Surviving and Thriving Your First Year of College

You may have been an honor student in high school or just squeaked by. You may be headed to an out-of-town college or a local one. Either way, I hope you find college to be an exciting, enlightening, enriching experience. And I hope that you'll not only enjoy yourself but that you'll learn critical skills that will impact the rest of your college career and provide you with a tailwind for thriving in the adult world.

To give you a head start, here are my top three tips for having a successful college experience:

1. Build Your Resilience 

Lots of experiences in college will stress you out. It may be your course work, professors, roommate, friends or love life. Resist the urge to call home to complain or quit every time you hit a bump in the road. Instead, learn to thrive on challenge, cope with setbacks, bounce back from adversity.

Do you need to do this all by yourself? Not at all. Resilience is best understood as a process in which you gain the skills to deal with stressful situations. But you won't be gaining any skills if you ignore the issue, blow off the problem or call your helicopter parents right away to solve the problem for you.

2. Be Persistent 

If you are a praise junkie, used to receiving multitudes of "good jobs" for every little achievement, you may be in for a shock. College assignments are generally global. Nobody praises you until you've completed the total assignment and perhaps, not even then. So, be persistent, motivating yourself to continue the task despite feeling frustrated.

Learn to break down larger tasks into smaller pieces that are easier to accomplish. Learn to stay with an assignment even if it's tough or boring. Be persistent even when you fail. Too many people use failure as an excuse to give up. You, however, can learn to use it as a challenge to make you stronger, smarter and more self-confident.

3. Keep Your Procrastination At Bay 

Accessible, appealing, affordable distractions are everywhere. Digital devices ding, social networks seduce, beer parties beckon. It's hard to stay on task when so much else is enticing you. But stay on task you must. Give in to your tendency to put things off and see how quickly you'll find yourself on the Boulevard of Broken Dreams.

The Habit of Hiding Your Feelings: Origins of Developmental Trauma

Psychologist R.D Stolorow suggests that developmental trauma "originates within a formative intersubjective context whose central feature is malattunement to painful affect. It occurs where there is a breakdown of the child-caregiver system of mutual emotional interaction and regulation".

This breakdown can make it difficult or impossible for the child to learn to tolerate and integrate their emotional states. Negative emotional states are therefore experienced by the child as unbearable, overwhelming, disorganized states. A painful or frightening feeling becomes traumatic when the attunement that the child needs to assist in its tolerance, containment, and moderation is profoundly absent.

Fragile parents, damaged children

The pathology, history and limitations of the parents play a very important role. Parents who are vulnerable, needy or emotion-phobic themselves may put overt or covert pressure on their children to monitor and censor their feelings. Parental pressure on children, especially astute and sensitive children, can take many forms besides overt criticism and prohibition. A child who senses that his emotional expression disturbs, distresses or overwhelms their parent and causes even a subtle withdrawal of parental affection, may choose to "voluntarily" limit their emotional expression in order to keep the fragile parent calm and close.

Consequences of Developmental trauma

Within the individual, one significant consequence of developmental trauma is a severe dampening of emotional experiencing or a narrowing of its range so that whatever feels unacceptable, intolerable, or too dangerous in particular interpersonal context is excluded.

• A woman whose family expected her to restrain her feelings as a child may grow up to believe that she is incapable of feeling because she does not cry when she suffers a loss or in situations when others around her might respond more intensely.
• Many men who have been taught not to express vulnerability as children are very proud of their emotional toughness, but baffled as to why their female partners describe them as cold and distant.

Unconscious convictions drive interpersonal behavior

From recurring experiences of misattunement, punishment or neglect of a child's negative emotions, the child develops the unconscious conviction that natural emotional responses and naturally arising (painful) feeling states are signs of an unacceptable defect or of an inherent inner badness.

Creation of an "ideal self"

A defensive "ideal self" is often established which is purified of the offending feeling states that were perceived to be unwelcome or damaging to caregivers. It may become a central requirement to live up to this pure ideal in order to maintain harmonious ties with important others and to uphold self-esteem.

After the creation of this ideal self, whenever a prohibited feeling emerges, it is experienced as a failure to embody the required ideal and an exposure of the imagined underlying essential defectiveness or badness.

The experience of the prohibited emotions will usually be accompanied by feelings of self-loathing, isolation and shame which drive renewed efforts to hide or control emotions.

Repercussions in adult life: Damaged relationships

When prohibited emotions arise in daily life, ambiguous reactions or behaviors of the friend or partner that lend themselves to being interpreted as critical or disapproving may confirm the patient's semi-conscious or unconscious expectations that a display of authentic feelings will be met with disdain, disinterest, hostility, disgust, alarm, withdrawal, exploitation, and the like, or that they will damage their partner and destroy the personal connection.

In adult life developmental trauma has a powerfully destructive impact on new relationships since the defensive manoeuvering required to avoid provoking negative emotional states or the energy needed to suppress emotional displays can at best be confusing and disorganizing to their interactional partners, and at worst may drive them away or provoke exactly the rage, dismissal, criticism or punishment that they fear.

These sorts of defensive responses can even happen in the safe space of therapy. When the therapist becomes aware that this is happening the experience can be questioned and worked with while it is actually occurring... in real time and with honest conversation about what is really being felt and feared

The impulse to change

Since emotion and emotional expression is our natural human birthright, individuals who have had to suppress or denigrate their emotional natures often secretly envy others who express themselves more easily. They often recognize that they feel trapped and restricted in a cage that they can see that they are creating for themselves.

Sometimes they despair, fearing that something inside has been irreparably broken or extinguished and that they will never be able to feel as others do. Sometimes they feel so unskilled in emotional expression that they fear that if they let go even a little bit that they will collapse absolutely and forever. Neither of these fears is ever true for people who generally function well in the world.

Therapy can help

Therapists are trained to recognize emotional trauma. Therapists work to help their clients tease apart the roots and origins of their fears and unconscious beliefs. Clients are encouraged to question their automatic thoughts and habitual behaviors. They receive support and encouragement to experiment in their daily relationships. In the therapy itself, they can have the lived experience of showing emotion in the presence of another human being and being accepted. This experience is often the beginning of healing.

If you feel that you are limited in your emotional expression and if you see that this is causing problems in your relationships it may be time to courageously address the problem by speaking about it with a trusted friend or a professional counselor.

Dream Interpretation - The Meaning of Cleaning Up in Dreams

Today one of my regular patients (who submits her dreams for professional dream translation and psychotherapy) made me a question that gave me inspiration to write an article about the certainty you can feel when you translate the meaning of dreams based on the scientific method of dream interpretation. These translations are not based on suppositions. They really help you understand the unconscious words in your dreams.

This patient is also studying the dream language. She already knows the basic meaning of dreams, but she is mentally ill. This is why she needs my help.

Let me first of all post a sentence of her last dream and my translations:

'I was trying to clean up and was worrying about making enough money to move out'

Dream Translation:

When you are cleaning up you are eliminating the immorality from a certain place.

Money in dreams represents excitement, enthusiasm, psychical energy.

Your ego was trying to eliminate the immorality from the anti-conscience's place in your psyche because you wanted to find enthusiasm enough to move out.

In other words, your ego is trying to make what is immoral seem to be 'OK' and move on to another case, with another man. This would be catastrophic for you and your partner. Be careful with your superficiality and your anti-conscience.

...

The anti-conscience is our wild conscience, which generates mental illnesses within our human conscience. All dreams basically show to the dreamers how much their anti-conscience is influencing their behavior and how. Dreams also show to all dreamers what to do in order to stop being influenced by their anti-conscience and find sound mental health, peace, and happiness.

My patient asked me:

'Why couldn't cleaning up my mother's house mean that I want to remove junk from where my anti-conscience is instead of making things seem OK?'

Here is my answer: 

The meaning of the dream symbols is given by the dream producer; the unconscious mind. Carl Jung and I had a lot of trouble trying to discover the meaning that the unconscious mind gives to the images it uses to send us important messages.

The unconscious mind decided that whatever is dirty in a dream represents immorality. So, we have to respect the meaning given by the unconscious mind. Whenever you clean what is dirty you are eliminating immorality from there.

Your ego was trying to remove the immorality existent there and pretend that there was no immorality on betrayal. However, if you betray your partner you are immoral.

The unconscious mind has a divine origin and undoubtable wisdom. You can also verify that the scientific dream translations reflect wise words that don't come from the dream translator's mind. The scientific translations follow the dream logic (the logic followed by the unconscious mind that produces our dreams) and not the logic of our ignorant human conscience.

The unconscious logic is based on wisdom and sanctity. The unconscious mind is a very serious and sad doctor who helps us eliminate our evil and absurd anti-conscience, so that we may learn how to find peace and happiness instead of being violent, indifferent, and cruel.

Let me analyze the details of this dream scene:

'I was trying to clean up and was worrying about making enough money to move out'

Here is the dreamer's question again:

'Why couldn't cleaning up my mother's house mean that I want to remove junk from where my anti-conscience is instead of making things seem OK?'

The dreamer tries to give to this dream scene a meaning based on the logic of her conscience, without following the unconscious logic.

It would logically fit to translate the meaning of 'cleaning up' as the intention to remove junk from some place if we would follow the logic of our conscience.

However, when you clean up a certain place in a dream, you clean what is dirty. Whatever is dirty in dreams represents immorality because this is the meaning that the unconscious mind gives to this dream symbol. The unconscious mind decided that this is the meaning of this word.

Carl Jung had to compare numerous dreams from different cases in order to discover the meaning of the dream symbols, and I followed his example, doing exactly the same. I had to study and compare many dreams while curing many people through dream therapy in order to discover the meaning of more dream symbols.

Discovering the meaning of the dream language was like discovering the meaning of an incomprehensible ancient language.

You are lucky because Carl Jung had the courage to make such arduous research, and because I had the courage to continue his work. You have the privilege to find our discoveries ready and immediately use to your advantage the knowledge we found after working so hard.

There Are IQ Tests And Creativity Tests - How About Those Who Score High On Both?

The other day, I was talking to an individual who scored over 138 on the IQ test. That's a pretty smart person, and although many folks claim that they are of that intelligence level, it isn't as common as you might think. In fact, by the time you get up to 145 and 155, you're almost talking one in 1 million. Interestingly enough the same individual scored extremely high on the Torrance Test of Creativity. It isn't often when someone scores off the chart on both the IQ tests and the creativity tests.

However, it does happen that is to say those that score high on both the Stanford-Binet Test and Torrance Test of Creativity. What might a person be able to do who scored that high on both? Well, I would submit to you that they can do whatever they want, and we don't even have to tell them what to do, they are creative enough to find their own niche and run with it. All we should do is support them in whatever it is they want to do, because chances are whatever that is they will do it well, and better than anyone else might. Do you see my point?

The reason I make this statement is not in personal reflection necessarily, but rather from a think tank recruiter's point of view, as I am able to talk to brilliant creative geniuses quite often. It is truly amazing some of the innovations, ideas, and original thoughts they come up with, sometimes on a daily basis; no kidding. You might not find these individuals willing to spend an awful lot of time in academia, and you probably won't find them joining the government as a bureaucrat - although, sometimes you can, and sometimes they hide out unbeknownst to the rest of us trying to blend into the scenery of society.

Indeed, I would submit to you that it would behoove our nation to find these individuals, help them along with whatever they need, and run a little interference and block for them while they run for a touchdown. We must not be too hasty to demand that they conform to society's every whim, rather we should ask them how to transform our society to meet their objectives, unleashing armies of these types of individuals because that would truly propel the future of mankind, and keep our nation in the lead. Indeed, this is merely a thought and philosophical argument. If you'd like to discuss this at a much higher level, then shoot me an e-mail.

How to Use All Your Psychological Functions at The Same Time

Our psychological functions are based on:

1. Thoughts 

2. Feelings 

3. Sensations 

4. Intuition

We have only one psychological function completely developed in our human conscience, and another one half-developed. The two other psychological functions and the half of the psychological function not well-developed in our conscience belong to our anti-conscience, our absurd and evil primitive conscience.

However, the truth is that our anti-conscience occupies the biggest part of our psyche because it influences our ego. Our tiny human conscience is only a spot. The analogy is not fair for us, the human beings concentrated into the human side of our conscience. We need help; our anti-conscience is quite stronger than us, the human beings existent in our human conscience.

We have to develop our human conscience and at the same time eliminate our anti-conscience by following the unconscious guidance in dreams. This is a process of consciousness that works on the psychological functions possessed by our anti-conscience, bringing them to the light of the conscious surface. This means that we finally understand this content, and we transform it in a positive way.

For example, if you belong to a psychological type based on thoughts, this means that the opposite psychological function to your main psychological function, which is based on feelings, is not working at all in your human conscience. You are a thinking robot. You have no human feelings.

This is why you are indifferent and cruel, without understanding how other people feel. However, this is something that your human conscience cannot admit because you have a selfish ego. You believe that you are right for being the way you are, and you don't want to care about the importance of your feelings.

The unconscious mind helps you understand your psychological problems and the importance of goodness for your psychological health. You learn how to develop all your psychological functions based on sensitivity and wisdom.

This is how you definitively stop having psychological problems and you purify your spirit. You get rid of the evil influence of your satanic anti-conscience. The divine unconscious mind helps you transform the diabolic concepts of your wild conscience into positive thoughts that help you become more intelligent.

You learn how to develop your feelings. You become sensitive. You pay attention to the way you feel. You don't try to ignore what you dislike. You are connected with your reality. You also can predict the future by reading the symbolic signs of your reality, which can be translated exactly like dreams.

This means that you develop all your psychological functions at the same time. You stop being one-sided. You learn how to give importance to all the components of your reality, and not only to the ones that your favorite psychological function prefers.

You also learn how to have an introverted and extroverted attitude in life. You stop being only introverted. You stop being a type interested in your own opinion about everything and nothing else.

You stop being only extroverted. You stop following the world's opinion without criticizing anything. You understand that you must have your own philosophy of life.

The divine unconscious mind shows you in your own dreams how to fight what is evil and how to develop the positive characteristics of your personality. You get rid of your absurd anti-conscience, and you become a perfect human being.

Children With ADHD - Symptoms and Types

ADHD means Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder is an inability to gain concentration to do a work or being hyperactive. The symptoms of ADHD may start before the age of seven years in children. The confirmation of this disorder must be made only after a proper and regular notification of the symptoms. ADHD is usually found in 8 to 10% of children. ADHD affected children usually act without thinking.

Symptoms of Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder:

The symptoms of ADHD are

• Those children are found restless
• It would be a bit difficult to gain their attention
• They will always like to play alone
• They talk a lot
• Those children can be distracted very easily

Few behaviors may seem like symptoms of ADHD but they are not. Those behaviors are due to stress or anxiety or depression. Few situations which make people to behave as if they are ADHD affected persons are as follows

• Sudden change in life style
• Stress due to work
• Because of society, environment

Diagnosing ADHD:

Doctors would find it very difficult to diagnose ADHD by the symptoms provided prior by other patients or any other pediatrics. This disorder is diagnosed in between 8 and 14 years of age. All the children may show the symptoms of ADHD during few times if they get anxious. The symptoms of ADHD are present over a long period of time.

Curing ADHD:

Successfully ADHD can be treated and cured. The children with ADHD can be made to live in this society normally as other people without any disorder due to this ADHD. ADHD doesn't have any special type of medicine instead they can be treated with the help of change in behavior of the affected children and changing the society in which they are living in.

Types of ADHD:

There are three types of ADHD they are

• Hypoactive
• Hyperactive
• Combined type

Hypoactive type:

This type of ADHD reduces the activity of the affected person. The children affected by this type will be found to be very inactive and their attention could be attained that much easily.

Hyperactive type:

In this type the children are found to be more active and they speak a lot and they like to have more attention over them.

Combined type:

In this type the children may behave inactive few times or overactive at other times.

Few tips or points to keep our child away from attention deficit hyperactive disorder.

Many of the parents have wrong concepts over adhd because of this wrong concept parents are over restricting their children. This is mainly due to few rumors which are found around us. Parents must understand that over restriction may also lead to adhd. So I request you all parents not to consider the entire rumor and the sayings of all your neighbors instead make clear research on adhd or read a clear article or blog about adhd like this one. Even it is better to consult a doctor nearby.

Psychotherapy Based on Scientific Dream Interpretation - The Best Alternative for Your Case

If you understand that you need psychological help this is a good sign. By recognizing that you need solutions instead of living suffocated by numerous problems, you already are doing something to get out of this situation. 

However, which treatment should you follow?

There are so many psychological treatments in the vast world. Who knows which one will really work for you?

On the other hand, how much will you have to spend; and for how long?

I was in this situation when I was a young mother. I didn't know what to do.

I knew that there was no guarantee that a psychotherapist would help me solve my problems. Most people follow psychotherapy forever and become dependent on their psychotherapist. They spend a lot of time and money but get nowhere.

One of my friends was following psychotherapy for years. His appointment with his psychotherapist was something he god used to. And he was paying a lot of money per month for this therapy. It was a group therapy.

Whenever he would say something, he would always mention that 'his psychotherapist' said that. He kept repeating his words. His psychotherapist was giving him a recipe and he was simply following it.

I needed something drastic. My case was serious. I had many repetitive thoughts that I couldn't stop no matter how hard I tried to get rid of them. I was always angry. I understood that I was becoming crazy.

My father was schizophrenic. I always had the fear of becoming schizophrenic like him. I didn't want to have the same tragic destiny.

However, I couldn't pay for treatment. I was a young mother and I had to be with my baby all the time. My mother-in-law had died when I was still pregnant, and my father-in-law was living with my husband and with me.

I had to cook for everyone. My brother-in-law was living alone in an apartment, but having lunch and dinner with us. I had to cook special food for the baby and for my husband's family. I was passing through a very stressful period of time.

Fortunately, I started looking for psychotherapy by reading many books. I cared about the interpretation of dreams because I had many vivid dreams and I saw that all psychotherapists gave importance to the meaning of dreams.

I had read Freud's book about the interpreting of dreams when I was 18-years-old. I saw that his interpretations couldn't fit for all types of dreams.

I remembered this book. I decided to study all existent methods of dream interpretation, until I would be able to find the right one. I was very lucky because I discovered Carl Jung's method of dream interpretation. His method is the only one that helps us understand the wise unconscious messages in dreams.

The unconscious mind that produces our dreams is God's mind. The psychotherapy we have in dream messages cannot be compared to the psychotherapy based on the suppositions of ignorant human minds.

I managed to simplify and clarify Carl Jung's complicated and obscure method of dream interpretation for you, what means that today learning the dream language is a simple matter. Through dream translation you understand the real meaning of life. The divine unconscious mind teaches you many things you ignore, and entirely free of charge, for all your life.

You only have to study the dream language for a while in order to find the best psychotherapist you could have in your own dreams, without having to go anywhere.

The dream language is like any language made by words, with the difference that it is made by images. After mastering the dream language, you'll have a direct communication with God.

This is the best part. God produces your dreams to help you become a perfect human being. You have the privilege to talk with God through dream messages and understand His guidance. This is an alternative that cannot be compared to any other alternative you could have.

The unconscious mind showed me that I was wrong because I was revolted with my father-in-law and my brother-in-law who had lost my mother-in-law. They wanted to see me substituting her. She was a super mother. However, I was not a hero like her. I was selfish and lazy.

At that time I started understanding something about the meaning of dreams based on Carl Jung's method. I was in the beginning of my studies. I was reading Jung's books about the psychological types.

I was fascinated by the fact that I could have a dialogue with the divine unconscious mind through dream messages.

The unconscious mind showed me that I should show compassion to my father-in-law and to my brother-in-law and stop complaining.

I started talking about my situation: I was a young mother. I had to take care of my baby. I couldn't be my father-in-law's and my brother-in-law's slave like my mother-in-law. They should also understand that my husband and I were a young couple and stop being a burden for us.

The unconscious mind showed me that I was cruel and indifferent to their pain.

I told the unconscious mind that yes, I was cruel and indifferent. I didn't want to be their slave.

The unconscious mind showed me that I finally understood that I was evil. This was an important recognition.

Then, I remembered my dearest mother-in-law. I loved her; she was a true angel. I remembered how much she loved my father-in-law and my brother-in-law, feeling ashamed because I betrayed her after her death. I didn't treat those who were so important for her the way she was expecting me to treat them.

She was probably very sad with me. She always treated me as if I was her own daughter.

I felt ridiculous. I was more than ashamed because I was so cruel and indifferent after her death. I told my father-in-law that I was sorry for being rude, and I tried to be nice with him and with my brother-in-law.

My brother-in-law started living with his girlfriend. She was older than him, but she was very kind with my father-in-law. He decided to live with them because he liked the way she treated him.

Therefore, I got rid of the big burden that was torturing me so much, without doing anything for that. Everything was magically solved thanks to my brother-in-law's girlfriend when I recognized that I was evil and I had to show compassion to my relatives.

When you transform your personality and you stop making mistakes, your life conditions change. This is the biggest advantage you have when you follow dream therapy. Everything in your reality depends on your obedience to the wisdom of the unconscious mind. When you manage to evolve, everything becomes better for you.