Category Archives: Mental Health

Solutions To Discrimination And Stereotyping At Work

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Typecasting and stereotyping individuals is a common human error. Constructive relationship building is reliant on a person’s ability to learn from others differences. Failing to notice diversity in the workplace and not approaching this with an open mind is a fundamental error we all make. It is important for employees to identify ways to remove stereotyping from their work environment.

While you may not be directly involved, if you are in an environment that is conducive to social labeling consider yourself warned. Stereotyping inhibits social development and group learning. Work typecasting will directly hamper an individual’s ability to develop personal relationships and networking skills.

Prejudice is an immediate by-product of social stereotyping. Prejudiced behaviour leads to discrimination in the workplace which is less than favourable. The labelling of people at work is a way in which we categorise chunks of information. The less familiar the information and the more complicated it is to disseminate, the more we are prone to assigning a ‘general’ label to it.

In an attempt to remove workplace stereotyping the best approach to start with is by defining this. Stereotyping or labeling is explained as being the social categorisation we assign to those we meet. It is a human instinct to literally label people as we meet them. In essence stereotyping is a ‘lazy’ social habit we have developed. Consider the disaster stereotyping has in a place such as South Africa, where the diversity in culture is vast and complex.

When human beings are faced with new information we look for the fastest and simplest way to make sense of it. When bombarded with vast differences and hordes of information the easiest way through is to put miscellaneous matter into a stereotype box. When faced with information we don’t understand a kind of mental meltdown ensues. Systems crash and the sheer mystery of such information lead to assumptions.

Prejudice as a Result of Stereotyping at Work

Prejudice behaviour and discrimination is a direct result of stereotyping. Discrimination is an immediate by-product of refusing to accept other for their individuality. Such behaviour is both deconstructive and primitive. As the name explains, to be prejudice is to pre-judge an individual. Instead of awarding people the equal opportunity to prove their personal worth we assign a predefined label to them. Based on assumption, we place individuals into groups of relevancy. Prejudice behaviour in the workplace instills negativity and unfair criticism.

FIVE SOLUTIONS: Remove Stereotyping form the Workplace

1. Learn to interact with people on a more personal level

– Personal relationships are one of the most insightful clues to your own emotional maturity.
– Expand your perceptions and open your mind to diversities.
– Personal relationships are based on your ability to interact with others and harmonise the disclosure of personal information

2. Interact with diverse professional contacts

– Open yourself up to learning about different cultures in business.
– Develop valuable business contacts as a result of mutual sharing and respect.

3. Commit to expanding your knowledge.

– Apply effort to you endeavour to learn from things you don’t understand.
– Exercise commitment and patience in your quest to remove stereotyping from the workplace.

4. Keep an open mind.

– Put your feet in others shoes.
– Consider their experiences based on their situation.
– Conceited behaviour is counter-productive.
– Practice humility

5. Make it your goal to remove type casting from your workplace.

– Display conviction to your cause and you will not fail.
– Setting objectives is the best way to motivate yourself.
– Make it your goal to succeed.

Learning from each other’s differences and having a slice of humble pie is all that is required to eliminate stereotyping. There are so many things that we can learn from each other’s differences. We cannot expect to move forward if we continue to refer back to past stereotyping.

Copyright (c) 2008 Camilla Patten

ALIENATION IN ANITA DESAI`S ` CRY, THE PEACOCK`

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Alienation in Anita Desai’s Cry, the peacock

by RAM SHARMA, LECTURER IN ENGLISH, J.V.P.G COLLEGE, BARAUT, BAGHPAT, U.P. 30-04-2002

Anita Desai is a dominant figure in the twentieth century Indian English fiction. She has given a new direction to Indian English literature. Her novels are considered to be the great contribution to the Indian English literature. She started her literary journey with the publication of her first novel Cry, the Peacock in 1963. The 1960’s scattered a sense of great dejection and gloom all over India. In 1962 china obtain a victory over India and this defeat brought a sense of disgrace and humiliation to the hearts of Indians. During this period of dejection and humiliation, Anita Desai’s novel Cry, the Peacock published. Perhaps she must have had a nag of disillusionment in her subconscious mind, which came before us in the form of the novel Cry, the Peacock. She has measured the individual level of the abondoned self of her characters. Desai has delineated the self-alienation, despair, death, desolation and socio-psychic fragmentation of the protagonist. Through this article I have made a humble attempt to discover the meaning of alienation and inner life of Desai’s protagonist Maya in the novel Cry, the Peacock. I was, being human, borne alone; I am, being woman, hard beset; I live by squeezing from a stone The little nourishment I get1.

Every wife yearns for the intense intimacy with her husband. But in Cry, the Peacock the protogonist Maya receives hostility and indifference rather than delicacy and affection. In this novel Desai presents the silence, solitude, meloncholy and dark world of shadows in Maya’s life. Cry, the Peacock is concerned with its chief protagonist Maya’s Psychological problems. Based on the mythological and archetypal images and symbols, this novel explores the hidden and dormant impulses of Maya’s psyche. As a young sensitive girl, Maya desires to love and to be loved. She marries the friend of her father, Gautama, who is much older than herself. She belongs to a traditional Brahmin family which believes in astrology and other prophetic strains of Brahmanical order. On the other hand, Gautama’s family represents the rational side of life. Thus Maya is haunted constantly by the rationalistic approach of her husband to the affairs of life. Maya loves Gautama passionately and desires to be loved in return; but Gautama’s coldness disappoints her2. They are different with each other in tradition and modernity, trust and distrust in human relationships, brahmanical and non-brahmanical order of the society. The prophecy of albino astrologer creates a fear psychosis in Maya’s mind: The astrologer, that creeping sly magician of my hallucinations-no of course they were not hallucination, Arjuna had proved them to me, and yet-could they be real? had never said anything to suggest that it was I who would die young, unnatural and violently, four years after my marriage, nothing to suggest that he even thought that3. The astrologer’s prophecy proves to be true in the case of Maya’s brother, Arjuna. Gautama as a rationalist, fails to understand Maya’s emotional mental state. In the first part of the novel the death of her pet dog Toto serves as the symbol of an abondoned self doomed to loneliness: All day the body lay rotting in the sun. It could not be moved on to the verandah for, in that April heat, the reek of dead flesh was over powering and would soon have penetrated the rooms. So she moved the little string bed on which it lay under the lime trees, where there was a cool agueous shade, saw its eyes open and staring still, screamed and rushed to the garden tap to wash the vision from her eyes, continued to cry and ran, defeated, into the house4.

Maya feels alianation due to the death of Toto. It was intolerable to her. The death of dog indicates the eternal truth in human life. The idea of death terrifies Maya and she is obsessed with it. She is badly disturbed by the indifference of her husband Gautama to the death of dog and it shows his carelessness towards his wife. Because Maya is a childless lady and Toto was like a child to her. Both of them have different views about death. Gautam thinks death to be a normal event while Maya is disturbed by it. The second part of the novel reveals Maya’s psychic depth and narrates the tragic death of Maya’s husband Gautama. Maya and Gautama have different approaches towards life. Gautama is a lawyer. In his family one did not speak about love and affection and spoke of parliament, cases of bribery and corruption revealed in government while Maya’s family champions human values and rights. She is very sensitive and cannot ignore her feelings. Maya wants her fulfilment as a woman and as a wife. But her father like husband does not soothe her burning heart. She opts for an ideal love. Maya symbolizes the pangs of the peacock mating, narrates the secrets in the following lines: Do you not hear the Peacock call in the wilds? Are they not blood chilling, their shrieks of pain? – Pia, Pia-, they cry -Lover, Lover Mio, mio – I die I die-. ….. They spread-out their splended tails and begin to dance, but, like shiva’s their dance, knowing that they and their lovers are all to die….. when they have exhausted themselves in battle, they will mate. Peacock are wise. The hundred eyes upon their tales have seen the truth of life and death, and know them to be one. Living they are in love with life. – Lover, Lover-, you will hear them cry in the forests when the rain clouds come, – Lover, I die- …….5

The anguished shriek for mating, the crying and the yearning for the male peacock reaches out to Maya but not Gautama. She asks Gautama to hear the call -Pia, Pia-, but Gautama remains listless to the cry. He has no sexual and passionate urge towards her. Maya, the -pea-hen’ fails to have her instincts fulfilled from Gautama, the -peacock’. She feels loneliness, isolation and desertion. Gautama is a self controlled reasonable, dutiful and worldly wise man. He did not try to soothe her. Maya knows about the insensitive and indifferent nature about her husband. She says:

……he knew nothing that concerned me. Giving me an opal ring to wear on my finger, he did not notice the translucent skin beneath, the blue fleshing veins that ran under and out of the bridge of gold and jolted me into smiling with pleasure each time I saw it. Telling me to go to sleep while he worked at his papers, he did not give another thought to me, to either the soft, willing body or the lonely, wanting mind that waited near his bed6.

Maya aspires for human love. She yearns to be loved by Gautama’s family members. But the cold behaviour & indifference of Gautama’s family members disappoints her: And I yearned, yearned for her to hold me to her bosom. I could not remember my own mother at all. My throat began to swell with unbearable self-pity. I would cry, I know it in a while, and dreaded it, in their same presence. -Please, I whispered’7….

In this passage the last word -please- is the expression of Maya’s inner psyche. She is a love-lorn lady. She wishes that her mother-in-law should stay with her. The word -Please- reflects the pangs of a modern sensitive lady and her helplessness in the human world. The constant anxiety and loneliness breed in her delusion. The hallucination born of her isolation and lonely temperament make her a psychic patient. A mental shock produces an injurious effect on her subconscious mind. This trauma leading to an obsession in her psyche. Another shocking effect upon Maya’s psyche is the prophecy of an astrologer about her future that after four years of their marriage one of them would die either husband, or wife. After four years of her marriage she recollects about this prophecy:

…… we had been married four years. It was as though the moon light had withered the shadows in my mnd as well, leaving it all dead-white, or dead-black. When the drums fell silent and the moon began to sink over the trees, I knew the time had come. It was now to be either Gautam, or I8.

The constant sound of prophecy of the astrologer haunts her waking and sleeping hours. She spent many sleepless nights due to regular process of day dreaming, nightmares and constant fear. This anxiety phobia makes an unconscious journey through her dreams to an unknown world: Yet, once I fall asleep, the dream dissolves quickly into a nightmare in which a row of soft, shaggy, frailfooted bear shamble through a dance…….. By a grotesque transformation, the bears are rendered into a lonely, hounded herd of gentle, thoughtful visitors from a forgotten mountain-land and the gibbering, cavorting human beings are seen as monsters from some prehistoric age, gabbling and gesticulating, pointing at their genitals, turning their backs and raising their tails, with stark madness in their faces……9

In this passage, one wonders to see a world of dreams beyond human imagination. It is a bizarre world. The phrase -monsters from prehistoric age- refers to the pre-unconscious level of human mind. Human mind when faced with the worries and anxities of life traces for its recesses of pre conscious level of human psyche. The passge becomes a wonderful example for the repressed desires and obsessions of the unconscious mind. The grotesque figure of the bear is followed by some horrifying sights like -gibbling-, -cavorting- human beings as -monsters-. They are with definitive absured gestures, pointing out their genitals and then showing their behaviour with -stark madness-. This bizarre world of animals world symbolizes sexual obsessions of Maya. The sight of it becomes representative of Maya’s inherent fear for death10. Thus Maya’s loneliness, obsession, seclusion, unfulfilled womanhood, emotional stimuli unrestness, debilitative husband and over-ridden death phobia make her neurotic in her behaviour. He insanity grows more and more. Her growing insanity and neurotic behavour is approaching near some disaster. She whoops and produce a sound -like an antic owl- 11. Before mirror she giggles -at the absurd image- 12.

She finally invites her husband to follow her for fresh air out of the room. She leads him upstairs on the roof. Gautama follows her upstairs on to the roof and she hears the sound of -an owl- for an ill-omen. She in a fit of maddening fury, thrust him down the roof. He falls down to the very bottom and dies13.

In the third part of the novel she also dies, Thus this alienation and solitude between husband-wife relationship brought out their death. The novel Cry, the Peacock describes the reasons and consequences of alienation in the relationship between Gautama and Maya. Maya’s neurotic behaviour is due to her intense alienation. Both husband and wife have different attitudes towards life. This attitude alienates them from each other. Maya’s isolation haunts her no more as she kills her husband in a fit of maddening fury. It is alienation which brings a disastrous end of their life.

Works cited

1-Elinor Wylie, -Let No Charitable Hope-, cited by Polly N. Chenoy in Indian Journal of American Studies, Vol. 13 No.2 (July 1983), p.172. 2-O.P. Budholia’s Anita Desai -Vision and Technique in her novels’ Published by B.R. Publishing Corporation (2001), p. 3. 3-Anita Desai, Cry, the Peacock (New Delhi: Orient Paperbacks, ) p. 4-Ibid p. 5-Ibid p. 6-Ibid p. 7-Ibid p. 8-Ibid p. 9-Ibid p. 10-O.P. Budholia’s Anita Desai -Vision and Technique in her novels’ Published by B.R. Publishing Corporation (2001), p. 138-139. 11-Anita Desai, Cry, the Peacock (New Delhi: Orient Paperbacks, ) p. 12-Ibid p. 13-O.P. Budholia’s Anita Desai -Vision and Technique in her novels’ Published by B.R. Publishing Corporation (2001), p. 140.

30-04-2002

Magnetic Therapy For Painless Treatment

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Are you looking for an alternative solution of medicines for different painful conditions like depression, inflammation in the joints and rheumatoid arthritis? If yes, you have got great options for this and the treatment is magnetic therapy. The best part of the therapy is that its completely painless. This is a proven technology as a large number of people have tried this non-invasive therapy for treatment and are very happy with the results.

Alternative of medicines:

Though there has been a great advancement in medical industry and scientists have come up with a number of effective medicines for different ocular conditions, the fact that these have their own side effects cant be ignored. In this situation different magnetic therapies work best. One of the most famous therapies is rTMS treatment in India. Magnetic therapy makes a safe alternative of medicines and has no unwanted effects.

Magnetic therapy

This treatment is getting more and more popular every day and the reason is effective solution for painful conditions. Affected people get quick and painless relief for muscle and joint pains. Magnetic therapy is an apt solution for treating migraines and depression, which are otherwise treated with electric shocks, a very painful treatment. Some of the major benefits of magnetic therapy are use of simple devices, helpful in post-surgery healing, brings-down stress levels, makes patients more active and improves blood circulation.

Different forms of magnetic devices

Based on different problems and individual needs, several magnetic therapy devices are available in the market.

Spot Magnets: These devices are affixed to affected body parts or to acupuncture points with surgical tapes or wraps.

Shoulder supports: These magnetic devices are used to provide support to shoulders and upper back and provide these areas magnetic healing. These are helpful in treatment of muscle pain, joint pain and arthritic shoulder pain.

PEMF Devices: Pulsed Electromagnetic Therapy (PEMF) machines are used to provide PEMF treatment to get rid of various painful conditions and depression. Major benefits one gets from PEMF therapy are decreased pain, better sleep, nerves regeneration, wound healing and creation of stronger bones.

Knee Braces: Biomagnetic knee braces prove to be helpful for painful and injured knees. Major problems these braces treat are strains, sprains and osteoarthritis knee pain.

Magnetic mattress: If you are missing a good night’s sleep for long time, use mattress pad designed with components of magnet and get a sound sleep. These boost the production of melatonin hormones and help you get a good sleep.

Author bio: Writer of this article is an expert in the field of magnetic therapy and manufacturing of different magnetic therapy devices like rTMS and PEMF machines. Check out the products at PEMF India.

Afraid Of Getting Military Mental Stress Discharge Train Your Mind, Not Just Your Body!

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Several military members get discharged every year because of the mental stress they experience while deployed. Getting discharged may be for their own health and safety in such situations; their stress, anxiety, and depression can put them in trouble and may even worsen if they stay in the field.

Unfortunately, as a military member, you would want to avoid getting discharged, especially if you have not served your full term. When you get discharged due to mental stress before you complete your term, you will not be eligible for Veteran benefits unless the doctors rule it as a medical discharge.

Being in the military is naturally stressful for anyone. You have to let go of the comforts of home and exchange it for an environment you have no control over. You also dont know what to expect. And who knows when war is going to strike? This kind of situation is enough to cause severe mental stress on anyone; some are able to handle it, while some are not. If you are about to get deployed, it would be best if you know what to do to keep the mental stress from overwhelming you.

Train the Mind. As you train your body in the military, make sure to also train the mind. Before you understand how to do that, lets give you a brief overview of how the mind works.

How the Mind Works. The mind has several levels of consciousness, the most prominent of which are the conscious mind and the subconscious. The conscious mind decides what we do, what we think of, and what we are aware of at the present moment. When we are faced with a certain situation or knowledge, the conscious mind filters it and stores it in the subconscious.

The subconscious mind, on the other hand, influences us from underneath the conscious state. Its influences can be very strong and powerful because they just direct our actions and behaviors. Since these influences come from the subconscious, we are not able to filter or evaluate them.

Unfortunately, the subconscious is very sensitive. It can absorb practically anything positive or negative. So when youre out on the field, the subconscious mind is actively absorbing everything you experience. Your subconscious absorbs all the fear, anxiety, restlessness, and negative moods of the people around you. It absorbs the threats in the environment. Slowly, these build up into powerful thought patterns and beliefs, until you stress yourself out because you start to believe in all these negative thoughts.

How to Train the Mind. Training the mind means getting into your own subconscious and conditioning it so that it does not absorb and automatically fends off negative thoughts and beliefs. Instead, you replace these negative thoughts with powerful messages that the subconscious mind can hold on to at all times during deployment.

Some examples are:

I am a survivor.
Survival skills come naturally to me.
I make the best of every situation.

These messages are called subliminal messages, because they pass under or sub the threshold or limens of the conscious mind. They are not recognizable or registered in the conscious mind; they go directly to the subconscious.

Thinking About Thinking

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As a public school superintendent, I believe the best way to prepare students for college and careers is to focus on providing instructional programs and opportunities that help them become good thinkers. To do this teachers, and virtually everyone else in a community, should assume the mantle of becoming a “cognitive coach” to students. Whether you are a parent, grandparent, aunt, uncle, older sibling, or a community member at large, we all have an important role to play in the developing good thinkers among our youth.

The best way for you to become a cognitive coach is to seek out and engage school children and adolescents in meaningful conversations. The objective here is to get kids talking about what they think, what they feel, and what they believe whenever and wherever you may find them. It may be in a classroom. It may be at the grocery store. It may be at a basketball game. It doesn’t matter where as long as you engage students in an topical conversation and, hopefully, even a debate. Mainly, you want to encourage students to voice their opinion about things. Get them to take a position on -this thing, or that thing,- and ask them to support their position with evidence. Curiously enough, the simple process of engaging students in real life conversations and debates will serve to reinforce what they have learned in the classroom, and help them create their own knowledge about a subject or topic. Learning indicates that a student has been exposed to material, understands the material, and can recall the information. Knowledge, on the other hand, goes beyond recall and includes information processing, application to other situations, consideration of meaning, and contrasting with other concepts. Naturally, the topic of conversation you engage in with one of your learners will vary from student to student, and in the level of complexity based on child’s age and developmental level. But even a kindergartener has an opinion about things that are going on in his or her life. Engaging in conversation with any members of your learning community in ways that gets at what they have learned and what they know will help them develop higher order reasoning skills. The goal here is to assist students in integrating their knowledge and experience through day-to-day discussions with adults. A student’s mental synthesis process occurs when a respected adult asks a question, particularly a question that requires reflection. In education, we call this process -scaffolding.- I think all adults in a community have a responsibility to help children build the mental scaffolds I’m talking about here, where one concept formation builds upon another, with the ultimate goal of producing independent thinkers.

TIPS ON ENGAGING IN MEANINGFUL CONVERSATIONS WITH STUDENTS:

Help students make connections to what they have learned in the classroom to real-life situations. Effective understanding of content subject matter is more likely to occur when students are required to explain, elaborate, and defend what they know in relation to things going on around them. Just about any lesson in math, science, or social students can be used as a basis for -what do you know?- and -what do you think?- forms of questioning. At the grocery store, ask students to practice estimation on the fly and come up with the best value for the size, quantity, and choice of products. Use lessons from history and civics to get the student to voice an opinion on whether some new law or school policy is -fair- or -unfair.- Point out a crumpled car in a parking lot (hopefully not your own) and ask a student to speculate about the laws of physics that must have been involved in the accident. You might even ask them to provide an opinion on how long ago the accident occurred by examining the amount of oxidation (rust) that has formed on exposed metal surfaces. Encouraging students to make connections between what they know to non-classroom situations where opinion, speculation, estimation, probability and plausibility thinking is required can be a fun activity for both parties. It also offers students an opportunity to use intuition, creativity, and imagination that fosters the development of an inquisitive mind.

Promote diverse thinking about a topic or problem at the local, state, or national level. This is the old -on the one hand, and on the other hand- type of conversation with a learner. Point out to the student that debate is a form of human discourse that is not only tolerated in our society, but encouraged. Ask the student to consider both sides of an ongoing debate that can be found in any local newspaper. Have them argue from both sides of the political arena, and then ask them to choose one side. Get them to defend the position they have adopted. Don’t be afraid to challenge any flawed or inaccurate assumptions that they made along the way. Again, the goal here is to prompt the student to not only report what they know, and what values the hold in the process, but to formulate new ideas about a topic through a mental synthesis process.

Encourage students to use primary sources of information about a subject, topic or problem. Ask them to report what the textbook and teacher has taught them, but then point them in the direction of conducting their own research using sources that are independent of both. This means teaching them to be skilled users of the local library and the Internet. Students can become very skilled Google Jockeys if they are guided by adults to find quality research articles, peer reviewed magazines, archived newspaper accounts, etc. that either reinforces what they have learned in class or changes their perspective entirely. Either way, they are using higher order reasoning skills that lead to better discrimination of valuable versus not-valuable information. The development of these discriminatory skills leads to better comprehension of reading material and forms the basis of structured thinking. Structured thinking results in better writing. Asking students to routinely find their own primary source information in addition to textbooks leads to more disciplined and diverse thinking, which in turn, leads to good test-taking behavior and better test scores. This is because the student can draw upon multiple associations to the same content knowledge when they need to. Help students recognize the relationship between cause and effect. Through the practice of disciplined and discriminatory thinking, the next step is to encourage students to use the scientific method to solve problems. As a natural consequence of the type of intentional conversation that you’ve employed thus far, students will begin to routinely use an inventory of cognitive skills that not only activate prior knowledge, but helps them constructs new meaning in the process. Things like comparing and contrasting, classifying, observing, planning and predicting, testing assumptions, and hypothesis formation are skills that have now become well practiced by the learner. These are the sub-set of skills necessary for the student to begin seeing cause and effect relationships all around them, and that’s when the light bulb really clicks on in the critical thinking developmental process. Most schools do an excellent job teaching students the scientific method, but they need help with the precursor skills mentioned above. When students can demonstrate the ability to put aside their personal values, beliefs, and bias and engage in the rigors of purely evidence-based thought, use of the scientific method becomes second nature. As a cognitive coach, when you see these thinking skills begin to emerge, jump on the opportunity to use a -teachable moment- to ask the learner to explain how they have considered facts, ideas, situations, alternatives, criteria, and consequences when they report any conclusions (opinions) they share.

Call attention to the use of -spin- and -propaganda- in all information sources. This involves teaching students to develop an inventory of common sense strategies that help them develop their real-world discrimination skills. We all know that it is wise to teach children the -Golden Rule- and the old adage that -if something looks too good to be true, it probably is.- What I’m talking about here is more subtle and insidious. Something that is not obvious to children and adolescents until pointed out by an adult, but is a critical analysis skill that is crucial to independent thought. Spin is the manipulative use of an information source. It puts an innocent common sense perspective on an embarrassing occurrence so that it sounds normal or good. Propaganda is an attempt to get the public to adopt a common sense perspective that is not true, and is known not to be true, for the purpose of gaining or maintaining political control.

Hopefully, after reading this article, you will be willing to join with me in engaging students living in your community in conversations that will help them become good thinkers. If we teach children everything we know, their knowledge is limited to ours. If we teach children how to think, their knowledge is limitless. I’m a firm believer that any student’s ability to succeed in life after graduating from high school, and in their competition for jobs that don’t yet exist, rests on their demonstrated ability to be good thinkers. Your help is needed in the development of student cognitive competencies, even at an early age. You can do this be assisting students in the gathering and analyzing information, helping them develop their own set of assumptions, ideas, hypotheses, and most importantly, teaching them to solve real-world problems through disciplined, creative, and independent thought. Having good thinkers in your midst enriches the lives of every member of your community, and you can really help by increasing their numbers by following some of the strategies described in this article.