Tag: anxiety

In addition to bodywork and artwork (the paintings and photos on this site are mine), I love to read and write. The “Extras” pages contain excerpts from one of my published books. There’s also a page for books that don’t fit into the categories on the Asian Therapies or Rosen… Read more“Extras”

Reality is created, maintained and altered in social interactions. When we talk to people we assume we are sharing a mutually intelligible world. But this assumption remains unformulated and we don’t think about "reality" because there’s no need to mention the obvious. Even the most trivial and insignificant exchanges take… Read more“Anxiety: The World as Chaos”

There is no possible way that our stock of knowledge can ever be adequate. The world never stops changing. Novel situations continue to emerge. We will always be learning something new. If we make enough areas of life routine, however, the activity in the warehouse of ideas can come to… Read more“What You Don’t Know”

Routine situations normally follow each other in a self-evident chain of succession. This doesn’t mean we never encounter anything new. It merely means that, most of the time, our knowledge is adequate and the empty categories are automatically filled in with specific details. We expect pregnancy to lead to childbirth…. Read more“Worry: The Need to Know”

If we had to stop and reflect on all that we do, there would be too much to think about; we would be totally preoccupied with the small details of everyday life. As impressive as the brain is, there are limits to the amount of information it can process. Routines… Read more“Changing Reality”

Socially shared knowledge is not something we are taught in school or read in books. Its foundations are in the routine necessities, the social interactions, the problems, dangers, and enjoyments of everyday life. Over the course of a lifetime we acquire a set of recipes: techniques for dealing with frequently… Read more“Recipe Knowledge”

What is unique about human beings, compared to other animals, is that we lack a biologically inherited nature that dictates how we can live. There is no specific segment of the world defined by our physiological limitations. We can live on the equator or in Iceland, eat human flesh or… Read more“The World from Scratch”

Worry has a bad image. It’s regarded as useless, neurotic, an object of ridicule. The negative aspects of worry — the tendency to exaggerate and overreact — make “don’t worry” seem like reasonable advice. And certainly there are times when putting something out of mind may be the best policy…. Read more“Victims of Advice”

We live in a world that inundates us with health information, whether it’s the foods we should eat or avoid, the exercise fads we should follow, or, perhaps more seriously, the latest prescription drugs we’re advised to “ask your doctor about.” While some of this may be helpful, the constant… Read more“Understanding Anxiety: Introduction”