Gabriel Mohr

is spreading positivity and conscious information!

The Next Step in Psychology

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Quick Fact

-Psychologists can have a lot on their plate, and applying the most effective practices often helps them do what they want to do better, faster, and more efficiently!

Intro

Psychologists, often, have quite the job to do. I’ve observed the work of many psychologists. I’ve been to multiple psychologists when I was younger. And I’ve also been/done the work of a psychologist (in an unprofessional sense). In each experience, there is a lot going on behind the scenes with one common goal – to improve the overall and long-term wellbeing of the patient(s).

But what about today? What’s the current state of the psychological process? And what is the next step in psychology? 

The Current State of Psychology 

By ‘current’ I’m referring to 2010-2021. What I’m about to say is what I’ve observed within this 11 year period!

Many psychologists are quite ineffective for 3 particular reasons – one, they have trouble building a connection with their patient, sometimes through no fault of their own. Two, they force the lessons and structures they learn in college onto the patient, even when it’s unnecessary and unhelpful. Three, the psychologist suffers from their own trauma and, frankly, should see a psychologist themselves.

However, the psychologists I’ve seen and read about who are/were great are/were extremely great! It seems like talent plays a large part in the making of a great psychologist, and when talent is combined with study, meditation, integration work, and experience, everything comes together, and healing the patient becomes second nature.

And then some psychologists are in the middle; that is, they’re somewhat helpful towards some patients when they see them for a certain amount of time.

When we combine all of this together we see some psychologists being exceptionally effective with the rest being anywhere from sort of effective to not very effective at all. This, of course, isn’t a jab or something said out of spite, but simply me communicating what I’ve observed.

Why Is It Here?

I think psychology has (or is about to) hit a bump in the road. Many psychologists are finding that their patients are resisting more than ever before, perhaps for reasons unknown. Please keep in mind that the effectiveness of a psychologist partially depends on the willingness and ability of the patient to open and express themselves and that the advancement of social media (and technology in general) encourages people to be unexpressive in the physical part of life. Obviously, it’s more complicated than this, however, this is a gigantic part of why a lot of us are in therapy today – that is, we feel unheard and unaccepted by those around us.

Also, we see psychology where it is today partially because of a lack of physical movement and an increase in emotional pain. In the old days, we had to move a lot just to survive, so we had endorphins and adrenaline moving through our bodies. We also socialized with each other a lot more since there wasn’t much else to do. 

We didn’t let our emotions bottle up as we do now, now we can’t express any negative emotion without getting frowns and judging stares from those around us, so we hold them in and they seep out in ways we don’t like, damaging ourselves and others in the process. 

When you combine this with the training and structure that every professional psychologist is highly encouraged to follow and impress upon their patient, you have a mismatch. The patient is in a lot of deep pain and feels misunderstood. The psychologist introduces a 10-step process that may or may not work. There’s a better way to go about this!

What Is The Next Step In Psychology?

If we think about what I’ve just written then it can seem grim, because it’ll just keep getting worse and worse, right?

Not if we advance into the next step in psychology. I suggest that the psychologist need not add more work onto their already overbearing load, but change their perspective and approach to their work entirely.

The next step in psychology looks something like this:

-Each and every trained professional will be more effective the more they participate in the process of self-integration. Self-integration is very good for our wellbeing and it’s almost always the answer to their patient’s pressing problems, not to mention the better the doctor feels the more they do it, thus increasing their influence.

-Psychologists ought to have an extremely open-minded approach to their work. Imposing structures, beliefs, and the like doesn’t seem to be helpful in the long run, and in many cases, I’ve seen it prove to be detrimental. Let the patient open up. Let them create their own systems that they want to follow for their own good. If the patient is particularly close-minded, it seems like only very gentle and general guidance is necessary, especially if it’s combined with encouraging them to be open-minded.

-And lastly, psychologists will be more effective if communication and emotional connection flow freely between the patient and the professional. This is why psychedelics are so helpful to the psychologist, they allow communication and connection to be experienced on a level that’s absolutely incredible! 

When these three aspects are happening all at once within the psychologist and, eventually, the patient, there is much hope for true and long-lasting healing! This is why I recommend each and every psychologist be highly encouraged to take psychedelics and read the works of Carl Jung before (and while) they work in the field. Carl Jung was the most effective psychoanalyst of all time, and psychedelics help boost our overall ability to heal ourselves and the patient.

Final Thoughts 

I’m not a huge fan of saying these words since what I’m saying can be interpreted as me imposing a structure, or a set of tasks for a psychologist to follow in order to become “better.” The only reason why I’m even coming close to implying something like this is that if what I say makes us feel fearful, angry, or that I don’t know what I’m talking about, these feelings and thoughts can be paid attention to. Once they’re paid attention to they can be disidentified from, asked questions, logically analyzed, and consciously integrated into our personality. In other words, it folds in on itself, transcending structure in the process and becoming regenerative and healing.

Also, I’ve come to ponder the concept that some are simply unable to change. I’ve always thought that everyone can change but simply don’t, but my life experience is leading me to consider that some of us cannot change and will never be able to change. Just like how a man with no arm cannot open a door a man with a small mind cannot change – both need their capabilities expanded by artificial means. That’s my thought on that, but I haven’t accepted it as a universal truth, perhaps this simply isn’t the case!

Conclusion 

Thank you very much for reading my post, and I’ll see you in the next one! 🙂

How To Think

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Quick Facts

-Organizing your mind and deciding how you want to think often helps you filter your action, reach your goals, analyze, create understanding, and come to conclusions in a more efficient, faster, and better way!

-Using our intelligence to figure out how to avoid our pain/trauma/crappy situations is, well, painful! Using our intelligence to feel and release our pain feels a lot better!

Intro

Thinking is something most of us do, however thinking about how we think and trying to think differently is a totally different story – I commend you for being brave enough to read this post as a matter of fact!

Ever since I was a young child I’ve enjoyed critical thinking, and over the years I’ve realized a ton of cool things, including some great ways to think and some not-so-great ways to think. 

Why Think At All?

The old saying, “ignorance is bliss” is known by almost everyone. A combination of ignorance and confidence is indeed the key to success in this world, however, I suspect that you’re here because you already think. I suspect that you’re intelligent and that you’re looking to refine your skills by taking the advice of a man on the internet!

Even if I were to say “yes, you shouldn’t think” (which I won’t) there are those out there who are naturally-born thinkers and those who wish to develop their intelligence. So I write this post for you, avid mind user, to make sure you have the best perspectives possible when you’re thinking about… Well, anything 🙂

How Do We Know When We’ve Chosen The Right Way(s) To Think?

This is a great question since anyone can say anything. It’s super easy for some guy to go “oh, I’ll just sucker these people by telling him how to think, even though I don’t have a monkey’s clue myself,” so please allow me to iterate.

You know you’ve chosen the right way(s) to think when you’ve chosen the right things/people/experiences to have and experience in your life and when you’ve chosen to bring said things/people/experiences in your life. If you ask yourself, “why am I thinking? Is it for the dance or the end result? What is the end result I’m trying to reach?” you’ll quickly uncover your goals, wishes, and desires. Once you’ve uncovered them it’s up to you to decide whether or not they are the right wishes, goals, and desires because of how pleasurable, enlightening, and healthy they are for you (and subsequently everyone around you) in the long run.

Let’s say you desire money. A lot of thought will go into your job and how to do it properly, and/or thought will go into how to make money. Let’s say you desire chips. Some thought will go into when and where to buy and eat the chips, especially when the time is near. 

But, should these things even be desired in the first place? And if so, should they be desired along with other things/experiences/people? These are things that can be quickly figured out if we know how to properly think.

Great Ways To Think

First, I always like to ask the question, “what/who should I aim for that is in my very best interest?” After I answer the question and refine it over time I come up with a list of goals, hobbies, people, experiences, etc to obtain, and all that’s left is thinking about how to get there.

Then, I adopt one (or multiple) ways of thinking when I ask myself, “how will I achieve my goals/be around the people I want to be around/etc?” And here is my list of great ways to think:

-The open-mind approach. Many people call this meditation, however, I always like to approach my goals, desires, beliefs, problems, fears, etc with an open mind, especially if I created them myself. I enjoy leaving this state of mind unlabeled because of its relaxing, visual, and enlightening effects, however, it can be called the Philosopher’s Mind or the Mystic’s Mind.

-The strategic approach. This kind of thinking is logical, based on observation, and often oriented towards a goal or two. If you’ve already formed some great goals you may enjoy thinking like this since it’ll help you achieve them. Detectives think like this! 

-The conceptual approach. Being able to play out events in your mind (as if you were creating and watching a movie) is great for figuring out what to do, say, and how to be in any particular situation without seeming “off” to others around you. 

-The feel-good approach. We do a lot with the ultimate goal of feeling good, and so one question I like to ask myself is, “which feelings do I desire and what is the quickest, most efficient, and healthiest way to feel those feelings?” When I answer myself I begin to give myself the feelings I desire, sometimes by meditating and stating to myself, “I choose to produce more oxytocin, serotonin, dopamine,” etc.

-The integration or “what’s wrong?” approach. I enjoy integrating parts of myself that I haven’t integrated yet, particularly if they bother me, so if I’m finding something bothersome I’ll always ask myself “what’s wrong?” and do a logical analysis from there.

Some Detrimental Ways To Think

One of the worst ways to think is when we think about how to achieve goals without thinking about if the goals are good or bad for us. Being irrational isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but when we’re being irrational and our behavior is detrimental to our overall, long-term wellbeing then something should probably change. 

Another terrible way to use our intelligence is if we’re trying to avoid pain or trauma that’s stuck inside of our mind and/or body. Alternatively, if we’re using it to avoid our emotions as a whole. If we’re high in intelligence it’s almost always a good idea to consciously pay attention to and develop our emotional side, and if we’re highly emotional it’s almost always a good idea to consciously pay attention to and develop our mind.

If you think about how and why you think, and when you answer the questions you ask yourself, things often develop themselves from there 🙂

Final Thoughts 

At the peak of intelligence, when enough knowledge is gathered, we can experience something called “intellectual enlightenment.” Many people have coined this term “opening your 3rd eye,” however I’ve experienced it as a positive emotion inside of my head. I feel it right now as I write about it! When I feel it my search for intelligence is replaced with a certain contentment, and I feel like producing instead of consuming. I feel as if it is the same for you, however, I wouldn’t be surprised if intellectual enlightenment is different for you than it is for me.

Also, in my opinion, knowing which ways to think and at which times is a great skill to cultivate! Considering this can result in an endless loop, though, so I don’t recommend getting too carried away with deciding how to think at what time.

Conclusion

Thank you so much for reading my post! It’s very abstract but it covers just about everything on a general level, and I’ll see you in the next article!

On Oxytocin

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Quick Facts

-Oxytocin is our love chemical! It makes us feel amazing, it enhances trust and empathy with our partner, it stabilizes our overall psychological stability, trust, and relaxation levels, it reduces behaviors infidelity, particularly with women who have a lot of interactions with strangers of the opposite sex… And more!

-Oxytocin can encourage favoritism and prejudice, envy and dishonesty! If we love one, we are more than likely to feel the opposite towards another.

Intro

Oxytocin is becoming much more popular and well-known as time goes on! It’s considered the love hormone because of how it’s produced, however, I’ll love to shed some light on what it does and how it’s very good for us.

What Is Oxytocin?

Oxytocin is a hormone that acts as a neurotransmitter. It’s often considered to be connected with love and pleasure, and it’s produced in the hypothalamus and the pituitary gland. 

What Does It Do?

It does a lot of things for us:

-It’s in the same ballpark as serotonin, dopamine, and your endorphins in the sense that it makes you feel amazing! Oxytocin is a pleasure chemical, and that’s one of the main reasons I’m writing about it right now 🙂

-It has many positive effects on our relationships including enhanced trust, empathy, positive relationship memories, getting to it, and positive communication with your partner.

-It greatly increases our overall psychological stability, trust, and relaxation levels. It definitely reduces stress and anxiety in our bodies!

-Oxytocin helps us be more sociable, and it may help autistic people to be more socially aware. That’s pretty cool!

-A healthy level of oxytocin helps the mother through labor, and it greatly helps the mother bond with her baby. It’s released when the baby attaches to her breast, which releases the milk.

-A healthy level of oxycontin in the father encourages him to point out certain objects to the baby and encourage them to explore.

-It probably encourages males to keep a greater distance from attractive strangers and engage in social/sexual activities with their partner, which makes them feel good, thus creating a behavior loop.

-Oxytocin reduces behaviors associated with infidelity, particularly with women who have a lot of interactions with strangers of the opposite sex. 

-It decreases the novelty of interacting with a stranger. I’ve personally experienced this!

-Oxytocin can encourage favoritism and prejudice, envy and dishonesty. This makes sense since we associate certain people and activities with feeling good, and we can treat the activities and/or people that don’t make us feel good as if they “have to be dealt with” so that we can get back to feeling good. This can be remedied with understanding that we can produce oxytocin and other feel-good chemicals whenever we want with meditation!

How Can We Produce More of It?

That’s a lot of positives when compared to the other pleasure chemicals! So, if we feel like we want more of it, how do we get it?

Romantic interactions with a singular partner seem to be the best way to do this, although I wouldn’t be surprised if those of you who are in open relationships experience oxytocin as well! Cuddling, engaging in conversation, doing things together, and sex are all ways to increase both of your oxycontin levels. Having children and bonding with them is also a great way to produce oxytocin!

You can produce it through meditation, and particularly while thinking the thought, “I choose to produce more oxytocin” over and over again. I personally vouch for this because I’ve been doing it all day today, and it’s been working!

Yoga, listening to and making music, massages, spending time with friends, empathetic and deep conversations, cooking and eating (healthy) food with the partner you love, doing nice things, and petting animals all increase our oxytocin levels 🙂

Final Thoughts

I wouldn’t be surprised if oxytocin is the feeling of love that everyone wants to feel! What’s interesting to me is that we can feel it on our own without anyone else if we want to, and perhaps this is a way to revive relationships that are sinking – that is, both partners individually choose to produce more oxytocin with themselves and each other on a consistent basis. It’s very important for well-being anyways, even if you’re single 🙂

Conclusion 

Thank you for reading my article! I’m deeply grateful that you’re joining me today and swimming in the sea of knowledge, and I’ll see you in the next post!

Sources

This post was written with some help by:

Healthline, twice!

On Endorphins

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 Quick Facts

-Endorphins work as a “natural morphine,” relieving pain and making you feel good! Producing a healthy level of endorphins is extremely healthy and helpful for our well-being!

-Exercise, sex, dancing, laughing, meditation, and more produce a higher level of endorphins!

Intro

People love to talk about serotonin and dopamine, but endorphins and oxytocin get left behind more often than I like! Since they help us feel good (and give a variety of other benefits) I’ll be shedding some light on them today!

What Are Endorphins? 

Let’s start with the word “endorphin” itself. It comes from putting together the words “endogenous,” meaning from within the body, and “morphine,” which is an opiate pain reliever, together! Since endorphins are the “original morphine” they attach to the opiate receptors, the same receptors that are targeted with opioid drugs. Isn’t that interesting? I think it is.

This doesn’t mean endorphins are bad for you, quite the contrary. Our bodies wouldn’t produce them if they harmed us! 

What Purpose Do They Serve?

While we don’t understand endorphins as much as we want to, we know they make us feel amazing. They’re a reward chemical like dopamine, and feeling a healthy amount of euphoria contributes to alleviated depression, reduced stress and anxiety, a higher level of self-esteem, reducing your weight, and helping you with pregnancy and childbirth. 

If we don’t have a healthy level of endorphins in our body we can expect the opposite of what I’ve mentioned above, and we can add impulsive behavior into the mix as well… While the role of the endorphin seems very simple, it’s very important, and I recommend producing more of them if you feel down more often then you should.

How Can We Produce More Of Them?

And now for the best part! 

Exercise and sex are two big producers of endorphins, I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re the most effective ways to produce endorphins ever! 

Dancing, laughing, and getting a massage is right up there as well. If I didn’t laugh as much as I did I’d be a lot less healthy than I am today! 

Meditating, creating art, acupuncture, saunas, and aromatherapy do the trick as well, especially if this is what you’re into! I can personally say meditation works, especially when combined with the conscious choice to produce more endorphins (repeating “I choose to produce more endorphins” over and over again).

Try eating something spicy, spicy foods can help.

And, you can volunteer. If you try this and it helps you out I recommend being with more people who are of your kind, that will most likely help as well 🙂

Final Thoughts

While fairly unknown and simple, I feel like endorphins play a critical role in our wellbeing, and that they’re right up there with serotonin and dopamine. Perhaps they’re psychologically-based like dopamine, perhaps not, but either way, producing more of them on a consistent basis is easy and healthy enough!

I’ve also been thinking about physical health in relation to mental health, and it seems like some of us think we’re mentally unhealthy when our cure can be started at the biological level. Perhaps we’re mentally and physically unhealthy, but my thought is that starting from the ground up and producing more serotonin, dopamine, and endorphins first before going to the mental side of things may be a good idea; I almost wish I did that instead of the other way around.

Conclusion 

Thank you so much for reading! I’m glad you’re here and learning along with me, I’ll see you in the next article 🙂

Sources 

This post was written with some help by:

Healthline

On Emotional Suppression

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Quick Facts

-Many of us suppress our emotions, either consciously or subconsciously, for many different reasons.

-Suppressing our emotions doesn’t make them go away; they go into the subconscious, and they begin to control our lives until they are realized, disidentified, learned from, and (usually) transcended.

-We can heal from the pain that arises from suppressing our emotions!

Intro 

I should have written this article long ago, it’s very applicable to many of our lives but I’ve simply been on a roll with the 80+ ideas I’ve come up with!

Suppression is a silent killer in the world we live in today. I speak to America in many of my articles, however, I understand that every country in the world suffers from emotional suppression, and some on a very intense scale. What is it? Why is it terrible for us? How can we stop doing it and heal ourselves? These questions and more will be answered below 🙂

What Is Emotional Suppression?

Emotional suppression is when we consciously or subconsciously keep ourselves from feeling an emotion. We “push it down,” so to speak, into the depths of our mind so that we can ignore it and go about our daily lives.

Why Do We Do It?

Sometimes we do this automatically, like if we experience a traumatic event or live in a traumatic culture. When we do it consciously, it’s usually because we want to stay composed and keep going (IE, at a funeral or at work).

Emotions can be intense, sometimes they’re too intense for our minds to handle, especially when we were younger. It also didn’t help if we experienced something traumatic as a child and our parents tried to sush us or otherwise stop us from crying because by doing so they were encouraging us to suppress our emotions, which is a terrible idea, as we’ll see in the next paragraph. 

And, we didn’t necessarily have to witness a murder to consider an event traumatic – trauma is tightly linked with expectation, the more intense your expectation, the greater the trauma if it happens to be violated. Many children have the subconscious expectation that their parents will be around forever, so if they get momentarily lost at a carnival, they will probably remember that for the rest of their lives in a not-so-pleasant tonality.

Why Is It Bad For Us?

Okay, we like to suppress emotions – big deal, right? The brain does it automatically so it mustn’t mean too much, right?

Even though we automatically suppress emotions this line of thinking is very, very wrong and very, very dangerous. This is true because of one simple fact – suppressing an emotion doesn’t make it go away, it just pushes it into the subconscious part of your mind. It still exists, and now that it’s not conscious it seeps into our lives in ways that are subtle and, sometimes, detrimental to our wellbeing.

I can hear you out there saying, “but Gabriel, what if this is simply your belief? Don’t you know that you can create your own reality with the beliefs you hold and that they aren’t necessarily the same for everybody else?”

This is so, however, there is a difference between a psychic belief and a psychic fact – a belief is something made and acted out by us crafty humans, however, a psychic fact is a truth that exists in the psychological realm whether we believe in it or not. Case in point, I received all of my information used in this post from direct observation of myself and other people, and I can guarantee you these “other people” did not have a clue as to what emotional suppression was, let alone believed in it – but they acted it out anyway.

So let’s take anger as an example – if we suppress our anger and never let it out it continues to ball up inside of us and stay in our subconscious. But, since it isn’t going away, it expresses itself by influencing our mood, perception, beliefs, and actions. For example, “life is just terrible… There’s always something going on I don’t like” is a great example of a belief created in the spirit of repressed anger. 

Once the beliefs are created they are almost always played out, and what happens when repressed emotion is the cause for many of the beliefs most people hold? You get today’s insanity. Insanity has spread all over the world simply because we suppress our emotions in favor of other things.

How Can We Heal From It?

But of course, there is a way out! We can feel our suppressed emotions, release them, and become much happier and clear-minded in the process.

I’ve come up with some guidelines after healing from my own suppressed emotions ever since I was a teenager. They are guidelines, so I don’t follow them every time, but most of the time I find them extremely helpful:

-First, I pay attention to how I feel in the moment. If I’m thinking about letting out some suppressed emotion it’s almost always the case I feel crappy right at the moment. So I pay attention to what it looks like in my mind, and where it is in my body (chest, solar plexus, abdomen, etc).

-When I have a visual and a location of the feeling I have successfully brought the feeling from subconsciousness into consciousness. I have options here; I can keep my mind’s eye on it and let it play itself out to its entirety, I can “expand” my visual of it by “zooming out,” I can disidentify from the emotion, I can ask myself some questions, and/or I can physically act it out. Usually, I do a combination of these things at a time, whatever feels right for that particular emotion at that particular time, and I’ll almost always ask the questions “which underlying beliefs cause this feeling to appear and stay? Why do I believe I need this feeling?” especially if holding on to it isn’t a good idea.

-Then, when I have felt and questioned and acted it out, I enjoy bringing logic into the mix. For example, if I’m dealing with suppressed sadness, I can ask myself “why is this feeling here? What purpose does it serve?” and try to find a better, less detrimental way to be. Sometimes the reason is simple and sometimes it’s complex, sometimes there are multiple reasons for the emotion to be present, sometimes there are no reasons at all. However, once I’ve answered myself honestly I’ll have an advanced understanding of my situation.

-At this point I’ve brought my feeling into consciousness, empathized with it, and analyzed it. I understand it, why it’s there, and better ways to be in place of it. I then release it, sometimes I replace it with new beliefs and feelings, sometimes I don’t. Usually, this goes something like, “I choose to feel this feeling completely and permanently release it.” If I don’t completely understand the suppressed emotion before I make this decision it usually stays until I understand it. I could force it to leave without understanding it, but where’s the fun in that? 😉

Now, this process may be completely different for you. Perhaps you prefer to let your emotions out through physical violence or a jog on the street. Maybe your most effective way of letting out suppressed emotions is different from everyone else’s, that’s why I recommend you create your own process/processes.

Final Thoughts 

Emotional suppression is a gigantus problem. It really stunts our well-being, self-control, and general enjoyment of life as a whole, and even if you don’t feel as if you have any suppressed emotions I greatly encourage you to ask yourself if you do; you may surprise yourself!

It seems to me this is the best use of meditation, that is, to find and ultimately release suppressed emotion. Sitting still in a quiet room is a great way to build concentration and go through your process (unless you’re consciously acting out your emotions), and I encourage this reason for meditation over the lesser but growing reason; social popularity and, ironically, more suppression in the pursuit of positive emotion.

Conclusion

Thank you for reading my article! The path has been exposed, will you follow it? 😉

I’ll see you in the next post!