to the left, in a circle. If you start on the top shelf of a cabinet, work your way down. Have a process that is orderly, but don’t worry about where or when you start, because there is no ideal time to tackle clutter.
Productivity Problem #8: “I Schedule a Task, But Ignore It”
There are many reasons why organizing systems break down. Sometimes, people with ADHD get bored with their system. They need more variety. Have a system that you will stick with for three months. If you revise it every month, it will drive you crazy. You may not have to overhaul it completely. You might just have to tweak it. It’s not unusual for individuals with ADHD to revamp their systems more frequently than other people do.
Productivity Problem #9: When Worry Prevents Things From Getting Done
As you start your day, do the first three things that worry you the most, to get them off your plate. The internal distraction of worry plays more on people with ADHD than on other people and prevents them from getting things done.If you do any part of what is worrying you, you’ll break the anxiety. Say, you have a report to do, and it’s hard to get started, and it’s causing you anxiety. Start the footnotes, do a little research, speak to one expert. If you break the inertia caused by your anxiety, you can keep moving forward.
Productivity Problem #10: Not Being Able to Prioritize a To-Do List
Just take a shot at doing it. If you use 1s, 2s, and 3s, and that’s too narrow, add 4s. If you use A, B, and C, and that’s too narrow, add a D. Adding colors is good for setting the priorities of your to-do list. Don’t use more than four colors because that will make you nuts. Use yellow, green, and red because we know what those mean.I like having a three-column to-do list. One for “now,” another for “soon,” and a third labeled “fat chance.” “Now” could be this week or within the next two days. Making “now” mean “today” to finish a task is too rigid. “Soon” could mean the end of the week. “Fat chance” could mean “whenever.”
Productivity Problem #11: Never Meeting Deadlines
Schedule extra time to finish a task by default. Rather than trying to precisely estimate how long a task will take, just say, “Screw it. I’m going to need 30 percent more time for everything I plan, no matter what.” Just pick a number. Twenty percent more, 50 percent more, and allot that. The worst that could happen is that you finish it early.
Productivity Problem #12: Mail Mismanagement
To cut off junk mail at its source, log on to catalogchoice.org and have them alert marketers to stop sending you stuff.Have only one place for the day’s mail to land, maybe the dining room table. Yes, it piles up quickly, but at least you know where it will be when you decide to tackle it.Don’t open junk mail. It can contain four to seven pieces of paper. Junk mail goes, unopened, right into the recycling bin.
Productivity Problem #13: Project Impossible? Blow it up, break it down.
If you have a project to do — planning a wedding, say — instead of breaking down the tasks, try blowing things up first. Place different sticky notes randomly on a wall or bulletin board. It doesn’t matter what categories they’re in, the sequence, or the priority. Get it out of your head and onto paper. If you don’t have a wall, do it on your computer.Now look for things that have a deadline. If you’re planning a wedding, you have to book the venue first. You want to first deal with things that could screw up the event if you miss a due date.Look for different ways to break things down. There will be stuff you have to delegate, things that have to happen in sequence, or things that are related by function.Now that you’ve broken things down, you need to see the big picture again. Organizers advise their clients to break things down, but people with ADHD lose the big picture while doing this. You need to visualize the whole project again.This article corresponds to the ADHD Experts Webinar, “ADHD-Friendly Ways to Organize Your Life!” with Judith Kolberg, which is available for purchase.
Have you ever woken up in the middle of the night with upsetting thoughts spinning through your head? Maybe you argued with your partner and you’re reliving the fight in agonizing detail. Perhaps you can’t stop worrying about all the things that could go wrong in an upcoming job interview. Or maybe you’re perseverating about the state of the world.
Rehashing the past or imagining the future isn’t unusual. That’s how we humans figure out how to navigate our lives. But sometimes this system goes haywire, and we get stuck, like a needle stuck on a record album that plays the same riff over and over again.
Repetitive, ruminative thinking can make it hard to see reality as it is, keeping us locked into negative thinking patterns that don’t serve us. When that happens, our mental health may be compromised; we may lose sleep, have trouble concentrating, or feel lethargic and depressed.
What can we do instead? There are many tips for transforming rumination into something less toxic and even useful. Here are a few tools I’ve found helpful in my own life—and that research suggests can work for those of us prone to rumination.
Practice mindful awareness
Creating a little separation from your spinning thoughts can help transform them into something more manageable.
By becoming an observer of your present experience using mindfulness techniques, you can learn to let go a bit of the past and future (where thoughts reign supreme) and stay more grounded in the moment, accepting “what is.” Practicing mindfulness has the added benefit of revealing the transient nature of your thoughts, helping to defang them somewhat and make it easier to let them go.
There are many mindfulness practices that might help with this. For example, a simple breath meditation, where you practice focusing on your breath and paying gentle, accepting attention to its changing patterns, may do the trick. Thoughts can (and likely will) still come into your head as you practice this. But they can be named gently before returning your focus to your breath, giving them less power.
Trying out a mindful body scan may also reduce intrusive thoughts. By focusing on sensations in your body—tension or pain, differences in temperature, points of contact with the ground, etc.—you can bring yourself into the present in a way that will make thoughts of the past or the future less salient, allowing them to drift away.
I definitely find that using mindfulness can make tricky, persistent thoughts less problematic. Plus, I get the added bonus of feeling calmer and less stressed—a win-win.
Gain some perspective
Sometimes our thoughts are persistent because there is something we need to learn from them before we can let them go. Taking the time to examine our intrusive thoughts and gain perspective on them may help shift them from troubling and distracting to something more useful.
Self-compassion—a combination of mindfully becoming aware of your thoughts, offering yourself words of kindness, and acknowledging that you aren’t alone in your suffering—may help. By not pushing away your thoughts, but accepting them with a compassionate attitude, you may be able to examine them with more openness, perhaps reframing what’s bothering you in a new way and considering steps you can take to improve things.
Research finds that having a self-compassionate mindset is tied to less rumination, even in patients with major depression (where rumination is often severe). However, people without depression can also benefit. In one study, young adults who wrote about a negative experience in a self-compassionate way ruminated less afterward than those instructed to write in an emotionally expressive way.
You can also gain perspective through what researchers call “self-distancing”—considering your internal state as if you were someone looking in from the outside. One clever way to do this is to write about your experience in the third person, using pronouns like “you” “he,” or “she” instead of “I”—a technique that has been found to reduce rumination.
Gaining Perspective on Negative EventsTake a step back and analyze your feelings without ruminating
How might this look in real life? Let’s say my friend tells me she doesn’t want to talk to me right now, and I’m agonizing about the end of our friendship. I can talk to myself (or write out an imaginary dialogue) like this: Jill, what your friend said hurt your feelings, but it doesn’t mean your friendship is over. Think of the many times you yourself had to withdraw or didn’t have the energy to engage because you were tired, stressed, or depressed. You need to give her some space and not assume the worst. Looking at my thoughts in this light makes everything seem less dire and helps loosen sticky perseverating.
Move—preferably outside
Rumination, by definition, means getting lost in your thoughts to the point where you feel stuck or immobile. Sometimes what you really need is to take yourself out of your head and into your body in a way that can break the rumination cycle. Getting some exercise might do the trick.
Hundreds of studies show how physical exercise, in general, can be helpful for reducing rumination—one of the key features of a depressed mind. Even engaging in a single session of moderate exercise has been found to reduce rumination (among other symptoms) in depressed patients.
But being outside in nature may help above and beyond physical exercise. As another study found, walking in the woods reduced rumination more than walking along a road for the same amount of time.
If you go out walking, it may help to keep your attention on your surroundings and prevent troubling thoughts from cropping up—perhaps by doing an awe walk, enjoying the company of a friend, or taking pictures along the way—giving your overactive mind a much-needed break.
This is my personal go-to activity for ruminative thinking, and it never ceases to surprise me how a good walk in the woods puts everything in a better light.
Stop feeding the fire and redirect your attention
Sometimes, we get lost in repetitive thoughts because we keep getting re-stimulated by listening to the same stories over and over again. If we are ruminating over things beyond our control—like wars abroad, presidential elections, or climate change—we may need to take a break from our 24/7 (bad) news cycle and let our minds focus on other, better things.
Too much negative news consumption does no one any good; it blinds us to the good things going on in life, giving us a skewed view of the world and making us feel helpless. While we shouldn’t put our heads in the sand, either, we need to balance our over-attention to negative stories with a deliberate focus on what’s going right. That may include taking a break from social media or TV news, practicing gratitude for the good in our lives, or taking action with like-minded people on an issue of concern to us. These can help reduce the fuel for our worried minds, while pointing us in a healthier direction.
Likewise, if we’re ruminating about other people in our lives—perhaps an ex-boyfriend—we may want to disengage from news of them for a while. If we can’t stop replaying negative interactions with loved ones in our minds, we may want to recall past positive interactions or assertively communicate our needs to them, rather than letting our minds spin. Too often, our relationship ruminations create a toxic brew that keeps us stuck. That does no one any good.
Talk to a trusted person—or maybe a therapist
It’s always a gift when someone knows you well enough that they can listen and help you get unstuck. Whether they do it with humor or by offering sage wisdom, sometimes getting an outsider’s perspective and not sitting alone with your thoughts can move you into a better headspace.
However, there’s a difference between someone who can cheer you up momentarily and someone who can have a more lasting impact on your ruminating tendencies. If your trusted friend distracts you by making you laugh, great; it may offer you some relief, and that’s good. But that may not solve your overall problem, and rumination may return. Likewise, if someone supports you by sharing your repetitive thoughts—maybe even egging you on, without offering insight or advice for getting unstuck—this probably won’t be helpful, either (and may even make things worse). So, you should tread carefully to find the right person who can listen well and offer empathy, but also provide a helpful perspective.
I’m lucky to have friends like that who’ve helped “unstick” me at times. If you don’t have people like that in your life or want someone more emotionally neutral, seeing a therapist might be your best option—and, in some cases, probably necessary.
If intrusive thoughts are so problematic that they’re hurting your health, relationships, or ability to engage with life, it may be a sign of a more serious condition, like anxiety, depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, or even post-traumatic stress disorder. In that case, you’ll want a professional, like a therapist who can provide guidance for letting go of troubling thoughts and moving into healthier thinking patterns. Cognitive-behavioral therapy, for example, has a proven track record for helping people with rumination and is the go-to therapy for those suffering from many mental health disorders.
Of course, we can’t simply push away all troubling thoughts all the time, nor should we. Persistent thoughts can be signals to ourselves about underlying life issues that need resolution. But by drawing upon mindfulness, a self-distanced perspective, physical exercise, redirection, and social support, you can perhaps find a path forward. While there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach, these tools may help—and, at the very least, they are unlikely to do harm. Plus, who knows? You might even get yourself that good night’s sleep you’ve been missing.
Journalist Julia Hotz (credit: 
These days, this question is at the forefront of my mind—and probably many other people’s. Especially when we face political polarization, humanitarian crises at our borders, and the prospect of a warming planet, it’s easy to despair rather than hope.But, according to William Miller, professor emeritus at the University of New Mexico, this is the wrong approach to what ails us. In his new book, 
