Stress

We all know what stress is; it is a little hard to define exactly, but we all have an idea what it is. We know the feeling in our stomachs, the racing pulse and even the dizziness. We also know that stress for bad for us; it can lead to high blood pressure, has been linked to cancer and it is a major factor in some mental disorders. So why do we get stressed, what possible benefit could getting stressed be.

Well if we didn’t get stressed at all it would be difficult for us to get out of bed in morning. It is the stress of having to earn money that causes us to get up in the morning. When our stomachs are empty we feel hungry and it is this stress of feeling hungry that causes us to go look for food. If stress is a natural part of life why is stress so bad for us? To answer this question we need to go all way back to Africa perhaps 100,000 years ago. It has always been a bit of a surprise that a monkey as insignificant as homo sapien could have survived on the plains of Africa, yet alone thrive. This is where stress was so useful. When ancient homo sapiens perceived danger their body were flooded with hormones that produced the familiar signs of stress, racing pulse etc. This was like turning on the turbo-boost, early humans were able to run faster, withstand pain; the so-called fight or flight response.

Now fast forward to today. Modern humans are unlikely to encounter lions, crocodiles or other major predators, but yet we experience the same stress response as our hunter-gather forebears. When we get stuck in traffic we experience the same stress response as being chased by a lion. Actually that is not quite the case. There still are some humans living as hunter-gathers in Africa and it is possible to test their stress levels. When the stress level of these hunter-gathers is measured and compared to the stress levels of humans living in the developed world we find that the hunter-gather’s stress level is less. It appears that being stuck in traffic is more stressful than being chased by a lion.

So, even though stress is a natural part of life, modern humans need to learn to re-interpret what stress is or face the adverse consequences.

How Does The Mind Work?

How the mind works has been a matter of discussion, heated discussion, for centuries. With modern technology we now know how the basic unit of the brain, the neuron, works but still we have no idea how the brain thinks. Indeed there are psychologists who argue that there is no such thing as creative though. So this article will describe how the brain works and some practical steps we can take to improve our thinking process.

Now a neuron is quite simple; it is very similar to a simple light switch, either on or off. The diagram shows a representation of a neuron. The important thing to note is that a neuron is designed to connect with other neurons. The dendrite is the input to the neuron, and the terminal is the output. When the neuron detects inputs on a sufficient number of dendrites the neuron will fire. When the neuron fires all the terminals send out a signal. Say you see danger, such as a lion, there will be neurons in the brain whose job is to recognise a lion. These neurons do not need to see a complete lion, they can put together a little bit of brown fur, maybe some teeth. So these lion neurons are connected to neurons that recognise brown fur and neurons that recognise teeth. So when enough brown fur neurons and teeth neurons fire the lion neuron will fire, in other words the lion neuron has recognised a lion. Now, if only the brown fur neurons fire and not the teeth neurons then the lion neuron might not fire. The next stage of the process starts. These lion neurons might be connected to neurons that control the leg muscles. When the leg muscles neurons receive inputs from the lion neurons the legs start to move; the person runs away. Now this is very simplistic but it demonstrates how neutrons work. Neutrons work by simply passing messages, on-off messages, from one neuron to another. So neurons can only work when connected in a network.  In fact a neuron network is also simple; it can easily modelled by a computer, even a simple spreadsheet can model a limited number of neurons. The question is ‘if a neuron is so simple why do we have such trouble understanding how the brain works’?

To date no one has come up with a complete explanation of how a neuron can think, but there are two schools of though. Firstly, neurons operate in a network; if an individual neuron cannot think there must be something fundamentally different about a network of billions of neurons. For some reason, and we do not know what that reason is, a network of a billion neurons can think where as an individual neuron can’t. It is possible to develop computer programs comprising of many thousands of virtual neurons, not billions but thousands. Now these computer programs have been somewhat successful but you would not consider these computer programs as being able to think; to date Artificial Intelligence is some way off. However, they do suggest that it if the number of virtual computer neurons were increased to many billions then these computer programs might be able to think. However creating computer programs that big is simply not possible for now and still, nobody knows how many virtual neurons would be required for a computer to think or even why more neurons would make a difference in the first place. But we know a brain can think so the answer must have something to do with a network effect. Or does it?

There are psychologists who have come up with a radical answer, that creative though does not really exist. What we perceive as creative though is just simple programming of the brain. So your unique genetic material combined with a lifetime of experience and learning means that you will react to any situation in a specific and predictable fashion. In the same way a computer is programmed. Of course human genetic material is very complicated and every human has slightly different experiences in growing up and therefore the range of predictable human behaviours to any one single event would be truly vast. To test this theory would also be extremely difficult. You have to get two identical twins, separate them at birth and bring them up in a totally controlled environment; you would have to re-run The Trueman Show by two. Most people would find it is difficult to believe that a fairly non-descript Swiss physics teacher working in a fairly non-descript patent office and one day comes up with the formula E=MC² is not a case of original though. However at this stage the idea that we are simply programmed machines is very attractive. Otherwise you have to attribute something magical to the neuron.

What is clear is that the connections in the brain are not permanent. Neuron connections and the neurons themselves are continuously being pruned and new ones being created. It takes a lot of energy and resources to maintain all these neurons and connections and if any neurons are not being used then those resources are directed elsewhere. As an example, you might have been a good sprinter when you were a youngster but now in older age you don’t run at all, all those neurons that drove your leg muscles will be pruned. It is like removing the spark plugs from a motor. Likewise your daily habits are constantly building more connections in the brain. If you get out of the right hand side of the bed in the morning, the get-out-of-bed-on-the-right-hand-side neurons will be building up connections to your muscles. You will be stronger getting out of bed on the right hand side than the left hand side. Of course in the example of getting out of bed the difference will be so small you will not be able to notice it. But beware there are areas where this pruning and rebuilding process can make a big difference.

Let’s say you are one of the many people who do not like going to work on Monday mornings, you get out of bed and say ‘its Monday morning I don’t like going to work’. By indulging in this habit you are physically changing your brain; you are reinforcing all those negative connections in your brain. If you were to say ‘its Monday morning I can’t wait to get to work and tell everybody about my wonderful weekend and all the things I am going to achieve at work this week’ (a bit cheesy I know, but anyway) you are reinforcing all the positive connections in your brain. This is why it so important to set goals and work towards achieving those goals, because you will be physically changing your brain for the better. Now let’s say you want to study hard to pass an exam. If you have never studied before but you regularly set goals and achieved them, even goals that are totally unrelated, such as running a half marathon, you will be more likely to study hard and pass the exam. You will literally have more achievement neurons in your brain. So whether your goals are keeping the house clean, being more punctual, eating more carrots, it doesn’t matter, setting and achieving goals will build a healthier brain for you.

Now, let’s explore a similar but slightly different concept ‘priming’ and we use the example of the lion again. The process of running away from a lion as it was explained above was a little simple; there would be many hundred of layers of neurons involved. When we see something neurons connected to the eyes convert what we see into a format that the brain can understand. So we don’t see a lion’s tooth per se; what we see is something that is white, so a series of neurons that detect colour react to the white colour of the tooth. Similarly, there will be a series of neurons that detect shapes, so when we see the lion’s tooth there will be a series of neurons that react to the sharp pointed shape of the tooth. The process continues with other features of the tooth being detected, such as the smooth enamel surface. So all these neurons detecting colour, shape and texture will be connected to neurons that detect teeth. Now just because you see something with teeth doesn’t mean you are looking at a lion; dogs have teeth, crocodiles have teeth. Sure the teeth sensing neurons will be connected to the lion detecting neurons, but the lion detecting neurons will also be connected to many other types of neurons. Let’s say lion are most active in the morning and night and lions prefer to hunt on grassy plains, say. So the lion detecting neurons will be connected to time-of-day neurons, lion-country neurons and as suggested above brown fur neurons. There is a set pattern to how these neurons must fire. When we look at something, say a lion, a wave of activity happens in our brains; colour, shape texture neurons are the first to activate, then teeth, fur and other neurons will activate. The next wave will be animal detecting neurons, followed by muscle activate neurons. This is the so-called spreading activation model.

So, one of the implications of the spreading activation model is that your brain can be primed to react in certain ways. If you are out in lion country in the early morning (remember lion hunting time) your lion detecting neurons will already be receiving lots of signals; if you see a flash of brown fur in the deep grass you are much more likely to interpret that as a lion. I have deliberately used a lion in these examples as a lion represents danger. Now if you are out in lion country in the early morning a flash of brown fur in the long grass could equally be a gazelle, after all this is what the lions are hunting and a gazelle would also be food for humans. So why would be more likely to interpret the flash of brown fur as a lion rather than a gazelle, because danger signals will override a food signals in the brain. Over thousands of years humans who mistook a gazelle for a lion missed on lunch, humans who mistook a lion for a gazelle became lunch.

Now in our modern world we do not see lions but are brains are still primed to react in certain ways. So on Monday mornings when we don’t want to go to work our brains are primed to be very negative. All the I-don’t-want-to-do-anything neurons are firing away slowing us down and making every task harder. Notice that we evolved on the plains of Africa, where there were lions and many other dangers, so we are sort of programmed to handle great danger. Unfortunately in our modern world many of the processes that are in place to deal with great dangers like lions kick in when we miss the bus. However, we can also prime our brains for positive results. You will often hear sport coaches telling their athletes to visual what a good tennis serve or soccer goal kick would look like; this is because all the neurons that are needed to pull off a good tennis serve or soccer goal kick are being primed when we visualise a good result.

So the final message is if you want to build a better brain, try to plan, visualise and achieve challenging tasks.

Can People Change

Can people change? It is fair to say that in the field of psychology there are many different views on this subject. Firstly, people need to understand that the human mind and behaviour is extremely complicated and any model or theory of the mind and behaviour is a simplification. The analogy would be trying to describe Australia. If we were to say Australia is an island continent that might be very easy to understand, of course such a description would be too simple because it doesn’t describe the major cities or any other features of Australia. If we were to describe the shops along every major street in every major city of Australia there would be too much information and it would be impossible to understand and get a sense of what Australia is. So it is in psychology, we need models that provide an overall sense of how human behaviour works but models that are not bogged down in detail. Sometimes the details we leave out might later prove to be very and the model might need to be changed, this is how theories of mind and behaviour are improved. It is true that sometimes different theories might seem to conflict with each other. So there is no complete theory of the mind, we need to take parts of various theories that seem appropriate at this time and use them.

So let’s start with personality. Although we all seem to understand what personality is personality is very difficult to define? The usual accepted definition is an enduring set of behaviours or attitudes, which causes its own problems as we will see later. Perhaps the most commonly know theory of personality is the Trait Theory of Personality; if you have ever done a personality test this would have been based on some form of the Trait Theory of Personality. The Trait Theory describes personality as a series of specific, independent traits that are combined in different measures to form personality. One very well researched model is The Big Five Model which uses five traits; Openness (to experience), Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism or OCEAN. So someone who is high on extraversion and low on neuroticism might be very outgoing and lively. Conversely, someone who is high on conscientiousness and neuroticism might do well in an area like research or auditing. No one trait is seen as any more desirable than any other trait and there is almost an infinite number of combinations of traits, so it can explain most behaviours. According to the trait model of personality, our personality is developed by mid-adolesce and is somewhat fixed for the rest of our lives. So as our personality is a description of our enduring set of behaviours or attitudes, we are saying that our behaviours are somewhat fixed. This does not bode well for a person’s ability to change. My personal opinion is that your underlying personality, in terms of attitude is not going to change greatly over your lifetime, if you are an outgoing person you will mostly remain an outgoing person. However the link between personality and behaviour is somewhat fluid. So the outgoing person who tends to talk over the top of people can learn to be more restrained and listen to what other people have to say.

When we are talking about extreme behaviour such as domestic violence it is worthwhile talking about personality disorders. Under the trait version of personality we are a simple combination of various personality traits. Although no one trait is intrinsically better than any other, if a person rates wildly high or low on a particular personality trait they might have difficultly operating in society. Let’s talk about neuroticism. If someone rated extremely high on neuroticism they might be afraid to talk to anyone or take any kind of personal risk at all, they might not be able to trust people and they might develop phobias. But rating very low on neuroticism can also be problematic. Being very low on neuroticism is associated with criminal activities, infidelity in marriage and even car accidents; people who rate low on neuroticism just cannot see the danger in their own actions. Personality disorders are rare in the community but research has shown they are statistically over represented in domestic violence cases. Personality disorders can be treated, but they are very difficult to treat and treatment usually takes a very long time.

Let’s get back to one of the problems of the Trait Theory. Say you are the high extroversion, low neuroticism person talked about above and you are at a funeral, it is likely you will be very subdued and quite. Does this mean your personality has changed? This is basic problem with the Trait Theory; every time we act out of character then we are saying our personality has changed. The alternative would be that the Trait Theory does not do a good job of predicting behaviour. As we know both of these alternatives aren’t true we have a problem. Let’s introduce the term situationalism. Situationalism suggests that our behaviour is also a function of situation variables not just personality variables. I am sure there are many researchers and auditors who sit quietly in a corner of the office all day beavering away and are the life of the party after work. Your trait personality is not the be all and end all of you as a person. So are there any other models of behaviour that might explain domestic violence.

Another view of personality and behaviour is the Self-Regulation Perspective; in this perspective behaviour is defined as a series of goals with mental feedback loops monitoring our progress towards those goals. This perspective is very logical, we have an ideal sense of ourselves and we are continually working towards this ideal self and processing information to monitor we are on track to achieve this ideal self. Much of this processing is done automatically without us really being aware of this continuous mental processing effort. A key issue in the Self-Regulation perspective is expectancy, do we actually believe we can achieve goals; logically if we doubt we can achieve a goal then effort is decreased. Emotions are seen as a signal that this automatically processing is not achieving the required result and the automatic processing must be turned off and more conscious brain power must be employed to bring the person back on track. The analogy is the auto-pilot on a plane. So an emotion such as anger is not seen as intrinsically bad, anger is seen as a signal that priorities need to change to address a sudden unexpected situation. Of course the Self-Regulation perspective implies self-control. Quite often we have to suspend one goal in order to obtain another. Say we want to drive home after a dinner party this means we cannot drink alcohol.  So in this model change is about learning how to problem solve. Indeed people who enter therapy would talk about problems, how these problems relate to their life goals and what behavioural traits are problematic and need modification. Also in therapy people would talk about their belief (expectancy) in themselves, whether or not they can accept the challenges that might be required to achieve their ultimate goals. In this model change is quite a simple process of education and goal setting.

How does the Self-Regulation Perspective explain domestic violence? The answer lies in expectancy and what the aim of the offender is. Basically the offender has no confidence that they can achieve their goals. Often violent behaviour is a cover to blame other people for lack of success by the offender. The second problem is the offender’s goal; these are all scrambled, the offender really doesn’t know what they are trying to achieve. A common problem is obstructive type behaviour, where the only goal is to oppose other people and be obstructive. Domestic violence is associated with a lot of anger and other negative emotions. Above we described how emotions are a signal to the person that the person is no longer progressing towards their goals; of course if the goals are all confused then emotions will be breaking out all the time. Also if a person does not have a strong sense of their goals the self regulation process fails and self control is lost. The person simply does what feels good at the time. Regrettably, violence is what feels good. In order to change the domestic violence offender needs to completely re-build their sense of themselves; although it is possible to do this it is likely to take a very long time. One area that is very difficult to develop is confidence. Confidence is developed over years; years of trial and error, years of overcoming failure to ultimately achieve success, it is very difficult to gain confidence overnight.

So the basic question is can people change? I help people change all the time; change their eating habits or their exercise routines. Mostly I help people align health and fitness goals with greater life goals. So yes people can change but with domestic violence we are talking about extreme behaviour. If you are in a violent relationship you need to leave. Sure your partner might be capable of change but not in a time frame that would be acceptable. If you are reading this article and think ‘this applies to me’, or ‘I keep doing things that I regret later’ then there is a much greater chance you will be able to change. However if you are in a relationship and you are being violent I doubt if you will be able to change in time to save the relationship or in a time that does not do great harm to your partner.

Of course this article is general in nature and does not represent professional advice.

Charming But Dangerous

In previous articles I have spoken about the psychology of our behaviour, why we do things that are not good for use. In those articles I have applied those principles to health and fitness, why we eat junk food, why we don’t exercise etc. However, in this article those same principles will be applied to domestic violence. Now I am not apportioning blame, I am just explaining the psychology.

The basic theme is that when people begin to enter into relationships they do not chose partners who are violent (in most cases). In fact the partner who becomes violent can often be quite charming and it often comes as a surprise to people outside the relationship that there is violence in the relationship. So if these people can be charming why do they choose to be violent? This article will argue that these people don’t have a choice, as much as they might want to be good they simply can’t.

Let us consider something called Social Learning Theory. Basically, social learning theory says that when we are born we know nothing, we have no personality, we are a blank page; we have to learn everything about ourselves even learn our gender. Importantly we learn how to interact with other people, and this is a long process stretching all the way from the cradle, through kindergarten, high school, and our first job; in fact we never stop learning. Also we learn how to act in different situations, so as an example we might learn to act differently at school and at home. So the Social Learning Theory is pretty simple; violent people either learn to be violent (probably during childhood) or do not learn more appropriate ways to behave.

There are two ways to apply this theory. In the 1930’s a researcher called Sutherland at the University of Chicago developed a social learning theory called the Theory of Differential Association, and there are multiple research studies that support this theory. In this theory people learn crime, how to commit crime, how to profit from crime and how to justify crime from others skilled in crime. Being able to justify your crime is an extremely important part of committing crime; very few people would be able commit crime if they did not have a way of justifying that crime. Even criminals are worried that other people might think badly of them. In the case of domestic violence, it is my opinion that being able to justify violence is very important. To use a crude analogy, I read an article about a man who hit his wife because she burnt the toast. How could anyone justify this sort of action, you need to have some readymade justification at hand that you have learnt somewhere. Sure you might be able to invent a justification, but in my opinion it is much more likely this justification has been learnt, probably during a dysfunction childhood.

One feature of Sutherland’s theory is that people choose to commit crime. Now in the case of domestic violence it might be tempting to think that the offender chooses to be charming and then chooses to be violent. I would argue that the offender has learnt how to be violent over a long period of time without consciously recognising it. So people from violent or dysfunctional homes learn how to be violent and they revert to this behaviour under times of stress. It is not a matter of choice.

So what is the mechanism for this transformation from charming to violent? The offender might not set out to be violent, however this is not a position they can maintain. These offenders or potential offenders are able to interact with people when other people are at a distance, say work colleagues. However, close personal relationships put much greater stress on us and it is these stresses that the offender cannot handle. Also, as I stated above people can learn different behaviours for different situations, so the work environment and home are quite different. In a normal relationship partners have disagreements, but both partners grow and mature together and times of stress can even accelerate this process. In short they learn. People who have not learnt how to deal with people cannot cope with this process and revert to what they do know, which is often their dysfunctional upbringing. Then a second process that kicks in, normalisation. The violent person begins to introduce bad behaviour such as yelling into the relationship. Now if the other partner responds by yelling, then the behaviour of yelling is normalised. The process then progresses to physical violence, maybe not a level of violence that would leave bruises or would allow the police to act but violence none the less. After a little while this level of violence has become normalised. The process then continues to greater levels of violence. Now the violent person might not plan this out, but they fall into the process because they don’t know better. The violent person might even recognise that the behaviour is wrong but they just cannot help themselves. An analogy might be if you went on holidays to say China and you try to take a taxi somewhere. Now the taxi driver doesn’t speak English, the taxi driver only speaks Chinese. The English speaking tourist will continue to speak to the taxi driver in English trying to explain where they want to go to and the taxi driver will continue to speak in Chinese. Both the taxi driver and the tourist know that what they are doing is of no help at all, but they don’t know what else to do so they keep speaking in their own language. It is the same with domestic violence; the violent person does not know how to act in any other way.

The second way to apply Social Learning Theory is a process called Behaviouralism. As a child you are rewarded for good behaviour and punished for being bad; hence you learn that doing the right thing is beneficial for you. If you have every watched Super Nanny you will know how simple and effective this process can be. In a dysfunctional family this process breaks. There are several common problems; children are used as pawns by warring parents or there is a lack of structure in the home where children cannot tell what is good and what bad behaviour is. Such events can be very traumatic and learning and development can stop all together. This is the difficulty of a dysfunctional upbringing; people are often stuck in adolescence type behaviour. So you start life as a baby with your parents doing absolutely everything for you. Then you grow up a little bit and you are asked to do little jobs around the house for pocket money. Your parents let you go out at night provided you follow certain rules, such as being home by midnight. And so on, there is a continual process of exchanging responsibility for additional freedom. Importantly people learn how to learn.  In a dysfunctional family this simple process often stalls and people find they are continuously treated as children, so people enter adulthood with an emotional development of say that of a 15 year old. Of greater concern, people from dysfunctional upbringings have not learnt how to modify their behaviour; they have not learnt how to learn. The end result is people from a dysfunctional family not having the emotional maturity to function in a romantic relationship.

This brings us to the final question, is this process inevitable and can people change. Well this is a vexed question; my position is that all people can change to some extent. Indeed some people are able to mature and grow overnight. It is like there is a crossed wire in the brain, when the wires are uncrossed the brain works normally straight away. The problem with domestic violent is that violent person might not even realise their behaviour is wrong and they certainly would not be able to change without considerable professional counselling and support. If anyone is thinking that they can change their partner and continue in the violent relationship they may be putting themselves in mortal danger.

Normalisation, Domestic Violence

Although I write about fitness there is a wealth of research that shows it is the total environment that contributes to a person’s wellbeing. So it will be difficult to be fit if you live in an environment where healthy food is not seen as important and diets are poor. It is difficult to have mental health issues and be fit or eat healthily. It is difficult to navigate times of stress or grief without social support. If a person is trapped in an unhealthy relationship then all other aspects of their lives can be compromised. There is a well researched area of psychology called social psychology, how individuals behave in a social context, and I will apply this to domestic violence rather than health and fitness as I have done in other articles.

So how do we come to live in environments that are not healthy? There are several mechanisms for this and today we will talk about normalisation. Normalisation, when used by psychologists, refers to the process where certain ideas or actions are seen as being normal. We can see this on a global scale or at the personal level. So when random breath testing for alcohol was introduced in N.S.W. overnight drink driving was no longer seen as normal. The introduction of R.B.T. was a big global event. Normalisation can also be seen on an individual level. If you go out for dinner with people who do not drink this will impede your level of alcohol consumption. If you continue to associate with people who do not drink alcohol, over time your level of alcohol consumption will decrease. So normalisation can also occur with very small events that happen time and time again. There are thousands of people who get married or form romantic partnerships every year, and when you form a close bond with another person it is likely your behaviour will change. Say one partner might be very neat and the other a bit of a slob, so one or both partner’s behaviour will change and become more accommodative. Being a little bit neater might become normal behaviour, if not the partners would not be able to live together.

So let’s turn our attention to domestic violence. Say you went out on a date with someone, say to dinner, and half way through the meal your date threw a glass of wine at you. It would be very unlikely that you would ever go out on a date with that person every again. No, there is a set mechanism in domestic violence of gradually exposing the partner to increasing levels of violence. So initially when an issue arises both partners will discuss the issue and concessions will be made. Surprisingly, it is partner who becomes violent who is usually the most accommodating. Healthy discussion eventually gives way to heated discussion and eventually to yelling at each other. Now at some point in time both partners will end up yelling at each other. Yelling has become normalised. The process continues to the next stage; whereas the violent partner might have been able to get their way by yelling, yelling no longer works. So the next stage is physical violence, maybe not throwing a glass of wine, or punching the other person, it might be standing over the other person in an aggressive way, but physical violence none the less. This is the danger point; if this violent or even overly aggressive behaviour is normalised the cycle will just keep progressing. The end point can be very violent behaviour where one partner is at great risk. I am not saying yelling at each other is acceptable, but physical intimidation is a red flag. I have not included emotional abuse for simplicity in this article and I will cover it in later writings, because this is much more complicated.

Sure there will be other factors involved in domestic violence, such as financial entrapment or isolation  and the explanation above is a little simplistic. But the above it is valid explanation.

So all this starts with the potential partner giving the appearance of not being violent. If fact these people can often be very charming. The police have a brochure called “Charming But Dangerous”. This raises the question ‘if these people can be charming, why do they choose not be charming’? The answer to this question is relevant to both parties. Firstly, the partner who is potentially violent is hiding their true self. As much as they would like to yell and lash out they are able to control their emotions, but this control cannot last; they are a boiling kettle struggling to keep the steam in. Alternatively, the potentially violent partner has difficulty operating in social situations. In situations involving little stress these people can operate but they will crumble under stress. Although a new romantic partnership can be a great thing it can be very stressful.  In other blogs I will discuss this in more detail.

You might say that this is all pretty obvious. However herein lies the danger, people get sucked in because the process is so subtle. It is like people drowning in shallow water at the beach, they cannot perceive they are in danger. Very few people begin a relationship with someone they think might be violent and we all think we are able to spot people who might be violent. However, when someone starts off as being very charming and we want to retain this opinion. This also applies to people outside the relationship such as family and friends. People get confused when this charming person begins to act badly and we are likely to excuse this bad behaviour rather than change our opinion. Before people realise what has happened the normalisation process has sucked them in.

So the theme of this article is that domestic violence is a process. People are drawn into unhealthy relationships. People are introduced to increasing levels of violence and violence becomes normalised.

Pressure to Conform

In the 1960’s Stanley Milgram began a series of experiments. These experiments were fiendishly simple but the results shocked the world of social science. Milgram took two volunteers off the street; the volunteers were told they were to be involved in an experiment on enhanced learning. One volunteer would act as the teacher and the other would act as the pupil. The volunteers drew straws to determine who would be the pupil and who would be the teacher. The pupil was lead into a small room and strapped into a chair and electrodes were attached. The only other furniture in the room was a small table with a loud speaker and a microphone. This was done in full view of the teacher. The teacher was then lead to other room. In this room were a similar table, loud speaker and microphone, however the table had an electrical panel on it. The panel had a series of switches marked form one volt to 450 volts and a red button that delivered an electric shock to the pupil. The only other furniture was a little table and chair where the person running the experiment wearing a white lab coat sat taking notes. The procedure was explained to the teacher; the teacher was given a stack of cards with the name of five items on each card. The teacher was to read the items to the pupil and the pupil was to repeat the five items. If the pupil provided the wrong answer the teacher would administer and electric shock and flip the switch to the next higher voltage. The experiment proceeded. The pupil was easily able to the repeat the items on the card, at first, however the items became more difficult and the pupil would begin to make mistakes. At the lowest voltages the pupil did not seem to even notice, but after a little while, when the voltage was increased to about four to five volts, the pupil would say that he was feeling the shock. However with increasing voltage the pupil would complain that it was becoming painful. If the teacher questioned the experimenter, the experimenter replied “the experiment requires you continue”. If the teacher continued the pupil soon began crying out in pain with the increasing voltage. Again if the teacher questioned the experimenter, the experimenter would repeat “the experiment requires you continue”. Eventually the pupil would become quite, indicating the pupil had passed out. Again if the teacher questioned the experimenter, the experimenter would repeat “the experiment requires you continue”. How many teachers actually got all the way to the fatal 450 volts, well it was about 60%.

Now of course the experiment was a fake. One volunteer was an actor and the drawing of the straw was rigged so the actor was always selected as the pupil. The electrical panel was a fake and the electrodes connected to the pupil were fakes as well. However the teacher did not know this and years later several teachers were contacted and they were still very upset about the whole experience, they reported difficulty in sleeping and other trauma symptoms. Today the experiment would be unethical, because of the psychological pressure it placed on the volunteers. However, the fact remains that within about 30 to 45 minutes after walking off the street, and with minimal encouragement, 60% of the teachers were delivering a fatal electric shock.

Milgram was interested in how people were influenced by authority; however it also shows how easily people can be influenced by outside forces. If people lacked the reserve not to electrocute the poor pupil, how are people going to resist the myriad of daily pressures pulling them in all different directions. In terms of health and fitness, how are people going to resist that extra piece of cake or wine over lunch. Personal trainers should always be aware of the social pressures placed on people who are trying to improve their fitness levels. In other blogs I have written about how goal setting is vital in fitness regimes.

Existential, Identity, Relationship and Meaning

Now, identity relationships and meaning these are topics that really speak about motivation. Existentialists see identity tied into our relationships to other people, proposition 3. This ultimately leads to a search for meaning in our life’s, proposition 4. From a health and fitness perspective, it is quite worthwhile spending some time thinking about these things, as it can allow us to make realistic decisions about how we will change.

Although existentialists spend a lot of time talking about identity, this blog will reduce the argument a little. Image I was sitting in a bare room by myself, no windows, no furniture and one cold electric light, I am totally alone with no interaction with anybody or anything; do I have an identity in this situation? The existentialist would say no, the existentialist would say my identity flows from others. To an extent our identity is simply the sum of our past experiences and the expectations placed upon us by other. Few of us recognise how much of our identity is a reflection of others. Hence we condemn ourselves to stay as we are and completely rule out any possibility of growth. We become trapped in our habits and the expectations we feel others impose on us. For health and fitness the implications are obvious. This leads to a search for meaning

The final proposition, proposition4, in existentialism is the search for meaning. This might sound very abstract however it is very applicable to people who find themselves stuck in a rut, for people who want to change but keep returning to their old habits. If people cannot understand what gives their lives meaning they have nothing but old imposed values and habits to rely on. People cling to old habits and values because these are the only things giving meaning to people’s lives. This is the crunch, rather than having an understanding of ourselves and our values and using this to formulate our actions we work the other round. As an example you may have hear someone who has lost their job or been divorced. However often these people have successfully moved, they have a new job or a new partner and yet they keep banging on about how they were shafted in the past. It is this feeling of injustice that gives meaning to their lives. And at the end of the day this is the easiest thing to do, finding true meaning in our lives is extremely difficult.  I would encourage everybody to read my next blog on work done by a researcher named Milgram.

So how do we put all this together to improve our health and fitness? An obvious answer would be to surround ourselves with fit people. This is not a bad strategy and probably almost unavoidable if we join a gym or a boot camp. However the issue might be that we reflect what is suitable level of fitness from the very fit. It is quite common to see teenage boys in the gym trying to lift too much weight because they see other people doing a 200 lb bench press. The answer as proposed by existentialists is to explore ourselves and what we are capable of. Now after banging on about existentialism for a couple of blogs, in the next blog I will put forward a goal setting system that takes into account what meaning we put into our lives.

Existential Goals Proposition One and Two

You might expect to read in a blog on health, fitness and goal setting motivational stories extolling people t o run marathons, swim oceans or climb mountains. You might expect to hear that you can overcome anything obstacle and achieve the unimaginable. Some self help books make wild claims that we can be anything we want to be, we just have to want it bad enough. You might see advertisements for business programs purporting that anybody can be a multi-millionaire in two weeks by share trading. Well if that was true, if everybody could be a multi-millionaire, you would have to pay Jim’s Mowing fifty thousand dollars to mow your lawn, clearly not everybody can be a multi-millionaire. This is not what existentialism goal setting about. Existential goal setting is based on self-awareness and understanding our limits; the ultimate limit being life is short and you are dead for a long time. In this philosophy goal setting becomes essential, because we limited opportunity of goals to chose from.

The first proposition is self-awareness. We do not have unlimited capacity to do everything we want to do in life. As an example, if you want to run a marathon that is great and I would not dissuade you, but by choosing to run a marathon you must give up other things in life to put in the training. The existentialist would ask the basic question “what do we really want out of life”? Once we have answered that question then we are in the position to decide how we will use our precious time. Being self aware means that we can accept our limits yet still feel worthwhile; we are also free from accepting the limits place on us by other people and society. Surprisingly, it is only by being self aware that we can fully aware of all the choices available to us. A common excuse for failing to complete a goal is that “I was too busy” or “I started training but I did not have time, the kids demand a lot of time”. These are all examples of failing to understand our limitations and or to fully committing to a project. If a project or goal truly answered the question “what do I want out of life” you would be so motivated to achieve that goal that you make time, you would organise the kids so you had time.

The second proposition is freedom and responsibility. If we are free to choose between all the available options in life and hence we must be responsible for our choices. Sounds a bit harsh, but stay with for a while. There are many things in life that we have no choice over; soldiers coming back from war don’t have no choice in acquiring post traumatic stress disorder. However this is an extreme case and many things in life we do have a choice about, but only if we accept the responsibility of making those choices. The alternative is making non-decisions. By doing nothing or procrastinating over what we should do we are actually making a choice, we have chose the status quo. As an example you might never have considered yourself a good runner hence you might never have tried to run a marathon, you have made a non-choice not to run. Strangely it is only when we accept that we are the result of our previous choices that we can put the past behind us. Once we put the past behind and accept the responsibility that we  must and will make choices about the future can we really appreciate what options we do have to make our lives better.

Existentialism has been used in a range of areas from psychotherapy, counselling to sports psychology and it might sound a bit sombre. However for health and fitness it is quite a simple process to apply. This blog is a brief introduction to existentialism and in the next blog we will talk about two other propositions of existentialism, identity and creating new meaning after which I will present a simple goal setting structure. However the main points to date are to be self aware to our limitations and the real alternatives we can choose from. Next, to need to accept responsibility for the choices we have made and to understand we need to make choices to improve our future.

Life Goals Health and Fitness

In the last blog we spoke about existentialism; the meaning of life and how we define many aspects of our own life. In this blog we will discuss how existentialism helps define motivation and behaviour. But first we need to understand two things; that many of our behaviours are sub-conscious and secondly that we learn many of our behaviours. Further, we can sub-consciously learn behaviours and enact these behaviours. To create an example, young girls learn that  females use makeup; girls might have to learn how and what makeup to use but rarely do young girls make a conscious decision about wearing makeup. In fact a lot of what we do each day is a matter of automatic programming and happens sub-consciously. A human operating on automatic pilot is not always a bad thing, if we had to consciously think about our every action we would not be able cope.

So how does this affect our health and fitness? Once we create a definition of ourselves that definition becomes part of our personality and it is very hard to change that definition. To use the example above, most women would find it difficult to not wear makeup; the term “difficult” needs to be explained. People will go to extraordinary lengths to maintain their definition of themselves and as some of our behaviour is subconscious we don’t even realise what we are doing. Hence some of the behaviours we use to protect our definition of ourselves appear to lag logic. The first is denial; we can simply deny the facts. So, a health example might be that we refuse to accept that we have put on a bit of weight or that we might not be as fit as we could be. As we put on weight or lose fitness incrementally denial is a tailor made excuse mechanism.

A more insidious form of defence is sublimation, where we convert a negative into a positive. So, someone who lacks confidence or needs constant attention might act out as being as quite outgoing, even outrageously so. Often people who are unfit will make jokes about themselves, they might brag about how many beers they can drink. Hence, the behaviour becomes central to our personality. Fortunately once people understand what is going on they can change their behaviour. A very successful strategy is find behaviour and attitudes which are more pleasing and adds to our lives. A realistic example is someone who is always trying to impress other people, telling other people all the extraordinary thing they have done; a much better strategy is to talk to people about what the other person has done.

At an even more detrimental level is self sabotage. People actually sabotage their own efforts to get fit and there are several reasons, but we will just go into two. People become very attached to their perceptions of themselves, they feel that if they change their whole life will collapse and that up to date their whole would have been a lie if they change. Example, someone is overweight and makes excuses for being overweight, let’s say the whole family is overweight, if that person then loses weight the excuses that they have used for so long are no longer valid. People don’t want their excuses to be shown to be false, and they don’t want to accept that for all those years they could have had a normal weight. Seems strange, but many of these processes go on at a sub-conscious level.

Stepping it up again, self sabotage is often related to “fear of failure”. Again these processes go on sub-consciously, a person is so afraid of failing that they set up excuses beforehand. People might set unrealistic goals for themselves to begin with so that when the project fails they can blame the goals rather than their efforts. People might have difficulty starting a project, they procrastinate; the procrastination is all about being worried that they will fail. Fear of failure is a difficult thing to combat on your own and you might need some help. In all the above situation the goal is to preserve the status quo. Life goals that would drive us forward and improve our life have been sublimated with barriers.

Of course people should not talk themselves into a psychological condition that they do not have. Often people eat ice cream when they are trying to lose weight, because ice cream tastes nice.

However the start to deal with all these problems is action. Set small, even trivial goals, but keep lifting the bar. Breaking tasks into time intervals helps some people. So instead of setting a goal of running 5 kms, set a goal of running for a minute walking for two minutes, and then increase this to running for one minute, fifteen seconds etc. I know this blog is headed life goals but the first thing is action. Once you are moving then we can talk about life goals and that is what we will be doing in the next blog.

Life, Health and Fitness

Recently I was training a young chap and I asked him why he wanted to get fit and he answered “I want to look good for the chicks”. He was expressing an existential motivation. Existentialism deals with the meaning of life. Woody Allen once quipped “I took a test in existentialism. I left all the answers blank and still got 100%”. I have to admit that existentialism is a bit like that. So how does an obtuse form of philosophy have anything to do with health and fitness?

Existentialism is all about the individual and the choices the individual makes in trying to construct a life. An existential philosopher would use terms like “confusion”, “searching” or “life definition”. So we humans are all confused until we define our own life. Existentialism cannot apply to a creature like a fish; a fish swims around the ocean eating, until it is ultimately eaten by a bigger fish, it does not consider its role in life it is simply programmed to react. Now existentialism might be a bit fancy when trying to explain health and fitness. But not to worry, the point being that when we are talking about health and fitness we need to consider our whole life. What choices or non-choices have we made in regard to our health and how do these choices affect our life?

We define many aspects of our lives. You might define yourself as someone who can cook, for instance. Once you define an aspect of our lives you put considerable effort into building and protecting that aspect. So in the example of cooking, you might purchase cook books, try different recipes and actually build your cooking ability. The reverse is also true, if you define a negative aspect of your live you will protect that definition of yourself, it is almost like you don’t want to let go of an excuse. So the classic example is someone who defines themselves as not being fit. So these people will join a gym, take on a personal trainer and their fitness level will increase, no surprise there, what happens next is surprising. Once people who have clear definition of themselves as being unfit start to get fit they will sabotage their health and fitness routines. They will go to great lengths, subconsciously, to protect their definition of themselves. How we define ourselves is very powerful.
By taking the time to think about our life and what we want out of life we can be much more determined and deliberate in the choices we make; we can be more motivated. The young lad at the start of this story had very strong motivations to get fit. However this benefit is in the distance. Like so many aspects of being fit and healthy the benefits are in the future and therefore cannot be fully appreciated by the unfit. So you might have been told that you will feel so much better when you are fit, which is true and for some people this might be motivating. However for some people the exertion and pain of training might be too much and they never get to appreciate the feelings of being fit, hence motivation is lost. The aim of existential is to define motivation in terms of larger life goals.

Now this is not to say there are not limits on what we can achieve, someone with degenerative knee issues should not be trying to run marathons. So how to stay motivated? There are two basic strategies. We need to understand how we define ourselves and how these definitions affect our behaviour. The existential theory of behaviour will be explored in the next few blogs.

Limits of Evolutionary Psychology

Evolutionary psychology is a school of psychology that relates human traits and behaviour to how humans evolved on the plains of Africa over hundreds of thousands of years; it is based around reproduction and the propagation of useful genes. The term “survival of the fittest” only applies to the point where individuals need to be fit and healthy to reproduce. In fact reproduction is the most detrimental and risky thing any one individual can undertake. For males it means competing with other males, it might involve travelling long distances alone all of which could, and often did, result in death. For females, could you image giving birth without any medical assistance in the bush, and that is before taking into account the risk of being less mobile for several months whilst pregnant with predators all around. Evolutionary psychology does explain quite nicely many behaviours and traits that are so very detrimental to health and fitness in modern humans. It explains why we love to eat fat and sugar, why young men are so reckless and are over represented in road fatalities for instance.

Of course evolutionary psychology does not explain all human behaviour. In response to the many comments about my earlier blogs on how evolutionary survival strategies determined different roles for males and females, I can say categorically  that ten thousand years ago humans did not wear clothes and so evolutionary psychology has nothing to say on who does the ironing. Who does the bulk of domestic chores is purely a determination of culture. The military, which is very male dominated, seems very keen on clean well ironed uniforms and neatly made beds, which proves men can complete these tasks just as well as women.

Also, some groups have tried to link evolution to race. From an evolutionary psychology perspective there is no such thing as race. Often this will be met with statements link ‘but I can see obvious differences between races’. Ok, let’s consider an example; a clansman from central Africa is very tall, dark skinned and has frizzy hair whilst a Japanese person is short, paled skin and has straight hair. Whilst it is true that if you consider people across vast distances you will see differences, what this argument does not take into account is the myriad of variations in people as you travel between Africa and Japan, say. As we move north from Africa we begin to see skin colour lightening with a decrease in the intensity of sun light. The further north we go the quicker this change occurs, due to the increasing angle of the sun. It is impossible to pick a point where people change skin colour from dark to light. Height is also interesting; it is the perfect example of an interaction between genes and environment. At the end of WWll the average height of Japanese males was estimated at 160 cm, today the average is 171 cm. A combination of better diet, better medical care and a preference for height in a partner have all contributed to making people much taller very quickly. So the difference in height between the African clansman and a Japanese person is better accounted for by culture and diet interacting with genes than by a declaration of race.

One final word on evolutionary psychology, there are some things that evolution explains very well. From a bio-mechanics point of view walking on four legs is much easier on a body than walking on two legs. Humans pay a big price for walking on two legs, our backs are more prone to stress, human knees carry twice the weight of a creature on all fours and our shoulders have become so flimsily that they dislocate easily. But of course the gains of walking on two legs were huge, for instance we developed very flexible hands. Most primates can stand on two feet and have extremely strong bodies, they can hang form a single hand or foot for hours, but they cannot stand for very long. That is because to stand you need very well developed gluteus maximus muscle (a strong bottom) and core muscles to support the back. It took countless generations, thousands of years, for human to develop the ability to stand. It only took a few decades for humans to send all day sitting down, hence all the back and knee problems in modern society. So evolutionary psychology can be very useful but we need to careful to use a scientifically supportive approach.

Gender Issues for Men: Stress

In a previous blog we spoke about two different theories of gender; social learning theory and evolutionary theory. The so-called nature or nurture argument. However the current thinking is of a Gene-Environment (G-E) interaction; gender, behaviour or personality is not all nature or all nurture but an interaction of genes and the environment. The G-E interaction also solves one problem of evolution theory. In Darwin’s original theory of evolution the time required for species to evolve seemed a bit long; it was clear that species could evolve very quickly.

In social learning theory males and females learn their role in society, boys play rugby and girls play the more gentile game of netball. Hence boys learn not only the rules of rugby but how to be rough and tumble blokes. Girls learn how to be sporty but gentile. It would be considered unseemly to see a couple of girls punching it out on the netball court. The G-E interaction sees learning differently. Learning changes us biologically; some environmental interactions actually turn genes on and off. Humans all have thousands of genes many which do not seem to do anything at al. The latest gene research suggests that many of these genes are lying in reserve and are turned on (or off) under certain situations. As an example a group of genes has been identified which appeared to how no function, except if the owner of those genes smoke, in that case there is almost a 90% chance of contracting lung cancer ever with light smoking. So in the traditional Darwin theory of evolution, Zebras are chased by lions so the fastest Zebras escape and each generation of Zebras gets a little bit faster. The G-E interaction perspective says that if Zebras are chased by predators, run fast genes are turned on and the very next generation of Zebras have run fast genes that are turned on at birth with allows for the develop of a Zebra much faster than the parents.

So the question is, if Zebras can faster why don’t they just run faster? Because running fast has its own problems; bones have to be lighter which can break more easily, the metabolic rate has to be higher which means more food, etc. The other question is how does this apply to men’s health? Humans also have genes that turn on and off due to environmental conditions and stress has been identified as such an environmental condition. Again as one example, a gene called MOA has been identified with higher levels of aggression and interestingly occurring in males but not in females. Further not all males have this gene; boys who have this gene and are brought up in supportive non stressful environments do not seem to have any problems with aggression. However boys with the gene who are raised in families where there is domestic violence, marital stress or in communities riven by conflict have higher levels of aggression and criminal convictions. So cast your mind back 10,000 years to the plains of Africa where troops of humans are wandering around the bush. Females, the most valuable members of the troop, are huddled in the centre of the territory and expendable males patrol the edges of the territory. In times of scarcity the interaction between human troops and even troops of other animals such as baboons will be much more violent as each troop is either trying to defend their territory and resources or to steal resources from other troops. Of course fighting with other troops is not always beneficial, especially when simple trade began. Also aggressive males need stronger upper bodies, requiring more food and diverting internal resources away from more useful muscles such as legs. So a gene like MOA makes perfect evolutionary sense, allowing human males to evolve from being highly aggressive to more co-operative and visa versa quite quickly.

So again, how does all of this affect men’s health and fitness? Prolonged exposure to stress is unhealthy and that men seem to suffer from more stress related conditions than women. Now this might be cultural, yoga and meditation classes which are great for stress relieve are usually populated with women not men. However research is beginning to show that genetic factors allow men to better cope with stress in the short term but suffer in the longer term. Generally, exercise is considered good for stress relieve however some interesting research is questioning this. When you see men exercise in the gym, there is a good chance they are doing bench presses, bicep curls etc, all the exercises to build upper body strength. Remember upper body strength is associated with aggression and stress. Rather than being stress relieving these upper body strength gym routines might actually be turning on stress and aggression response genes, although more research is required. The bottom line is men are very susceptible to stress and should be doing specific stress reduction routines such as meditation or yoga.

Gender: Health and Fitness

The next few blogs will begin to talk about gender issues in health and fitness. However first we must define a two terms, sex and gender. Sex is our little boy bits and our little girl bits and mostly this is determined pre-birth. Gender is our role in society.

The social learning theory of gender is quite straight forward; we learn our gender, and therefore our role in society, from the community that surrounds us. Little boys are dressed in blue and are given toy hammers and toy trucks to play with and little girls are dressed in pink and are given toy tea sets. There is a classic experiment. A group of babies ranging from fifteen months to two years was recruited, 50% were boys and 50% were girls. Half the boys were dressed in blue jump suits and half in pink, similarly for the girls. So half the children were dressed in gender appropriate colour and half were not. Next a group of university students were recruited, and told that the children were being used in a study and that the students were need to mind individual children for fifteen minutes between tests. The students were placed in a room with one chair, soft carpet and different toys, all designed  to encourage the students to play with the children. There were cameras in the room and the students were told these cameras were required for O.H.S. reasons. In fact the student’s interaction with the children was the subject of the experiment. Of course the students gave the children gender appropriate toys based on the colour of the jumpsuit. Even though half the children were not dressed in gender appropriate colours the children appeared happy to play with whatever toy they were given.  However the behaviour of the students towards the children was quite different depending on the colour of the jumpsuit. Children in pink were held longer and more often. Students waited longer to attend to crying child dressed in blue and tended to use verbal reassurances before touching or holding the child dressed in blue. This experiment has been repeated many times and the results have always been similar, supporting the view that children are treated differently depending on their gender from an early age and that the distinction is quite arbitrary. Boys are expected to be more independent than girls and better able to cope.

A quite different view of gender is the evolutionary psychology perspective, which says that our gender roles are partly based on sexual differences. Now stay with this one for a while before making up your mind. As a general comment for all animals, males can never be sure that any offspring are the product of their genes, where as females can always be sure that any offspring are there’s. Also the opportunity for females to reproduce is limited; once a female is pregnant they must wait until the offspring is suckled before reproducing again. Whereas males do not have these restrains on their reproductive opportunities and males can reproduce for a longer proportion of their lives than females. So if a male wants to ensure that his genes are propagated his best strategy is to have as many mating as possible and not invest time in any offspring. For a female the strategy is completely different, a female’s best strategy is to very selective about who they chose as a mate and invest all their resources into ensuring any off spring survive, particularly female offspring.  So you might ask, thousands of years ago on the plains of Africa, who were the most valuable member of any troop of humans? Well it was females of reproductive age, then female children, then males, because only reproductive females could ensure the longevity of any one troop. Hence it makes evolutionary sense to group females together in the relative safety of the centre of the troop’s territory and have males patrol the edges of the territory for danger. If males get killed by marauding baboons so what? Also being at the extremities of the territory gives males better mating opportunities with females from other troops. A high risk of death but higher mating opportunities, for a male this is no contest. So how does this relate to gender, health and fitness? Evolutionary theory would suggest that females are geared towards longevity and looking after themselves, where as males are not.

Over the next few blogs both these theories will be related to modern day issues of health and fitness.

Positive Attitude versus an Adaptive Attitude

Being positive and happy is a good thing, but is being unhappy and negative always a bad thing? Evolutionary psychology would suggest that a positive or negative attitude is neither good nor bad, it depends on the situation.

To refresh, evolutionary psychology suggests that not only do creatures physically adapt to their environment they also adapt behaviourally. So when we look at a lizard that is green it is easy to understand that the lizard has evolved a green skin so as to blend into green leaves. However species also develop certain behaviours. Green lizards also understand that they must stay in the trees, if they venture out onto yellow sand they are instantly recognisable to predators. Most lizards are born from eggs with no care from the mother after birth, so how do they know this behaviour; it is encoded in their DNA. The behaviour of hiding in trees is as important to the lizard as being green and is a product of evolution.

The same process applies to humans; we have evolved behaviours that helped us survive. Each year thousands of humans are killed and maimed by cars and yet we are scared of spiders and snakes. This is because ten thousand years ago spiders and snakes were a real threat to humans. If there had been cars zooming around the plains of Africa ten thousand years ago we probably would be scared of cars as well.

The point being that negative emotions such as being scared, running away from danger were very valuable. Some researchers even think that depression might even have evolved as a response to times of scarcity, allowing humans to slow down and wait it out until good times returned. Hence being sad, frightened or unhappy is not allows bad; it might be the signal to our bodies to unleash a great human evolutionary advantage, the ability to emotionally adapt.

Of course we are living in a modern world and some of our inherited behaviours don’t serve us well today. Being depressed and sitting in a cave waiting for the monsoon rains is not really going to help. Being sad and eating a tub of ice cream again is not going to help it is maladaptive; it makes sense from an evolutionary psychology perspective. So we need to understand that we feel sad for instance and we may need to sit quickly for a short time and absorb that sadness. But, we also must override some of our natural instincts and use this time to change and adapt to our new situation.

So it has been a long way around to make my point. Humans do not always act logically. We often fall back onto old evolutionary behaviours which are maladaptive. We often feel that we are doing is getting us nowhere and yet we keep doing it. The good news is that humans are very adaptive. Once we understand that our behaviour is not serving us well we can adapt and change and we will feel very happy with our new adaptive behaviour. However it takes conscious effort we need to recognise our behaviour and plan to change.

Just one note, for some people maladaptive behaviour is so ingrained that they might need help to understand their behaviour and implement change.

Does it make sense to eat fat and sugar?

Does it make sense to eat a load of fat and sugar and spend the rest of the day lying on the lounge? Form a health and fitness perspective maybe not, however from an evolutionary psychology perspective it makes perfect sense. Remember that evolutionary psychology is based on the fact that humans evolved on the African plains tens of thousands of years ago, and that much of our current behaviour is based on those early survival strategies.

In the wild there is very little fat available. All possible prey is usually very lean; after all a fat zebra that could not run quickly would soon become dinner. If you every have every watched a David Attenborough show you might have noticed that when lions catch something, say a zebra, they don’t start by eating rump steak or eye fillet. The lions fight over the live or the kidney because these are the fatty parts of the catch. For a predator eating fat makes evolutionary sense as fat is energy.

Human behaviour and sugar are even more intertwined in our evolutionary past. The only sugar available in the wild is via fruit and fruiting plants and animals evolved together. Plants encase their seeds in soft fleshly fruits. Animals eat the fruit and excrete the seeds in a clump of soft damp poo, far from the parent plant. For the animals in the wild sugar is an incredibly valuable food source providing instant energy. Plants that offered the sweetest fruits stood the best chance of having their seeds distributed. Of course co-evolution meant that over time the sweetness of fruits increased and some animals, humans included, specialised in eating fruits. Of course in the wild fruit was only available for a very short period in spring and early summer.

So we are genetically programmed to eat fat and sugar. It appears that evolution that served us well on the plains of Africa when food was at a premium now works against us. However recent research might come to the rescue. It appears that when we eat fat we quickly become full; there is a limit to how much fat we can eat. The same seems to apply with sugar. As an experiment try eating a couple of spoons full of sugar and you will quickly realise there is a limit. However, and I not recommending this, you will be able to drink several cans of soft drink, with about ten teaspoons of sugar in each can. Recent research is showing that foods that combine both fat and sugar confuses our bodies and the automatic shut off circuit does not seem to activate. In nature, foods that combine high levels of both fat and sugar are extremely difficult to find. In the western diet food that contains both fat and sugar are very very common, as an example, ice cream. Ice cream is basically dairy fat, and sugar and we can eat buckets full of ice cream.

So although we are genetically programmed to eat fat and sugar it is processed food that causes us problems.

Evolutionary Psychology

Evolutionary Psychology is simply the application of the theory of evolution to personality and behaviour. Firstly, there are multiple theories of personality and behaviour. The brain is very complex and the functionality of the brain is not fully understood. Some theories of personality seem to explain behaviour better than other in certain situations. Hence we can pick and choose whatever theory of personality seems to be the most appropriate at any particular time. As I explained in an earlier blog even the definition of personality is somewhat difficult. We often describe personality in terms of behaviour. If someone acts aggressively we might say they have an aggressive personality, the problem arises then if that same person acts in a co-operative manner; has their personality changed?

The theory of evolution, or natural selection, states that not all individuals in any species are identical; and those individuals who are more suited to their environment will do better and reproduce more often. Hence, successful genes are transmitted to the next generation. Over time, successive generations will become more adapted to their environment. Note, evolution relies upon reproduction not survival; it is quite possible that very very risky behaviour that might result is death could lead to more reproduction opportunities. The Black Widow spider is called the black widow because the female spider eats the male after mating.

Initially, the theory of evolution focused on the physical properties of species. Charles Darwin measured the differences in the size, speed, colour and diet of the closely related species to show how different species were adapted to their environment. However, psychologists wondered if behaviour and personality could also be a result of evolution. Once psychologists began to consider personality as a result of evolution the supportive examples began to come quickly and easily. As an example, many animals rely on camouflage to hide from predators; however this camouflage only works if the animal remains still and remains in an area that supports the camouflage. A green tree frog blends into green foliage; however the same frog on a sandy beach would stand out and be an easy meal for some predator.

Psychologists then began to wonder if human behaviour was also influenced by evolution and if behaviour could be in inherited. Some of the findings about the inheritability of behaviour are a little controversial and require more time than available in this blog to explain. However, study of identical twins have shown that many attitudes can be inherited including; belief in religion, support for political parties, even crime appears to be inherited. The gold standard of this type of research is to find identical twins raised apart and then to measure their attitudes and behaviour, of course identical twins raised apart is incredibly rare. However, where identical twins are raised apart the similarity in behaviour, attitudes and life styles is remarkable. Hence, there is very good scientific evidence that much of our behaviour is encoded in our genes.

The question is how does evolutionary psychology effect our health and fitness outcomes? Also if behaviour is encoded into people genes are people really able to change? In the next few blogs I will attempt to answer these questions in simple, not to scientific language.

The Psychology of Personality

It might seem funny reading about the psychology of personality in a blog about health and fitness. However it is our personality that really creates who we are. If you were describe yourself you might use a range of physical descriptions, such as age, height, weight etc. However, eventually you would start describing yourself in terms of your behaviour, what you do for a job, what your hobbies are, likes and dislikes etc. So much of you, is your personality and how you approach life, it is therefore not surprising that personality effects our health in two ways. Firstly, personality effects our behaviour, our motivation and how we approach problems. Hence, our personality effects the health and fitness choices we make. Secondly, research has shown that certain personality types directly effects our health. A term used by psychologists is psycho-education. Psycho-education is a process where people are educated about their personalities, the aim being that if people understand their personalities they can take more control over their lives.

Personality is a funny thing, we all intuitively know what personality is and yet it is very hard to define.  Personality is often defined in terms of behaviour. Someone might be said to have a happy personality, so you expect this person to be happy. However what happens at a funeral you would not expect a person with a happy personality to be happy at a funeral. So does personality rely on the situation, do we have different personalities in different situations?

The other thing about personality is that it originates in the brain. The brain is made up of billions of neurons. Now I won’t go into the detail about neurons, you can simply ‘google’ neuron to learn more, but take it from me a neuron is not all that complex in the way it operates. A neuron is a simple switch, on/off. The operation of a neuron is similar in many ways to a computer, a series of switches are either set to zero or one. In fact scientists build computers that mimic the operation of the brain. The problem comes when we try to understand how the brain forms though and creative ideas. If the neurons are so simple, how can the brain be so complicated and hard to understand? Hence, it is intrinsically difficult to understand personality and, importantly, why there is not just one theory of personality.

Over the next few blogs I will present several different theories of personality. The important thing to remember is that no one theory of personality is right or wrong. Also, just about all the theories I will discuss have some common features. It is the case that different theories of personality tend to describe some behaviour better than others. The theories that I will present will include, Behaviouralism, Social Learning, Evolutionary Psychology and the Narrative perspective. The aim is allow readers of these blogs to look at their behaviour in a slightly different ways and hopefully that will allow readers to be better equipped to make more appropriate fitness and health choices.

First Impressions and Body Image

First impressions count; beauty is only skin deep; don’t judge a book by its cover; or we might hear that a certain politician has charisma, whatever that means. Body image is very much talked about but what does psychology say about body image and how does body image affect our health and fitness?

There are several perspectives of personality and behaviour; however when we are talking about processing of imagery, the Evolutionary Perspective of personality can be compared with actual brain imagery. Firstly, have you ever noticed that dogs are very good at catching tennis balls? This is because dogs only see in black and white; hence they can process movement very quickly. Humans have colour vision and that slows down our reaction time. Also processing colour image needs a larger brain and a larger brain needs a lot of energy to operate. In evolutionary terms it is very expensive to have a brain.

So what are the evolutionary advantages of having colour vision over say a better sense of smell? Ten thousand years ago on the plains of Africa, which is really yesterday in evolutionary terms, humans we able to defeat the camouflage strategy of other animals.  So when a human saw glimpse of coloured fur in the underbrush the human was able to detect whether the animal was prey or predator. Sure a dog’s sense of smell is very sensitive but if the dog is downwind of another animal its sense of smell is defeated. However as this judgement between predator or prey had to be made quickly humans became to rely on first impressions. So the bad news is that we are genetically programmed to judge things on very little visual information. We very much rely on first impressions.

There is some good news. Humans are much more attuned to danger than to reward, after all if a hunter was to mistake an antelope as a lion and runs way he is missing out on a meal. However if the hunter mistakes a lion as an antelope then he is the meal. So by simply smiling at someone and saying there name you are going a long way to creating a good impression. Secondly, in most situations first impressions fade and humans begin to process other information.

The bad news is that we humans worry too much about the impressions we make. Because we are wearing a shirt that might be a little creased or because we have some other minor blemish we withdraw within ourselves and we disengage with other people. Hence, ironically, we end up not providing other people with the information they need to make a more informed decision about who we are.

How does this all apply to health and fitness? Firstly we unduly stress ourselves about the image we are presenting to other people. Some people might feel uncomfortable exercising in gyms, we are always comparing ourselves to other people in the gym. Our evolutionary adaptive behaviour of looking out for danger from all quarters has become maladaptive in our modern world; we are looking out for threats that are just not there. In the next few blogs I will outline some simple strategies on how to avoid these evolutionary pitfalls.

Who Do You Think You Are?

You are who you think other people think you are!

This is probably one of the most well known phases in Social Psychology, if not the most confusing.

The phase refers to our image of ourselves, and is sometime referred to as “the looking glass self”. If you were to look into a mirror you would see an exact representation of yourself. Of course when you look into the mirror you interpret what you see. Your attention is drawn to all the little things you are not happy with, the little pimple, maybe a grey hair. Or maybe you might think your shoulders or biceps look great after a couple of months of weight lifting, a little vain perhaps. The point is your impression of yourself is not the exact representation presented in the mirror.

The same process happens when you meet people face-to-face. You project an image of yourself onto the other person. Like a mirror you read back your own impression of yourself. Without the other person doing anything much, you interpret reactions and non-reactions as confirmation of your own impression of yourself. For example if you think “most people like me” every time someone says “hello” you might read that as “they are saying hello because they like me”.

Also the process is dynamic. People react to the image you project. To use the example above, if you truly believe in the phase “most people like me” people are actually more likely to like you. People sub-consciously read your projected image and react accordingly. Psychologists have included this interaction process into a theory of personality, the Social Learning perspective of personality. In other words we learn our personality. All the thousands of interactions over a lifetime contribute to the formation of our personality.

So how does this help with fitness and health? Our image of ourselves is one of the key determinates of our health and fitness. People with positive self images seem able to look at themselves in the mirror and make a realistic assessment of themselves and decide to make changes without too much emotional distress. People with positive self images, often don’t have as fixed image of themselves; they view themselves as changeable. After all this is process of personal growth. So how do we develop a positive self image?

Over the next few weeks I will write various suggestions on how to develop a self image that is primed for personal growth. However the first step is to take some positive action, it doesn’t have to be anything big, in fact I am going to suggest something small, the smaller the better. As an example it might be eating a piece of fruit or a vegetable for morning tea. Then start describing yourself as a person who eats fruit and vegetables for morning tea. Over the next few weeks this blog will present some of the theories developed by well known sports psychologists on how anyone can build a more positive self image.

I Don’t Feel Like Training Today!

There are times when we all feel like not training; after all we are only human. It is best to have a regular training routine and to stick to it. Rather than breaking your routine you might like to try just doing a very light workout. So if your regular routine is to go the gym and lift weights, still go to the gym but may be do lighter weights or more aerobic type exercise, but try to kept your regular routine going. You want to try to build a habit of exercising.

One mistake people can make is to try to do too much. If you are training very hard over a period of two to three months you body will peak. Building muscle is all about stretching, straining and micro-tearing your muscles. However your muscles can only do so much work before they need a rest. Try scheduling a rest week very couple of months. After your week’s rest don’t go straight back to your previous level of exertion. Cut it back a bit maybe to about 70% of your previous exertion level and start building up again over a number of weeks. As an example if you are doing 30 push ups, have a week’s rest, then start back at maybe 20 push ups, after a week build it up to say 25 push ups, etc. Not only will you avoid burn out you will see you performance improve.

Training is not only about building our muscles and lung capacity, it is also about training our mind. We need to set goals, and sometimes this means setting ambitious goals that we will fail to meet. If we were to meet every goal we every set there would be an argument that the goals are not ambitious enough. On the other hand we need to know when to give up, “it was a big ask and I gave it my best”. The important thing is to keep a realistic perspective on what is happening. Do you not feel like training because you are little more tired today than usual or is your training routine not really of interest to you anymore. If you have set an ambitious goal sometimes you might need to back away and then have another run at it.

The term a psychologist might use is a “Narrative”. Narrative theory is probably one of the most exciting new perspectives in psychology. This perspective on behaviour is not so much about our experiences but how we interpret them. So the above example of not wanting to train on a particular day could be interpreted in a number of ways. So again how does this influence our health, wellbeing and fitness? The way we interpret things is very likely to influence the way we behave in the future. So although we need to keep a realistic view of things, we should be concentrating on achievements and things that we enjoy. I am not saying that we should live in a world where everything is sweetness and light, bad happens we should. However we are more likely to be successful when we set goals and see those goals as part of a bigger picture.

How to stop snacking out of the Fridge!

Have you ever wonder how they train seals at the zoo, dogs to do tricks in movies or elephants to kick footballs? The trainers wait until the animals do something they want to encourage and then give the animal some food. So if an elephants happens to touch a football with it’s foot, it is given a food reward. After a short time the elephant is only given a reward if the elephant moves the ball with it’s foot. Pretty soon the elephants are playing football, kicking balls through goals etc. This is called Operant Conditioning.

Operant conditioning is part of the behavioural perspective of psychology. This perspective posits that behaviour is learned. At the time of birth we are all blank pieces of paper and all subsequent behaviour is learned. This perspective was popularised by a chap called B.F. Skinner in America in the 1950’s Skinner used birds to show how behaviour is learned when reinforced with food rewards.  Behaviouralists believe that there is no role for logic, thoughts or feelings in the understanding of behaviour. The only thing that needs to be considered is the environment, stimulus, reward and punishment. Whereas B.F. Skinner used direct rewards, in the form of bird food, other behaviouralists developed theories of social learning. Later researchers, such as Albert Bandura, completed experiments to show that behaviour could be learned simply by observing behaviour and physical rewards were not required. If an individual was to observe someone else being rewarded for performing a particular action then the individual is more likely to perform that behaviour.

So how does this relate to health and fitness? Because social learning is the basis for most advertising. In the standard add someone uses a product and is rewarded. Often this revolves around being in a friendly group when you purchase fast food or being admired because you have brought the right car. Does this work? Well advertising companies spend literally billions of dollars each year on advertising. In the case of fast food there is good research to suggest advertising suppresses our natural suspicions of fast food. We learn to eat to fast food without really thinking about it. We tend to switch from logical thought to automatic behaviour. Of course there are other things that cause us to eat, however, how we learn about food is vitally important.

There are other perspectives on behaviour. However, the behavioural perspective is very well supported by years of experimental evidence and is known to be very powerful in changing behaviour. Although learning theories might appear simple, good behaviour is rewarded and bad behaviour is punished, if we understand this principle we can all change aspects of our behaviour. Particularly, we can change habits that impact on our health and fitness.

Guess what? Every time you go to the fridge you get a food reward. You are training yourself to go into the kitchen, open the fridge door and look for food. A classic example of operant conditioning. To break this habit simply put some very light hand weights in the fridge. If you happen to find yourself learning into the fridge, aimlessly, about to snack, pick up the hand weights and maybe do a little exercise. Just half a minute will do. You will quickly un-train yourself.