Nido (nest) Therapy

Nesting Swan, a photo by TylerIngram on Flickr.


Professor Peter Tyrer, editor of the British Journal of Psychiatry, argues his profession practises 'mental colonialism' on people with long-term, chronic mental illness that's resistant to treatment. His approach is called Nidotherapy -- Nido meaning 'nest' -- focused on changing a person's environment not their personality. 

To read transcript or download audio: http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/allinthemind/nido-nest-therapy-top-psychiatrist-issues-strong/2960628

the silt is your delta

Nile River Delta, Mediterranean Sea (NASA, International Space Station, 08/18/11), a photo by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center on Flickr.


... you cannot understand 'true beauty, true happiness, unless you also understand the depths of despair and sorrow. So do that painful learning down in the silt; because the silt is your delta.'

(delta = fertile place)

From interview with artist John Olsen 
The masterly Mr Squiggle, by Janet Hawley, Good Weekend, 2 September 2006.

sharing

The Age, Opinion

March 22 2003

The pursuit of happiness is the first step in a long journey to personal and global peace, writes Hugh Mackay.  

It is easy to be sceptical about the pursuit of happiness - partly because it is the most elusive and unpredictable of emotions, partly because most personal growth and development comes from pain, not pleasure, and partly because it seems such a vacuous focus for our all-too-brief and fragile visit to this planet. Yet, when people try to define their goals, they often seek nothing more than this: 'I just want to be happy.'
 
Ancient wisdom suggests that the selfish pursuit of happiness is actually counter-productive (rather like the quest for 'national identity'): the more you seek it, the less likely you are to find it. But there is another possibility, illuminated by a different question: whose happiness is worth pursuing?
 
There was once a rule at a Sydney boarding school that required girls at the dining table to restrain themselves from asking for something to be passed to them: they had to wait for it to be spontaneously offered to them by someone else.
 
I do not know whether that rule has survived, but it had a serious point. It was a way of teaching those girls that the pathway to personal fulfillment is not straight: you achieve your goal indirectly, by first attending to the needs of others. The more assiduously you pass the salt to everyone else, the more likely it is that someone will eventually decide to pass it to you.
 
If that sounds a bit too calculating, well, so be it: even the so-called golden rule has always had a collateral benefit buried in the subtext: 'do unto others as you would have them do unto you' might sound like unbridled altruism, but there is a strong implication of reciprocity in there. If you treat others the way you would like them to treat you, you improve the chances that they will indeed treat you just like that.
 
But reciprocity is a moral minefield. It all comes down to motive: if you treat others well only because you expect reciprocal treatment, that comes dangerously close to exploitation, and the satisfaction you seek is likely to elude you. The trick is to embrace the central paradox of human happiness: we are generally at our happiest when we strive for the happiness of others. 'Look out for No.1' was always a dark seductive con.
 
'I've never been happier' is the almost universal cry of volunteers who prepare meals for the poor, read to the blind, visit the sick and lonely, or relieve suffering, hardship, poverty or despair in any way. It is also the common experience of those who devote their working lives to professions like teaching, medicine and counselling - where the entire focus is on the wellbeing of the pupil, the patient or the client, and where remuneration is a peripheral issue.
The pursuit of happiness, it turns out, is a worthwhile exercise, provided we remember whose happiness we are pursuing.
 
Perhaps that is the first step in the long journey to personal, and ultimately global, peace.
 
Hugh Mackay is an author and social researcher.

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/03/21/1047749940975.html 

Barry Dickins

reading on broadway, a photo by MarkelConnors on Flickr.

'Dickins found himself reading Plath at a very difficult time, five years ago. He was, he says, "so seriously sick, I nearly perished of hopelessness". Of all the treatment that he received, he adds, "nothing worked like reading". 

He describes himself as "a slow reader and maybe too speedy a writer", but reading and re-reading Plath was a kind of saving grace. He found himself "reloving, if there is such a word, her poetry". On devising a play that builds on that experience, he says, "There's a way to write for someone, and not like them ..." '

from 'Theatre play a tribute to poet's talents: Plath's potent words find voice on stage', Philippa Hawker, The Age, 10 September 2013, p. 18

http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/stage/plaths-potent-words-find-voice-on-stage-20130909-2tg5x.html

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/lifematters/barry-dickins-is-back/3053296 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzkx6gfyUIk 

http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/books/best-and-worst-of-times-in-a-bleak-house-20120325-1vs7k.html 

Think about life

Think about life, a photo by zilverbat. on Flickr.

  '... the Bhutanese government sponsored a resolution in July 2011 which was the only resolution of the day met with applause in the big chamber, to make happiness an objective for development efforts across the world. It passed unanimously. As outflow of that there is a special high-level meeting at the UN on 2 April, bringing together 40 or 50 scientists from around the world who work on this program ... '

Read the transcript or listen to the full episode from the Science Show, ABC Radio National:
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/scienceshow/measuring-well-being/3894930

John Updike

Fallen rocks IMG_1382, a photo by OZinOH on Flickr.

  '... the heavy stones fell with a strange slowness, seen from above, and accumulated into a kind of mountain it became Joey's summer job to clear away. 

He learned a valuable lesson that first summer on the farm, while he turned fourteen: even if you manage to wrestle only one stone into the wheelbarrow and sweatily, staggeringly trundle it down to the swampy area this side of the springhouse, eventually the entire mountain will be taken away. 

On the same principle, an invisible giant, removing only one day at a time, will eventually dispose of an entire life.'

from A Sandstone Farmhouse

http://jsse.revues.org/273 

13 Virtues (Benjamin Franklin)

Capital: Virtues and Vices: Greed, a photo by Art History Images (Holly Hayes) on Flickr.

1. TEMPERANCE: Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.
2. SILENCE: Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.
3. ORDER: Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.
4. RESOLUTION: Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.
5. FRUGALITY: Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing.
6. INDUSTRY: Lose no time; be always employed in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.
7. SINCERITY: Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly.
8. JUSTICE: Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty.
9. MODERATION: Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.
10. CLEANLINESS: Tolerate no uncleanness in body, clothes, or habitation.
11. TRANQUILLITY: Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.
12. CHASTITY: Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another's peace or reputation.
13. HUMILITY: Imitate Jesus and Socrates.