Financial Therapy Is a Thing And Maybe It Could Help You
Or maybe you need some mental health training to go to Mars. Separate items.
Money. The freaky-outiest of topics?
I don’t know if there’s a topic that’s more fraught among people with interesting minds than money. As I say in the intro to this week’s episode about financial therapy, “I think a lot of it has to do with how much it bleeds all over a lot of other topics. It’s tied into your sense of self-worth, your place in society, it gets all over your concept of security, your view of the future. And here in America at least, we live in a capitalist society where money affects stuff like your health care, definitely your retirement. “
I mean, other topics might be up there in terms of stress generated: health, relationships, family, but I think money has got to be a contender for freaky-outiness. But I think it’s a topic that might get overlooked when it comes to actually dealing with those panicky feelings because ostensibly it’s a quantitative topic. It’s objective. It’s numbers. So I think a lot of people neglect to really acknowledge or cope with the emotional content of money and personal finance.
But Celia Roberts Hughes does. She’s a financial therapist, which is a thing. It’s a relatively new thing and there aren’t a lot of people in her profession, but it is a thing. On this week’s show, Celia talks about how she works with her clients who come in to talk about their relationship to money. I was going to just use the $ there to denote money but I don’t know how to make the Euro or Yen or other signs on my computer so I just had to type out “money”.
A lot of our relationship to money comes down to how we were taught about it or not taught about it when we were young. Or not taught, at least not directly. Because whether there were sit down lessons on money or you were just left to glean stuff from a family or a culture, there was stuff being taught nonetheless. On the cultural side, Celia brings up the example of what if you were raised in a traditionally Christian conservative environment where the father was the breadwinner and the mother didn’t work? What does that do to your concept of money later on in life? And if that family model didn’t end up working according to tradition after all, how does that impact you later in life?
It’s an interesting episode and I hope you listen to it.
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Getting the mind ready for Mars
Space: the Longest Goodbye is an upcoming documentary about how NASA is training astronauts from a mental health perspective. Because how DO you handle the reality of, say, a really long trip to Mars and back without going bananas (medical term)? And what a mess it would be if you go to all this trouble to send someone to Mars and back only to have them go all Major Tom on you?
I can talk to you if you want me to
One of my favorite things to do in the world is travel places to give speeches. I have spoken to community groups, corporations, schools, and just about everywhere else. A fun run, once. Another time at the Carter Center in Atlanta. I give speeches about mental health and wellness, delayed covid trauma, the optimism I have for fighting mental health stigma, and more. The speeches are well-received, judging from the rave feedback I’ve been receiving. Perhaps you would like me to come talk to your group? It’s easy to arrange! Just visit Collective Speakers and get in touch with my friends there.
A use for AI other than generating pictures of people with six fingers on each hand
A new study points to potential uses in AI for identifying psychosis.
MRI brain scans of those at clinically high risk for psychosis in other studies have shown structural differences in the brain, namely in reduced gray matter in the medial and superior temporal and medial frontal cortex according to the scientists. For this current study, the researchers found that the superior temporal, insula, and superior frontal areas were brain regions that helped the algorithm the most in classifying healthy controls from high-risk participants who later developed psychosis.
Here is the picture Psychology Today used for this article and I don’t know what it has to do with anything:
If you want, you can watch Pong Wars all day and for the rest of your life
Go check it out here. You don’t play it, you just watch it. And keep watching it.
Dessa on Sleeping with Celebrities
Dessa is many things but mostly she’s a cake decorator. For our purposes for this episode, at least. Oh sure, you may know her has a brilliant musician, rapper, poet, and occasional guest host on public radio. You may have heard her work on Welcome to Night Vale or heard her in action as part of the Doomtree collective or on The Hamilton Mix Tape. But we think her real passion is doing up those cakes super fancy. She details for us what kinds of piping equipment and ingredients she uses to make beautiful flowers on all the cakes that she’s constantly and giving away to friends. You can learn why roses are easier and daisies are surprisingly tricky as you nod off to sleep with visions of cakes dancing in your head.