Articles from the Week of May 27 to June 2, 2023
Interesting Quotes
Whenever you feel like criticizing any one… just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.
F. Scott Fitzgerald
This capacity for empathy leads to a genuine encounter — we have to progress toward this culture of encounter — in which heart speaks to heart.
Pope Francis
Judge tenderly, if you must. There is usually a side you have not heard, a story you know nothing about, and a battle waged that you do not have to fight.
Traci Lea Larussa, writer and illustrator
Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil."
C. S. Lewis
“You cannot live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you.”
COACH JOHN WOODEN
“People always call it luck when you've acted more sensibly than they have.”
ANNE TYLER
The highest appreciation is not to utter words but to live by them.
John F. Kennedy
"The best way to learn to be an honest, responsible adult is to live with adults who act honestly and responsibly."
CLAUDIA JEWETT
“Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, “I will try again tomorrow.”
Mary Anne Radmacher, writer
Fascinating Facts
Almost all meteorites crash in Antarctica
“Meteorites do not actually hit the Earth at completely random places. While their fall may be random, most end up landing in Antarctica. This is believed to be because it is on the southern end of the Earth, where meteorites are pulled to once they enter Earth’s atmosphere. This could be considered lucky, as some meteorites fall to Earth at a large enough size to do some damage to people or structures, and Antarctica is almost completely uninhabited. Most meteorites that fall are too small to do any damage.”
Antartica is the world's largest desert
“The term 'desert' does not just refer to endless sand and a glaring hot sun. There are various subtypes, and all of them involve an extreme temperature and a barren landscape. One subtype of desert is the polar desert, an area devoid of life where there is ice instead of sand and freezing cold winds instead of boiling hot temperatures. This makes Antarctica a polar desert, and at over 5.5 million square miles, it also takes the title of the largest desert in the world, beating out the Sahara desert for the top spot.”
Both quotes from “Need to Know Facts”
The Mall of America, the largest shopping mall in America, is owned by Canadians (Source: InterestingFacts.com)
Counseling Articles
Nondisordered Cannabis Use Among US Adolescents
This article has a confusing set of abbreviations (e.g., NDCU stands for Nondisordered Cannabis Use, which in this study means looking at teens who are not using enough pot so that it meets the DSM-5 criteria for cannabis use disorder). Recreational cannabis use is being legalized in more and more states. But this research concludes that when teens use cannabis, even though they are not using it at a level that is believed to be disordered, “cannabis use is associated with deficits in cognitive and executive functioning, including processing speed, sustained attention, working memory, judgment and planning, problem-solving, decision-making, and self-regulation. Adverse mental health outcomes, including increased rates of depression and suicidal behaviors, have also been associated with youth cannabis use. Well-controlled longitudinal epidemiologic studies have demonstrated that adolescent cannabis exposure is associated with a 4-fold increase in adult psychosis diagnoses. Finally, cannabis use among youth is associated with worse academic performance and delinquent behavior.”
How many more studies have to be conducted before legislators realize that legalizing pot is not a wise thing to do?
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Thinking a Thought Doesn’t Make It So
Although postmodernists say that whatever you believe makes it so. Here’s a story about a woman in Brazil who married a rag doll but then became incensed when she came to believe that he was unfaithful to her.
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Largest US Children’s Hospital Will No Longer Offer Transgender Medical Procedures: CEO
The CEO of the largest children’s hospital in the country—Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston, Texas—has stated that they will no longer offer gender change procedures, i.e., puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and gender reassignment surgeries at the hospital.
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Widespread Prescribing of Stimulants With Other CNS Meds
Ritalin for ADHD has been found to be a very safe medication. However, it is commonly being prescribed along with other psychoactive medications, and those combinations concern some psychiatrists. I’ll just quote one sentence from the article to give you a sense of what is happening. “The widespread, often off-label use of these stimulants, in combination therapy with antidepressants, anxiolytics, opioids, and other psychoactive drugs, "reveals new patterns of utilization beyond the approved use of stimulants as monotherapy for ADHD, but because there are so few studies of these kinds of combination therapy, both the advantages and additional risks [of this type of prescribing] remain unknown.” If you have clients who are receiving stimulants and one of these other medications and are not feeling well, it may be wise to encourage them to talk with their prescribing doctors about taking these medications in combination.
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Polypharmacy Killed My Son. He’s Not Alone
To take the above article and make it personal, one mother explains how polypharmacy took her son’s life.
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Adult-Onset ADHD: Treatment in Primary Care
Although the picture of these two guys (one in a baseball cap) might lead you to believe these are two young adult goofballs who haven’t fully outgrown their adolescence, they are both M.D.s and the minute or so it will take you to read the transcript of their interview is worth the time. They make some good points about whether ADHD ever develops for the first time in adulthood (listening to the transcript will take 5 minutes, so if your time is limited, I recommend reading the edited transcript which takes about one minute). It also includes mention of a medication for adult ADHD that you may not be familiar with.
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Discerning True Love from Infatuation with Bipolar Disorder
If you counsel with bipolar clients, you know that one thing they often struggle with is differentiating true love from infatuation. Here are some useful tips from a person who has experienced this. I believe her points could be useful to many young people, whether or not they have bipolar disorder.
And you also will be introduced to an interesting word if you don’t already know it—limerance.
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What Warning Signs to Look for in Relationships
Sometimes clients are in unhealthy relationships but it’s difficult for them to recognize, even though we’ve asked them good questions to help them see the toxicity of the relationship. In those cases it is sometimes helpful to bring in an uninvolved third party. Here’s a helpful article on spotting an unhealthy relationship from WebMD that you could save and share with a client when you need a third party.
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Your Most Ambivalent Relationships Are the Most Toxic
This is an insight that you may want to use in counseling when you see it in action in one of your client’s lives. The article cites several research studies to support the above assertion. It’s in the New York Times, so you probably can’t read it unless you have a subscription to that newspaper. I’ll include a couple paragraphs so you can get a few insights from the article.
“The most toxic relationships aren’t the purely negative ones. They’re the ones that are a mix of positive and negative. We often call them frenemies, supposed friends who sometimes help you and sometimes hurt you. But it’s not just friends. It’s the in-laws who volunteer to watch your kids but belittle your parenting. The roommate who gets you through a breakup and then starts dating your ex. The manager who praises your work but denies you a promotion. . . . .”
“The evidence that ambivalent relationships can be bad for us is strong, but the reasons can be harder to read — just like the relationships themselves.
“The most intuitive reason is that ambivalent relationships are unpredictable. With a clear enemy, you put up a shield when you cross paths. With a frenemy, you never know whether Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde is going to show up. Ambivalence short-circuits the parasympathetic nervous system and activates a fight-or-flight response. It’s unnerving to hope for a hug while bracing yourself for a brawl.”
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What Is Imposter Syndrome?
This article may help some of your clients, especially those who have accomplished something that no one else in their family has done. “Imposter syndrome” was first described almost some 50 years ago, and has been experienced by some notable people such as Albert Einstein, Jennifer Lopez and Tom Hanks. If you have a client who is struggling with those feelings, this article has some specific suggestions that might help.
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“Maybe I’m Not Just Thoroughly Messed Up:” Olympian Molly Seidel On Her Late ADHD Diagnosis
Women’s ADHD is often missed or misdiagnosed. I encourage every counselor to read this article.
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“The 3 Vital Keys to Our Happy ADHD Marriage”
Both the husband and wife in this marriage have ADHD—she the hyperactive type and he the inattentive type, and neither were diagnosed until they were adults. Learn how they make their marriage work.
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Dodgers to Host ‘Christian Faith and Family Day’ Amid Drag Queen Backlash
Since there was so much negative backlash against the Dodgers hosting the Daughters of Perpetual Indulgence, they have apparently decided to resurrect their “Christian Faith and Family Day.”
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The American Academy Of Pediatrics Sacrifices American Children On The Altar Of Gender Ideology
Even though many pediatricians and parents have asked the leaders of the American Academy of Pediatrics to allow the organization to have a discussion of what evidence-based research has shown about using puberty-blockers, cross-sex hormones, and gender surgery, as many European countries have done, and most of those European countries are now limiting transgender medical interventions until long-term results have been collected, the leadership of the AAP is refusing to allow pediatricians to even have a discussion and do research on the long-term effects of “gender-affirming” approaches. For three years the leaders have not allowed this issue to even be brought up for discussion, and it seems likely that they will disallow it this year as well. This seems to contradict the idea that medical treatments should be based on evidence of the healthiness or lack of healthiness of given treatments.
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Menstrual Cycle Phases and ADHD: Why Cycle Syncing Is Essential
Although there are no published research articles about how menstrual cycles affect women with ADHD, apparently many women with ADHD recognize this occurs, and they make plans that take this phenomenon into account.
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Have a wonderful week or weekend!
Henry Virkler