By Alexia LaFata | Elite Daily

There’s no happiness like one that comes from doing something good for someone else without expecting anything in return.

This kind of selflessness comes in all shapes and sizes. It can happen on a large scale — like, for example, whenever Oprah has one of her famous giveaways — or on a smaller scale, like what occurs between you and another individual.

Whether you help your little brother solve a math problem, volunteer at a nearby homeless shelter or an animal clinic, or assist your stubborn elderly neighbor with yard work, you learn what it means to be altruistic.

And it’s altruism that brings human beings true, unfettered bliss.

The most important part of altruism is the fact you aren’t doing something to benefit yourself or for the purpose of self-satisfaction and ego.

Instead, altruism is about doing something solely to benefit others, and it’s the purity of the act that makes other people more willing to be altruistic, too.

Unfortunately, there’s a widely-accepted notion human beings are all selfish individuals who act out of pure self-serving motives.

For as long as psychologists have been studying human behavior, people have been skeptical about the idea we’re capable of really doing something without expecting any personal benefit in return.

People have been skeptical, so it seems, about altruism.

But in his book Motivation, Altruism, Personality and Social Psychology: The Coming Age of Altruism, Dr. Michael Babula challenges these negative ideas about selflessness.

He questions the research that says human beings are motivated by “self-interest,” constantly acting to maximize their personal benefits.

Dr. Babula discusses the decades he spent researching the benefits of selfless behavior, insisting pure, unadulterated altruism indeed exists — and there are incredible benefits to come along with it.

His research suggests human beings who live for others actually lead incredibly successful lives and show lower rates of depression and stress.

In support of this research, Jessica L. Collett and Christopher A. Morrissey of the University of Notre Dame also suggest when you help other people in the name of true altruism, you experience less psychological indicators of anxiety and an increase in positive feelings towards yourself.

Even more research from the APA journal Health Psychology suggests when you volunteer for the sole purpose of helping others, you actually live longer than those who volunteer for themselves or an ego boost.

It’s easy to determine if someone who does something nice is expecting something else in return or is just doing it to make themselves feel better and not to make you feel better.

Those people are untrustworthy. You can’t help but question their motives, and you feel anxious around them because you know they’re going to expect you to reward them for their kindness in some way or another.

But kindness should never be a currency. It should be out of the goodness of one’s heart, and should be used as a means to inspire other people to act similarly — especially when it comes to paying it forward.

When you’re truly altruistic towards other people, social scientists have discovered you start a chain reaction of those people helping others out.

Your act of kindness begins a ripple effect of kindness extending far beyond your social circle and into the rest of the world.

This wonderful chain reaction you created is called “paying it forward.” And it feels amazing.

READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE…

Jon Miller | The Spirit Science

Your mind is an unbelievably powerful tool. Within its folded lobes and betwixt its rapidly snapping neurons lie all possibilities – everything that is, has been, or ever will be. This is because your mind is like an endless field of the richest soil, stretching off in every direction as far as the eye can see, and ideas are the seeds that create our inner reality which in turn, manifest into what we perceive as the external world around us.

The proof of this lies in the fact that everything in our civilization was once merely an idea in someone’s mind. From the invention of language, to the construction of houses, to the computer you are reading this sentence on; these were all at one point electrical impulses in somebody’s brain – primordial thoughts waiting to be crystallized into existence.

Whether you know or not, every thought you have has a profound effect not only on you, but on everyone around you and ultimately on the entire collective human consciousness. This is the nature of power.

The thoughts that we choose to indulge and act on change and shape the universe around us, and because this is the endless process of evolution manifesting itself, ironically the only thing that is constant is change itself.

So then, if all things are temporary and we wield power regardless of our knowing about it, surely it must be better to direct it in a conscious way, rather than allow others to make our choices for us.

Suffering is the result of feeling powerless. Put another way, we suffer because we are not fully conscious of what is happening within our own minds and hearts. When we feel like rustled leaves aimlessly and randomly drifting with the whims of the wind. It is easy to cage ourselves in a victim mentality, blaming circumstance and the people around us rather than accepting responsibility for our situation.

When I was younger, I struggled constantly with suicidal depression. This came about through an abusive childhood and a general exposure to the harshness of the world at an early age. Nevertheless I grew up with many friends, did well in school, and held the admiration of many around me. Imagine my surprise, then, when I first seriously considered ending my life when I was eight years old.

I thought to myself, “I have every reason to be happy. I should be happy.” By thinking these things you are denying the root of your suffering and therefore simply burying the problem deeper where it will do what all ideas/seeds do – grow and develop.

As I grew older, my depression worsened while I got better and better at hiding it. Bending to society’s “mental illness” narrative, I came to believe that I had an incurable, lifelong disease that could, at best, only be moderately managed.

Read the rest of the article here on The Spirit Science.

Steven Bancarz | Spirit Science and Metaphysics

A few years ago, a series of studies came out in an attempt to sort of ‘debunk’ people who practice spirituality.  The study found that people who have a spiritual understanding of life tend to be more susceptible to mental health problems, addictions, and anxiety disorders.

A passive aggressive news report from the Daily Mail titled “Spiritual people are more likely to be mentally ill (but at least they think life has more meaning)” took a jab at spiritual people as if to say “They’re crazy, but at least they think life is more important to them”.

What if they are more aware of the things that are wrong with society and are more connected to the suffering in the world?  What if an anxious mind is a searching and connected mind? A very important study came out a few years ago linking social anxiety to increased empathetic abilities.  People who report suffering from social anxiety have an increased ability to feel and interpret the emotions and mental states of people around them.  As the study concluded:

Results support the hypothesis that high socially anxious individuals may demonstrate a unique social-cognitive abilities profile with elevated cognitive empathy tendencies and high accuracy in effective mental state attributions.

In other words, people who have social anxiety are able to more tangibly feel the emotions of people around them.  Many many people who consider themselves to be “conscious” or “spiritual” also report feeling social anxiety and experience things like depression and other mental disorders. But as it turns out, people who suffer from anxiety may also be more intelligent.

Studies link anxiety to intelligence

One research study out of Lakehead University discovered that people with anxiety scored higher on verbal intelligence tests.  People who reported having General Anxiety Disorder and depression actually scored higher on verbal-linguistic testing.  Another study conducted by the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya in Israel found that people with anxiety were better than others at maintaining directed focus while overcoming a primary threat as they are being bombarded by numerous other smaller threats, thereby significantly increasing their chances of survival.

Read the rest of the article here.

Check out these other articles related to empaths and anxiety here:

5 Essential Coping Tips For Introverts In Uncomfortable Social Situations

Un-Stuck in Traffic: How to Bring Joy to Life’s Otherwise Annoying Moments

7 Signs That You’re an Empath & How to Cope With Being One

By Jill Mattson | Jill’s Wings of Light

We are focusing on one of many fascinating uses of the freeware program [of Sharry Edwards, of the Institute of BioAcoustic Biology and Soundhealth], nanoVoice! (Try it at www.nanoVoice.org…but so you know, Sharry does not offer a MAC version, sorry) The NanoVoice graphs your emotions -even the subconscious ones! The nanoVoice graphs our emotions, whether or not we are conscious of them.

Our feelings affect us far more than we suspect: People unknowingly project their subliminal feelings onto others. For example, a person withdraws, not allowing anyone to get close, while he perceives that others have abandoned him.

We clothe dark feelings in an acceptable light. Anger is often disguised as a righteous reaction. Subconscious expectations set up interpersonal difficulties. For example, we do not voice our expectations, yet we are wounded when they are not met.

Unconscious feelings can trigger other people’s behavior. For example, Bob believes that he is “no good” and radiates this feeling. Those nearby feel this energy, subconsciously pick up on it and act accordingly. Subtly Bob conditioned others to treat him with low regard.

A person is rarely aware when his ego directs situations. When we are not conscious of it, our ego is extraordinarily hard to manage. Usually we are clueless about subconscious feelings, illustrating that it is difficult to know ourselves from the inside out. Negative emotions spread to those in close proximity. Just like second-hand smoke inflicts damage, so do our toxic emotions. Yet, we steadfastly believe that we can hide our feelings without any impact on others.

Sharry Edwards created the nanoVoice,” giving us inner knowledge so we can better navigate emotional challenges. The nanoVoice allows us to view our underlying emotions and access buried feelings. This unveils confusion, sheds light on indecision, and depicts ego issues. These revelations enable us to acknowledge, resolve and release negative emotional habits.

In addition to showing your individual pitches in your voice, this tool has a button to push in which you get a general analysis of your voice.  There are many more uses of this tool, which are described in the book on BioAcoustics, see Secret Sounds Ultimate Healing at www. Jills Wingsoflight.com. Also The Healing Flower Symphonies at www.JillsWingsOfLight.com release unwanted negative emotional baggage.   Hats off to Sharry Edwards for this incredible gift!

Robert O’Leary, JD BARA, has had an abiding interest in alternative health products & modalities since the early 1970’s & he has seen how they have made people go from lacking health to vibrant health. He became an attorney, singer-songwriter, martial artist & father along the way and brings that experience to his practice as a BioAcoustic Soundhealth Practitioner, under the tutelage of the award-winning founder of BioAcoustic Biology, Sharry Edwards, whose Institute of BioAcoustic Biology has now been serving clients for 30 years with a non-invasive & safe integrative modality that supports the body’s ability to self-heal using the power of the human voice. Robert brings this modality to serve clients in Greater Springfield (MA), New England & “virtually” the world, with his website. He can also be reached at romayasoundhealthandbeauty@gmail.

Jill Mattson | * Jill’s Wings of Light

Personality programs identify our natural talents, strengthens and capabilities, encouraging us to better utilize them. Simultaneously personality profilers identify our weaknesses, allowing us to turn them into strengths.

Sages throughout history report how difficult it is to “know thyself,” but these wise sages did not have access to [Sharry]Edward’s multifaceted nanoVoice. Today we shall investigate its ability to reveal subconscious emotions.

Many of our behaviors and moods are hidden beneath layers of pain. We do not eliminate negative feelings by ignoring them. By identifying and addressing they are releases. We experience complex thoughts, feelings and behaviors, but are only fully conscious of one element at a time. We subjugate feelings and thoughts when we are occupied with other things. This underground emotional energy influences our health and creates emotional habits. Since our minds process only one action at a time, thoughts and feelings are regularly processed below our conscious mind. It is not only unpleasant feelings that we deny, but also deep levels of thinking and feeling that we experience all day long.

The nanoVoice graphs our emotions¨ whether or not we are conscious of them. Our feelings go underground far more than we suspect. Next week [, we will discuss] Ways we divert our feelings form our conscious mind.

*Published in its entirety with permission of he author

Robert O’Leary, JD BARA, has had an abiding interest in alternative health products & modalities since the early 1970’s & he has seen how they have made people go from lacking health to vibrant health. He became an attorney, singer-songwriter, martial artist & father along the way and brings that experience to his practice as a BioAcoustic Soundhealth Practitioner, under the tutelage of the award-winning founder of BioAcoustic Biology, Sharry Edwards, whose Institute of BioAcoustic Biology has now been serving clients for 30 years with a non-invasive & safe integrative modality that supports the body’s ability to self-heal using the power of the human voice. Robert brings this modality to serve clients in Greater Springfield (MA), New England & “virtually” the world, with his website. He can also be reached at romayasoundhealthandbeauty@gmail.

By Jill Mattson | * Jill’s Wings of Light

We spend our formative years in school, developing our rational minds, but our emotions receive no formal attention. High divorce rates, job loss, employment stress, accidents, deaths, personal struggles, changing hormones, financial problems and health issues challenge everyone’s emotional health. Yet, as a society, we stubbornly treat the development of our emotions as a low priority. Since emotions are invisible, they are treated as if they don’t exist.

Meanwhile, emotions affect the bottom line of our health, happiness and wellbeing. Developing the mind is important, but so is improving our emotional strength. Think about a world in which many people display emotional mastery and harmony! Emotional development is crucial for personal growth, but the cumulative affect impacts our entire society.

Sharry Edwards, a true genius of our time and a pioneer in sound healing, developed a system to monitor emotions, even the subconscious ones! Sharry’s signature system, BioAcoustics, maps and balances frequencies in our body, resulting in astonishing health improvements. Sharry has also now gifted us with a frequency based personality profiler, the nanoVoice. Hold on to your hats… it is free!

The software freeware will take your voice and break into component pitches. Yes our voice is a combination of all of the frequencies within – our emotions, thoughts and body! More on how to best use this program next message!

In addition to showing your individual pitches in your voice, this tool has a button to push in which you get a general analysis of your voice.  There are many more uses of this tool, which are described in the book on BioAcoustics, see Secret Sounds Ultimate Healing at www. Jills Wingsoflight.com. Also The Healing Flower Symphonies at www.JillsWingsOfLight.com release unwanted negative emotional baggage.

*This article is printed in its entirety with the permission of the author.

Robert O’Leary, JD BARA, has had an abiding interest in alternative health products & modalities since the early 1970’s & he has seen how they have made people go from lacking health to vibrant health. He became an attorney, singer-songwriter, martial artist & father along the way and brings that experience to his practice as a BioAcoustic Soundhealth Practitioner, under the tutelage of the award-winning founder of BioAcoustic Biology, Sharry Edwards, whose Institute of BioAcoustic Biology has now been serving clients for 30 years with a non-invasive & safe integrative modality that supports the body’s ability to self-heal using the power of the human voice. Robert brings this modality to serve clients in Greater Springfield (MA), New England & “virtually” the world, with his website. He can also be reached at romayasoundhealthandbeauty@gmail.

By Altetheia Luna |Lonerwolf

Having a martyr complex is like having a get out of jail free card.

It allows you to evade guilt and shame, bypass self-responsibility, and perhaps most importantly (and tragically), it allows you to dodge real life self-growth. Having a martyr complex essentially involves pointing the finger at other people or situations in your life and blaming them for your illnesses, disappointments, crushed dreams, and emotional turmoil.

Right now, I’m guessing that you’ve come to this article either because you are struggling with a potential “martyr” in your life right now, or because you suspect that you have adopted this way of life.

And yes, having a martyr complex IS a way of life: it literally taints every interaction you have with others, as well as every perception you have of the world. I say this because I have not only personally wrestled with a martyr complex in the past, but in the present I also frequently speak with and mentor self-imposed martyrs.

How will this article benefit you? It will give you a simple, accurate, and detailed checklist of signs, symptoms and examples that will help you to identify any potential martyrs/victims in your life. This article will also help you to gain closure about yourself if you have a martyr complex, and will make a few recommendations to help you out. 😉

RELATED ARTICLE:7 Ways to Reclaim the Power of Your Inner Warrior Goddess

Why Do People Develop Martyr Complexes?

Why do some people become self-imposed victims, and others become self-possessed champions? There are a number of potential reasons why, and all of them might help you to develop a more compassionate understanding of others and/or yourself. (I know how much of a pain in the ass being a martyr and living with a martyr is, so stay with me.)

Childhood experiences mold us significantly, and often martyr complexes develop out of adopting the twisted behavioral patterns and values of our parents. For example, if our mother/father were self-imposed victims who gave up all of their hopes and dreams for us, it is likely that we would adopt the values of being “selfless, sacrificial and kind.” As our parent’s and family members were like gods to us when we were little, we unconsciously adopt many of their traits.

Societal/cultural conditioning also contributes greatly to our tendency to develop certain complexes throughout life. For example, making a simple comparison of South American and North American tradition reveals a lot about differing cultural expectations. Latina women, for example, are traditionally expected to be motherly, nurturing, self-sacrificing homemakers. American women, on the other hand, are frequently encouraged to be active, successful, and even a little selfish, business women. Our cultural roots determine many of the thoughts and feelings we have about who we are, and who we “should” be.

RELATED ARTICLE:5 Unexpected Ways the Inflated Ego Enslaves, Dominates, and Fools You

Self-esteem and the subsequent development of our core beliefs is also a major contributor to developing a martyr complex. The worse we feel about ourselves, the more we tend to try covering this up by making believe that we are “kind, loving, compassionate and caring.” Being a self-imposed martyr also removes the need for us to take responsibility of our lives by scapegoating other people as the cause of our failures and disappointments.

 The Martyr Complex Checklist

Here we’ll examine the martyr complex more in depth. All signs, symptoms and examples will be phrased in the third person.

Signs:

• The person has a martyr as their hero, e.g. Joan of Arc, Francis of Assisi, Gandhi, Jesus, or perhaps a parent or grandparent who abandoned all of their hopes and dreams in “service” of the family.
• They were born into a culture/country/family that has very strict gender roles, religious creeds, or expectations.
• They display signs of low self-esteem, e.g. inability to receive love or affection, negative body image, excessive judgmentalism, moodiness, etc.
• They were abused as a child emotionally, psychologically or physically (e.g. by a parent, sibling, family member, church member, teacher, etc.).
• They have stayed in an abusive relationship or friendship, even despite their ailing health and well-being.

Symptoms:

• They refuse to accept responsibility for the decisions and choices that have caused them pain or suffering.
• They portray themselves as righteous, self-sacrificing, the “nice guy/girl,” the saint, the caretaker, or the hero.
• They blame the selfishness and inhumanity of other people for their repression and oppression.
• They seek to reassure themselves of their innocence and greatness.
• They exaggerate their level of suffering, hardship and mistreatment.
• They have a cynical, paranoid or even suspicious perception of other people’s intentions.
• They have an obsessive need to be right.
• They have a hard time saying “no” and setting personal boundaries.
• They assume that other people can read their mind.
• They emotionally manipulate or coerce people into doing what they want by portraying themselves as the noble sufferer.
• They don’t take initiative to solve their problems or try to actively remedy them.
• When the Martyr’s problems are solved, they find more “problems” to complain about.
• They actively seek appreciation, recognition, and attention for their efforts by creating drama.

Examples:

1. Jessica is in a relationship with Paul who is an alcoholic. Her friends have constantly advised her to leave the relationship for her health, but Jessica keeps insisting that she will “change” Paul and help him to be a better person – despite his reluctance to improve himself.

2. Antonio is constantly staying overtime at work without being asked to. When one of his colleagues is promoted to the position of regional assistant manager within the company, he guilt trips his boss by pointing out how “hard he works and how much he sacrifices” without getting anything in return.

3. Melissa is trying her best at university, and yet her mother is frequently asking her for help within the house. When Melissa explains that she “has a lot to do” because of her university study, her mother starts complaining how selfish and unthoughtful she is, and how she “has given up everything to get Melissa where she is.”

4. Jake and Flynn own a restaurant. When Jake suggests that Flynn “take a break,” Flynn responds by saying, “Without me, this place will fall apart. I have no choice but to stay here.”

5. Valentina and Rodrigo have been married for 20 years. When Rodrigo suggests that Valentina start painting again, Valentina says, “How can I? I have to continue taking care of my children; I have too much to do,” even though both of their children are self-sufficient teenagers.

Dealing with a Martyr Complex

We’ll explore how to deal with people in your life that have a martyr complex in a future article. To finish up, I just want to provide a few quick, basic pieces of advice for helping yourself if you struggle with a martyr complex.

Firstly be honest with yourself. Honesty requires the courage and desire to truly live an empowered life.

Secondly, learn to take responsibility for your decisions, feelings and actions. Although it can be painful and hard to do, taking responsibility allows you to draw a line between what you can and can’t change in your life.

Thirdly, learn to value yourself. When you learn to respect and love yourself, you learn to say “no” to anything that doesn’t serve you such as blaming, victimization and deliberate suffering. Consequently, you allow yourself to truly enjoy life and find authentic self-fulfillment.

I’d love for you to share below what you have learned about having a martyr complex, or dealing with people in your life who struggle with one.

Photo by: Jonesytheteacher, Saint Joan of the Arc Superstar and Eric Mesa under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

SEE THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE HERE AND MORE BY LONERWOLF…

By Hooria Jazaieri | Greater Good

Where is your attention right now? Humans are thought to spend many of our waking hours not in the present moment. What’s more, we are rarely even aware of the fact that our minds have wandered.

Past studies have suggested that mind-wandering has negative effects on our mood and even our physical health. In a recently published study in the Journal of Positive Psychology, my colleagues and I sought to understand whether mind-wandering also makes us less caring—and what we can do about it.

We recruited 51 adults and pinged them twice a day for nine weeks while they were enrolled in a compassion cultivation training course. We were interested in a few things: First, we wanted to find out how much people’s minds were wandering, and to what types of things (pleasant, neutral, or unpleasant topics). Because participants were enrolled in the compassion meditation course, we wanted to find out (on a given day) whether they had completed any formal compassion meditation practices and whether they had engaged in a kind, caring, or helpful behavior toward themselves or someone else.

Caring behaviors toward themselves might include asking for help, taking care of their body (with sleep, diet, or exercise), engaging in nourishing, soothing activities (e.g., cooking, gardening, taking a bath, massage). Caring behaviors toward others might include letting someone go ahead of them at the checkout, smiling at a stranger, picking up a piece of trash in the street, or mindfully listening to a friend.

Our findings showed that a wandering mind can be less caring. Specifically, mind-wandering to unpleasant or neutral topics (rather than pleasant topics) predicted less caring behavior toward oneself and others on a given day. Meanwhile, mind-wandering to pleasant topics actually predictedmore caring behavior toward oneself and others.

Given prior research suggesting that when our minds wander we’re unhappy, it’s possible that mind-wandering to negative events produces negative emotions that narrow our attention and lead us to miss opportunities for caring. In contrast, when our minds wander to positive events, we may experience positive feelings that broaden our attention and allow us to more fully engage in the present moment and the potential for caring. Past research is a bit mixed on whether people are actually happier when thinking about pleasant topics rather than engaging in the present, so additional studies are needed to explicitly investigate this.

Fortunately, our research suggests that training in compassion may be able to alter the habitual patterns of mind-wandering. Prior to the compassion program, participants’ minds were wandering about 59.1 percent of the time, a higher rate thanearlier studies have reported (46.9 percent). At the end of the nine-week program, however, their overall mind-wandering had decreased to 54.5 percent of the time, including a slight increase in mind-wandering to pleasant topics.

More importantly, when participants reported engaging in compassion meditation practices on a given day, they also reported less mind-wandering to unpleasant topics and moremind-wandering to pleasant topics. Thus, regular compassion practice may have the dual effect of increasing and decreasing different types of mind-wandering.

If you find that your mind often drifts to negative topics, consider trying some exercises and meditations that are part of the compassion cultivation training program:

• Settling and Focusing the Mind: When you notice that your attention has wandered, gently bring it back to your breath.
• Lovingkindness and Compassion for a Loved One: Bring to mind a loved one and wish them well. Think about a time when this person was experiencing difficulties and wish them well.
• Lovingkindness and Compassion for Oneself: Bring to mind an image of yourself and wish yourself well. Think about a time when you were experiencing some difficulties and wish yourself well.
• Embracing Common Humanity: Call to mind three different people in your life: someone whom you’re close to, a neutral person, and someone with whom you’ve had some difficulties. Think about how all of these people share a basic yearning to be happy and free from suffering; in this respect, all of these people are the same.
• Compassion for Others: Expand your scope of awareness to include people living in your neighborhood, city, state, country, continent, and so forth. Reflect on how just as you wish to be happy and free from suffering, so do they. In this respect, we are all connected.
• Active Compassion (“Tonglen”): When breathing in, imagine taking away the pain and suffering of others; when breathing out, imagine sending out happiness and good fortune.

Our study adds to the growing literature that suggests that, more often than not, our minds are wandering. While mind-wandering has received a lot of criticism, the story may be a bit more nuanced—perhaps not all mind-wandering is bad. One thing seems to be clear, though: We can train our minds to intentionally shift how often and where our minds wander, and this may be part of becoming a more compassionate and caring person for the benefit of ourselves and others.

About The Author

Hooria Jazaieri, MFT, is a researcher and cognitive-behavioral therapist currently in the psychology graduate program at the University of California, Berkeley.

Read more great articles at Greater Good.

By Sol Mateo and Aletheia Luna |Lonerwolf.com

By Omar Cherif
My natural interest in psychology and philosophy drives me to read quite a lot about the subjects. Recently I came across a paper on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder of Abandonment. Fear of abandonment is something I knew of, yet have never delved enough to fully understand it. So I began researching.

In an Article by Susan Anderson, a psychotherapist and author of various self-help books, there was a 30-point list of characteristics of the disorder. By number 10, I suddenly felt a light bulb pop above my head. My eyes widened and proceeded to change positions to get closer to the screen. Aha.

I was familiar with many of those symptoms. Only that they are not mine, but belong to some of the people I knew throughout my life.

What I found even more fascinating is the significant number of comments from readers thanking the writer because she made them realize that whatever they were, and/or still are, suffering from is precisely related to their fear of abandonment —  a moment of epiphany for most; it truly hit home for them. They identified with the symptoms and shared their own stories, which were educational and, as usual, enlightening and full of insights.

As I kept skimming through the comments the light bulb got bigger and brighter. Splendid. It all makes sense now. How can one not love psychology. More personal examples reminded me by more people who, according to my new findings as well as some previous observations, must have unresolved abandonment issues.

As a fierce proponent of The Significance of Letting Go, I have written before about our attachment to others in Codependency: What Being Addicted to Someone Means. Also The Parable of the Cow: You Are Not Your Thoughts, which is a more philosophical one, discussing our attachment to thoughts in particular and the process of letting go of them.

After this enticing introduction, I felt drawn to shed some light on the topic of fear of abandonment, in hope to help more people identify the dire effects of clinging to pain caused by past memories. So I plugged the light bulb and turned it on.

What Is It?

Before getting to the causes and symptoms, we must first acknowledge the existence of a core, primal fear called fear of abandonment. It is widely proposed that the first taste of the feeling of abandonment begins when we were expelled from our warm mother’s womb towards the cold outside world.

As the children grow up, every time the parents get home late or have to travel their emotional attachment to them is shaken. As a source of their security and comfort, they fear for the safety of their parents, leaving feeling anxious and insecure during their absence.

Family ties are fundamental to our well-being. Depending on how we are brought up and how functional these ties are, one way or another we all grow up having some sort of fear of being abandoned — whether we are conscious of it or not. We all seem to worry that we’ll be left alone in the world to deal with life and its difficulties. How we react to that universal driving force depends from one person to another.

So fear of abandonment is a natural fear. But, if for some reason it reaches a certain intense degree that it begins affecting our judgment and behaviour, then it could turn problematic and become crippling.

In psychology, fear of abandonment is described as the irrational belief that one is in imminent danger of being personally rejected, discarded, or replaced. Abandoned Child Syndrome is one of the terms explaining the condition.

Fear, all kinds of fears, are detrimental to our health. Whether it’s from the unknown, or people, or situations, it is a fierce foe and a slayer of meaning, purpose, courage, and fulfilment. Naturally, living with fear can be so devastating that it often affects us on a biological level — activating the physical pain centres in the brain and leaving an emotional imprint in its warning system.

Fear of abandonment is no different; and it leads people to go through an emotional trauma characterised by a wide variety of symptoms, which cause harm to them and/or their loved ones.

Causes

During my research, I mainly came across two psychological terms related to fear of abandonment: Abandonment Child Syndrome and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder of Abandonment.

Let me first clarify a general difference.

A syndrome is the association of several clinically recognisable features, signs, symptoms, phenomena, or characteristics which often occur together, so that the presence of one feature alerts to the presence of the others. For example, Codependency or Borderline Personality Disorder going hand in hand with Abandonment Child Syndrome.

A disorder, on the other hand, is an abnormal physical or mental condition.

A disease remains a different thing altogether.

However, from reading about both, syndrome and disorder, I can see more similarities than differences. In our example here, the abandoned child syndrome is what could result from childhood issues with abandonment. Despite the fact that it is not recognised as a mental disorder, it has the future potential to turn into a PTSD of Abandonment.

For the sake of simplicity, I will keep referring to what we’re talking about here less formally as “Fear of Abandonment”, which could lead to a ACS and/or PTSD of Abandonment.

Now, the issues related to fear of abandonment typically begins during childhood through the loss of one or both parents or a caregiver due to death or divorce. The abandonment may be literal, as in physical — when the parent is not present in the child’s life (neglected or deserted), or when physically or sexually abused; it could be emotional — when the parent withholds love, nurturing, stimulation, or in the case of verbal and emotional abuse; or it could even be financial.

For children, any of these different degrees of early traumas can be one of the most anxiety-provoking situations in their lives. They could all cause deep-seated, lasting damage. Children tend to live in a black-and-white reality, so they carry the pain with them forever. Fortunately, the damage is reversible. Always, “There’s still time to change the road you’re on”, as Led Zeppelin remind us. And we’ll get to that later.

When the children grow up with an absent parent and/or inadequate physical or emotional care they often develop feelings of grief and blame themselves for their parent’s absence.
 In many cases, the trauma stays well into adulthood. The sufferer continues to believe and fear that every significant person in their life is going to abandon them in a similar way.

As mentioned, fearing abandonment is therefore often coupled with an exaggerated sense of dependency on another individual(s). People feel at a loss without the presence of a parent or a partner, which drives them to rush into relationships just so they are not alone.

This irrational fright of being abandoned causes our mammalian brain to perceive it as an attack on our personal being. As a way to protect us it reacts with fear. And when we feel trapped in a situation in which we have no control over for too long we tend to carry the dreadful weight over our shoulders throughout our lives. Even after the situation is over the fear remains. Just like all traumas, it could range from mild to severe, and we can always heal from it.

My interest, however, was not in the abused type, which I had formerly covered in the MK-Ultra piece. But rather, I was more into those less severe cases of people who have never acknowledged the existence of the wound. Or perhaps they did, but have never taken a step towards healing from the loss or rejection, possibly due to them blocking the pain. That was what my aha-moment about. Because it reminded by those I knew, old and young.

READ FULL ARTICLE ON ONE LUCKY SOUL

About the Author:

Omar Cherif is a trilingual writer and researcher, photographer and blogger with degrees in journalism, psychology, and philosophy. After working in the corporate world for ten years, he took writing as a vocation and is currently finalizing his first book about dreams, the subconscious mind, and spirituality among other topics.

You can follow Omar on Facebook and One Lucky Soul and you can check his Photography here.

By Nicholas West |Activist Post

For additional background to the latest press release from DARPA posted in full below, I encourage you to read the following selection of linked articles where I discuss the scope and chronology of what is being studied. Therein, you will find that the U.S. BRAIN Initiative and its European counterpart, the Human Brain Project, are not spending multi-billions of dollars on neuroscience research simply to help people with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and organic brain dysfunction. It is, perhaps first and foremost, a military endeavor that has wide ramifications if even 1/10th of what is being studied comes to fruition. In short, it’s more about mind control than it is about brain restoration and improvement. Please keep this in mind when you read DARPA’s emphasis on “new therapies.”

• Obama Doubles Down on BRAIN Project and Military Mind Control
• Mind Control Scientists Find New Memory Manipulation Technology
• Secret DARPA Mind Control Project Revealed: Leaked Document
• The 9 Goals of Mind Control: Interim Report
• New Mind Reading Research Aims to Synchronize Humans
• Nanoparticles Enable Remote Control Brains Via Magnetic Field: New Study

DARPA Press Release

Related Article: DARPA Takes Step Closer to the Dark Side with Death Ray Field Test

A new DARPA program aims to develop an implantable neural interface able to provide unprecedented signal resolution and data-transfer bandwidth between the human brain and the digital world. The interface would serve as a translator, converting between the electrochemical language used by neurons in the brain and the ones and zeros that constitute the language of information technology. The goal is to achieve this communications link in a biocompatible device no larger than one cubic centimeter in size, roughly the volume of two nickels stacked back to back.

The program, Neural Engineering System Design (NESD), stands to dramatically enhance research capabilities in neurotechnology and provide a foundation for new therapies.

“Today’s best brain-computer interface systems are like two supercomputers trying to talk to each other using an old 300-baud modem,” said Phillip Alvelda, the NESD program manager. “Imagine what will become possible when we upgrade our tools to really open the channel between the human brain and modern electronics.”

Among the program’s potential applications are devices that could compensate for deficits in sight or hearing by feeding digital auditory or visual information into the brain at a resolution and experiential quality far higher than is possible with current technology.

Neural interfaces currently approved for human use squeeze a tremendous amount of information through just 100 channels, with each channel aggregating signals from tens of thousands of neurons at a time. The result is noisy and imprecise. In contrast, the NESD program aims to develop systems that can communicate clearly and individually with any of up to one million neurons in a given region of the brain.

Related Article: Jon Rappoport: This Is Your Brain On Neuroscience

Achieving the program’s ambitious goals and ensuring that the envisioned devices will have the potential to be practical outside of a research setting will require integrated breakthroughs across numerous disciplines including neuroscience, synthetic biology, low-power electronics, photonics, medical device packaging and manufacturing, systems engineering, and clinical testing. In addition to the program’s hardware challenges, NESD researchers will be required to develop advanced mathematical and neuro-computation techniques to first transcode high-definition sensory information between electronic and cortical neuron representations and then compress and represent those data with minimal loss of fidelity and functionality.

To accelerate that integrative process, the NESD program aims to recruit a diverse roster of leading industry stakeholders willing to offer state-of-the-art prototyping and manufacturing services and intellectual property to NESD researchers on a pre-competitive basis. In later phases of the program, these partners could help transition the resulting technologies into research and commercial application spaces.

To familiarize potential participants with the technical objectives of NESD, DARPA will host a Proposers Day meeting that runs Tuesday and Wednesday, February 2-3, 2016, in Arlington, Va. The Special Notice announcing the Proposers Day meeting is available at

“Today’s best brain-computer interface systems are like two supercomputers trying to talk to each other using an old 300-baud modem,” said Phillip Alvelda, the NESD program manager. “Imagine what will become possible when we upgrade our tools to really open the channel between the human brain and modern electronics.”

Among the program’s potential applications are devices that could compensate for deficits in sight or hearing by feeding digital auditory or visual information into the brain at a resolution and experiential quality far higher than is possible with current technology.

Neural interfaces currently approved for human use squeeze a tremendous amount of information through just 100 channels, with each channel aggregating signals from tens of thousands of neurons at a time. The result is noisy and imprecise. In contrast, the NESD program aims to develop systems that can communicate clearly and individually with any of up to one million neurons in a given region of the brain.

Related Article: Secret DARPA Mind Control Project Revealed: Leaked Document

Achieving the program’s ambitious goals and ensuring that the envisioned devices will have the potential to be practical outside of a research setting will require integrated breakthroughs across numerous disciplines including neuroscience, synthetic biology, low-power electronics, photonics, medical device packaging and manufacturing, systems engineering, and clinical testing. In addition to the program’s hardware challenges, NESD researchers will be required to develop advanced mathematical and neuro-computation techniques to first transcode high-definition sensory information between electronic and cortical neuron representations and then compress and represent those data with minimal loss of fidelity and functionality.

To accelerate that integrative process, the NESD program aims to recruit a diverse roster of leading industry stakeholders willing to offer state-of-the-art prototyping and manufacturing services and intellectual property to NESD researchers on a pre-competitive basis. In later phases of the program, these partners could help transition the resulting technologies into research and commercial application spaces.

To familiarize potential participants with the technical objectives of NESD, DARPA will host a Proposers Day meeting that runs Tuesday and Wednesday, February 2-3, 2016, in Arlington, Va. The Special Notice announcing the Proposers Day meeting is available at…

Read the rest of the article here…..