Category: Journal

  • Editor’s Journal #4: Living a Long Life

    Editor’s Journal #4: Living a Long Life

    Daily writing prompt
    What are your thoughts on the concept of living a very long life?

    The mysteries of death are those which people can only imagine until the time of death arrives. One moment we are alive, the next we are gone who knows where. It is unclear what happens after death although more and more people begin to believe in the concept of reincarnation.

    I certainly hope I am one of those who reach an old age, although it is so unpredictable. People die every day, some unexpectedly, and this is why all I can do is hope I am not one of those casualties. I certainly hope I reach 90 or even 100 years old.

    Planning for a long-life is what I do, of course. I have long-term plans that assume I am going to be alive in the next few decades. It would be a shame if my plans were suddenly disrupted by the prospect of death.

    As someone who is a mystic, I wish I could plan ahead for my next reincarnation; however, this seems to be beyond my current level of knowledge. So all I can do is hope that my experience of death is painless, and that my transition to the afterlife is smooth and pleasant.

    Things You Can do To Live a Long Life

    Living a long and healthy life is a common desire for many people. While genetics and luck play a role, there are several habits and lifestyle choices that can contribute to longevity.

    1. Healthy Diet: Consuming a balanced diet rich in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, lean proteins, and healthy fats can support overall well-being and longevity.
    2. Regular Exercise: Engaging in regular physical activity, such as walking, swimming, or yoga, can help maintain a healthy weight, improve cardiovascular health, and boost overall longevity.
    3. Stress Management: Finding healthy ways to manage stress, such as meditation, mindfulness, or hobbies, can positively impact both physical and mental health, potentially leading to a longer life.
    4. Social Connections: Cultivating strong social connections and relationships can contribute to a sense of belonging, reduced feelings of loneliness, and overall well-being, which are linked to longevity.
    5. Avoiding Harmful Habits: Minimizing or avoiding harmful habits such as smoking, excessive alcohol consumption, and drug abuse can significantly improve one’s chances of living a longer and healthier life.
    6. Regular Health Check-ups: Regular medical check-ups and screenings can help detect and manage health issues early, potentially preventing them from becoming more serious.
    7. Mental Stimulation: Engaging in activities that provide mental stimulation, such as reading, puzzles, or learning new skills, can help maintain cognitive function as we age.

    While there are no guarantees when it comes to longevity, adopting healthy habits and making positive lifestyle choices can certainly improve the chances of living a long and fulfilling life.

    Conclusion

    It is difficult to know for sure how long each of us will live, but we can always hope and plan for a long life, and a pleasant transition into the afterlife. Regardless of when we die, we will feel better if we make the most of life and live each day with the urgency that it might be the last.

  • Editor’s Journal #3: A New Year Begins

    Editor’s Journal #3: A New Year Begins

    𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐏𝐘 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟒, 𝐄𝐕𝐄𝐑𝐘𝐎𝐍𝐄! May your new year be prosperous. This new year found me working hard for the Betshy blog which is growing slowly but steadily. In 2023, I found me focused on exploring questions that answer mysteries of life, such as: Is there life after death?

    I also just published a video on my Youtube Channel called ‘Welcome to Israel’ showcasing footage from Israel about their culture and ways, as perceived by me. It has been a productive year to its very end! This year has indeed been a very creative one too.

    Furthermore, this year I have had so many experiences, both good and bad ones. I have learned that I want to believe there is more to life than just a mere passage through age and time. We all die, so we should always make the best to achieve our goals. This is where the answer to this edition’s daily writing prompt fits perfectly.

    Daily writing prompt
    Do you spend more time thinking about the future or the past? Why?

    I think of both, as well as the present. If I could choose, I would ideally spend more time thinking of the future. However, my episodic competes with my prospective memory, ultimately both shaping my semantic memory. So at any given moment, I am bombarded with memories trigger by different stimuli, as well as reminders of things that I am working on, or things I will be doing in the future.

    Because we are at a time in which we are transitioning from 2023 into a new year, I feel it is even more important to think ahead into the future in order to evaluate our goals and methods for achieving those. It is good to have a plan and to be prepared for contingencies. I hope your new year is prosperous! Take care.

  • Editor’s Journal #2: My SEO Journey

    Editor’s Journal #2: My SEO Journey

    What this is saying is that 350 people had clicked my website on the Google search engine in the last 28 days. This is brilliant news and my site has been exponentially growing, which is something that makes me truly happy as I have been working super hard to ensure the search engine optimisation (SEO) is high standards and effective. I am currently attempting to increase traffic even more, and have long-term goals to achieve it.

    Now, let’s answer the daily writing prompt question I selected for this journal:

    Daily writing prompt
    What are your biggest challenges?

    Answer

    My biggest challenge is to succeed in meeting the users’ needs when they conduct a search on Google, Bing, or other websites. One can only try one’s best. Another challenge is to provide such a high quality content, that other people feel like mentioning my blog in their blogs. These links would be highly appreciated, and that is so the blog can gain more authority on search engines.

    Final Thoughts

    I will continue to add new journals and updates about SEO as time goes by, and will continue to answer a daily writing prompt per publication. Thank you once again for supporting this blog, and I hope you enjoy reading some of the new material. Take care.

  • Editor’s Journal #1: What I’ve Been Up To

    Editor’s Journal #1: What I’ve Been Up To

    So, I’ve had such a productive week when it comes to all things related to Betshy . I’ve recorded a new podcast episode called The Dark Side of Religion, also created a video for it which is found on Youtube and on this blog.

    I also have been flowing with article-writing. I must admit that I rarely include references now, so I can write daily for the sake of writing. But I am currently working on an academic article which will contain references and will be published on Academia.

    Acquired Traumatic & Traumatised Narcissism
    Adults who experienced domestic abuse when they were children have a higher potential to suffer from long-term health impacts such as diabetes, obesity, and heart disease. They might also experience mental health problems, which …
    The “TikTok Tics” Outbreaks: A Modern Case of Mass Psychogenic Illness
    As someone who has lived with complex mental health challenges and has spent years studying the fragile boundary between mind and body, I am deeply fascinated by how psychological distress can spread rapidly through …
    Mass Psychogenic Illness: Mass / Epidemic Hysteria
    I am here on my quiet seaside corner where the waves remind me how easily human minds can ripple and resonate with one another. I have come to respect the profound power of the …
    The “Dancing Plague” of Strasbourg, 1518: Madness, Mystery, and the Power of the Collective Mind
    As someone who has lived with complex mental health challenges and has spent years studying the fragile boundary between mind and body, I am endlessly fascinated by one of history’s most bizarre episodes: the …

    I am also enjoying working with artificial intelligence in varied forms. I feel lucky to be interacting with these technological advancements because I understand that the future will be easier for those who adapt to the new mainstream elements.

    Now, it’s been a while that I’ve been wanting to participate in WordPress‘ daily writing prompt activities, and I have chosen to do so in this blog post. The question asked is the following:

    Daily writing prompt
    Are you a good judge of character?

    Answer:

    Yes, I can be a good judge of character, I tend to be accurate about many factors I attribute to individuals; and can often predict behaviours and outcomes. So I believe that because of how much I research psychology, I am always expanding my mental database in order to be able to comprehend much more. It is an ongoing process of knowledge and experience acquisition.

    Final Thoughts

    I hope you have enjoyed learning a bit about my week. I will try to do these Editor Journals more frequently so I can stay in touch with all of you who read me. Thank you for taking the time to learn from the blog posts of this website. I am glad this is the case. Take care.

  • Achieving Outcomes Through Reflective Decision-Making

    Achieving Outcomes Through Reflective Decision-Making

    I always think: ‘I will find the answers to the puzzle of my mind and life’, and instantly make mental reference to whatever is plaguing my mind or whatever it is that I am trying to achieve. After all, working out outcomes takes some logical calculations and a few decisions. The latter, however, is always the most difficult part when it comes to accuracy of predictions. This blog post will guide the reader towards unblocking the mental process of decision-making about important outcomes.

    As a general rule of thumb, whenever I am trying to figure out the relationship between existing elements of reality, I ask myself one question: ‘What is my role in this outcome?’. This entails several more questions such as: ‘Do I have any influence on this outcome? Have I missed an opportunity to control this outcome?’. This is of course considering that there is an outcome which can be positive or negative, but maybe not neutral. It’s at this point that questioning what a positive outcome would be like, and equally visualising what a negative outcome would be like is a good idea. How do these polar opposite outcomes feel?

    Things can get biased with mental health problems, though. For instance, post-traumatic stress (PTS) can blur important cognitive processes such as this one. This is why in order to manage the risk of bias, and to minimise the effect of reactive emotions; it is wise to introduce another question at this point: ‘how do past experiences remind me of this outcome?’. This is when a mental process of comparison takes place, with all the repercussions of reliving memories of emotional significance. Yet, if I am lucky, I tend to be able to examine the potential outcome in alignment with my true self.

    I begin taking my assertions seriously, and I engage in positive affirmations knowing that in order for my honesty and integrity to survive I have to be in control of how I respond to my own thoughts and situations. I induce pragmatic thinking by considering how healthy the desired outcome is for me, and whether there is any risk of harm or loss in the process of achieving it. I then self-monitor to ensure that I am not disproportionately fixated on an outcome that does not help me align with my true self. Like this, step by step… I get closer to achieving the outcome I need, and the outcome which soothes my self-esteem and self-worth.

    Give it a try.

  • Authoritarianism in Mental Health Settings

    Authoritarianism in Mental Health Settings

    When I began this journey in Forensic Psychology, I did not expect to learn as much as I have. The main tenet of this career consists in understanding psychopathy , and psychopathology.

    It does make me question authoritarianism and the ways in which it can manifest. For instance, Milgram and Adorno et al. studied the psychology of obedience under pressure, and how following orders led to the holocaust. An aspect that has been questioned little is how scarcity or the fear of scarcity has led to similar phenomena due to how people have been conditioned to see money as an enabler of everyday behaviour. For instance, when Milgram conducted his obedience experiments during the 60s, he monetarily rewarded his participants for taking part in the studies. Modern psychologists have attempted to re-examine the dynamics at Yale’s laboratory and what might have led the participants to show that they were capable of being sadistic under such conditions. An example is Gibson’s (2013) work which meticulously examines the prods given by the experimenter. In a way, Gibson seeked to understand how the orders and requests given by the authority figure contributed to the decision-making processes of the participants. However, I have not come across much research highlighting the role of the monetary incentive in everyday behaviour; or how being given a monetary incentive places a subconscious obligation on individuals to comply with requests, even if such requests at times make them feel uncomfortable.

    The c/s/x movement, also known as ‘the psychiatric survivors movement‘ (Wikipedia, n.d.) explores how a large number of individuals report feeling or having felt dehumanised by the mental health system. For the unstigmatised person, it is often more common to assume that all these people expressing dissatisfaction with the system are crazy, than to understand the nature of what it means to respect a person’s dignity and human rights. It is quite a complex situation, because it is unclear what reinforces and keeps some mental health settings from actively listening to their patients’ concerns.

    According to Turner (2015), signal detection theory (SDT) “describes processes whereby information that is important to the perceiver (known as the ‘signal’) is distinguished from other information that is unimportant and potentially distracting (known as the ‘noise’). It is my hypothesis that some of the inherently dehumanising behaviours occurring in the mental health system happen as a result of the hyper-normalisation of object-relations with patients. As I mentioned on my post Investigating the neuropsychopathology of prejudice‘, people can at times perceive those with stereotyped and stigmatised characteristics as non-human objects. This would of course increase the chance of mental health settings staff processing signals coming from clients as background noise, rather than as worth-listening-to human signals. Such established conscious and unconscious behaviours leading to the dehumanisation of many clients are reinforced through monetary incentives, and through an intragroup, mob-like co-validation of such unconscious biases. Like Eichmann, many live their lives constantly affirming to themselves that they were just following procedures and orders, or just doing their job; and therefore they believe it is not their responsibility to reflect on how clients are impacted by this. But the signals coming from mental health patients often stand in stark contrast to the common belief that these dehumanising, and at times non-empathic methods are appropriate, or even de facto acceptable.

    I do think everyone deserves to be paid for their labour, and that having access to a basic form of income is an important foundation in any society; and I also think that mental health settings need to be encouraged or trained appropriately to detect clients’ signals as more than just background noise (i.e. as more than non-human objects signals) in order to reduce risk outcomes. The situation is problematic, persistent, and pervasive with these manifestations of authoritarianism in mental health settings. It would indeed be arrogant to assume that all the patients/clients expressing dissatisfaction with the service are wrong, or to culturally pathologise reasonable dissent. It would also be irresponsible and de jure unacceptable to fail to take steps towards alleviating feelings of ‘being dehumanised’ in civil society, especially if such feelings of dehumanisation have the potential to lead to never events, such as suicide.

    References

    Gibson, S. (2013) ‘Milgram’s obedience experiments: A rhetorical analysis’, British Journal of Social Psychology, vol. 52, York, The British Psychological Society/York University, pp. 290-309 [Online]. Available at https://pmt-eu.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/f/gvehrt/TN_cdi_gale_infotracacademiconefile_A332152211 (accessed 11 October 2020).

    Turner, J. (2015) ‘Making sense of the world’, in Turner, J. and Barker, M. J. (eds) Living Psychology: From the Everyday to the Extraordinary, Milton Keynes, The Open University, pp. 7-45.

    Wikipedia (n.d.) ‘Psychiatric survivors movement’ [Online]. Available at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychiatric_survivors_movement (accessed 11 October 2020).

  • Blogging as a Method for Democratic Therapy

    Blogging as a Method for Democratic Therapy

    Blogs are a great way to express your voice. Even if your experiences have made you feel silent, oppressed, and unfairly treated at an intergroup relational context; you can still assert your thoughts, feelings and opinions in the online community. This way, blogging can be a method for cognitive-emotional democratic healing at both individual and collective levels.

    Why is expressing your voice important?

    Actions and reactions happen at inter and intra group levels for many reasons. Sometimes communicating our perspective helps elucidate a particular situation. So for instance, if you feel that some members of your social milieu have displayed hostility towards you as a result of the hostility that they themselves have been subjected to, you might be correct in assuming that such a hostility might have become hypernormalised at the group’s cultural level , and that such members are experiencing reactive-formative symptoms of trauma. For the minority individual, the experience of being let down, or rejected by a group, culture, system, or apparatus can be debilitating (i.e. it can feel like mob behaviour), and when this happens for a prolonged period of time; it can create feelings of marginalised frustration. Blogging is a good way to use your freedom of speech in a way that directly addresses the public audience, whilst simultaneously being an interpersonal method for expression.

    The risk is to stay silent.

    Setting up a blog

    There are different ways in which you can begin your blog. The most common problem I hear when I speak with people about blogging is ‘I do not not what to say. I would not know where to start’. My answer is that such is precisely the way to start a blog. You do not need to know what to write about in order to express that you do not know what to write about. Sometimes it could be sharing your professional work. Other times it could just be about sharing an experience you went through. I tend to shift between these modes. Most of the time, I share some of my thoughts, feelings, and add something interesting that I have been researching about. Regardless of what your needs for expression are, blogging is an effective method for online communication and an interdisciplinary style for socialisation. But, what blog to use?

    Choosing a blogging platform

    Different people will prefer different types of blogs for their journalism depending on how much time or effort they wish to invest in the endeavour. Here are a few options:

    • Blogger : A very simple and generic user experience design for expressing thoughts. It has an archive of dates which store your thoughts across time. The interface is easy to learn, and it is free of charge. It is ideal for those only getting started in cybercultural activities.
    • Google Sites: This platform truly is flexible in terms of allowing the user to experience freedom in how to structure their pages. It is useful for creative projects and for getting started with digital design. It lacks an automatic blogging archive, so if what you are looking for is a place to log your thoughts, Blogger is a better option. All you need is a Google account.
    • WordPress: This blog (as you can see at the bottom of the page) is powered by WordPress. The reason why I personally prefer this platform is because it gives me a wide margin of flexibility when it comes to design, as well as simultaneously having an archive for blog posts which permits organization.
    • Medium: For those who do not wish to either hassle neither with the design nor with the other technicalities, Medium allows people to register and write. It is a community project, meaning that people from all walks of life contribute to the discussion.