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Understanding and Managing Anxiety, with Derya Ozes, LMFT

Humintell’s Sayaka Torra recently sat down with Derya Ozes to discuss understanding and managing anxiety. Derya is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist at DeryaTherapy and has been in practice for over 10 years.

During their 25 minute conversation, they discussed how the pandemic has affected anxiety management, their personal experiences with anxiety, and more.

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The last several years has been challenging for so many people (myself included) and has revealed the importance of discussing mental health issues and various emotional states. From a therapist’s perspective, how has the pandemic affected anxiety and anxiety management in particular?

Derya emphasized the importance of understanding anxiety and that understanding anxiety is in essence understanding disruptions and change.

Anxiety generally manifests itself in psychological and somatic expressions of worry and fear, especially in situations where we may feel we don’t have a lot of agency or influence over.

Derya states that there’s definitely a relationship between the pandemic and increased anxiety levels. The pandemic caused major disruption and change in many of our routines that make us feel anchored and grounded. These routines were essential in helping us feel a sense of stability in our lives.

When we have a sense of stability, that is when we feel compelled to go beyond our basic survival needs. We develop hobbies and take part in social engagements.

The pandemic essentially invited disruption and change in all the main domains in our life.

When you talk about disruption and change, I think everyone can relate to that. Here in the Bay Area we went through a pretty strict lockdown where we had our daily routines uprooted. Can you speak about how disruptions are critical to understanding anxiety and how disruptions affect anxiety?

Derya states that in order to understand anxiety, it’s important to understand what NOT having anxiety looks like.

Not having anxiety involves a sense of psychological safety. We feel psychologically safe when we have rhythms in place that allow us to feel anchored in our day-to-day and week-to-week.

When those rhythms are taken away, it’s very common to feel psychologically disoriented.

Derya emphasizes that although the word “disruption” may have a negative connotation, there are also good disruptions. In different developmental stages of our lives, we make decisions that invite change such as getting married, having a child, moving a new community, and being promoted.

Did you know? Research shows that it takes on average 1-3 months in order for us to adapt to something new. This pertains to change that we ourselves have invited (known as intrinsic change).

In contrast, if there’s an external factor (extrinsic change) that causes change, it generally takes 4-8 months in order for us to adapt.

Derya emphasizes that part of managing change is managing how much change you bring into your life.

PRO TIP: If you can avoid multiple disruptions at the same time, you should avoid it.

Understanding One's Own EmotionsWhen you spoke about “good disruptions” that really resonated with me. I experienced a lot of anxiety after the birth of my son and it was a huge shift to adapt to my new role as a mom. I was curious to know about your personal experience as a therapist, dealing with anxiety through the pandemic. How has it affected your role as a therapist and how have you managed that for yourself?

Derya said the question reminded her of a conversation she had years ago with one of her mentors. At the time she had multiple disruptions in her life and her mentor reminded her that although she has all kinds of knowledge and tools as a therapist, she’s human first.

Everyone has a different capacity for change and a different way of processing and adapting to change. Something that may be challenging to one person may take them one day to process. For some people it may take weeks for them to process the same challenge.

Derya emphasizes that knowing yourself is important- having an awareness of your own patterns and ways you process emotion.

PRO TIP: If you are anticipating change in your life, be proactive about setting yourself up for success. Put stepping stones to anchor yourself around something.

Derya reflected on some personal changes she’s gone through in the recent past and how those changes have affected her.

Those are all really great tips and some of them I’ve never heard of (see graphic above). Above all, remembering that you’re human first and that sometimes you can do everything “right” and still feel anxious and that’s okay. Do you have any closing thoughts?

Derya explains that oftentimes when we are in an exciting and new part of our lives, we often assume it’s going to be a certain way forever. She emphasizes seeing and validating when the emotional shifts happen.

We often hold ourselves to a very high standard and forget to give ourselves the same level of grace and reassurance we give others. When you’re managing change it’s important to have some self empathy. Be connected to your friends or your special person. Reach out to professionals and have those difficult conversations especially if you’re struggling.

PRO TIP: Check in with yourself in the form of journal entries or lists. Ask yourself how you’re feeling grounded and what kind of changes you may need to make to feel more anchored. 

The post Understanding and Managing Anxiety, with Derya Ozes, LMFT first appeared on Humintell.

Can Humans Judge Animal Emotions? Yes, to an Extent.

animal emotionsMost people can discern how their pet cat or dog is feeling by just listening to them- happy kitties purr and angry dogs growl. But can this insight be extended to wild animals like a cow or a pig?

A new study entitled “Age, empathy, familiarity, domestication and call features enhance human perception of animal emotion expressions” from the University of Copenhagen surveyed more than 1000 people from around the world.

They found that most people can pick up on an animal’s excitement, but not necessarily positive or negative emotions.

The Study

Greenall, et al obtained audio recordings of pigs, horses, goats, and cows as well as wild boars and Przewalski’s horses.

According to Science “The recordings were made while the animals were experiencing certain emotions categorized as either positive, such as a horse readying to eat producing a high-pitched neigh, or negative, such as a hungry horse producing a throaty whine. The trial also included sound bites from human actors, who were recorded saying meaningless sounds in either an angry, fearful, or joyful tone.”

Once the recordings were obtained, the researchers sent the audio files and a survey to volunteers who were from 48 different countries and had the option to take the survey in eight different languages, including Italian, Dutch, and Hebrew.

For each question, they compared two short snippets of vocalizations from a particular species and decided which clip represented a high or low arousal and which vocalization represented a positive or negative emotion.

The Results

Figure 1.
Figure 1. (a) Phylogeny of the species played back in the survey. Correct recognition percentage per species for (b) arousal and (c) valence questions (orange: domestic species; yellow: wild species; grey: humans; binomial test: *0.05 ≤ p < 0.01, ***p ≤ 0.0001, NS = not significant).

Survey participants were able to accurately discern arousal in pigs, horses, and goats more than half of the time. The scores for emotional valence were more variable.

The survey takers were able to differentiate positive from negative vocalizations in humans, goats, horses, pigs, and wild boars at an above average clip, but they struggled to discern which emotions were being vocalized by the cows and wild horses.

Males and females didn’t show a difference in the accuracy of their answers. Instead, younger volunteers (aged 20 to 29 being the best, and ability declining with age) and those who had experience working with animals were better at picking up on both arousal and emotional valence.

The study suggests it may have been evolutionarily advantageous for a wide variety of animals to pick up on the emotional cues of other animals’ vocalizations—a long screech, for example, that may signal to multiple species that a predator is nearby.

Relationship to Empathy

A follow up study conducted by ethologist Elodie Briefer found that people who had higher empathy scores were better at identifying animal emotions from sound alone.

Briefer and her team collected used recordings similar to those of the Greenall, et al which were associated with positive experiences, such as an animal anticipating food or being reunited with a friend. Other sounds were made when the animal was afraid, under stress, or socially isolated.

In addition to discerning positive and negative emotions, participants were also asked to complete an empathy questionnaire based on the interpersonal reactivity index.

This index measures four empathetic traits: their tendency to adopt other people’s points of view, feel sympathy for others, experience distress when others are in need, and imagine themselves in fictional situations.

Interestingly, people who scored highly for empathy were better able to understand the meaning of the animal sounds.

This research suggests all us mammals have a shared emotional system.

The post Can Humans Judge Animal Emotions? Yes, to an Extent. first appeared on Humintell.

Babies Smile in Utero When Mom Eats Carrots But Frown When it’s Kale

A study led by Durham University’s Fetal and Neonatal Research Lab and published in the journal Psychological Science provides the first direct evidence that babies react to taste and smell in the womb.

The researchers took 4D ultrasound scans of 100 pregnant women to see how their unborn babies responded after being exposed to flavors from foods eaten by their mothers.

Thirty-five of the women took a capsule containing powdered carrot and 34 took a kale capsule. After 20 minutes researchers looked at each fetus using a 4D ultrasound. The mothers also did not eat or drink anything containing carrot or kale on the day of their scans to control for factors that could affect fetal reactions.

The results?

Evidence shows that facial expressions begin in utero; data shows that laughing and smiling begin in the womb as early as 24 weeks and are very prevalent by week 32.

Fetuses exposed to carrot showed more “laughter-face” responses while those exposed to kale showed more “cry-face” responses.  Their findings could further our understanding of the development of human taste and smell receptors.

Facial reactions seen in both flavor groups, compared with fetuses in a control group who were not exposed to either flavor, showed that exposure to just a small amount of carrot or kale flavor was enough to stimulate a reaction.

Babies in utero
Fig. 1. Example of cry-face gestalt of a kale-exposed fetus: (a) baseline, (b) cry-face gestalt (apex). FM11 = nasolabial furrow; FM16 = lower-lip depressor.
Fig. 2. Example of laughter-face gestalt of a carrot-exposed fetus: (a) baseline, (b) laughter-face gestalt (apex). FM6 = cheek raiser; FM12 = lip-corner puller.

The researchers also believe that what pregnant women eat might influence babies’ taste preferences after birth and potentially have implications for establishing healthy eating habits.

Humans experience flavor through a combination of taste and smell. In fetuses it is thought that this might happen through inhaling and swallowing the amniotic fluid in the womb.

Lead researcher Beyza Ustun, a postgraduate researcher in the Fetal and Neonatal Research Lab, Department of Psychology, Durham University, said:

“A number of studies have suggested that babies can taste and smell in the womb, but they are based on post-birth outcomes while our study is the first to see these reactions prior to birth. As a result, we think that this repeated exposure to flavors before birth could help to establish food preferences post-birth, which could be important when thinking about messaging around healthy eating and the potential for avoiding ‘food-fussiness’ when weaning. It was really amazing to see unborn babies’ reaction to kale or carrot flavors during the scans and share those moments with their parents.”

The researchers say their findings might also help with information given to mothers about the importance of taste and healthy diets during pregnancy. They have now begun a follow-up study with the same babies post-birth to see if the influence of flavors they experienced in the womb affects their acceptance of different foods.

Research co-author Professor Jackie Blissett, of Aston University, said: “It could be argued that repeated prenatal flavor exposures may lead to preferences for those flavors experienced postnatally. In other words, exposing the fetus to less ‘liked’ flavors, such as kale, might mean they get used to those flavors in utero.

“The next step is to examine whether fetuses show less ‘negative’ responses to these flavors over time, resulting in greater acceptance of those flavors when babies first taste them outside of the womb.”

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