By Tanya Ruckstuhl-Valenti LICSW, MSW

Holidays are a strange time of the year.  We all have these Norman Rockwell-type images floating around in our heads.  Our holiday fantasy usually looks something like this:  Families gathered snugly together to feast on delicious food, sharing laughter and drinks and great feeling of merriment, joyful holiday music in the background, beautiful decorations to delight the eye, and (miraculously mute) children frolicking in the yard contentedly.   

Unfortunately the reality is sometimes more like this: socially awkward moments of feeling disconnected to the very people we feel we “should” be most connected to, food that is either not that great tasting or so good as to inspire overeating as a coping mechanism to counter act anxiety, warring agendas regarding what to watch on television, cranky children, drunken family members, one person loudly obsessing about when precisely the pie should have but did not come out of the oven, another trying to sell memberships in their new Ponzi scheme. 

And even more difficult still is going through the holiday season without having a crazy family to be annoyed by.  People who are alone during the holidays often feel like The Little Match Girl, outside in the cold watching those lucky souls in warm and comfortable houses.  It’s one thing to be driven nuts by people who know you, but harder yet to be surrounded by the festive fervor and to feel isolated from it at the same time. 

Ah, the holidays!  It’s no wonder that depressed people get more depressed and anxious people get more anxious inside the twin pressure cookers of expectation and disappointment. 

Imagine buying a lottery ticket and telling yourself, “I absolutely must win and when I do I’m going to buy a cruise ship and a pony and if this ticket is not a winner I am a total loser.”  Can you recognize how unlikely a pleasing outcome would be? 

Regardless if you have crazy family members who make you wish to be an orphan or no family and are facing the challenge of how to fill the hours, the most important mental health booster you can engage in during this time of year is to focus on cultivating the little pleasures that you can be in charge of. 

For myself, I like to listen to schmaltzy Christmas CD’s, make lavender scented bath salts for my friends, assist my children in making hideously ugly gingerbread houses (they keep getting uglier each year: pretty soon we’ll be using them as Halloween decorations).  This year I’m adding going out dancing with some mom-friends to my holiday traditions. 

There are endless activities and rituals that can help you experience the expansive joy that holidays are all about, or to reconnect with your inner calm.  One of my friends goes out of town each year with her family so they can focus on sharing experience rather than things.  Another increases her twelve-step meeting attendance so she can surround herself at least part of the time with people who understand and support her recovery.  Another one volunteers at a soup kitchen to remind herself that service work is the best antidote to depression. 

Whatever helps you find your own sense of balance within the mad tornado of expectations and obligations—or within the empty time and loneliness—remember that you have options…and that as long as there are options, there is hope! 

Here's a recluse/hikikomori survey I've created using PollDaddy:

Click here to take the survey.

Posted via email from HikiCulture – A Forum for Reclusive People (and Hikikomori) {hikiculture.com site blog}

Once upon a time, there was a little red hen who owned a wheat field.

“Who will help me harvest the wheat?” she asked.

“Not I,” said the dog. “I’ve never done that before.”

“Not I,” said the cow. “I’ve got way too much to do already.”

“Not I,” said the duck. “That’s not on my job description.”

So the little red hen did it herself.

“Who will help me grind the wheat into flour?” she asked.

“Not I,” said the dog. “You’re so much better at that than I am.”

“Not I,” said the cow. “There’s not enough time to show me how.”

“Not I, “ said the duck. “I would probably just mess it up.”

So the little red hen did it herself.
“Who will help me make some bread?” asked the little red hen.

“Not I,” said the dog.  “I’ve got a deadline to meet.”

“Not I,” said the cow. “I’ve got to leave right at 5:00 p.m.”

“Not I,” said the duck.  “You can’t trust me with something that important.”

So the little red hen did it herself.

When all her guests arrived that evening for the farmyard dinner party, the little red hen had nothing ready to serve except the bread.  Now, it was some fine bread – the best anyone had ever tasted – but it was disappointing as a main course nonetheless.  The little red hen had been so caught up doing everything herself that she didn’t have time to get anything else ready.

Moral of the Story:

Leaders learn how to delegate.  They involve others throughout a project for both the project’s and the team members’ good.  Good leaders challenge their performers to do more than the performers think they can, and good leaders never “chicken out” by doing the whole thing themselves.

Click on this text to go to poll.

Posted via email from HikiCulture – A Forum for Reclusive People (and Hikikomori) {hikiculture.com site blog}

The other day my dear friend Ian wrote a post about the ten books that shook his world. I immediately thought that was a great idea and decided to do it myself too.
After a minute I realized I was not going to do it, after all. It would just take too much time and effort of trying to remember them all, write about them as well as what they meant too me…, nah, just too much. I am not as dedicated as Ian and he wins. Touché.
But, in the process of thinking about it I did remember one of the very important books of my life, one that I haven’t been thinking about for a long long time since I read it, say, 25 years or so ago, when I was pretty young: Herman Hesse’s The Glass Bead Game.
When I discovered Hesse I read many of his novels and I loved them all: Demian, Siddharta, Journey to the East and especially Steppenwolf. By the way, do people still read Hesse at all? Anybody knows what the situation is nowadays? In my time if you were into personal growth, Hesse was a must. I believe even more so if you were male, as I remember. Which, now that I think of it, is quite interesting.
Anyway, for me The Glass Bead Game was above it all. I still remember how very shocked I felt when reaching the last page and reading something I was totally unprepared for. After everything the main characters has gone through, after finally achieving the very top of the world, he decides to let it all go. He decides to abandon it all and to step into something very simple yet meaningful, into serving. But then, finally feeling completely free and content, he suddenly dies. Abruptly. The end. No more.
I can so easily reconnect with that moment, lying in my bed with the last page in front of me, my heart pounding hard and my face staring in disbelief. It felt as if all the four existential dilemmas (freedom, death, isolation, meaninglessness) suddenly hit me in my forehead, really hard. For days my mind was pulsating with thoughts: “Everything I begin, will end. Everything I build, will eventually crush down. Nothing is permanent and whatever I may achieve, whatever peak I might reach, even if I reach the absolute freedom, it will all end in total isolation and with death I will vanish from this world. So what is the meaning of it all? What difference does anything make? Why move? Why try?“
The romantic worlds and illusions started to crush down and I kept attempting to build them up again, and again, and again. I wanted to have a nice illusion of absolute meaning, of eternity, of connectedness and free choice, yet the pictures never held for very long and there were always pieces missing. Only in the last couple of years I seem to be starting to come to peace with it all.
Well, that book definitely shook my world. I believe I would be somewhat different had I not read it. But I am totally happy I did, of course. No mourning here, just a celebration.

Three experts that we've put our trust

      Today we live in a world of experts.  Or so you’d think.  It’s important to have letters in front and in back of your name. PhD, MD, CEO, and over 900 acronyms and abbreviations denoting certain expertise and standards for qualification have come to be important indicators of our place in society.  The complexity of society has been somewhat responsible for this as knowledge has become more focused and narrow.  No longer do I just work in the employment department at my company.  I may be an employment benefits administrator, or a FMLA/Leave specialist, or a Human Resources Analyst.  And these are just three jobs in the field of Human Resources.  A normal human being, after reading the job description of these positions can get a pretty good idea of what a person is supposed to do.  But take another field in the computer technology area. 

            ‘“Operations research” and “management science” are terms that are used interchangeably to describe the discipline of using advanced analytical techniques to make better decisions and to solve problems. In private enterprises, operations research is used in planning business ventures and analyzing options by using statistical analysis, data and computer modeling, linear programming, and other mathematical techniques.

Operations research analysts are often involved in top-level strategizing, planning, and forecasting. They help to allocate resources, measure performance, schedule, design production facilities and systems, manage the supply chain, set prices, coordinate transportation and distribution, or analyze large databases.’ (Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Handbook, 2008-09 ed)

            I suppose that if you’re an Operations research analyst this is all very clear, but if I was a freshman student in college and was thinking about what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, I might have difficulty grasping the scope of this job. 

            The point of this discussion is that as our society becomes more complex the more we have to specialize, which in turn creates more cultural isolation.  Not only do we not know what our neighbor does but we can’t talk with him because of our language and paradigm orientation.  Experts are supposed to know more about their subject than the rest of us.  They’re schooled and accredited, whereas we aren’t.  This sometimes gives us a sense that we are not as good as they are thereby putting more confidence in them than may be deemed necessary or advisable.  That is the reason, at least in the counseling field, that boundaries between the counselor and counselee are so important.  The counselor has power that if used improperly results in unethical behavior.  The same can be said as it applies to other professions.   Those with accreditation have more power with/over their clients and the clients need protection from improper or sloppy behavior. 

               Ethical imperatives are not always consistent with similar professions.  Two particular licensures that many counseling practitioners in Texas have are the Licensed Professional Counselor and Licensed Marriage and Family Therapy license.  Both of these licenses are administered by the same state agency.  They each have their own board and they periodically modify the ethics criteria for their particular license.  The ethics criteria are basically the same with a few minor exceptions.  However, one difference that I’ve always wondered about has to do with sexual conduct between a counselor and a former client.  There’s a whole list of caveats for sexual conduct with a former patient but the one that jumps out at me is that if a person is a LPC they are permitted to have sexual relations with a former patient after five years, while an LMFT is allowed to have sexual relations with a former patient after two years.  I would never consider having sexual relations with a former patient under any circumstances but have wondered why one license board used five years and the other two.  I’m not familiar with other professions but I imagine that there are other inconsistencies and anomalies in professional ethics criteria. 

Not only are there a myriad of requirements for accreditation for hundreds of professional designations, the requirements for entry into many of these professions continues to stiffen.  In some cases this is understandable as the knowledge base of that profession expands requiring more knowledge on the part of the candidate.  However, there are probably many instances where this is not the case.  It appears that accreditation is more of a job security function.  Take for instance the requirements for Licensed Professional Counselor in Texas.  When I became an LPC twenty years ago one of the requirements for licensure was to have 1000 hours of face to face counseling internship experience under the supervision of an accredited LPC supervisor.  Today it is 3000 hours of supervised face to face.  Also, the criteria to become and maintain a supervisor’s are more intense, thus giving supervisors another source of income.  As far as I can tell there has not been that much addition to the body of knowledge in counseling for a person to be admitted to licensure in those twenty years.  The only conclusion I can make is that the move was to limit the number of new licenses issued. 

To further emphasize the power of the expert, you only have to look in our court system where we have dueling experts who sell their services to advocate for a client.  On the other side is another expert who is equally adamant in their testimony for their client.  Can both be right?  Years ago I was involved in a lawsuit involving the value of a piece of commercial real estate.  Both sides had appraisals for the same property.  Both appraisers were competent and accredited.  But the differential in their appraisals was as much as 50%.  The definition of value is “what a willing buyer and a willing seller, neither of which is being forced to buy or sell, are willing to pay for a property.”  So, given the same facts, how could two appraisers be that far apart.  Could it be that the fact that the appraisers were being paid to advocate for their clients, that the values were skewed towards the clients position?   Is that ethical? And if so, which one is unethical?  Obviously, both can’t be right.  At one point years ago there was a saying that MAI which stood for Master Appraisers Institute, really meant Made According to Instruction.  Because of this tendency by some unethical appraisers, after the savings and loan scandals a number of appraisers were indicted for overstating values on properties that were later deemed to be considerably less valuable than appraised. 

Most professionals are highly ethical and it’s unfortunate that when a few bad apples are unethical that it blemishes the whole barrel and causes those professions to be ever stricter, thus punishing other honest professionals.  But the power still remains and is generally subject to self policing which itself sometimes is flawed.

Cultural isolation that accents our hierarchal differences and places further impediments in our way of communicating, even though well meaning in nature, create more possibilities for ethical transgressions.

‘Everything I’ve always done ..I’ve done by myself (be that good or bad)’.
However the reality of that statement is untrue – it’s just that for forever it has ‘felt’ like that.

I updated the HikiCulture banner. In addition to updating the HikiCulture banner, I updated the banners for my Posterous, Tumblr and Blogger blogs.

The typeface used was Myriad Pro; bold was the weight I used for HikiCulture, and bold condensed was the weight used for A Forum For Reclusive People (and Hikikomori) part of the banner.

Myriad Pro is an under-used typeface that is considered by many people (who are into typography) as being a great alternative to the extremely over-used typeface Helvetica. I myself find Myriad to be a great alternative to Helvetica as I find Helvetica to lack 'personality' —- it's a very neutral font.

Enjoy.

Posted via email from HikiCulture – A Forum For Reclusive People (and Hikikomori) {HikiCulture.Com Site Blog}

La Chapelle probably knows me for the shortest amount of time, yet compared to those who have known me longer she has more insight. She tells me that I have tiptoed into this master plan, without thinking of its HUGE side effect. Social isolation is not something that most humans can survive, but certainly not ME. Sitting in a big room in a big house all alone all day with nothing to look forward to and not seeing any of the faces I adore is more than I can bear. For instance, highlights of this week included: two kind of ok zumba classes, Barrons and Kaplan math workbook work, and over twittering. This existence is less than bleak, and I don’t have any solutions in mind. Another big issue is that when I’m lonely I end up eating more. It’s almost like words from my past are coming to life. When I was on the other end of the table when my friends told me that food fills holes other than hunger. Now I’m the one using it for the wrong purpose, and I hate myself for it. My next post will be focused on being Thankful, because, after all, it is Thanksgiving Eve. But I’m going to burn lots of calories just trying to smile this year.

Rhoda Hahn (Psychiatrist) gives expert video advice on:

1. What is “schizotypal personality disorder”?
2. What are the signs of schizotypal personality disorder?
3. What causes schizotypal personality disorder?
4. What are the dangers of schizotypal personality disorder?
5. Who is at risk for schizotypal personality disorder?
6. What are the treatments for schizotypal personality disorder?

[Excerpt from Vamik D. Volkan (2008), “Trauma, Identity and Search for a Solution in Cyprus”, Insight Turkey, vol. 10, no.4, pp. 95-110]

…

Historical developments after the summer of 1974 have continued to trauma­tize Cypriot Turks in a slow and often unrecognized fashion. A world opinion ac­cepting the Cypriot Greeks as victims and the Cypriot Turks (or Turks in general) as aggressors has been established. Although this was perhaps due to the failure of Turkish diplomacy, psychologically speaking it might also be due to the West­ern World’s stereotypical perceptions of Turks as the heirs to the Ottomans, who were the enemies of the West. Whatever the cause, the Greek side of the island was recognized legally as a state by all nations, except Turkey, while only Turkey accepted the Turkish side as a legal entity. This reality created an invisible enclave for the Cypriot Turks.

Cypriot Greeks managed to convince international organizations to impose severe embargoes on the Cypriot Turks. Accordingly, trading directly with foreign countries became impossible, and travel documents issued to the Cypriot Turks by the northern Cypriot Turkish authorities were not recognized by the international community. No direct flights to the Turkish side of the island were permitted, and mail to and from the Turkish side could only travel through Turkey. Cypriot Turks were not allowed to compete in sports in foreign countries (except in Turkey.)… After living in actual enclaves for eleven years [between 1963-1974], the Cypriot Turks from 1974 to the present time have continued to live in an invisible enclave.­

…

Official diplomacy makes little room for noticing and caring about emotions. The people in international organizations do not even consider feel­ing ashamed about treating the Cypriot Turks as second-class world citizens for decades while accepting the Greeks in the south of the island as regular human beings…

The results of my interviews surprised me. All of the young people I interviewed seemed unaware of their ancestors’ recent history. I also learned that, since the opening of the borders between the Greek and Turkish sides after the Greek side became a member of the European Union, more than 250 Turkish Cypriot families began sending their children to secondary or higher schools on the Greek side where no lessons are given on the massive and chronic Cypriot Turkish trauma. I was also informed that 10-20 Cypriot Turkish children are also attending Cypriot Greek elementary schools. The Cypriot Turkish parents’ justification for sending their children to schools on the Cypriot Greek side is their perception that the Cypriot Turkish schools are inferior to the schools in the south, which are part of the EU system. Some parents were aware that their children might experience humili­ations after crossing the border to the Cypriot Greek side, but in spite of this they continued to send them there…

How did the younger generation of Cypriot Turks – again I am generalizing here – begin to “forget” the history and the dramatic nature of their recent ances­tors’ experience? First, let me suggest that strong external pressure and political propaganda have played a significant role in the denial and repression of the mas­sive trauma of their ancestors…

For some time now, especially after the failure of the Annan Plan, Americans and other foreigners who are assigned the task of finding a solution for the “Cy­prus problem” have become more and more aware that the “logical solution” of creating “Cypriotism” described above is only an illusion. The present focus seems to be on a more realistic strategy to find a way for Cypriot Greeks and Cypriot Turks to hold on to their national identities while living side by side. Neverthe­less, the influence of the long-lasting illusionary strategy to get rid of the “Cyprus problem” through an emphasis on “Cypriotism” has had an impact on the Cy­priot Turks who were hungry for a legal identity that would not be humiliating. It helped to create identity confusion among the Cypriot Turks, especially the younger generation, which Cypriot Greeks were spared.

Some years ago i completed a masters in business administration course – it turned out to be a very interesting experience but there were some moments.

The course was part time – sessions were four day blocks of training per month for each module. In the first few months of the programme it was exhausting: I slept every night early during the first two modules. I had to get my head around all of that business language from the likes of Ivan Ansoff, Ohmae, Michael Porter: value chain, return on investment, benchmarking, balanced scorecard, competitive advantage, etc.  There were several modules, covering subjects like international business, operations management, business strategy, entrepreneurship and enterprise, marketing, human resource management, leadership/management, knowledge and information management, business ethics, organizational learning and changing, finance and accounting. We had to do assignments and in some cases examinations.  There were group assessments of consulting, one to a British based firm, and the other to an international firm that was conducted overseas.  The international consultancy to Zensar Technologies of  Pune in India was developed with other students, by this time there were nine students left on the course. On the international trip we did different assignments with different departments of the same global firm: an Indian Giant call Zensar Technologies. We all travelled together and stayed at the same hotel.

Then there were the other students. We were a small intake, about twelve began the course. There was a combination of overseas students and British managers, professionals and would-be entrepreneurs. Initially, I felt social isolation,  most of the students would not talk to me or even sit with me during lunch and tea breaks for the first three months. During one course exercise the lecturer –one of the professors – had to bark at some of the other students to “work with this man!” as three out of the group of four had their backs turned to me whilst they attempted the exercise even though they were told to work “as a group”. By this stage in my life I was used to the silly psychological antics that supposedly “well educated” White British people partake in when they feel that you are not one of them and thus are not important enough to be considered for an opinion.  Also, at the time  I was working in the third sector, in visual arts, which hardly has an international global reach and a multimillion dollar portfolio.  In addition people tend to talk to and relate more quickly with people who look like themselves or look like people they grew up with. Nevertheless though I felt like an outsider, I was confident in my abilities and my personality to affect a change and to eventually negotiate a working relationship with these people.  I also knew that at the end of the course I was going my own way.   A few MBA students very smug and self-interested: one guy boasted about the  public school he attended and his father’s share options in ICI. He ironically, had to do the most re-sits of failed exams and module assignments and was last seen on the plane back from India arguing with a customs official who told him that he had to get back on to the plane to collect his boarding card which he had left under his seat on the plane. It was satisfying to see his come-uppance via the “jobsworth” official at Heathrow airport.  Another pair of students could usually be heard discussing and comparing  the merits of their BMWs, again it was satisfying to find that in spite of their BMWs they both dropped off the course for different reasons: one due to failure of an assignment, and the other due to the withdrawal of his business partners to support his professional development.

There was a lack of career coaching from the business school, even though there were guest slots from real business people – these slots were often the most interesting, you would learn a lot about the real business world. But formal coaching as in how to market your skills, and links with consulting recruiters such as Accenture were non-existent.

There were some bad modules and assignments – The finance module was conducted by one lecturer who liked to boast about her family – she had a spot of B.O. and had one perspective “creating shareholder value, we have to view businesses as a portfolio of assets to be bought and sold”. She marked down my assignment at 54% about a Primary Care Trust hospital’s financial performance. I had gone to great lengths to get the insider confidential information.  During the taught part of the module she would refuse to talk to me unless it was in one or two syllables, she spent most of her time looking at and talking to the White males of the course, she would not explain the concepts, you were expected to keep up, during problem solving sessions she would sit with the same males in the group. During this module no one would talk to me as it was finance, they assumed that i would not be able to do the work.  The men did not also talk to the three women remaining on the course also during this module. I got 70% in the exam just to spite the bitch and her puppies.   

The organisational learning module was a riot: the lead lecturer JF used the group as a social experiment and split them into two groups and students were encouraged to develop their own learning contracts and to take a greater responsibility for their own learning and studying. This went okay with the odd grumble until the final submission of assignments where the same lecturer, JF said that he had not planned a session for the last afternoon of the week (a Saturday afternoon) only that students would peer review and mark each others’ assignments! There was a tacit agreement that no students failed another student’s work. I smelled trouble as i had seen groups of students going off together earlier in the week to have coffee, and I was left on my own a lot of the time outside of lectures. I said that i was not comfortable with this as a process and that there would be potential repercussions. It soon became apparent that the lecturer JF was using this session to assert his authority, his mark was to be seen as final, and in the process some students would fail. JF would let the students talk and discuss their marks for a fellow student’s assignment before coming in at the end with his final verdict: his marks were final. This did not sit well with the group who became  more resentful as the afternoon wore on. My assignment was to be the final one to be discussed. At this point  a student (who was the son of another student) proposed  an argument that I had created an unfair advantage or myself as my work was submitted too close to the official deadline  to be reviewed  and thus should be penalised. It was true that most students had submitted their assignments for review a week before the official deadline, but I had not as there was no assignment but I had emailed all of the students to stop submitting assignments to me as i would not read them and I did not want them to prejudice my work.  The second lecturer on the course cross checked the rules and gruffly said “Akin has acted lawfully, well that settles it”. At this point about three students said that they had not the time to read my assignment and so were unable to allocate a mark. The father-and-son pair said that they had not read the assignment in protest. The public school student said that he had read the assignment, and felt that it was too long – I was getting no favours from him. The remaining two students felt that it was a good assignment. The lecturer JF read it and said gruffly “it is skilfully written – 61 per cent”.  At this point the father of the family pair exploded and accused JF of “having lost the plot” and expressed his anger that he was paying for a course module where the lecturer had not even turned up with a session plan.  The session ended with the other lecturer attempting to cool things off and the other students hurriedly leaving. The two students who had marked my work positively   walked with me to the city centre, but i was cautious with my words to them. Later that evening e-mails of apologies were sent from father-and-son.  JF was removed from participating further on the MBA  course, and the assignments were remarked. My mark was upgraded to 63%. I quite liked JF and arranged for a one-to-one review over a coffee which he duly delivered and gave very detailed feedback about the assignment. The assignment is my favourite of all the work that I submitted over the course.

The international business was split into two parts: part one was a taught module with an assignment, this  first assignment was a nightmare for me – I couldn’t do it and had by then taken to drinking whiskey and port just to get to sleep at night, as my work pressures, personnel life issues and course pressures were by then taking their  toll. My first attempt was a shambling draft version, submitted just to avoid the 50% penalty for late submission. During the taught part of this module I also got into an argument with one of the international business lecturers who was using his slot as a lecturer to broadcast his political opinions on Zimbabwe, which I challenged. “you can tell us about the business world and international models of working but your views on Zimbabwe are not welcome here” were some of my words during one angry exchange.  My resubmission got a bare pass – the marker was a very compassionate and helpful man who supported me with academic articles and help to complete it.  After this i was playing catch-up and struggling with burnout, not firing on all cylinders and having late submissions of assignments: the university were very understanding of my problems and granted me time extensions to three elective studies.

 The International consulting trip to India with other students went smoothly. We had to a market penetration strategy for three European countries for the products of the Indian based firm. I was very impressed with the Indian professionals. Whilst in India I did a spot of shopping myself, getting meditation whites made by a tailor: what was most impressive about this was that the tailor sent a man round to the hotel with a moped to take me to his shop for the final fitting. I saw the other students jealously eyeballing me whilst I held on to the back of this vehicle in my colonial brown suit. One student hated India and Indians – they reminded her of Gypsies back in her native Romania, and she was especially put out by Indian men shouting and whistling at her wearing a boob tube in Bombay at night. She complained from start to finish, even on the plane to Britain – the other students sat her next to me, and I told her that I am sick of hearing complaints about Indians and Indian practices. She apologized and kept quiet for the rest of the journey.

Elective botch jobs.  There were three electives on the course. Electives were opportunities to study an area of interest further, the course leadership had to have a critical mass of students for the electives to be economically viable, and so they made students choose from a range of ten subjects their three most desired topics.  The other students got together and decided which topics we should all study. I chose my favourite topics anyway, an the majority on the course, which by now had dwindled from twelve to nine, got their way. We studied entrepreneurship, constraints management, and human resource management. I attended all of the taught sessions and submitted all of the assignments behind the time schedule, but my marks were surprisingly good: 61% on entrepreneurship – I did an interpretivist study on businesswomen; 64% on human resources – I did a study of downsizing in the third sector with my employing organisation as a case study; 72% in my hated subject of constraints management – I did a study on the Theory Of Constraints Thinking Tools and related this to Senge’s Fifth Discipline and  Covey’s Seven Habits Of Successful People,  I also related the theory of constraints thinking tools to a real problem: the dilemma of loss of funding for a small visual arts organisation – EMACA Visual Arts and their strategic options.  Most of my marks were due to a brilliant book called “Thinking For A Change” by Lisa Scheinkopf, which explained weird concepts such as Necessary Condition Thinking, Evaporating Clouds, Current Reality Tree, Future Reality Tree, etc.  Determined to make the lecturer look an idiot, I painstakingly read the book from end to end with a view to critique it to death and shoot his enthusiastic philosophy down in flames.  It had the opposite effect – I became a convert to his “evaporating clouds” as a problem solving tool – especially after scoring 72%

The dissertation. Doing the dissertation was the hardest thing that I have done in my life. It was a period where I was suffering from executive burnout and I had developed some very bad habits such as smoking menthol cigarettes, drinking whiskey, port and the odd spliff to get to sleep. The taught part of the dissertation I found confusing – it was focused on deductive research and towards SPSS software for undertaking quantitative analysis.  The supervision that I had was nearing on the incompetent – the supervisor was like a harassed GP – whilst his patients depended upon his advice to save their lives, his mind was on other things, such as becoming the Vice Dean of the university and his attitude like theirs (GPs) was “ hurry up and get on with it, I have a host of other things to do… next patient please!” .  He was a minimalist and it was not until the eleventh hour after six months of bullshit (three months before the deadline) that he advised me to undertake inductive research. Inductive research involves research where you are building theory from scratch as there is a lack of academic stuff on your chosen subject matter. So I was left to fend for myself finding academic articles and wading through a host of materials which was time consuming and exhausting.  I did the research eventually with the help of faithful friends and family submitting a 21,500 word piece on “Turnarounds In Non-Profit Organizations”. I came up with a theory and conceptual framework from all the work and research that I had done: case studies and interviews with experienced professionals and executives. Writing up all of this with a tight deadline and timescale  took all I had emotionally, physically and intellectually – I spent the next two months in bed after the submission, thankfully I had taken a “career break” to do this. I graduated a year later than all the other students – the university were very understanding of my burnout issues.

Finding my  literary voice. The amount of writing on the course enabled me to experiment with some of my ideas about management and leadership and I was encouraged to be reflexive – write about my experiences from my own point of view, recognising its limitations and identifying myself and taking ownership for my viewpoint. It was thus I found my own voice and learned that it was valid to write in this way, which I doing for a long time privately. This was one of the hidden benefits in doing such a course and i did discover from the other students who were positive about my assignments, that i had a valid and unique voice and a unique way of involving the reader in the subject concerned.

A Clean Version of Hell

There is more and more attention being drawn to the inhumane treatment that comes from prolonged isolation which 25,000 prisoners are subjected to every day in the US prison system.

Independent Kiilu Nyasha just wrote a great article entitled America’s Supermax Prisons Do Torture on how the US government has legalized torture through its excessive use of solitary confinement and isolation units.  It’s a problem gone largely unnoticed in our country.  There are now 60 supermax prisons in the US, the largest of which is right here in in this state- Supermax ADX-Florence.  In addition, nearly all maximum-security prisons have isolation units.

In his recent article, Hellhole: Is long-term solitary confinement torture?,  New Yorker columnist asks aloud, “If prolonged isolation is – as research and experience have confirmed for decades –so objectively horrifying, so intrinsically cruel, how did we end up with a prison system that may subject more of our own citizens to it than any other country in history has?”

These isolation units and Supermax prisons hold prisoners in solitary confinement every minute of these prisoners lives.  The only respite from their cells is a one hour session of exercise in a concrete room with no equipment and still alone.

Political prisoners are disproportionately represented in these isolation units, this even when the prisoners have clean records within prison.  In fact, the Florence Supermax is home to many of these political prisoners, including Black liberation prisoner Mutulu Shakur and Imam Jalil al-Amin.

60 Minutes recently did an excellent piece, Supermax: A Clean Version of Hell (revisited) which touches on the continual resistance shown by prisoners. In her article, Nyasha points to “a national study (Hayes and Rowan 1988) of 401 suicides in U.S. prisons —one of the largest studies of its kind—two out of every three people who committed suicide were being held in a control unit.”

Momentum is building against this loophole for torture right here on US soil.  It’s time to demand an end to the mistreatment of prisoners and the hell that isolation puts people through.

A horrible dream.
Though the dream is ridiculous, it scares me. For the first time in my life, I am truly scared. I wasn’t even that terrified last year when I received my results. I will not want that to happen at all, not even a percent of the dream.

          We will now explore the some reasons for cultures being in isolation.  I am currently reading Andrew Sorkin’s book entitled Too Big to Fail, which chronicles the rise and fall of wall street and the world economic meltdown in 2007-2008.  Even though the reasons for this fall have some unique qualities they also have common features of other cultures in isolation.  Some common qualities of these organizations are closed loop vision, lemming behavior, and a tight knit loyalty to either the organization, the principles or the leader.  Note that I did not mention greed, hubris, and unethical behavior.  These all contributed to the problem, but don’t really reflect the deeper contributors to cultural isolation.  In many cases they adhered to the concept that they were facilitating the greater good of the free market and its benefits to humanity as a whole. 

The sub-prime loan market and the over heated housing market are most notably blamed as the catalyst that almost brought the world economic market to its knees.   But who could be against putting millions of people into homes that previously could not afford a home?  But there’s little indication that the thinking went that deep.  In financial quarters it was not that altruistic or if it was the possible unintended consequences were not well thought out.   Without going into any great detail, the crux of the problem was a result of taking millions of sub-prime loans and bundling them into packages with better loans and then selling them as packages to investors.  Many of the large banks not only did the packaging, resulting in tremendous profits but also bought packages of these loans from their competitors, again making huge profits on brokering the packages to other investor groups.  Supposedly, by packaging good loans with riskier loans you made the packages into high quality instruments.  The rating agencies that told investors what the risks were to these packages, tended to rate them as triple A rated.  And to insure that the packages were highly rated, the sellers would buy insurance guaranteeing the packages.  Never mind that the insurance had very little behind it to pay off in case of default.  As it has become stated elsewhere, it became a house of cards.

            In most cases, these transactions were not illegal or even unethical.  But leveraged securities at 30-1, in hindsight do not seem prudent.  But everyone who was anyone on Wall Street was doing it, so it must be okay.  And anyway, the profits were tremendous.  In reading Sorkin’s book you quickly get the picture of a closed loop system that by its nature is myopic.  These were supposed to be some of the smartest financial brains in the world and yet even a high school economics student, given enough factual information could see the repercussions.  Money was certainly a factor and motivation for creating and perpetuating the system.  But I think it was more than that.  First they could not/ did not look out beyond the closed loop.  And two, there was nothing from the outside to give them a compass to follow.  And even though there were regulations in place to keep much of this from happening, many of the framers of the regulations were the ones reaping the profits.  And government was complicit  in facilitating legislation that would be a set up for eventual failure.

            Many years ago I was involved in commercial real estate development.  Because financing was always challenging for smaller developers, I was always looking for windows of opportunity to borrow at rates that made sense economically.  During one of the periods of high interest rates, I had a young man visit me offering to broker loan money for new commercial properties that I might want to build. He said that he had outlets for short term money at a floating rate of 2 points over prime.  Prime at the time was 14%.  At that time my rate would be 16% with a two point origination fee.  The usury rate in Texas had been raised to 22% from 18%, so you can see the mentality of the market.  I told him that we were out of the market since rates were so high and I couldn’t see how the economics would work.  He became somewhat belligerent and badgering, stating that this was the market and that rates were only going to get higher and I needed to borrow, since others were doing the same.  He pointed out that other companies were doing similar deals and flipping them to investment groups and making huge profits.  He even said that these kinds of loans were available on raw land, a non income producing property and people were staying in the project for six months and then selling to another investor.  I told him I just couldn’t see it; that it was too risky and sent him on his way.   In was not many months later that the real estate market tanked and billions of dollars were lost, savings and loans around the country closed, and banks by the hundreds either went under or were bought out by bigger banks. 

            We had not taken the bait and had survived.  At other times in my career, I was not quite so prudent and made financial mistakes because I followed the other lemmings into the sea.   We survived these financial crisis in the real estate market, but they required years to recover.

            The other factor to be considered in The Too Big to Fail scenario has to do with loyalty.  Successful organizations tend to generate great loyalty among its members.  We generally consider this to be a positive attribute of the organization.  There is a sense of togetherness and connection to have common goals and objectives.  But in creating this internal loyalty there is a tendency either to blindly adhere to the leaders wishes or become blind to the realities outside the group.  Sorkin relates an incident that could be generalized to any successful organization, whether the military, a government, the church, or business.  He states that in a meeting with executives at Lehman Bros., who were in an internal fight in the company and  before he died, Lewis L. Glucksman in order to maintain solidarity came to the meeting with a handful of number 2 pencils and gave each of them a pencil and told them to bread it.  Of course, no one had any difficulty in doing so.  He then handed a handful of pencils to Richard Fuld, who later became CEO of Lehman and instructed him to break them.  Because there were so many, he couldn’t.   Glucksman then said “Stay together, and you will continue to do great things.”  This is a story that has been repeated throughout history in one form or another and shows the power of loyalty to a cause.  But sometimes it’s necessary to step back and reappraise the situation, ask ourselves whether it make economic sense, or whether it’s legal, ethical, moral or responsible.  That takes great leadership and a sense by those under the leader that input and reflection are permissible and in fact are expected.

Eremitism

Posted via email from HikiCulture – A Forum For Reclusive People (and Hikikomori) {HikiCulture.Com Site Blog}

I tried joining the site Hermit's Slate @ Hermitary.Com two times in the past couple months; my registrations were not confirmed.

I am not exactly certain as to why my registrations were not confirmed, but the only thing I can think of is that staff are getting me mixed up with a previously banned member. I'd really like to join up to the site as it looks like an interesting place.

I read and followed this off the main page, so I don't understand why they are not confirming my account:

"To distinguish you from a spammer, fill in some information for Location, Occupation, Interests — at least Interests, which is the least revealing if that is an issue. I need to have something tangible to recognize you as genuinely interested in this forum and not just spamming. "

Hermit's Slate seems like an interesting place; I hope to eventually make it in there, but until then, I'll stick to using my own forum HikiCulture (well, I'd still be using HikiCulture even if I was in Hermit's Slate – I'd just be using the two in conjunction). 

Posted via email from HikiCulture – A Forum For Reclusive People (and Hikikomori) {HikiCulture.Com Site Blog}

Common behavioral outcomes include:

• isolation and poor social support networks;
• employment difficulties (especially in jobs that require social skills);
• marriage and relationship difficulties (misinterpretations, paranoia and ideas of reference are especially likely to complicate close relationships).

Patients with schizotypal personality disorder are less likely to attempt suicide than those with many other personality disorders.

Conditions that are commonly comorbid with schizotypal personality disorder include:

• depressive disorders (with an incidence of 50% among those with schizotypal personality disorder);
• anxiety disorders;
• another personality disorder (e.g. schizoid personality disorder, paranoid personality disorder, avoidant personality disorder, borderline personality disorder).

People with schizotypal personality disorder are at an increased risk of:

• Schizophrenia
• Major depression
• Anxiety disorder, characterized by prolonged worry or uneasiness
• Dysthymia, a low-grade depressed mood that continues for more than two years
• Panic disorder, characterized by sudden bouts of heart-pounding terror
• Social phobia, characterized by overwhelming anxiety and excessive self-consciousness in everyday social situations
• Avoidant personality disorder, characterized by a pervasive pattern of social inhibition and feelings of ineptness
• Obsessive-compulsive disorder, characterized by recurrent, unwanted thoughts and repetitive behaviors
• Borderline personality disorder, characterized by a constant state of emotional turmoil

The Schizotypal Personality Disorder Coming Into Treatment:

Countertransference Issues

Treatment Techniques

Treatment Goals

In an outpatient treatment setting, this author has seen individuals with StPD develop connections to others that, while impoverished and rather fragile, were of considerable value to the individuals involved. Their investment in the social contact provided the impetus needed for them to learn and practice social skills and appropriate interpersonal behavior.

ICD-10 criteria of Schizotypal Disorder (F21):

A disorder characterized by eccentric behaviour and anomalies of thinking and affect which resemble those seen in schizophrenia, though no definite and characteristic schizophrenic anomalies occur at any stage. The symptoms may include:

• a cold or inappropriate affect;
• anhedonia;
• odd or eccentric behaviour;
• a tendency to social withdrawal;
• paranoid or bizarre ideas not amounting to true delusions;
• obsessive ruminations;
• thought disorder and perceptual disturbances;
• occasional transient quasi-psychotic episodes with intense illusions, auditory or other hallucinations, and delusion-like ideas, usually occurring without external provocation.

DSM-IV-TR criteria of schizotypal personality disorder:

For a diagnosis of schizotypal personality disorder, at least five of the following criteria must be met, according to criteria spelled out in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), published by the American Psychiatric Association.
A pervasive pattern of social and interpersonal deficits marked by acute discomfort with, and reduced capacity for, close relationships as well as by cognitive or perceptual distortions and eccentricities of behavior, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by five (or more) of the following:

• ideas of reference (excluding delusions of reference);
• odd beliefs or magical thinking that influences behavior and is inconsistent with subcultural norms (e.g., superstitiousness, belief in clairvoyance, telepathy, or “sixth sense”; in children and adolescents, bizarre fantasies or preoccupations);
• unusual perceptual experiences, including bodily illusions;
• odd thinking and speech (e.g., vague, circumstantial, metaphorical, overelaborate, or stereotyped)
• suspiciousness or paranoid ideation;
• inappropriate or constricted affect;
• behavior or appearance that is odd, eccentric, or peculiar;
• lack of close friends or confidants other than first-degree relatives;
• excessive social anxiety that does not diminish with familiarity and tends to be associated with paranoid fears rather than negative judgments about self.

Although the ICD-10 diagnostic criteria for schizotypal disorder differ in detail from the DSM-IV criteria for schizotypal personality disorder, they define essentially the same condition. ICD-10 does not consider the disorder to be a personality disorder, and it classes it with schizophrenia, schizotypal and delusional disorders.

People with classic schizotypal personalities are apt to be loners, having few to no intimate relationships. They exhibit extreme anxiety in social situations, often associated more with distrust and an inability to communicate with others than with a negative self-image. They view themselves as alien or outcast, and this isolation causes pain as they disengage more and more from relationships and the outside world.

People with schizotypal personalities often have odd patterns of speech and ramble endlessly on tangents to a topic of conversation. They may dress in peculiar ways and have very strange ways of viewing the world around them. Often they harbor unusual ideas, such as believing in the powers of ESP or a sixth sense. At times, they believe they can magically influence people’s thoughts, actions and emotions.

In adolescence, signs of a schizotypal personality may begin as a gravitation toward solitary activities or a high level of social anxiety. The child may be an underperformer in school or appear socially out-of-step with peers, and as a result often becomes the subject of bullying or teasing.

Self-Image

Millon & Davis (1996, p. 626) describe individuals with StPD as ineffective and uncoordinated in regulating their needs, tensions, and goals. Their inadequate defenses lead to a disorganized and often direct discharge of primitive thoughts and impulses. They are unable to effectively sublimate their energy into reality-based activity and have few successful achievements in life. The disorganized and ineffective defenses further leave StPDs vulnerable to being overwhelmed by excess stimulation.

I have isolated myself from the past one week to be just concentrating on my work, dissertation, courseworks and exam reading. I have not met any friends , not spent time in socializing neither have I chatted with any one much. All I do is either put my head down in the library, researching or read a book in my room.

There are a few moments I feel that I wish to just run free , leave everything and be what I want to, forget all this, what is this that I am doing ? why this? , This makes me believe that I am here not just for education, but for a purpose, to understand and realize the purpose. That Purpose is different for different people, and we all observe and percieve it in a way that makes us comfortable.

Life has become a systems and a Process Modelling Diagram with a start and end to it, strings attached to it which if we slip, the strings break and we fall down into the valley of critizism, and torture.

Few people try to come out of the system, try to be a musical note without an end to it and be who you really want to be , but alas!, that is not what everyone acheves.

I have tried really hard on understanding the true purpose of my life, and believe me I still ammuse my self of what I have gone through and learnt from it. I beleieve we all are semenly connected through our psycological system, educating each other. All we need to know is how to gather this information, and knowledge and expand it beyond our means.

For all this text knowledge, we learn everyday in the books is all crap, what matters is , the knowledge of oneself, and that can be gained by knowing who you are.

I am still in the phase of my isolation and will soon come out of it when I believe I have achieved something, both material and spiritual, satisying my soul and mind.

For knowledge is not just about knowing, it is about truly understanding that , learning is a forever process which you will continue even after death!.

Pourquoi ne pas placer une feuille réfléchissante derrière vos radiateurs ? Celle-ci reflète une grande partie de la chaleur qui sera sinon absorbée par vos murs !

Cet article répertorie les DUT GTE en France, cette formation, formation que j’ai suivi est une formation clé pour l’avenir, mais encore peu connue.
Son but est de former des gens capable de créer, gérer, optimiser des systèmes thermiques, énergétiques, ainsi que de développer des énergies renouvelables et bien d’autre encore…

Le dut GTE, c’est LE DUT d’avenir…
Une formation très large, qui propose des cours pratiques : on travaille sur du concret

Pour l’avoir fait je le conseille vivement.

Maintenant il n’y a plus qu’à cliquer

Belfort

Montluçon

Brétigny sur Orge

Marseille

Bourg en Bresse

Poitiers

Colmar

Ville d’Avray

Lorient

Dunkerque

Pau

Grenoble

Nantes

Rouen

Longwy

Marne la Vallée

Cherbourg

Mis à part une erreur de ma part, ils sont tous là.

Vous pouvez également aller voir un site très intéressant sur le Génie Thermique et l’Energie en France