Social Engineering Blogs

An Aggregator for Blogs About Social Engineering and Related Fields

The technique which cured my anxiety

“It’s all in your head.” Words everyone who has suffered with anxiety knows well! The thing is… that’s a lie. And it pisses me off. Let me explain

Just about everyone who has anxiety and has sought out help from friends and family has heard the “It’s all in your head” explanation. Your friends and family are trying their best to help but just don’t understand what anxiety is and what it feels like physically. They don’t understand that you aren’t able to control what happens in your head. After all, if it was as simple as changing your thoughts and you were able to change them at will too then you wouldn’t be asking for help right?

Anxiety attacks (or even just severe generalized anxiety disorders) are visceral! They are mental and physical experiences and definitely not limited to just your thinking. An anxiety attack can give you headaches, throw you into a cold sweat, or make even breathing a challenge.

So why do so many people try to control symptoms like these by positive thinking alone???

It seems crazy when you think about it that people still try to control extreme and acute symptoms like the ones above with positive thinking.

My Journey

I’ll let you in on a little known fact about me. I used to have generalized anxiety. I felt a low (and sometimes not so low!) level of anxiety around the clock. Sometimes it would be totally manageable but out of the blue it would rear its ugly head and make socializing or even leaving the house next to impossible!

I am a bookworm, so the first place I went for help was self help books like  “ Success Through A Positive Mental Attitude” by Napoleon Hill and “How to Stop Worrying and Start Living” By Dale Carnegie. (yes, those are affiliate links) Not to bash these books as classic guides to positive thinking but by themselves they are not good remedies to anxiety.

I tried self medicating by taking massive doses of 5-HTP and Dopa Mucuna beans (They helped the acute symptoms of anxiety but did little to stop the causes.)

I even tried to systematically desensitize myself to my anxiety triggers by being around people and situations which would make me anxious more often.

All of these things worked temporarily but I felt like I was fighting an uphill battle which I couldn’t win. And after talking to other people who suffered from anxiety I knew that this was not an uncommon feeling at all.

This problem was actually what ignited my passion for understanding body language as a tool for personal transformation. I saw a TED talk entitled “Your body language shapes who you are” by Amy Cuddy.

In this talk she describes how our body language shapes who we are and how we feel, not just the other way around. Go take a look at it after you finish this article, you won’t be disappointed!

How This insight cured my anxiety and how it can cure yours

Knowing that our body language literally changes our physiology and our mood, I set out to figure out how to use this knowledge to solve my anxiety.

I learned two more things which let me do this, the first is an idea called anchoring. Anchoring is the idea that when you have a certain posture, or gesture and you associate it over time to a particular emotion or feeling then what you end up doing is building a trigger, when you do the gesture you feel the emotion.

In an article entitled Neuro-linguistic programming treatment for anxiety: Magic or myth? Martin Krugman describes a technique called “anchoring” Which is when you associate a kinesthetic (touch or feeling) sensation with a particular emotion. Although it has been shown to be ineffective in 1 hour therapies, Anchoring is effective when done on a more long term basis.

The second Idea I learned  was a military thought process which is used to help soldiers feel less discomfort in the face of uncertainty. This process is imagining the best, worst, and most likely scenarios. In the words of the stoic philosopher Seneca, “He robs present ills of their power who has perceived their coming beforehand.”

My life changed when I brought these three ideas together

Here is the power of these three ideas together you can anchor the best, worst, and most likely case scenarios to different body language, and use your powerful body language not only to change your body chemistry, but also to arouse the emotions and thoughts that everything will be all right! Here is an example…

What I did is this, when I was about to enter a situation which I knew would trigger my anxiety, like going to a hectic night at work, I would ask myself what the worst thing that could happen was. As I imagined all the worst things which could happen to me at work I would focus on maintaining the body language of discomfort, rolling my shoulders forward, looking down, breathing shallow, etc…

Next, I would ask myself what the best thing that could happen was. I would imagine getting compliments from customers, a pat on the back from the boss, and having a good time joking with my co-workers. As I did this I would straighten up my posture, push my chin ever so slightly up, focus on breathing deeply, and hold my hands in an open position.

And finally I would visualize the most likely scenario, going to work and skating by with a few good moments of appreciation and one or two disgruntled customers. When I was visualizing this average situation, I would hold my body in a neutral posture and breathe moderately deeply.

Then while I was at work I would focus on maintaining my posture as close as possible to the best case posture. When I did this I noticed I would feel more confident, and expect things to go well at work (and it became a self-fulfilling prophesy)

Why this technique works.

The thinking process of Best, worst, most likely helps bring your mind into a state where it is most prepared for what could happen.

Simultaneously, the visualization and body language anchoring end up creating a powerful trigger for different emotional states. Your mind learns to follow your body and you have a tool which not only addresses the way you are thinking but also the physiological and hormonal basis of that feeling!

This tool has been invaluable for me and a few people who I’ve taught it to, I hope it will be for you as well!

What I need you to do now are two things.

First, let me know how this technique worked for you in the comments below

Second, If you enjoyed this post share it using the buttons on the side of the page

Sources:

William, I.B. (2009). A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy. New York, NY: Oxford University Press

Krugman, Martin, et al., (1985): “Neuro-linguistic programming treatment for anxiety: Magic or myth?.” Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology. Aug, Vol. 53(4) pp. 526-530.

Permalink

The Funnel Approach to Questioning and Eliciting Information

2015-02-06_13-25-16Written for Tactics and Preparedness, Issue 15, January 2015
By Dr. David Matsumoto, Dr. Hyisung Hwang and Vincent Sandoval

Broadly speaking, elicitation refers to procedures or techniques involving interacting with and communicating with others, formally or informally, that is designed to gather knowledge or inform. Eliciting information from anyone who is uncooperative is a difficult task. Elicitation can occur in many different contexts, including very impromptu, informal situations such as everyday conversations and social interactions (e.g., a “chance” meeting at a cocktail party or other social gatherings) or very formal ones that are scheduled and occur in a predefined place (e.g., a job  interview). In this article, we provide tips to eliciting information during relatively more formal interviews, which we define as an overt activity for the purpose of information gathering. That is, an interview is a conversation with a purpose.

A list of questions by itself does not constitute an interview. Instead, one should prepare for interviews by crafting relevant questions to address specific topics to explore with the subject prior to conducting an interview. Preparation is essential to effective interviewing, including conducting and analyzing background reports, collating corroborating or disconfirming information, interviewing other individuals, gathering relevant forensics and other physical evidence.

Even when it comes to the interview, there are many things to consider, and it is important to understand the interview within the broader context than just the interaction between interviewer and subject. Interviews occur in a certain place and time, between two or more individuals who often come from very different backgrounds, cultural perspectives and goals. Sometimes subjects (and interviewers) come to the interview with deep-seated hatred and disrespect for each other. In many instances subjects may be uncooperative or cooperative up to a point. Interviews take place in a specific setting and much consideration needs to be paid to configuring those settings to maximize the effectiveness of the interview.

Effective interviewers rarely just jump straight to the point of the interview at the outset by asking very direct questions
about a very specific topic. Instead, effective interview strategies involve the development of some degree of rapport between the interviewer and subject. The development and maintenance of rapport can be very tricky and demanding, especially with an initially uncooperative subject. Establishing rapport needs to be part of an effective interview strategy.

There are many different types of interview strategies and tactics. Below, we provide some broad-stroked tips based on our
knowledge of the existing science relevant to interviewing as well as what has been vetted in the field with years of experience, which can be flexibly applied to a variety of settings.

Continue reading this article by clicking here

Expressing Anger Leads to Improved Health?

Angery Face - Anger: Does it motivate us - Humintell Taken from Medical News Today

In the US and many Western countries, people are urged to manage “negative” feelings of anger or suffer its ill effects. But new research published in Psychological Science suggests that anger may actually be linked with better, not worse, health in certain cultures. The findings are based off research conducted with participants from the US and Japan.

“Many of us in Western societies naively believe that anger is bad for health, and beliefs like these appear to be bolstered by recent scientific findings,” says psychological scientist Shinobu Kitayama of the University of Michigan. “But our study suggests that the truism linking anger to ill health may be valid only within the cultural boundary of the ‘West,’ where anger functions as an index of frustration, poverty, low status and everything else that potentially compromises health.”

“These findings show how socio-cultural factors go under the skin to influence vital biological processes,” explains Kitayama.

In other words, it’s the circumstances that elicit anger, and not anger itself, that seem to be bad for health. In previous work, Kitayama and colleagues found that anger can function as a signal of high status and privilege in Asia — drawing on this, they hypothesized that greater expression of anger might be associated with better health among Asian participants.

To explore the link, the researchers examined data from American participants drawn from the Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) survey and data from Japanese participants drawn from the Midlife in Japan (MIDJA) survey.

To measure health, the researchers looked at biomarkers for inflammation and cardiovascular functioning, both of which have been linked to anger expression in previous research. The combination of these two factors served as a measure of overall biological health risk.

The researchers also looked at measures that gauged various aspects of anger, including how often participants expressed angry feelings through verbally or physically aggressive behaviors (e.g., “I slam doors,” “I say nasty things”).

The data revealed that greater anger expression was associated with increased biological health risk among American participants, as previous studies have shown.

But greater anger expression was associated with reduced biological health risk among Japanese participants. And the association was not explained by other potentially related factors — such as age, gender, chronic health conditions, smoking and alcohol consumption, social status, and experience of negative emotions more generally.

“The association between greater anger and compromised biological health, taken for granted in the current (Western) literature, was completely reversed so that greater anger was associated with better biological health among Japanese,” explains Kitayama.

The researchers did not find a link between other facets of anger, such as chronic propensity toward anger or the extent to which participants suppressed feelings of anger, and health outcomes.

Together, these findings suggest that the link between anger expression and health reflects different experiences across cultural contexts. In the US, expressing anger seems to reflect the degree to which people experience negative events, while in Japan it may reflect the degree to which people feel empowered and entitled.

“Our point is that anger expression is a complex phenomenon likely motivated by a variety of factors, many of which could be culture-specific. These cultural factors must be taken into account to achieve a full understanding of the link between anger and health,” the researchers write.

Kitayama and colleagues hope that future longitudinal research that follows participants over time will help to shed light on the relationship:

“Such research will help us address whether improving personal and social life styles so as to reduce anger may entail long-term health benefits.”