 THE UNDEFEATED MIND Fall 2012 |
 Photo: wonderlane By nature I’ve always been an excessively introspective person. My entire life I’ve believed, as Socrates said, that “the unexamined life isn’t worth living.” Even now, my wife frequently accuses me of living mostly in my own head. But in my first year of college, in response to my voicing my commitment to this credo, a friend of mine once replied, “Nor is the unlived life worth examining.” Continue reading…
I left their apartment that night thinking about life stages and transitions and found myself wondering why I wasn’t married yet. I’d always felt I’d wanted to be and had certainly had a number of opportunities. But I’d passed them all up for one reason or another and at 34 remained single. Learning one of my brothers was going to be a father triggered something in me—a sense of urgency, a greater interest in moving my life forward, a need to shake things up—I’m not sure what. But the next morning I began a campaign to find my wife. Continue reading…  Photo: Randy Son Of Robert People all over the world know the story of Helen Keller, the deaf-blind girl Annie Sullivan taught to communicate by spelling letters on her hands, whose story was depicted in the play and movie The Miracle Worker. What most people don’t know is the story of how Helen’s parents found Annie Sullivan in the first place: Helen’s mother, Kate (who happened to be a cousin of Robert E. Lee, the Confederate general), had been inspired by a story of the successful education of another deaf blind girl, Laura Bridgman, which she read in Charles Dickens’ American Notes. So in 1886 she and Helen’s father, Arthur, traveled from their home in Alabama to Baltimore to find Dr. J. Julian Chisolm, an otolaryngologist, for advice.  Photo: The U.S. Army From quitting smoking to eating healthier to exercising regularly to getting more organized, most of us have a list of behaviors we’d like to begin (or end) that resist our attempts to do so. As a physician, I find myself giving advice about changing habits on a daily basis. Even though many of my patients are able to succeed in making desired changes in the short term, most of them revert to their original behaviors in the long term. What, then, are effective ways to alter behavior on a permanent basis? The psychology that underlies the changing of behaviors is complex. Two researchers named Prochaska and DiClemente developed a way of describing it they called the Stages of Change Model. Though originally developed in the context of smoking cessation, it’s five stages actually describe the process by which all behaviors change. Continue reading…  Photo: P.13 I leaned back in my chair and breathed a heavy sigh. My patient, Mr. Rodriguez (not his real name), noticed my discomfort. “I know I should quit,” he told me with a guilty shrug of his shoulders. “Have you ever tried?” I asked. “Once,” he replied, “but it didn’t stick.” Mr. Rodriguez had been a pack-a-day smoker for the past 20 years, something he’d only begrudgingly confessed in response to a standard inquiry I make of all my first time patients. He didn’t see it as a problem himself. Or at least he hadn’t mentioned it when I’d asked him at the beginning of the visit why he’d come to see me. “Are you aware of all the ways cigarette smoking is bad for you?” I asked. Continue reading… |
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