Bethany Cosentino, Amish mental health, rubber bands, and Wonderputt
Just another day at the office around here
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Bethany Cosentino on the podcast
Bethany Cosentino rose to fame as one half of Best Coast, a band known for a breezy California pop sound that nonetheless rode over lyrics that were sometimes about pain and vulnerability. But sometimes also just about California being awesome.
Best Coast is now either over or in indefinite suspension and Bethany is going solo with a new album coming out on Friday called Natural Disaster.
We talked about a lot of things in the interview, including her recent ADHD diagnosis, which followed by many years a previous ADHD diagnosis that she didn’t really take seriously. Now she’s finding that a lot of things make sense through the lens of the disorder. We also discussed her parents’ divorce when Bethany was a teenager and how years of relationship dysfunction on their part might have led to some pretty toxic relationships of her own.
And we get into the inner child work Bethany has done. As I say on the episode, I think inner child gets unfairly painted as something practiced by people who simply don’t want to face up to adult realities. But that ain’t it.
From Wondermind:
In theory, everybody has an inner child, or the past version (or versions) of ourselves as a kid. If you had some rough experiences growing up or complex trauma, like experiencing abuse or neglect, listening to and working with your inner child in a therapeutic setting can help you learn and grow from those tough times, says psychotherapist and complex trauma specialist Gillian O'Shea Brown, PhD, LCSW.
So, basically, “listening” to your inner child means revisiting difficult early memories or childhood experiences and understanding how you felt back then—and how that impacts how you feel and act today. By tapping into your inner child, you can pave the way for healing and behavioral and emotional change, Dr. O'Shea Brown says.
Studying mental health in Amish communities to better understand it everywhere else
Interesting article in the Daily Beast about studying Amish groups without much genetic diversity in order to try to figure out how mental disorders like depression can travel through genetics.
“What is unique in the Old Order Amish is that the burdens associated with these diseases are spread across the entire family because they are essentially one 40,000-person family,” Ament told The Daily Beast. “Because the Amish family is so large there are opportunities to develop precision medicine strategies in the Amish that may be applied in the future to the broader population.”
Driving to work by yourself may be driving you nuts
That’s the conclusion of some new research out of Spain, which indicates that the solo car commuter can become part of a pretty undesirable cycle:
The more time workers spent driving, the less sleep they got, the more depressed and under pressure they felt, and the worse their mental health was in general. Similarly, the more money they spent on commuting, the more sleep loss and depression they experienced.
…
The study in Spain aligns with previous research on the impact of commuting on health and mental well-being. A major study conducted by researchers at the University of East Anglia in 2014 found that car commuters in the UK were 13% more likely to feel they were under constant strain or unable to concentrate than those who took public transport or got to work in other ways.
So all those people on the subway? They’re doing better than those people in the cars.
Maybe you’d enjoy seeing a Japanese video of rubber bands being made
Perhaps that would soothe you.
Next week there won’t be a newsletter
on account of I’m going to take a little bit of time off. When one is self-employed, the notion of time off gets kind of weird. One has the freedom to grant one’s own request for said time off but it’s coupled with a sort of work ethic guilt that one should be laboring all the time regardless since one is both a human and a company, an employer and an employee, management and labor, always wrestling inside one. Anyway, yeah, though, time off. Things will be back to normal the following week and I swear I’ll never take time off again as long as I live, I am lying.
A list of fun and addictive Flash games
Just like the good old days. Or something. I spent way too much time on these in those old days and wasted some time this morning on Wonderputt.