Acceptance is a key to healthy living and loving relationships. While I could cite the science of this to the nth degree, I think illustration is useful.
As I write this I am waiting at the Arizona Cancer Center; it is my 15 month checkup, after the amputation of my right ring finger for what is called, subungual melanoma—a very rare cancer under the fingernail. The Center has only had five cases, and this
is one of the world-class places for the treatment of melanoma.
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Nurturing environments foster psychological flexibility. People are not rigidly attached to their beliefs and so are tolerant of the things other people do. They are clear about their values and act in the service of those values, even when doing so feels difficult or frustrating. They tend not to criticize or complain about other people’s behavior. Because they are less judgmental, they are less likely to punish or hurt others and more likely to praise, support, attend to, and care for others.
The best example I can think of is the patient mothering of an infant. I watch my daughter-in-law Jen with her five month old infant, Ashlyn. Ashlyn cries frequently and lately has been hard to get to sleep. Jen certainly feels frustration at times. But although she sometimes feels impatient, she continues to be soothing. Thanks to her patient teaching, every day Ashlyn develops new behaviors that are alternatives to being distressed.
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The following was published recently in the Eugene Register Guard.
The severe economic downturn that Oregon is experiencing will affect the psychological wellbeing of many Oregon families. These effects are just as real as the job loss and foreclosures that will result from the downturn. Their impact will be detrimental both to the economically distressed families and to their communities.
Job loss and economic difficulties have well established effects on marital relations and parenting. Oregonians who lose a job will naturally worry and feel sad and anxious. Indeed, these losses change brain chemistry and the immune system for the worse. Many may feel shame and a sense of loss of status. Husbands and wives will become more irritable and conflict will rise. For many families, the result will be divorce, which will further worsen families’ economic wellbeing and their children’s wellbeing. Children of divorce have more conduct problems, psychological difficulties, and academic failure. Many continue to have problems as adults.
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Yesterday’s New York Times has an article about high rates of violence among soldiers returning from Iraq. The article states that “Nine current or former members of Fort Carson’s Fourth Brigade Combat Team have killed someone or were charged with killings in the last three years after returning from Iraq.” In an article last January, the Times identified 121 instances in which returning veterans of Iraq or Afghanistan had committed murder. Numerous other instances of assault and rape have occurred.
After much prodding from Senator Ken Salazar, the Army is investigating the problem.
Major General Mark Graham, who is the commader of For Carson said they are “looking for a trend, something that happened through their life cycle that might have contributed to this, something we could have seen coming.”
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Cnn.com reports that at least 160 people were killed in a retaliotory attack by the Israeli’s against Hamas in Gaza.
Dennis Embry and I published the following several weeks ago in the Eugene Register Guard. We will not put an end to such violence until we make use of behavioral science knowledge about why such exchanges occur.
Prevailing views about the “war” on terror are directly contrary to scientific understanding of human behavior. Human beings who are traumatized by attack become highly motivated to counterattack. Yet government leaders in the U.S. pursue a military strategy that pays little attention to these effects. Scientific understanding of human behavior confirms the bumper sticker that says: “We are making terrorists faster than we can kill them.”
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The first thing we need to do to ensure human wellbeing is minimize biologically and psychologically toxic elements in people’s environments. In each of the roles in your life—parent, spouse, worker, policy maker, friend, neighbor—if you look for ways to minimize your own and other people’s exposure to toxic events, you will be laying the groundwork for a more peaceful, productive society with much less crime, drug abuse, depression, and conflict.
Start with the prenatal period. The developing fetus is harmed by maternal smoking, alcohol use, and drug use. Patty Brennan at Emory University has shown that maternal smoking can contribute to adolescent delinquency. David Barker has shown that poor maternal nutrition during pregnancy contributes to coronary heart disease, diabetes, and hypertension of offspring when they become adults. Good prenatal interventions like the Nurse Family Partnership can prevent these kinds of problems.
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NPR had a story on Paul Farmer this morning. He is a physician and anthropologist who is devoting his life to helping people achieve the most basic nurturing condition, adequate health care. Until people have health care they will find it difficult to nurture their children’s development in other ways. Farmer speak of his idealism in seeking health care for everyone.
Behavioral science can help make this a reality. Influencing the organizations of society to support universal health care is a matter that can be studied using the tools of science. For example, whether Oregon finally provides health care to the more than 100,000 children who do not have it will be a matter of whether influential business and health care organizations can be influenced to support it. That is a matter of creating consequences that make it benefical for these organizations to support it.
In future posts, I will discuss how analyzing the consequences to organizations is vital to influencing their behavior.
I created this blog to promote the spread of nurturing environments. Societies that increase the prevalence of nurturing family, school, workplace, and community environments will improve the wellbeing of their members in virtually every respect. They will reduce child abuse, marital conflict, crime, substance abuse, depression, prejudice, and interpersonal conflict. They will increase cooperation, productivity, healthy child development, and fun.
Over the past forty years, behavioral and biological scientists have studied all of the most common and costly problems of human beings. They have made great advances in the treatment and prevention of psychological problems like depression and anxiety; behavioral problems like antisocial behavior, substance abuse, marital conflict, and child abuse; and physical illnesses, like obesity, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and cancer.
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