In order to increase your chances of success in reducing your risk for developing coronary heart disease, follow these tips:
1. Consult your physician.
2. Monitor your eating and activity behaviors.
3. Familiarize yourself with foods that contain small or large amounts of cholesterol, fats and sodium.
4. Follow the suggested food-group units for a diet of 1600 or 2000 calories, or calculate your own individual energy needs. The less active you are, the fewer calories you can afford to eat without gaining weight.
5. Study the sample menus that follow to assist you in designing your own diet. What is important is that you generally eat as suggested, paying more attention to the types of food you eat and the way the foods are prepared than to exact amounts. Of course, this does not mean you should eat more than suggested if you are trying to lose weight or if you find you are gaining undesired weight. Use your common sense in these matters.
Monday, June 23, 2008
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Rebelliousness, Morality, and Psychological Health
The first and most obvious consideration in the relationship of rebelliousness to morality and psychological health is one which by now has passed from iconoclastic protest to virtual stereotype. Nonetheless, it should not be disregarded. It is simply this: rebellionresistance to acculturation, refusal to "adjust," adamant insistence on the importance of the self and of individuality--is very often the mark of a healthy character. If the rules deprive you of some part of yourself, then it is better to be unruly. The socially disapproved expression of this is delinquency, and most delinquency certainly is just plain confusion or blind and harmful striking out at the wrong enemy; but some delinquency has affirmation behind it, and we should not be too hasty in giving a bad name to what gives us a bad time. The great givers to humanity often have proud refusal in their souls, and they are aroused to wrath at the shoddy, the meretricious, and the unjust, which society seems to produce in appalling volume. Society is tough in its way, and it's no wonder that those who fight it tooth and nail are "tough guys," I think that much of the research and of the social action in relation to delinquency would be wiser if it recognized the potential value of the wayward characters who make its business for it. A person who is neither shy nor rebellious in his youth is not likely to be worth a farthing to himself nor to anyone else in the years of his physical maturity.
A second consideration which is certainly no news to most people, but which tends to get lost to psychologists who use phrases like guilt feelings, hostility, and anxiety, is that the healthy person psychologically is usually virtuous in the simple moral sense of the term. Psychologically healthy people do what they think is right, and what they think is right is that people should not lie to one another or to themselves, that they should not steal, slander, persecute, intrude, do damage willfully, go back on their word, fail a friend, or do any of the things that put them on the side of death as against life. This probably sounds like old-time religion, and in fact I am willing to be straightforwardly theological about this. I think there is an objective character to guilt, and when a person is false to his nature or offends against the nature of others then he is in sin and the place in which he has his existence is well described by the word "hell." I take "sin" here to be descriptive of the state of separation from the most basic sense of selfhood, or what some existentialist philosophers have called "the grounds of being." In whatever terms it is put, the fact is that a person is most alive and is functioning in such a way that he knows who he is and you know who he is and he knows who you are when his thoughts and actions are in accord with his moral judgment. The corollary is that when you do what you think is wrong you get a feeling of being dead, and if you are steeped in such wrongful ways you feel very dead all the time, and other people know that you are dead. There is such a thing as the death of the spirit. Many of the people whom we know as patients in our mental hospitals or as prisoners in our jails are in a condition of spiritual death, and their only hope is that someone can reach out to them, break through the walls of their isolation, recognize them. I think that too much has been made of the word love in this connection, for usually it connotes a feeling on the part of the person who is to give the love. The essence of the act of love as I understand it is the act of attention, and the affect that accompanies it in the person who is paying attention may be love, hate, sadness, or what have you. A real fight is an act of attention, a genuine condemnation is an act of attention, an understanding of final defeat is an act of attention. These as well as their positive counterparts are on the side of life, and the person who experiences them is in communication with other living beings and offers to them the possibility of community. The sort of philosophy of psychotherapy that prescribes blandness, nonjudgmentalness, and essential indifference on the part of the psychotherapist is simply a form of human debasement. Paying attention, caring, and being there yourself is all that counts.
One of the therapists there was clearly an incompetent by all standarts. Everything he did was wrong. After about six months of his residency, however, it became apparent that many of his patients were unaccountably getting better. Among his aberrant behaviors were such gross actions as telephoning a patient's foreman at work and telling him to stop bullying the patient, suggesting an unusual sexual technique to another patient whose wife was apparently frigid, and bluntly suggesting to a third patient that he should give up his job as an automobile repairman and get into the dispensing of food. The climax of the latter case was especially gruesome to the clinic, for the patient opened a doughnut shop of his own and on his final appointmerit appeared with a dozen doughnuts of his own making which he presented as a gift to the therapist, who without any insight at all offered them around to various other therapists and his supervisor of whom had difficulty, swallowing them. Goodness knows I am not suggesting, in recalling the case of this incompetent fellow, that all psychotherapists go forth and do likewise, for he was he and we are we. But I will say that he was alive, even though so obviously misguided; to his patients, the only thing that was of consequence was that he cared about them and that he thought there was something different they could do which would be right.
A second consideration which is certainly no news to most people, but which tends to get lost to psychologists who use phrases like guilt feelings, hostility, and anxiety, is that the healthy person psychologically is usually virtuous in the simple moral sense of the term. Psychologically healthy people do what they think is right, and what they think is right is that people should not lie to one another or to themselves, that they should not steal, slander, persecute, intrude, do damage willfully, go back on their word, fail a friend, or do any of the things that put them on the side of death as against life. This probably sounds like old-time religion, and in fact I am willing to be straightforwardly theological about this. I think there is an objective character to guilt, and when a person is false to his nature or offends against the nature of others then he is in sin and the place in which he has his existence is well described by the word "hell." I take "sin" here to be descriptive of the state of separation from the most basic sense of selfhood, or what some existentialist philosophers have called "the grounds of being." In whatever terms it is put, the fact is that a person is most alive and is functioning in such a way that he knows who he is and you know who he is and he knows who you are when his thoughts and actions are in accord with his moral judgment. The corollary is that when you do what you think is wrong you get a feeling of being dead, and if you are steeped in such wrongful ways you feel very dead all the time, and other people know that you are dead. There is such a thing as the death of the spirit. Many of the people whom we know as patients in our mental hospitals or as prisoners in our jails are in a condition of spiritual death, and their only hope is that someone can reach out to them, break through the walls of their isolation, recognize them. I think that too much has been made of the word love in this connection, for usually it connotes a feeling on the part of the person who is to give the love. The essence of the act of love as I understand it is the act of attention, and the affect that accompanies it in the person who is paying attention may be love, hate, sadness, or what have you. A real fight is an act of attention, a genuine condemnation is an act of attention, an understanding of final defeat is an act of attention. These as well as their positive counterparts are on the side of life, and the person who experiences them is in communication with other living beings and offers to them the possibility of community. The sort of philosophy of psychotherapy that prescribes blandness, nonjudgmentalness, and essential indifference on the part of the psychotherapist is simply a form of human debasement. Paying attention, caring, and being there yourself is all that counts.
One of the therapists there was clearly an incompetent by all standarts. Everything he did was wrong. After about six months of his residency, however, it became apparent that many of his patients were unaccountably getting better. Among his aberrant behaviors were such gross actions as telephoning a patient's foreman at work and telling him to stop bullying the patient, suggesting an unusual sexual technique to another patient whose wife was apparently frigid, and bluntly suggesting to a third patient that he should give up his job as an automobile repairman and get into the dispensing of food. The climax of the latter case was especially gruesome to the clinic, for the patient opened a doughnut shop of his own and on his final appointmerit appeared with a dozen doughnuts of his own making which he presented as a gift to the therapist, who without any insight at all offered them around to various other therapists and his supervisor of whom had difficulty, swallowing them. Goodness knows I am not suggesting, in recalling the case of this incompetent fellow, that all psychotherapists go forth and do likewise, for he was he and we are we. But I will say that he was alive, even though so obviously misguided; to his patients, the only thing that was of consequence was that he cared about them and that he thought there was something different they could do which would be right.
Parent Education and Mental Hygiene
One of the most important points about parent education today is the extent to which mental hygiene principles have worked their way into its materials and procedures. Teachers and school administrators who think of parent education in terms of the earlier activities of parent-teacher groups will find that and with the use of authentic data made available from scientific research at the child development institutes, a significant change has come about. An incredible amount of exceedingly valuable information about children's behavior has been brought within the reach of present-day parents, especially mothers, and a glance into the more recent study courses and publications used by parent and child study groups is distinctly reassuring.
There is a tendency in some quarters to view with suspicion the efforts of groups of parents to learn something about mental hygiene as applied to themselves and to their children. Probably not a large number of parents are as yet actually helped; possibly, too, a certain number are harmed--the psychiatrists report a few parents getting just enough of the jargon and the general point of view to find "problem" children where these do not exist. On the whole, however, it is doubtful whether in any other educational field (except the nursery school) mental health principles have penetrated as far and as well as in the modern plans and practices in parent education and education for family life.
Formerly programs for study [by parents' groups] focused attention exclusively upon the child and included for discussion such topics as obedience, punishment, rewards, curiosity, imagination, habit formation, play, etc. More recently, especially with leaders trained in mental hygiene, interest focuses upon the life of the family groups and upon such items as personality development in family relationships, emotional honesty in dealing with children, etc. In attending such study groups parents are able to learn not only important facts about child growth and the family in a changing world, but also more satisfactory self-direction in their daily relationships with children.
So definitely has mental hygiene entered into modern education for family relations that in nearly all the current definitions mental health as an objective is either explicitly stated or unmistakably implied.
Parent education is a voluntary cooperative effort by parents, studying with qualified leaders (1) to understand more about childgrowth and development, family relationships, the conduct of family life, public education, home-school relationships, and the family in community life; and (2) to grow in ability to take a constructive part in family and community relationships with confidence and satisfaction.
Classification of objectives of parent education reflects clearly, especially in the first three of her list, the recent mental health emphasis in education for family relations:
1. To interpret to parents the findings of specialists in regard to various aspects of child and family life.
2. To modify or change the attitudes of parents toward their children and their behavior.
3. To act as a therapeutic device for relieving personal maladjustment.
With the increased knowledge available about human nature and the ways in which it develops and is modified, education in family relations ceases to be the simple matter it was in the past and is sometimes assumed to be today. Many parents who pride themselves on following to the letter the prescribed rules for the physical hygiene of their children. Even among those who realize the importance of early control of behavior problems, there are many who are deeply concerned when their children lie, steal, or have temper tantrums but attach little or no significance to such unhealthy signs as undue self-consciousness, day-dreaming or jealousy. Still less do they realize that these delinquencies and manifestations of abnormal behavior may be due to their own attitude toward their children. Yet many cases of delinquency in children have been traced to the attempt of parents to make the child's life compensate for their own failure to reach certain goals of achievement; to the fact that the child has for years been buffeted between the rigid discipline of one parent and the extreme laxity of the other; to the dominating attitude of one member of the family group, which leaves the child no opportunity for asserting himself as an individual, and to similar forms of conflict between the needs of the child and the conditions prevailing in his family. Parental attitudes are of fundamental importance.
There is a tendency in some quarters to view with suspicion the efforts of groups of parents to learn something about mental hygiene as applied to themselves and to their children. Probably not a large number of parents are as yet actually helped; possibly, too, a certain number are harmed--the psychiatrists report a few parents getting just enough of the jargon and the general point of view to find "problem" children where these do not exist. On the whole, however, it is doubtful whether in any other educational field (except the nursery school) mental health principles have penetrated as far and as well as in the modern plans and practices in parent education and education for family life.
Formerly programs for study [by parents' groups] focused attention exclusively upon the child and included for discussion such topics as obedience, punishment, rewards, curiosity, imagination, habit formation, play, etc. More recently, especially with leaders trained in mental hygiene, interest focuses upon the life of the family groups and upon such items as personality development in family relationships, emotional honesty in dealing with children, etc. In attending such study groups parents are able to learn not only important facts about child growth and the family in a changing world, but also more satisfactory self-direction in their daily relationships with children.
So definitely has mental hygiene entered into modern education for family relations that in nearly all the current definitions mental health as an objective is either explicitly stated or unmistakably implied.
Parent education is a voluntary cooperative effort by parents, studying with qualified leaders (1) to understand more about childgrowth and development, family relationships, the conduct of family life, public education, home-school relationships, and the family in community life; and (2) to grow in ability to take a constructive part in family and community relationships with confidence and satisfaction.
Classification of objectives of parent education reflects clearly, especially in the first three of her list, the recent mental health emphasis in education for family relations:
1. To interpret to parents the findings of specialists in regard to various aspects of child and family life.
2. To modify or change the attitudes of parents toward their children and their behavior.
3. To act as a therapeutic device for relieving personal maladjustment.
With the increased knowledge available about human nature and the ways in which it develops and is modified, education in family relations ceases to be the simple matter it was in the past and is sometimes assumed to be today. Many parents who pride themselves on following to the letter the prescribed rules for the physical hygiene of their children. Even among those who realize the importance of early control of behavior problems, there are many who are deeply concerned when their children lie, steal, or have temper tantrums but attach little or no significance to such unhealthy signs as undue self-consciousness, day-dreaming or jealousy. Still less do they realize that these delinquencies and manifestations of abnormal behavior may be due to their own attitude toward their children. Yet many cases of delinquency in children have been traced to the attempt of parents to make the child's life compensate for their own failure to reach certain goals of achievement; to the fact that the child has for years been buffeted between the rigid discipline of one parent and the extreme laxity of the other; to the dominating attitude of one member of the family group, which leaves the child no opportunity for asserting himself as an individual, and to similar forms of conflict between the needs of the child and the conditions prevailing in his family. Parental attitudes are of fundamental importance.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
