I can tell you from being an addict who was inches from death, your food addiction a in the same part of the brain as my drinking and I can tell you that I know exactly how you feel. Here is the hardest part for you to accept, and believe me, people around you will argue against it, most of how you got here was out of your control.

You most likely have issues in your brain. Because our "free will" and "you" exists in the brain, people like to conflate the two and associate malfunctions in the reward system to a lack of will power or personal responsibility. The very thing you make your choices with, your brain, is compromised.

I know something that has helped me, no wait, saved my life, and I just recently stumbled upon a book about it, exercise. Before you dismiss it and categorize yourself as someone who doesn't, or can't, exercise, read this book cover to cover. Get the audio book, listen to it on your down time.

If it is not the solution to your problems, I can guarantee you, it is the start to them. Do you want evidence? Read the book. Do you want research? Read the book. Do you want hope? Read the book.

You have to understand that you are fighting against the reward system in your brain. It will tell you things you have to ignore. I recommend exercise not because you mentioned overeating, but because you mentioned depression. The transformation in your body will just be an added bonus.

Of course, we don't all have the means, but therapy is #1. They will help you stay on course. When that malfunctioning part of your brain tells you one thing, your therapist will convinces you that it is a ruse fabricated by an imbalance of neurotransmitters. If you cannot afford one, it is up to you.

Every day. Commit to intense exercise every day. Zero excuse to miss. Not for your weight, for your brain. It is not the magic cure, but it is close. Good luck.

This is going around reddit today.

Julia Serano points out in her book Whipping Girl, that almost all the issues of sexism, homophobia, transphobia, sissyphobia, stem from the same thing, Oppositional Sexism.

It is the incorrect idea that, man is polar opposite to woman, and that man > woman. The next thing to derive from that thinking then is masculinity > femininity. Then masculinity = strong and helpful, femininity = weak and frivolous. Etc, etc.

But in regards to the homophobia comment, it is true I think, a lot of straight cismale homophobia results from some low level knowledge that they have ingrained in their social conditioning an oppositional sexist view of the world.

edit: added links

I'll stick to recommending science communication books (those that don't require a deep background on biological concepts):

• On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection - Charles Darwin, bonus points if you can get a 1st edition reprint (before his colleagues made him change a lot of important things); it is a must-read but it might need quite some time to truly understand it, it is a heavy read.
  
  
• A lot of people recommend the Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins but that one is one of his most controversial books and if you decide to read it, you should take everything with a pinch of salt; for Dawkins I prefer to recommend the Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution and the Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design. Just beware of Dawkins, he's a little dogmatic in his approach.
  
  
• The Dialectical Biologist - Richard Levins & Richard Lewontin.
  
  
• The Structure of Scientific Revolutions - Thomas Kuhn, this one will change forever your conception of science as a whole.
  
  
• The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature - Matt Ridley.
  
  
• Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History, and the Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History - Stephen J. Gould.
  
  
• The Ghosts of Evolution: Non-sensical Fruit, Missing Partners, and Other Ecological Anachronisms - Connie Barlow.
  
  
• Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? - Frans de Waal, this one is about animal cognition but has an incredible underline of all the deficiencies and prejudges on science.
  
  
• Microbe Hunters - Paul de Kruif.
  
  
• Symbiotic Planet: A New Look at Evolution, and What is Life? - Lynn Margulis.
  
  
• The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark - Carl Sagan & Ann Druyan.
  
  
• A Short Story of Nearly Everything - Bill Bryson.
  
  ---
  
  For books that everyone studying biology ends up reading, my candidate would be Lehninger's Principles of Biochemistry, by Nelson & Cox but that's a textbook.

Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker. This book will scare you into sleeping more.

There is also a great Joe Rogan interview with the author. Everyone should watch it.

Man or woman?

Man or woman?

Man or woman?

Man or woman?

Man or woman?

Hint! They are all men. Men who learned to write stylish, flowing, neat letters. Beautiful script and prose. A time when both men and women (educated) were expected to have exemplary writing skills. That is not to say that there wasn't people with bad writing...but these men are not going against the cultural grain...they are with the cultural expectations of that time period. If writing styles change over time and across cultures, the how can boys be hardwired or predisposed to a certain style of writing, and vice versa, how can girls be hardwired or predisposed to a different style of writing? If there is a biologically meaningful explanation than it should transcend cultures and time.

This is a classic case of societal expectation mixed with confirmation bias. "Because it's a "well-known fact" that women have better handwriting than men, most people are more likely to ignore cases that go against that stereotype, even though they're probably more common than popularly thought." I think this argument for sex-based differences really breaks down when we examine the evidence from other cultures and other time periods.


Would a man from India have the same image of "female" writing in his mind as yours? A woman from rural China? A boy from Russia? A girl from Peru? The image in your head of what is "girls writing" is culturally derived. Other cultures will have other ideas of what constitutes a male or female writing style...or perhaps none at all (e.g. there is no gender/sex divide).


I really recommend the book Delusions of Gender by Cordelia Fine as an introduction this topic. "Drawing on the latest research in neuroscience and psychology, Cordelia Fine debunks the myth of hardwired differences between men’s and women’s brains, unraveling the evidence behind such claims as men’s brains aren’t wired for empathy and women’s brains aren’t made to fix cars. She then goes one step further, offering a very different explanation of the dissimilarities between men’s and women’s behavior. Instead of a “male brain” and a “female brain,” Fine gives us a glimpse of plastic, mutable minds that are continuously influenced by cultural assumptions about gender."

I'm glad it helps. :)

Actually, this is mildly cathartic, having an outlet for all those "should've, could've" thoughts...

Involve others with more experience.

• If you need to choose a school, ask on /r/lgbt.
  
• When it's time to find a therapist, ask on /r/asktransgender.
  
• When you need to tell your parents, or even just need to decide whether to tell your parents, find a local peer group (GSA) with whom to practice the discussion.
  
  Learn about your community.
  
  
• Read "The nearest exit may be behind you", "Gender Outlaws: TNG", "Whipping Girl", "Transgender History". These will not be your problems, or necessarily your life, but you will find your people in them and a connection to an otherwise foreign community. (It sucks to be trans, nobody understands.)
  
• Find opportunities to participate in queer culture. Being T is not the same as being LGB. It's tempting to pull away, since yours is an issue of identity and not one of sexuality (and they really are extraordinarily different). Resist the temptation, be a part of something, force your way in and tolerate the inconsistencies, it will be worth it.
  
  Heal thyself.
  
  
• Your attitude and self-awareness is awesome, but your background and environment is not. I had a virtually identical home life (one fewer younger siblings, but the rest aligns right down to the lawyer parent!), and even after I "got over" it, it took years to really put the internalized prejudices of my youth away. Don't rationalize it away, don't be hard on yourself when you can't just get over it.
  
• Go to therapy. Find someone you really click with, and who you feel understands you, and invest the time and trust in that relationship to make the most of it. Don't tell them what they want to hear, tell them what you feel, and remember that they fully expect you to be totally wrong about your own feelings the first few times. Figure it out together. You should be able to get this nearly for free at the right college, make the most of it.
  
• If it feels awkward, you're doing it right. Cut yourself some slack, everyone has a hell of a time growing up and finding themselves, and thanks to your situation you'll be doing at 19 what most work out at 12. It's ok. Laugh at yourself, reflect and learn, and move on.
  
• Find a fringe benefit. If you dwell on gender dysphoria, it can seem pretty shitty. If you mire yourself in transition, it can seem like a thankless, endless slog. Find something to be excited about, find a part of yourself to enjoy, and don't feel guilty about it. :)
  
  
  Finally, and most importantly, you do belong.
  You don't have to be presenting in your preferred gender to go to a support group. You don't have to start HRT to comment on a board. There's a pervasive sense among trans folk that there are real trans people out there and we're not they. But the moment you recognize this part of yourself you're a part of our world whether you like it or not, and all of us feel just as different. Smile, introduce yourself, and share aspects of yourself among friends who have those same parts and who are just bursting for the opportunity to talk about it with anyone who understands.
  
  Sigh, I could ramble on, but I need to get back to work... I guess I can sum it up in promising, cross my heart, the world is a beautiful and wonderful place, and you're going to love it out here. :)

You really should pick up [Why We Sleep](Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams https://www.amazon.com/dp/1501144316/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_CU83Bb1KV9ZXS) before you decide. Pretty good evidence that there are serious detrimental long term effects on losing even little bits of sleep. Be careful.

> I was just wondering how many people have CPTSD as a result of emotional abuse and neglect as a child.

My father was a narcissist. My mother was a sociopath. So the entirety of my childhood was lost to narcissistic and sociopathic abuse, which left me with CPTSD.

> I’m worried that as it’s gone untreated for 20 years that I may never get better.

This is factually incorrect. You might want to check your local library for the book titled The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science. This book is rife with verified medical examples of the neuroplasticity of the brain. Neuroplasticity means the brain changes throughout life. The brain does not solidify like concrete once we reach adulthood. This is very good news for people like you and I, because it means the trauma we suffered in our childhood does not have to rule us for the rest of our lives, because our brain literally does change throughout our lives. We can assist it via several methods, such as psychotherapy, meditation and even exercise.

> I’d really like it if people could share their experiences with me and whether they’ve made any headway, recovery, partial recovery.

So if a psychologist with a PhD, who had practiced psychotherapy for the past 3+ decades terminated your therapy, telling you you have nothing left to resolve, would you consider yourself recovered? I do.

> How long did it go on for before you got a diagnosis?

I was diagnosed with PTSD at the age of 21 in 1985. CPTSD wasn't even on the radar in those days. All total, I have spent 22 years of my adult life in therapy. However, that does not and should not mean you will require as much time in therapy to recover.

The science has advanced so far from 1985 when I first began therapy. Back then, psychology wasn't considered a hard science like chemistry or biology. Today, psychology is getting closer to a hard science. From viewing a brain scan, brain injuries like PTSD, or disorders like OCD & ADHD can be diagnosed now. Additionally, trauma therapy did not exist in 1985. It hadn't yet been conceived. So if you have CPTSD, get to a trauma therapist and get to work, because they KNOW what they need to know to help guide you out of CPTSD.

As far as how the therapy works to free you, there will be MANY moments in your life that you will look at in therapy. Each moment will be discussed & analyzed until you fully understand what happened in each moment. After a certain period of time, you will have hundreds or thousands of these analyzed and understood moments in your life which, when chained together, will reveal the entire story of your life. This is when you will understand every moment that you lived & EVERYTHING will make sense. That is when you will know you are free. Or at least, that has been my experience. DO NOT GIVE UP. It is so worth it in the end.

Actually, I can help if you would like to know the for some reason. This is a neuroscience book that explains in great detail why your cheek makes your "hand" feel.

http://www.amazon.com/Brain-That-Changes-Itself-Frontiers/dp/0143113100/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1453512080&sr=8-2&keywords=The+Plastic+Brain

The short answer is that it's because the neurons in your brain that were wired to your hand still need to do something, so they remap in other parts of your brain that are nearby. It actually may mean that you can feel more detail on your cheek than most people in that area.

For a long time "phantom" pains were thought to be purely physiological, This science says otherwise. You may want to check it out. It's a good read.

Also, I'm an audio engineer and musician in Louisiana, primarily in Baton Rouge and New Orleans. I say this to say that I have the privilege of working with some top notch guys. One of the keyboard players I see gigging all the time down here only has one hand. He's got one hand, and one nub. He uses the damn nub. I don't know how he makes this keyboard sound this way, but he does.

With the advent of MIDI technology, there is so much you can do. And with the advent of the Arduino platform, you could even make something yourself. There are so many alternative controllers available for you to express yourself in different and creative ways...don't give up playing and making music. Maybe get a MIDI controller and some simple software?

Yeah studies have shown exercise improves learning ability and retention. On my phone right now but just google it, it’s a big thing now.

edit: https://www.amazon.com/Spark-Revolutionary-Science-Exercise-Brain/dp/0316113514

I sort of addressed this in a previous comment, if you want to read more. There's actually a book that has your definitive answer, and that's the The Emperor of All Maladies, one of the best pop-medical books I've ever read.

But briefly, cancer is not a new disease; the ancients were aware of it (Edwin Smith papyrus is the first likely mention of cancer, and the Hippocratic corpus deals with cancer explicitly). Prevalence prior to modern times is essentially impossible to figure out; nosology didn't exist in any modern sense, and any number of diseases could present like cancer (especially "pthisis", or tuberculosis). There have been a few paleopathological reports (essentially medical examinations of old bones) that suggest that cancer was far less common in pre-modern peoples. However, this is controversial (this is a great NYTimes articles that nicely outlines the controversy). There are all sorts of methodological reasons this is incredibly difficult to ascertain, and while some risk factors (most notably tobacco smoke and copious red meat consumption) weren't around, there's every reason to believe ancient peoples would have been exposed to risk factors that we don't have (ergot-contaminated grain, open fires, &c).

Sorry for the abbreviated answer, but I hope that helps!

Yep, the book Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do does a good job explaining this. Regardless of whether you feel it's fair to merge at the end it is faster for everyone and when people try to block people from merging or merge way early it creates backups that can echo for miles.

Anyone interested in a community on this should check out /r/bodyweightfitness

There are also some good books with similar progressions and ideas like You Are Your Own Gym or Overcoming Gravity

It ignores a large body of experimental research on the topic. The vast majority of studies he cites are not experimental, but observational. That means that the studies he cites are describing what is, not why it is. But he then makes a lot of causational claims about how it is women's biology causing them to be a lot less successful in the sciences. From a scientist, this can only represent intentionally skewing the narrative in a way that is harmful to women, under the pretense that he is "supporting" them. Either he is intentionally skewing the narrative, or he is not as good of a scientist as his degree would imply. He is not citing studies in good faith, for if he were, he would ackowledge their weakness as observational studies and refrain from claiming that they demonstrate universal biological truths.

He entirely ignores the corpus of experimental work that has been done that demonstrates existing bias. He also ignores the large body of evidence that people's career choices and career success are strongly influenced by societal expectations. All humans are affected, for instance, by stereotype threat, and it just so happens that he is perpetuating the stereotype that women cannot code as well as men -- which you now should recognize there is experimentally-backed basis to suggest that this belief being spread would actively harm the productivity of 20% of Google's workforce. Other experimental research indicates that identical resumes are rated worse and/or less likely to be hired with a woman's name than a man's name -- Even at a 5% difference, over multiple hiring and/or promotion cycles this effect would be exponential. He claims that there is scientific evidence of women being poorer leaders, but it seems that overall, women simply tend to rate themselves worse than others rate them. Is this because of biology, or is it because of stereotype threat? His every conclusion is tied to the claim that women's poor representation in the field is because of biology, but again, there is no evidence that it is biology, and honestly anyone who has experienced life in the USA has experienced our differing expectations of men and women, and differing perceptions of men and women. Scientifically, expectations affect outcomes.

I don't have the time or energy to go through every one of his points and do this, but I do want to make it clear that his entire approach was a disingenuous representation of the body of research that is available on gender differences and stereotypes, and it plays in to the "biotruth" narrative that is way-too-easily accepted by people who want to believe that feminism is irrelevant. I do suggest this read as a counterpoint to the idea that gender differences are purely biological.

Note I am not saying that there are NO biological differences -- OF COURSE there are some! But I think that it is actively harmful to our society to claim that things with a net negative socioeconomic effect on group A are caused by biological differences in group A. That should, imo, be the very last conclusion reached, after all others have been explored and rejected -- and we are still exploring the effects of social and cultural expectations.

Stop projecting, and educate yourself.

When two lanes go down to one, study after study and simulation after simulation shows that the best way to get the maximum number of cars through in the shortest period of time is to use all the available roadway - the merge point is supposed to be at the end of the lane that is "going away", not when you first see the "lane ends" sign.

Source: Traffic

Texts and Reference Books

Days in the Lives of Social Workers

DSM-5

Child Development, Third Edition: A Practitioner's Guide

Racial and Ethnic Groups

Social Work Documentation: A Guide to Strengthening Your Case Recording

Cognitive Behavior Therapy: Basics and Beyond

[Thoughts and Feelings: Taking Control of Your Moods and Your Life]
(https://www.amazon.com/Thoughts-Feelings-Harbinger-Self-Help-Workbook/dp/1608822087/ref=pd_sim_14_3?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=3ZW7PRW5TK2PB0MDR9R3)

Interpersonal Process in Therapy: An Integrative Model

[The Clinical Assessment Workbook: Balancing Strengths and Differential Diagnosis]
(https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0534578438/ref=ox_sc_sfl_title_38?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=ARCO1HGQTQFT8)

Helping Abused and Traumatized Children

Essential Research Methods for Social Work

Navigating Human Service Organizations

Privilege: A Reader

Play Therapy with Children in Crisis

The Color of Hope: People of Color Mental Health Narratives

The School Counseling and School Social Work Treatment Planner

Streets of Hope : The Fall and Rise of an Urban Neighborhood

Deviant Behavior

Social Work with Older Adults

The Aging Networks: A Guide to Programs and Services

[Grief and Bereavement in Contemporary Society: Bridging Research and Practice]
(https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0415884810/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1)

Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy

Motivational Interviewing: Helping People Change

Ethnicity and Family Therapy

Human Behavior in the Social Environment: Perspectives on Development and the Life Course

The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work

Generalist Social Work Practice: An Empowering Approach

Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association

The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook

DBT Skills Manual for Adolescents

DBT Skills Manual

DBT Skills Training Handouts and Worksheets

Social Welfare: A History of the American Response to Need

Novels

[A People’s History of the United States]
(https://www.amazon.com/Peoples-History-United-States/dp/0062397346/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1511070674&sr=1-1&keywords=howard+zinn&dpID=51pps1C9%252BGL&preST=_SY291_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&dpSrc=srch)


The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Life For Me Ain't Been No Crystal Stair

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Tuesdays with Morrie

The Death Class <- This one is based off of a course I took at my undergrad university

The Quiet Room

Girl, Interrupted

I Never Promised You a Rose Garden

Flowers for Algernon

Of Mice and Men

A Child Called It

Go Ask Alice

Under the Udala Trees

Prozac Nation

It's Kind of a Funny Story

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

The Yellow Wallpaper

The Bell Jar

The Outsiders

To Kill a Mockingbird

Julia Serano addresses this question in Whipping Girl. You should read it.

I'm not an expert about this subject, but if I remember correctly she uses the phrase "subconscious sex" to refer to how people feel. Then they can choose to express that in different ways. So a trans woman who wears a dress isn't a woman just because she wears a dress. She's a woman (innately) who expresses her gender (to society and/or herself) through wearing a dress.

And keep in mind that trans people are as diverse as cis people. Not all trans women wear dresses or have long hair. And there are cis men who wear dresses and have long hair. I don't know where our subconscious sex comes from, but it seems to be more than just a desire follow one gender role or the other.

Again, I'm not an expert. I hope someone will correct me if I've messed something up.

Yep. Traffic Everyone merging too early slows the overall flow of traffic, and simply causes the congestion earlier.

99% of back pain is psychosomatic. Imperfections in your vertebrae do not cause crippling pain, your subconscious does.

EDIT: 90%.

EDIT: For the open-minded who are interested: when I was desperate, this US$7 book and its concepts brought enlightenment and relief. The comments on Amazon may help convince you.

http://www.amazon.com/Healing-Back-Pain-Mind-Body-Connection/dp/0446557684/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1371145907&sr=8-1&keywords=sarno

The Expectant Father: The Ultimate Guide for Dads-to-Be https://www.amazon.com/dp/0789212137/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apap_vTr9qrgw1Hcn5

Hubby has started reading this and put a free pregnancy app in his phone after I yelled for the umpteenth time I'm not google, I need to study, look it up. It's helping.

My theory is for why 'time flies' when you are having fun (or really busy) and why it goes slow when you are bored. It goes beyond simply stating that during these interesting activities you are distracted.

This theory relies upon my assumption that when you are performing an interesting activity your eyes are generally more active. Playing a video game or doing a sport for example most likely requires a lot of eye movement compared to a boring activity.

It is said that when you move your eyes your brain cuts out the transition period during the movement (I can't remember where I read this, perhaps in the book Phantoms in the Brain). This is handy as it cuts out all the useless information that your blurry vision in this period would otherwise be sending to your brain. But what is interesting is that your brain distorts your perception of time in order to cut out this period of transition. This is my layman understanding.

My hypothesis is that time seems to go quicker during interesting or busy activities because pieces of time are actually lost or distorted for the higher number of eye movements that occur during this activity.

Edit: Here is a pdf from a nature article I found relating to this time distortion I am talking about.

• Exercise. “In SPARK, John J. Ratey, M.D., embarks upon a fascinating and entertaining journey through the mind-body connection, presenting startling research to prove that exercise is truly our best defense against everything from depression to ADD to addiction to aggression to menopause to Alzheimer's. Filled with amazing case studies (such as the revolutionary fitness program in Naperville, Illinois, which has put this school district of 19,000 kids first in the world of science test scores), SPARK is the first book to explore comprehensively the connection between exercise and the brain. It will change forever the way you think about your morning run---or, for that matter, simply the way you think“. Source: https://www.amazon.com/Spark-Revolutionary-Science-Exercise-Brain/dp/0316113514/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1522973939&sr=1-1&keywords=Spark%2C+The+Revolutionary+New+Science+of+Exercise+and+the+Brain
  
  
• Eat a healthy diet and follow some of the practices taken from Blue Zones, which are populations that have an unusually high number of centenarians. Some key take-aways from studies blue zones (Source: https://www.amazon.com/product-reviews/1426216556/ref=cm_cr_dp_d_cmps_btm?ie=UTF8&reviewerType=all_reviews):
  
  
• Long-lived people live on a high-carb, low-fat, plant-based diet;
  
• Long-lived people eat a lot of vegetables, including greens;
  
• Whenever they can get it, long-lived populations eat a lot of fruit;
  
• When animal products are consumed, it’s occasionally and in small amounts only;
  
• Long-lived people had periods in their life when a lot less food was available and they had to survive on a very
  sparse, limited diet;
  
• Long-lived people live in a sunny, warm climate;
  
• Long-lived people consume beans in some form or another;
  
• Nuts appear to be good for health;
  
• The typical diet is very simple and many essentially eat the same simple foods every day
  
• Quality food over variety is more important;
  
• They had an active lifestyle and moved a lot
  
• Many of them got 5 to 6 hours of moderate exercise per day;
  
• Many of them loved to work and had a sense of purpose in life;
  
• Many had large families;
  
• None of them smoked or ate massive amounts of food.
  
  
• Be a super-ager – “Which activities, if any, will increase your chances of remaining mentally sharp into old age? We’re still studying this question, but our best answer at the moment is: work hard at something. Many labs have observed that these critical brain regions increase in activity when people perform difficult tasks, whether the effort is physical or mental. You can therefore help keep these regions thick and healthy through vigorous exercise and bouts of strenuous mental effort.” Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/31/opinion/sunday/how-to-become-a-superager.html
  
  
• Boost your microbiome by eating a diverse diet. “Diet is perhaps the biggest factor in shaping the composition of the microbiome,” he says. A study by University College Cork researchers published in Nature in 2012 followed 200 elderly people over the course of two years, as they transitioned into different environments such as nursing homes. The researchers found that their subjects’ health – frailty, cognition, and immune system – all correlated with their microbiome. From bacterial population alone, researchers could tell if a patient was a long-stay patient in a nursing home, or short-stay, or living in the general community. These changes were a direct reflection of their diet in these different environments. “A diverse diet gives you a diverse microbiome that gives you a better health outcome,” says Cryan. Source: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140221-can-gut-bugs-make-you-smarter
  
  
• Have a healthy mind-set – don't ever succumb to the stereotypical mind set that getting older = decline. “To Langer, this was evidence that the biomedical model of the day — that the mind and the body are on separate tracks — was wrongheaded. The belief was that “the only way to get sick is through the introduction of a pathogen, and the only way to get well is to get rid of it,” she said, when we met at her office in Cambridge in December. She came to think that what people needed to heal themselves was a psychological “prime” — something that triggered the body to take curative measures all by itself. Gathering the older men together in New Hampshire, for what she would later refer to as a counterclockwise study, would be a way to test this premise. The men in the experimental group were told not merely to reminisce about this earlier era, but to inhabit it — to “make a psychological attempt to be the person they were 22 years ago,” she told me. “We have good reason to believe that if you are successful at this,” Langer told the men, “you will feel as you did in 1959.” From the time they walked through the doors, they were treated as if they were younger. The men were told that they would have to take their belongings upstairs themselves, even if they had to do it one shirt at a time. At the end of their stay, the men were tested again. On several measures, they outperformed a control group that came earlier to the monastery but didn’t imagine themselves back into the skin of their younger selves, though they were encouraged to reminisce. They were suppler, showed greater manual dexterity and sat taller — just as Langer had guessed. Perhaps most improbable, their sight improved. Independent judges said they looked younger. The experimental subjects, Langer told me, had “put their mind in an earlier time,” and their bodies went along for the ride.” Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/26/magazine/what-if-age-is-nothing-but-a-mind-set.html
  
  
• Live a life that has meaning – or, in other words, have a personal mission statement in life. Strive to accomplish something or to help others. “It is the pursuit of meaning is what makes human beings uniquely human. By putting aside our selfish interests to serve someone or something larger than ourselves -- by devoting our lives to "giving" rather than "taking" -- we are not only expressing our fundamental humanity, but are also acknowledging that that there is more to the good life than the pursuit of simple happiness.” Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/01/theres-more-to-life-than-being-happy/266805/
  
  
• Volunteer and help others. “Volunteering probably reduces mortality by a year and a half or possibly up to two years for people who are in their senior years,” says Stephen G. Post, a professor of preventive medicine at Stony Brook University School of Medicine and the author of The Hidden Gifts of Helping and Why Good Things Happen to Good People. “If you could put the benefits of helping others into a bottle and sell it, you could be a millionaire in a minute.” Source: https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Why+do+we+hesitate+to+help%3F-a0352848707
  
  
• Do strength training – there is an association between muscular strength and mortality in men (2008). Source: https://www.bmj.com/content/2/4225/927.4
  
  
• Have 1-2 drinks per day. Source: https://health.spectator.co.uk/the-great-alcohol-cover-up-how-public-health-bodies-hid-the-truth-about-drinking/
  

Read Why we sleep by Matthew Walker. He's a sleep researcher and covered this topic extensively. There are also tips on how to improve sleeping quality (such as regular schedule, avoiding blue light and screens, avoiding alcohol, etc)

https://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Sleep-Unlocking-Dreams/dp/1501144316

It's not nearly that straight forward, because weight loss is hormonally driven. Therefore, as we all know, a calorie is not actually a calorie, certainly when it comes to weight loss. It's why most of us are on r/keto in the first place.

EDIT: There's also the case of Sam Feltham's 5700 calorie experiment, where he ate over 5700 kcal of food every day for 2 weeks. The first time he ate high fat, low carb, and low protein, and only gained 3lbs. He did a second 2 week run where he did the same number of calories but with high carb and low fat, and he gained 16 lbs in the same period. So it's clear that overeating of certain foods will cause you to gain weight, while overeating of certain other foods (ie high fat, natural whole foods) will not cause the same weight gain.

This experiment was referenced in Dr Jason Fung's book The Obesity Code, which I highly recommend.

Buy this: Mayo Clinic Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy.

Don't buy this: What To Expect When You're Expecting

WTE is the worst god damn pregnancy book there is. Every single page is filled with dire warnings to wrap yourself in nothing but undyed virgin cotton or you could kill your baby. It's panic on paper. If you already own it, take it out at midnight and quietly bury it in the backyard. It's awful. My wife had panic attacks every time she opened it.

The Mayo Clinic book is both scientific and down-to-earth. Highly recommend.

Roads are like the Field of Dreams, "If you build it they will come" and fill up all the lanes.

Great book on Traffic and Traffic design: https://www.amazon.com/Traffic-Drive-What-Says-About/dp/0307277194

Understand the reason why you procrastinate. It is not about self control. This article breaks open the one of the biggest underlying reasons why people procrastinate:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/25/smarter-living/why-you-procrastinate-it-has-nothing-to-do-with-self-control.html

People procrastinate as a way of regulating their mood. Something about their condition or about the task they are procrastinating is causing them discomfort that they might not even be able to articulate, and procrastinating is a way of dealing with that discomfort in the moment.

One possible way to deal with this (not this specific thing you're procrastinating on, but the big picture) is that you may need counseling or to do other things to help your health to overcome depression or whatever hidden discomfort is causing you to procrastinate. I myself found that when I did not sleep well, I was chronically tired and depressed, but I didn't recognize it, because I masked it with caffeine. Caffeine doesn't give you the missing motivation back. It just keeps you wide awake and not wanting to do the things you need motivation to do. In a lot of cases, insufficient sleep is a major contributor to depression and anxiety.

I fixed my sleep problem to a large extent, using a weighted blanket, sensory deprivation (ear plugs and eye mask when I sleep), black-out curtains, blue-blocker glasses in the evenings, "dark room mode" of Flux (a screen dimming app for MacOS), and red LED light bulbs to light my room at night so I would actually get sleepy. (Now I just need to fix the schedule of my sleep; it's a work in progress.) That really helped.

Exercise also helps address depression, way more than I understood. See the book titled "Spark: the revolutionary new science of exercise and the brain".

When I reduced my depressive symptoms and improved my sleep, I felt a lot less prone to procrastinating.

Another great book on how to improve yourself and overcome things like procrastination is "Atomic Habits". This is a fantastic book. It explains that self transformation and improvement is not about revolutionary changes, but about establishing habits that get you a little bit of improvement but keeps you on a consistent trajectory of improvement. There's a lot of great stuff in there about procrastination.

If you can't seem to read books all the way through (a problem I had), try listening to the audio book while commuting. This has made a huge difference in my life. I actually finish books that I start now that I use audio books.

EDIT—

Of the various things that motivate people, fear only goes so far. After a while, concern over possibly ruining your life won't motivate you. I know this first hand, because I've procrastinated to the point of harming myself, and knowing that harm would come didn't motivate me to act. There is a much more potent set of motivators, and this won't be easy, but you need to find these and figure out how to view your work through these.

The most potent motivators are purpose, passion, and joy. In the grand scheme of your life, you need to find your purpose, develop a passion, and cultivate joy. There's an old parable about three men laying bricks who are asked what they are doing. The first one says "I'm laying bricks". The second says "I'm building a church". The third says "I'm building the house of God." Of these three, who do you think will do his best work and persist when the going gets tough?—The one who sees a grand, transcendant purpose in every brick he lays.

If you can't find a purpose in the task you are doing, step back. Some folks do boring work that is not rewarding in and of itself, but their "why" is their family. That is their purpose, and to provide for their family, they keep on keeping on. If you don't have a family, make a promise to your future self, and make bettering yourself your purpose. And if that won't do, seriously search for other work to do that you can get a sense of purpose from. I've heard of people who weren't responsible, but who got a dog or some other pet that then gave them a purpose, because that pet gave them joy, and they wanted a good life for this pet they loved so much. These are the stories where someone rescues a dog, but really, the dog rescued them just as much as they rescued it. Love makes all the difference here.

Think of something you take delight in, something that brings you joy, and if what you are doing can be thought of in terms of serving and pursuing this thing that brings you joy, the motivation from your delight may be able to help you overcome that heavy unspoken weight of apathy that causes you to procrastinate.

I read this one, liked it: https://www.amazon.com/Expectant-Father-Ultimate-Dads-Be/dp/0789212137/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

The Expectant Father: The Ultimate Guide for Dads-to-Be by Armin A. Brott, Jennifer Ash

You have to practice. Communication is a subconscious skill. You can't consciously plan your way through an entire conversation because there isn't enough time. It's possible to think of a few things that are good conversation starters, but that's about it.

In order to train any subconscious skill, you have to practice. When you practice your brain starts by trying to make the neural connections necessary to create the movement you want. At first the brain uses a lot of neurons. After more practice the brain finds more efficient ways of creating the movement and uses less neurons. That's how musicians look like they can effortlessly play an instrument the more they practice.

The biggest mistake people make about communication is that they don't approach learning it like they would approach learning a new sport or musical instrument. That's why nerds who like to be analytical about everything suck at communicating, because you have to learn communication by practice; the same way you learn a sport, which is another thing nerds suck at. You can't ride a bike by thinking every time before you move the pedals or handles. You can't make your way through a conversation that way either for the same reason - there's no time.

Practice keeping eye contact and saying what's on your mind without any hesitation. You'll find that after a few conversations you'll be able to do this more easily because your brain has gotten used to the skills. A good rule of thumb is to be yourself, but if you happen to be an asshole, you'll have to change.

If you can't find the courage to talk to random people right away, then start small. Talk to people you've been avoiding, like neighbors, coworkers, or classmates. Come up with a few prepared conversations and see what happens. If things don't go too well, know that you won't be that nervous and awkward during the next talk.

The neuroscience in this comment comes from The Brain That Changes Itself by Norman Doidge, and Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

Cancer is basically a series of mutations that screw up the part of a cell that says "don't go crazy, OK?" This leads to uncontrolled growth. Normally, the cell has a lot of built-in mechanisms to stop this, so there's a lot of things that have to go wrong in order for cancer to actually get hold.

The carcinogens in smoke cause mutations at a certain rate. Over time, as more mutations accumulate, the chance that the mechanisms for suppressing uncontrolled growth will fail becomes greater. However, it's a statistical thing. Some people can smoke forever and not get cancer. They just happened to get lucky; their mutations are in genes that aren't important to cancer.

edit: if you're interested in cancer, get this book. It's seriously "buy a copy for all of your friends" good.

Hi! I'm sorry to hear about your struggle, it sounds like you're going through a lot of emotions related to her.

The go to treatment for people with bpd is dialectical behavioral therapy, or otherwise known as DBT. I very much recommend that you try to get your daughter into a DBT program. As for how to deal with her, I think the validation section of the dbt workbook would be incredibly helpful for you, and also interpersonal skills such as SET and DEAR MAN.

Best of luck to you and your daughter!

Given my username this is probably not a surprise, but I speak freely about brain sex, no matter how libfem the company. I'm a scientist and I have no patience for ladybrain garbage. I've found that even the libfemmy-est of libfems can't really get offended when I say there is no ladybrain -- or at least they can't get offended aloud without betraying their internalized misogyny.

Here are a couple of book you could read about the subject to bring up and discuss: Pink Brain, Blue Brain is by Dr. Lise Eliot, a neuroscientist, and Delusions of Gender by Cordelia Fine.

Off the top of my head, in no particular order:

The Undercover Economist: Easily the best of those "Economics in everyday life - books"

The Blank Slate: Steven Pinker on the nature/nurture debate. This really opened my eyes on questions like "Why are the same people who fight against abortion for the death penalty", for example.

Complications: This and his second book, Better, gave me an incredible insight into medicine.

Why we get sick: Very good explanation of the defence mechanisms our bodies have and why treating symptoms can be a very bad idea.

How to read a book: An absolute classic. Turns out I've been doing it wrong all those years.

The Art of Strategy: Game Theory, applied to everyday situations. Always treats a topic like Nash equilibrium, Brinkmanship etc. theoretically and then goes into many examples.

A Random Walk Down Wall-Street: Made me see the stock market completely differently.

The Myth of the Rational Voter: The shortcomings of democracy.

The White Man's Burden: Fantastic account of the problems faced by the third world today, and why it is so hard to change them.

The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature - evolutionary psychology, behavioral genetics. (probably most interesting from a Freudian perspective, deals with many of our unconscious instincts)

Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces The Shape Our Decisions - Unconscious decision-making, behavioral economics, consumer psychology. Fun read.

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion - Most popular book on the psychology of persuasion, covers all the main principles. Very popular among business crowds.

Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships - Social neuroscience, mirror neurons, empathy, practical stuff mixed with easy to understand brain science.

Authentic Happiness - Positive Psychology, happiness, increasing life satisfaction.

Feeling Good - A good primer on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Also widely considered one of the best self-help books by mental health practitioners.

The Brain That Changes Itself - Neuroplasticity, how experience shapes our brains. Some really remarkable case studies that get you wondering how powerful our brains really are.

The Buddhist Brain - The practical neuroscience of happiness, love, and wisdom from a Buddhist perspective.

That should give you more than enough to chew on.

I've read so many books that I honestly cannot say that any particular one is the most important. However, here's a list of really good ones:

• Starting Strength. Mark Rippetoe. I've read all three editions. The books have greatly influenced the way I lift, especially in the obvious sense of proper form for barbell lifts.
  
  
• Practical Programming For Strength Training. Mark Rippetoe and Lon Kilgore. Simple explanations of a lot of things related to training even nutrition.
  
  
• Beyond Bodybuilding. Pavel Tsatsouline. Amazing book filled with numerous lifts with the goal of using strength training to develop mass.
  
• Relax Into Stretch and Super Joints by Pavel as well. If you have issues with mobility or flexibility, these books are awesome.
  
• 5 3 1. Jim Wendler. I'm fairly certain the majority of people know what this is, but if you haven't read it, I encourage reading both editions and the one for powerlifting, especially if you're running 5/3/1 right now. All three books are a huge resource for determining how to program assistance and conditioning.
  
• Easy Strength. Pavel and Dan John This was a great read. It was filled with tons of things from articles written by Dan John as well as just a massive look at how to appropriately program strength training for people at numerous levels.
  
• 4 Hour Body. Tim Ferriss. This was an amazing read. It, like Pavel's Power to the People, was a great read on complete minimalism of training towards a goal.
  
  I've read so many more books than that. Since these are the only ones that I can think of off the top of my head, I'd say that they are the ones that have made the biggest impression from reading them.

1. You don't have to do what the pediatrician says in terms of sleeping through the night and night weaning - that's parenting advice not medical advice. If you were happy co-sleeping and breastfeeding at night then you can continue to do that. You can always sleep train him later or even wait until he shows you that he is ready to sleep on his own.
   
   
2. Assuming you WANT to follow the pediatricians advice (a perfectly reasonable want, there is nothing wrong with following the pediatricians advice I just wanted to make sure that you knew that you shouldn't feel like you HAD to), then first I'll ask, what type of CIO are you doing? Are you doing the interval method where you go in at increasing intervals (after 2, 4, 8, 10 minutes) and lay him back down and rub his back for a minute to get him to calm down? Or are you doing the extinction method where you just let him cry until he falls asleep? Or are you sitting in the room with him the whole time, near his crib but not talking to him? Or some other version? You may just want to switch up how you do it. If you haven't read doctor ferber's book, I strongly suggest you do so, as it may help you find a specific method that will help you out.
   
   
3. Also, when is the last time that you feed him at night? If he goes to sleep around 7-8 pm and he eats at that time, its fairly reasonable in my opinion that he would be hungry by 3 am. You might consider adding a dream feed when you go to sleep a few hours after after him, around 10-11pm. He will probably only eat a little bit, but this could help keep him full until 6-7am, which is a much more reasonable time for him to be awake.

>societal feminazation of male traits

I don't know what that means.

I know that in general people have hormones that influence their behavior - estrogen and testosterone.

But that they also have cultural influences that influence this behavior.

For example, right now computer software coding is an overwhelmingly male dominated field. But there is nothing inherent to writing software that has to do with having a Y chromosome, a penis and testicles, facial hair, upper body strength, etc.

In fact, in the 1960's USA coding was considered a traditionally female job because you have to sit at a desk and type all day and people associated it with secretarial work (which, was done by men before it was done by women).

In Western Europe, soccer is a large part of male culture. In the United States, it's for little girls. Is one perception more "correct?"

So that there are "male traits" and "female traits" is true in that we can see patterns in human behavior - men and women are more likely to choose different majors in college, but there's no evidence that this is due to anything inherent about male or female biology.

The problem with physiological studies of the brain is twofold - first the brain is plastic. People who share common behaviors and thought patterns will share similar brain structures. For example, people who are piano players may have similar neural structures, or people who are gymnasts. One could hypothesize that these neural structures are the cause of skill at playing the piano, or that they were built up in the brain after years of study and practice. There is no way to know if differences in brain structures between men and women are "natural" or due to lived experience as their gender.

Secondly, studies that find a difference in the brains of men and women are more likely to be published than studies that find no difference. We are missing a large part of the argument.

If you think that "Men are acting in ways that are traditionally feminine," I would ask - according to what definition? In the 1700's men wore powdered wigs, tights and high heeled shoes. This clothing is traditionally feminine, no? Men at that time also took a big part in the education and raising of their children. This differed greatly from the idea of the stoic, uninvolved father of the mid 20th century, and we have seemingly swung back to the baby bjorn wearing hipster dad of 2013. In Middle Eastern cultures, heterosexual men will hold hands, hug and kiss on the mouth - something we could perceive as behavior typical of gay men. That doesn't make them gay.

To all of this I say - so what? Ideas about sexuality, about masculine and feminine change over time. You might not like how they change, and that's fine. But what you can't do is argue that they have a concrete and unchanging definition.

Advice from a former Clemson U (male) cheerleader:

Goblet Squats going ALL the way down

Bulgarian Split Squats

One Leg Romanian Deadlift

Box Jumps/Stair Jumps/Vertical Leap/Standing Leaps over Hurdles (feet together)

Standing Long Jump

Squat Thrusters or Burpees

Shoulder Press with dumbbells

Deadlift

(these last two above are included because often there is no lack of leg strength and quickness, but that the core does not translate that strength or the arms are not as strong as the athlete believes)

And the semi-controversial one

*Hang Cleans using barbell (I suggest Hang Cleans over Power Cleans because it is motion from your power stance, rather than from a crouch; both a useful but Hang Cleans tend to be neglected by many)

Finally, the most difficult leg day we ever did was all body weight exercises. Our Strength and Conditioning Coach actually served with Mark Lauren, author of You Are Your Own Gym. That is an excellent resource.

Obviously this is all done with proper nutrition, sufficient rest, and on a rotating basis of work and rest days. If you need more on that, it's more than anyone can put in a single reply.

Eventually yoiu would move on to more difficult and complex exercises, such as Hang Clean to Push Press, the Clean and Jerk, Kettlebell Swings, and others. Really you need as dedicated a conditioning program as any other highschool athlete, and while touching up weak links inyour physique is important, most teenagers I've worked with have needed an all around program before focusing on any one area. Most lack a solid core and true balance. Balance meaning (A) actual balance and (B) chest to back, shoulders to lats, biceps to triceps, abs to back, quads to hamstrings, etc.

Go TIGERS!

Then sir, might I recommend this amazing book.

http://www.amazon.com/Phantoms-Brain-Probing-Mysteries-Human/dp/0688172172

It is basically garbage and a waste of my hard-earned taxdollars. The reason it is garbage is because the assumption is that building highways reduces congestion. This is not true. What it does is increases capacity which means more people will then drive as the capacity has increased...so you end up back where you started...a congested road. This is what will happen in the short-term.

This, coupled with trends of one-car ownership and the beginnings of driverless cars, means this is a waste of taxpayer dollars as the demand won't exist either so there is not a need to build more highways. This is what will happen in the long-term.

Indeed, sticking what what already exists may be enough to meet the demand of a reduced car culture and more efficient and computerized driving patterns.

Arguably, a better solution is to build out more efficient regional public transportation such as trolleys, busses, rail, bike lanes, etc for a more long term solution. In the short-term shore up what already exists.

Great book on the topic: https://www.amazon.com/Traffic-Drive-What-Says-About/dp/0307277194

Whipping Girl makes a convincing argument that even as homosexuals and women have gained greater equality in our society, femininity has become taboo - especially in the LGBT community.

"Genderqueer" is a pretty broad term. As I understand it, it encompasses pretty much anything that doesn't fall under the categories of:

• Male
  
  
• Female
  
  
• Bigender (i.e., alternating male and female identifications)
  
  
• Agender (i.e., no gender identification)
  
  It's generally considered outside the standard binary, and I think in general genderqueer identities tend to encompass both maleness and femaleness to some degree.
  
  Also, my understanding is that it's fairly common for trans people to identify as genderqueer for a while - like, my assigned gender doesn't fit me, but I don't really fully identify with the "opposite" gender either - before realizing that that's not quite right, and coming to identify as the "opposite" gender. (Julia Serano talks about her experience having done this in her excellent book Whipping Girl.)

I don't know why people on this thread are telling you to wait. I mean if you're OK waiting, well then whatever, go ahead and wait. But it doesn't sound like you're OK with that. If it were me, I'd think about fighting, using reason and information as my weapons. But if you want to use those tools, you need to learn first, and that can take time. You need to educate yourself on what it means to be transgender. That means a lot of reading and information seeking. You need to listen to the stories of other people who have been in your position - and there have been people in your position. You need to learn about techniques they used to get out and find techniques that will work for you.

When I hear trans kids say things like they wish they were dead, it really worries me. I wish that I could do more to help you fight for your life, but all I can really do is point to the path. I hope you take it.

• Pausing puberty aged 12 saved my life: Transgender beauty queen praises her amazing family ahead of BBC documentary on her mission to become Miss England
  
  
• Transsexual Teen, Beauty Queen
  
  
• How Norman Spack transformed the way we treat transgender children
  
  
• WPATH Standards of Care v.7 (2011)
  
  
• Gender Orientation: Intersex Conditions Within The Transsexual Brain
  
  
• The Gender Variant Phenomenon--A Developmental Review
  By Anne Vitale Ph.D. 2003
  
  
• Biased-Interaction Theory of Psychosexual Development: “How Does One Know if One is Male or Female?” (Diamond 2006)
  
  
• Surviving a Gender Variant Childhood: The views of transgender adults on the needs of gender variant children and their parents. Riley 2012
  
  
• The Needs of Gender-Variant Children and Their Parents According to Health Professionals. Riley 2012
  
  
• Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity, Serano 2007

I posted this a few days ago. Hope it might be helpful for someone else. :)

> I'm a planner and a plotter by nature...so when I wanted to come out to people, I wanted to have this big speech laid out and a massive carpet bomb of information ready for everyone once I told them. I even wanted to tell people at the right time...not around anyone's birthday or holidays or anything, but when the moment was just right. It was just hindering me coming out. So, first tip: RELAX. Some planning is nice, but don't overdo things. You can take notes in, but don't write a letter or an essay. :)

> The good points I'd take from my experience thus far:

> let your family members know you wanna talk to them before you do. It's a thing they need to make 15-20 minutes of time for and not something you may wanna just casually throw in after dinner while watching TV.

> divide and conquer. Separate out the family members you think will be most comfortable (for me, it was my mother and sister over the phone) and speak with them first in private about it. It's a lot harder to come out to several people than just one.

> when you talk, talk to them about how you've felt first. Tell them it may be an awkward conversation, tell them that you're nervous talking to them, tell them how you've felt uncomfortable or dysphoric or how this has manifested in you. Put the 'I'm trans' near the middle/end.

> they may ask questions about it. You may not know all the answers just yet. That's fine. Stand firm, it's okay to not know everything or where things will end up.

> give them some time to wrap their head around things and don't push them.

> If everything goes well...bootstrap. ask the people you've told to help you with the people you haven't. I told my father and brothers, who helped me talk with my aunt, who helped me talk with my grandparents.

Addendum - good resources on trans stuff that I found:

The Praeger handbook of transsexuality. I was so lucky to have a copy in my local library, has some of the few studies/surveys i've seen, covers a lot of ground, trans guys and trans gals. Kinda technical though and a few years old, but I loved it. Learned so much!


Whipping Girl by Julia Serano. I think it really helps you understand society's fascination with trans ladies, but more mtf and activism focused of course.

PFLAG booklet I think it covers the basics okay for friends and family.

WPATH v7 standards of care Lots of fancy documentation about treatment of trans* individuals, expectations of HRT, etc.

I also read She's not there by jennifer finney boylan. i thought it was okay and I think it provides a more personal narrative to the whole thing, especially for me and my family because she's a fellow Mainer. Also mtf focused. Sorry trans guys, hopefully someone else can get you some cool resources. :(

edit: added some links. Also remember that while books are expensive, library cards are usually free and interlibrary loan is the coolest thing ever. :)

Does that mean that cis women who want to be sexy are fetishists?

Most likely they worry about trans women being fetishists because their own deeply internalized misogyny causes them to see female bodies primarily as sexual objects.

Whipping Girl is a must read.

Any answer I could give would be trumped by reading Whipping Girl. It's basically the canonical answer to all the questions you've posed here today. It is a treatise on the intersections of feminism and transsexuality, and also quite a good read.

I loved Emperor of all Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee
It gives a lot of good background about the history of cancer, but along the way you learn a lot about the history of science and research, as well. A lo of basic research and epidemiology that we take fro granted these days came out of cancer research.

I also recently read "Rabid" which was more of a cultural history. It was a really interesting read.

I was also moved by a book about end of life. It's called "Knocking on heaven's door" by Katy Butler. She describes how the US healthcare system caused her family immeasurable suffering due to its persistence on prolonging life, without regard for the quality of that life or for the quality of life of the caregivers. Butler makes a powerful case for the benefits of Slow Medicine, palliative care, and hospice.

Different forms of cancer have different outcomes, but if it's peak cancer, no one can really survive.

Cancer just gets stronger and stronger. It has no peak, unless you consider its peak to be whatever stage it's in when the patient dies.

If you're looking for a respect thread, check out "The Emperor of All Maladies", by Siddhartha Mukherjee.

TL;DR Dieting and fasting changed the appearance of, but did not solve, my disordered eating, food addiction, or food obsessions. No matter what, make sure you are being gentle and kind to yourself!

Personally, I turned to keto as a solution for my binge eating issues - One can only eat so much straight butter before one really feels 'done' after all ;) - but I recently saw a post on one of the keto subreddits that may resonate with you. The post suggested that "solving" disordered eating via a restrictive diet wasn't really a "fix" for those disordered attitudes towards food. Instead it's like a floppy band-aid: it might work at first but you have to heal the underlying wound, band-aid or no. And I'll be damned if for me, that wasn't absolutely right. I have had to be honest with myself: For some of the 3 or so years that I've been eating keto, my disordered eating didn't disappear, it only looked different. Since I started keto, it has looked like obsessive thoughts about food with sprinkled instances of my previous disordered patterns. I thought perhaps this would resonate for you with what you mentioned about ending your fast with a candy binge.

For me, I'm now experiencing a tension between "I would prefer to reduce my carbs to keto levels because I legitimately do feel better physically and physiologically when I don't eat carbs on a regular basis" and "but demonizing carbs hasn't actually caused me to recover, and I still turn to food for things that really aren't about hunger or nourishment." It's a fine line: I found myself obsessing over keto just as much as I had ever obsessed about food while in the throes of my unhelpful eating patterns.

Since this realization, I've found a couple tools that I hope will be useful. One is that I have cultivated the habit of using a handful of mood and behavior tracker apps, which help me be honest and mindful about how I am feeling on a given day. Pacifica is popular, and I also use BoosterBuddy. Booster Buddy prompts you to do 3 self-care tasks each day. It sounds trivial, but for some reason it really does lead me to be mindful of ways I can nurture myself, and ultimately I find I nurture myself more often and more effectively. Trackers won't by themselves cause your food obsessions to go away, of course - but I've been finding that if I start my day with a couple gentle, low-investment nudges towards self-care, then other good things tend to follow.

Another tool I'm using is DBT (dialectal behavior therapy.) Basically, it is a behavior-based therapy that is rooted in mindfulness without judgment of self or others. It has a few core tenets, which include the idea that 1. all behaviors are caused and 2. everyone is doing the best they can with the tools they have at any given time. You might be able to find DBT groups locally (and I really do recommend them in a group setting!) or you might be able to find a therapist for DBT one-on-one. I'm hopeful that an honest look at the role of my eating habits will enable me to find more effective solutions to the problems for which I have been using food. This is the specific tool that I used during my first experiences with DBT. It's meant to be used in a therapy setting, but I'm trying it out by myself. It includes worksheets to help you identify the specific patterns you are trying to change, as well as alternative strategies for situations that might trigger problem eating. DBT has been found to be effective for many folks with eating disorders.

Sorry for the wall - I really empathize with what you have written. For what it's worth, I believe in your ability to move through your eating disorder with compassion and in a way that feels good to you. :)

>Besides, some of the best writers only write well when either largely unhappy or severely inebriated.

This is horseshit. Here is what Stephen King, who struggled with massive drug and alcohol addictions, wrote in his book on that bullshit:

>The idea that the creative endeavor and mind-altering substances are entwined is one of the great pop-intellectual myths of our time. . . . Substance abusing writers are just substance abusers--common garden variety drunks and druggies, in other words. Any claims that the drugs and alcohol are necessary to dull a finer sensibility are just the usual self-serving bullshit. I've heard alcoholic snowplow drivers make the same claim, that they drink to still the demons.

A famous writer and homeless junkie look no different when passed out on the floor covered in vomit.

OP, check out /r/depression. Go talk to a doctor. I struggled with severe depression years ago and found that activity was key. Exercise has been vital for preventing my depression from coming back. Exercise is pretty much the best thing you could do for your brain ever.

Hey there. I'm not trans, but my girlfriend is, so while I cant personally relate to your situation, I hope I can offer some good advice/perspective.

My girlfriend transitioned about 3 years ago, and while her family had a really hard time at first, and are still not 100% cool with it, they are using the right names and pronouns around her and still enjoy spending time with her, whatever that's worth. They are slowly coming around, and for a couple of republicans, that's a huge deal. To her, transitioning was the single best decision of her life.

My advice is, you're an adult, and you should do what makes you happy, and its really hard to be happy if you're not happy with who you are. I know it must be really hard to do something your family might not like, but your well being and self esteem is more important than their judgment. My parents hoped my lesbianism was a phase at first, but they've come around. I wouldn't trade the love I share with my girlfriend for the complete love and acceptance of my parents any day.

If you are not financially dependent on your parents, you hold the bargaining chips, you can decide how much a part of your life you want them to have. You can pass without hormones, which shouldn't be a deciding factor if you're trans, on whether you should transition or not, but it really does help. I hope whatever you decide to do, it makes you happy.

Here's my advice: Read as much as you can, research, find some voices you can relate to and some advice that seems right for you. I highly reccommend "Whipping Girl" by Julia Serrano. There are plenty of great folks down at r/transgender and r/lgbt who have been in your shoes and are more than willing to spend some time chatting with you. Good luck.

For those who don't want to watch the video:

Big Ideas in Brief by Ian Crofton

Sapiens: a Brief History of Human Kind by Yuval Noah Harari

Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind by Sandra Blakeslee and Vilayanur S. Ramachandran

Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death, and Brain Surgery by Henry Marsh

How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer

Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers by Robert Sapolsky

The Brain: A Beginner's Guide by Ammar Al-Chalabi, R. Shane Delamont, and Martin R. Turner


Ill go ahead and put in a plug for the book I'm reading right now: The Gene: An Intimate History by Siddhartha Mukherjee

Around the same time the way cancer was treated by removing as much of the body near the tumor as could possibly be removed without killing the patient. In the case of breast cancer surgeons would remove so much muscle that women would lose the use of an arm. But dont take my word for it...

http://www.amazon.com/The-Emperor-All-Maladies-Biography/dp/1439170916

I read a fabulous book that dovetails very nicely with this issue http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0393340244/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 (If you dig sociology and social psychology this book is the tits)

Tldr: Working dads aren't disadvantaged in hiring, promotions or wages while working mothers have a hell of a time with it. And even women without offspring and discriminated against for loads of subconscious crap that society feeds us.

Or better yet, read V. S. Ramachandran's Phantoms in the Brain. He has been working on solving this problem since the 90's and created the mirror technique.

We received The Expectant Father as a gift when we were expecting our first. I’ll be honest, I don’t remember what was in the book, but I do remember the reassuring feeling I had when I read it.

So... it’s probably down the alley of what you’re looking for

One book that may be helpful for answering your questions is Self Made Man. The author spent about 18 months living as a man, in some all-male spaces (the monastery seems cool, but I'm positive that if I went to one of those Iron John camps, I'd be murdered). In the end, she had a nervous breakdown. Along the way she learned totally positively that she is neither a transvestite nor transgender. If Norah (the author) ever comes to Denver, I'd like to buy her a drink.

Two previous links on this subject that I've saved are:

http://www.reddit.com/r/asktransgender/comments/271fnm/changing_sides_in_a_sexist_world_share_your/
http://www.reddit.com/r/asktransgender/comments/2797ax/ftms_how_jarring_is_the_switch_to_the_male_social/
I'm certain that there are others. But I think these anecdotes from people who have been both genders, and the jarring differences that they experience might be something you ought to read. Things like:

> I wouldn't call it the better gender, though things are much easier in a lot of respects. I was recently promoted to electronics at Target. My boss basically said, "you're a guy so you must know a lot about electronics". My female coworker, who obviously knows more about electronics, had to fight tooth and nail to get the same position. She and our boss still but heads occasionally because he treats her as if she is incompetent. I think that's it really. When you're a guy, for the most part you are assumed competent until proven otherwise. With women, the opposite happens. You have to prove yourself competent before you're offered anything.

Another good book that I think you might be interested in is Whipping Girl.

How to describe what it feels like to be trans? I have two different ways of describing it to people that generally work okay, depending on their perspective. Of course, these describe my experience and are not meant to represent any sort of "trans narrative" that you have to experience to be trans.

• Just about every day since I started puberty, there's always been this voice in the back of my head. Sometimes it was quiet, barely a whisper, sometimes it was screaming so loudly that I could hardly think. Regardless of how loud it was though, it was always there with me, always speaking, and always saying the same exact thing; "^Something ^is ^wrong. Something is wrong. Something is WRONG." It never told me what was wrong. It never pointed me in a specific direction. The only way I could figure it out was by the things that caused the voice to go from whispering to screaming. It took years of self-reflection, but eventually I found out what was wrong. That's when I started HRT and a few weeks later the voice finally shut the fuck up and I finally had peace and quiet for the first time over 15 years
  
  
• Imagine that there's this scale from -10 to +10. -10 is "I want to kill myself" levels of depression. 0 is "Eh, whatever, I woke up today". +10 is "Holy crap! Today is my wedding!" levels of happiness. Until I hit puberty, I had the full scale. I could be mildly happy, exceptionally sad, grumpy, whatever. At some point though, I lost part of that scale; +1 through +9 became completely closed off to me. Every day started with, "Eh, whatever, I woke up today," at best. Without cause, I simply could not be happy. There was no such thing for me as being in a good mood for no reason. There was a whole range of emotion that I was physically incapable of experiencing and it affected every aspect of my life, both personal and interpersonal. After I started HRT though, that entire range of emotion finally opened up for me. I could wake up in a good mood for no reason. I could smile for no reason. I finally understood how normal people go about their lives and why I always came across as such a stick in the mud. And now that I've tasted of this life, there's no way I could ever go back to the way things were.
  
  As for book recommendations, I haven't read it, but I've heard phenomenal things about Whipping Girl, by Julia Serano. Also, while it's not a book, this article was very eye-opening for me. It practically read as a biography of my life with my name redacted...

I would recommend that you read
https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Guide-Fasting-Intermittent-Alternate-Day/dp/1628600012/
And
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1771641258/

These books contains links to a lot of the studies that answers your questions in depth.

shemale...

I can call myself that... I dunno if you should...

Read Whipping Girl and give us an essay with your thoughts first.

His doctors may also be hesitant to treat his ADHD effectively because many of the drugs that do also cause mania and mania is much more dangerous and harmful than not getting shit done for a while.

I'm ADHD and bipolar and it's a fucking train wreck. You sound so pissed off about this, I'm sure he reads that and when someone is always mad a you regardless of how hard you try it's pretty easy to just quit trying.

My doc used this example:

Two sets of parents both had kids with ADHD who had shitty grades. One set of parents told their kid they would take away their phone, their car and ground them if they didn't get their grades up in a month. The other set of parents told their kid that if they got their grades up they'd get him a new car.

Which kid do you think actually got their grades up?

Neither kid did. It just wasn't in the kids power to do it, no amount of punishment/reward would help the kid because they were asking the kid more to do more than they were capable of doing.

Read [Driven to Distraction] (http://www.amazon.com/Driven-Distraction-Revised-Recognizing-Attention/dp/0307743152/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1375056151&sr=1-1) to get a better perspective of what he's dealing with.

But mostly remember that the biploar and the mania treatments work against each other. Maybe as his moods become stable his doctor will step up the ADHD treatment but I can't imagine a doctor trying to treat mania and ADHD at the same time. It's always mania first then, when someone's been stable for months, treat ADHD.

Didn't think it was real, my dad never put much thought into ADHD. Wasn't until a couple years moving up in my career, someone called me out on it and told me about a book called "Driven to Distraction". Year or so after listening to that audiobook finally went to the doctor. That dude was reading a crystal ball when it came to some personal habits yadda yadda yadda....

You may be interested in reading John Ratey's Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain. He's clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard and I really enjoyed his book, which covers, among other things, the enormous impact exercise has on both mental health and creativity / academic potential.

Definitely worth a read.

Anyone who enjoyed this talk will be delighted to hear that Cordelia has a book out called Delusions of Gender, which is excellent and, redundantly, has made a lot of men very upset.

I think there are lots of interesting lines of thought behind the whole topic. I am greatly frustrated by how often people fall back on 'its biological'. I'm currently reading Delusions of Gender by Cordelia Fine which seems to share my frustration but is reassuring that the science is not at all cut and dry in that area. That most people grossly overestimate the data on 'hard wired' differences.

I think we also need to remember, that while kids do go to the gendered toys, kids can also be little gender police.

I bet most people here, during their childhood, had another kid tell them they could or couldn't do something based on their sex.

During an early stage of child development, kids learn rules, and try to fit the world into that. Some little kids literally think 'girls wear dresses, if I wear a dress then I am a girl' .

They just make assumptions very easily. No matter how many trucks you give them, your daughter is going to come across some girls's stereotypes, make the link (she's a girl - I'm a girl - this is how I be a girl!).

I think the most important thing is to early on teach your kids to be critical, and accepting of variation.

• You can like princess dresses, but you can like superheroes too! Anyone who says you have to choose toys for girls is silly. You can pick either!*
  
  I think the most important thing though is to not segregate kids. In a gender egalitarian society, men and women need to see each others as equals and stop placing rules on the basis of gender. People who grow up without positive experiences with the opposite sex (friends, parents, siblings) often have a harder time relating to them.
  

Seconded.

I highly recommend Ferber's book, Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems. Dude gets a bad rap, but seriously, the book has chapters devoted to toddlers with this sort of issue, and it's really helpful.

The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer

It reads almost like a mystery novel even though you know how it will end, weirdly enough. I highly recommend it to anyone who has been touched by cancer.

The closest thing that I've found is the Mayo Clinic book.

The Selfish Gene is a good place to start learning about Dawkins' real contributions to evolutionary biology (and is where the word meme was coined). A lot of philosophical work presently being done on game theory and signaling systems (Brian Skyrms is probably the central figure to consider here) is built on a foundation Dawkins helped to lay.

Whipping Girl by Julia Serano is commonly mentioned around here, and it's a good starting point. It's written by a trans woman and is basically a look at gender in society, sexism, and feminism among other things. It's main theme and her views on femininity are interesting. People had been suggesting it to me for a long time, but I kept putting it off until I found myself working in an environment with a lot of feminist identified people and knew very little on the subject. I'm not quite done yet but I've enjoyed it.

You mentioned in a previous post that she was diagnosed with Narcissistic Personality Disorder and that she is also OCD and ADHD, untreated and unmedicated.

You're not, and have never been, dealing with a "typical" person. Her mental health issues are serious and as of yet, unmanaged. You can't expect typical behaviour from someone with her issues.

u/CagedPika has some good resources for dealing with people with NPD, which I hope he will post.

Splitting: Protecting Yourself While Divorcing Someone with Borderline or Narcissistic Personality Disorder would be a good book for you too.


DBs aren't uncommon when teens marry due to unplanned pregnancy, especially if there is resentment included

I found this to be a good read

My training looks a bit different than the rest of the guys here. I am a more of a runner than anything else. I don't have the build most of the other guys have, I weight 160lbs, but it works for me. I run typically somewhere between 30-50 miles per week. I know there is a big variance there, but I'll do a few weeks of higher mileage, then scale it back for a week or two, then repeat. This worked for me for my ultra endurance running events and it works here too. The only difference is that when I am specifically training for a Spartan event, I add in body weight exercises 2-3 nights per week. Things like pull ups, burpees, planks, and variations really can take you far. I used this book to find and make a routine of body weight exercises.

The most important part is, you have to become the most mentally strong you can be. If you are mentally tough, you can finish this race today. During the log carry of the first lap, I said to myself, "I don't know that I want to go back out for a second lap." I talked myself into going to the transition area and taking it from there. I laid down, ate some salted potatoes (the best endurance food ever) changed my socks, and gave my legs a few minutes to rest. I was able to talk myself back into getting out there, and from there the rest was easy. This was my low point of the race and the only time I wanted to quit, but it happens to everyone nearly every race. Learn how to overcome this and you are golden right now.


Next up: NYC Marathon.

Why do you want to be more social? What do you want in life? Specifically. Write down the reasons, and write down everything you want for yourself - all the things you'd like to own, all the skills you'd like to have, all the people you'd like to meet, all the characteristics you wish you embodied.

Done? No, because you're an asshole. Go back and write them down. Seriously. I spent a fucking long time writing this post for you - I explain my point in several different ways, from different angles, because it's fucking important to me that you get the help you seek - you can take four minutes to write down some reasons. Open up your text editor and get to work, reddit will still be here when you get back. Don't get distracted. Do not trust your memory - write them down.

Okay. Look at those reasons. It's a list of things you want to be, do, and have. Ask yourself: Do you have the freedom to become, achieve and obtain those things, through your actions?

You were afraid to write some things. Maybe you thought "fuck a thousand people" was unrealistic. "Become emperor of my own country". "Go to space," "Own a castle," "Fly with the Blue Angels," "Be a real life James Bond," "Write a novel," "Be able to talk to anyone," "Start a religion," "Meet Daniel Craig." You're wrong, go back and write your "unrealistic" things down too. People have done them, you are physically capable of doing them. But are you free to do them?

Right now, you've decided to believe the answer is "no". If it were "yes", you wouldn't have posted, you would have just gone out and done them. Let's change that "no" to a "yes".

• Take this test. Write down your score somewhere you won't lose it.
  
  If this problem is the one you truly want to solve, you must focus your attention on it and let nothing distract you. All things which might get in the way of you solving your anxiety and inferiority problems must be ignored, including some of your own beliefs, and including some things like Netflix and Reddit you would rather be doing because they're comfortable and easy. This will be hard work. You will feel incredible after it is done, and it will be done soon if you work hard. Do not waste time. Only through discipline can you achieve freedom - if you are spending time looking at cat videos, understand that you are removing the freedom to spend that time elsewhere. You will not get that time back. It is forever chained to cat videos.
  
  
• Read this book. Pay particularly close attention to section IV.
  
• Take the test again. Compare scores.
  
  You must not fear. There is nothing on the other side of fear except failure. Failure of inaction is much, much worse than failure through action: you learn nothing when you do nothing. Make every attempt to socialize in every situation, even if it hurts, and even though you will fail many times. Experiment until you figure out, trust that you will figure it out.
  
  Optimism will not help you, neither will pessimism - if you believe things will work out okay no matter what, or that things will go to shit no matter what, you have resigned yourself to the whims of a random God and decided not to act. Only activism will help you - the belief that your actions will affect positive change on the outcome. This is true for all things you want in life, including "how do I make friends", "how do I start a business", "how do I become President", "how do I get a job," "how do I get an A in this class," and so on. Strengthen your belief that your success relies entirely on your actions. Strengthen your belief that you have the ability to make good decisions in the future. Strengthen your belief that the worst that could happen is something you can handle. Do not fear boredom, isolation or embarrassment if they are in service of your growth as a human being.
  
  
• Read this book. If it makes you feel shitty about yourself, that means I'm right and you need to read it all the way to the end, you will feel better later. Trust me and make the small sacrifice.
  
• Take the test again. Compare scores.
  
  Seneca recommended taking brief periods of time to deliberately live in rags and eat very little, to steel oneself against the fear of poverty. In our modern era we have developed many new fears, all of which can be eradicated in similar fashion. Fear of boredom. Fear of isolation. Fear of missing out. Fear of hunger, fear of gaining weight, fear of being unattractive, fear of looking dumb, inexperienced, uncool, fear of not being happy enough, not having enough interesting Facebook posts, and on and on. If you have these fears, face them. Physically write them down, then write down ways to mitigate or prevent them, and ways you could recover from them if they come to pass. Realize that these fears are controlling you and limiting your freedom.
  
  Then it comes time to face these fears. Go out and talk to people. Find people that know things you want to know, ask them questions. Find people that do things you want to do, admit your inexperience, and ask for their help. Offer them something in return, and get creative - "I'll <help you with your math homework / trade you a bag of chips / get you that girl's phone number / level up your WoW character> if you show me how you <do this problem / throw a perfect spiral / make those cookies>". Do this with as many people as you can find, do not worry about making friends with each one, do not worry if they make fun of you, do not worry if they hate you - the goal is quantity. Learn from your mistakes, learn from your successes. Every time you fail to take the action - going to a meetup, going to a party, talking to a stranger, joining a group activity - you are restricting your own freedom.
  
  Understand: you are on your own. You can build yourself to do and be anything you want, it is up to the rest of the world to try and stop you, and they will fail because they are uncoordinated and lack self-awareness. The more you realize this, the freer you become.
  
  Further reading:
  
  
• Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. It's a classic for a reason. Do not mentally add "effective in business" to the title, it applies to all situations.
  
• The Art of Seduction. It's not just about seducing women. Making friends, marketing products, attracting investors - these all share common skills which can and must be learned.
  
• The Obstacle Is The Way. Because this is /r/stoicism, after all.
  
• The 4-Hour Body. Learn about self-experimentation and planning ahead for failure. Develop self-awareness. Lose weight if necessary, build muscle if desired.

This book does a really good job of explaining the impact of less than 7 hours of sleep a night (TLDR it will kill you early)

Here's a metastudy with many (many) footnotes on sleep duration and mortality.

Just for longevity, this makes sleep at least as important as exercise for mortality.

(Source: I work in the sleep industry)

The Emperor of all Maladies is a brilliantly written book documenting the history of cancer, told through a human lens.

Sleep. Fix your fucking sleep. It is your foundation for improving everything else.

Audit your routines and schedules. Are you using your phone/TV right up until the moment you close your eyes? Are you going to sleep at a consistent time? What does your caffeine intake look like, especially in the latter half of your day?

If you don’t fix this, your lifts are the least of your worries. Your sleep, or lack thereof, will largely dictate most areas of your life, from your health, to your relationships, your motivation, as well as your mental, physical, and sexual performance, and through secondary effects, your academic/career/financial life as well.

Fix. Your. Fucking. Sleep.

Start here (20 minutes). Then here (2 hours).

Then read this.

Your life isn't pointless. Right now you may be at a low point, even the lowest point you have been in. I believe that struggling in some way, or being sad/depressed/angry/hurt/etc means that you care about something. Something feels like it's not right to you and you want it to be better. Even if it's a vague feeling, or you are struggling because you actually feel nothing at all, this says something. I'm not sure what you are going through since you didn't post many details (which is totally fine), but I wanted to let you know that there have been many times that I have struggled greatly. Due to my past trauma I've had terrible physical problems, emotional problems, dissociation, anxiety, depression, difficulty making and maintaining friendship and connection with others....and on and on. There were times when I was in so much pain (either mentally, emotionally or physically) that I couldn't get out of bed or even barely move for long periods of time. That is a very desperate feeling. I have felt utterly and completely alone in this world, as if I had nothing and no one, and that I would be broken forever.

One thing that really helps me is reading. It was a long journey for me to learn to recognize my own thoughts, feelings, and emotions. There are still some areas where I can struggle with this, but I have made so, so much progress it's almost unbelievable to me when I think back to the person I once was. I couldn't identify my own emotions or thoughts, but when I read about scenarios and other peoples emotions/thoughts in certain situations, I could tell when it felt right. Like, "Yes! That is how I felt when _____ happened to me." A few books that really helped me are The Body Keeps Score, and Running On Empty. Other resources that have helped me immensely are hypnosis (one in particular was Michael Mahoney's IBS Audio Program 100 (this cured the IBS I had had for ~25 years, since I was a child)), and Annie Hopper's Dynamic Neural Retraining System. The very first book that I read that gave me hope that I could change my life was The Brain that Changes Itself. I read that book 9 years ago and it set me on a path of real change. It gave me inspiration and hope and the belief that I could really change and improve my life. If you want any other book recommendations let me know, I've read a lot of books and I have even more favorites that have helped me.

There are still areas of my life that I am working to improve, but I am nowhere near the person I was before I started reading and learning. Working through this stuff, and figuring out how to even do it, are very challenging and difficult tasks. But it is so, so worth it. I wish I could really show you and explain to you the profound changes we can make as people. Every epiphany I've had about myself and my life has been amazing and life changing. To me it almost feels like the essence of what it means to be human. I'm not sure if people who don't go through trauma get the chance to experience such profound epiphanies, realization, and change. Maybe I'm just rambling now, but I want you to know that there is hope. You may not have it, but I have it for both of us right now. Read. See a therapist. Learn. Practice. Journal. Seek support. Seek out ways to make a change. It doesn't have to be profound or monumental. Go at your own pace, just be sure that you are going.

Also divorcing a BPD woman. A few notes for you:

1. Do not talk to police, ever. She will accuse you of something so that she gets the tables tilted in her favor. Do not talk to the police. Don't admit anything, don't answer any questions, and if they call you on the phone, hang up.
   
2. Don't sign anything. Not from her, not from her lawyer. Don't agree to any concession, ever. She will use it to extract every dollar, every ounce of emotional energy, and every minute of parenting time from you and your kids.
   
3. Check the recording laws in your state. Record every conversation you have with her from here on out.
   
4. As soon as it is possible, move back into your marital home. it will be uncomfortable, but it will be a deciding factor in determining custody.
   
5. Get in touch with a Domestic Violence group and get a restraining order against her. It may be your first and best line of defense (and she will violate it, I promise).
   
   A BPD cannot cooperate. They must control, they must preserve conflict and must paint someone as an abuser so they appear as a victim. There is no medication for this. Only years of therapy will help, and BPD don't believe there is anything wrong with them so therapy is never a real option.
   
   Get ready to stay on the offensive. Your divorce may cost you an arm and a leg but you can not concede anything or you'll spend the rest of your life reeling backwards.
   
   Pick up a copy of Splitting and follow its advice to a T, even if it seems exaggerated or hokey. Good luck.
   

> he became upset and whined that he "needs tv to fall asleep".

This is probably true. I've been reading Ferber's book and he talks about these sorts of situations. Both unwanted sleep associations (what your son likely now has with the TV), trouble with limit setting (your husband it sounds like :/) and what a good bedtime routine looks like.

On the sleep association if your child (or even an adult) always falls asleep in a certain situation, place, with someone present, ect they will often form a sleep association and now need that to fall asleep. He actually had an example of a kid who fell asleep every night in the living room watching TV and then if they woke in the night returned to the living room and turned on the TV since they didn't know how to fall asleep in their own bed. Also, if put to bed in their bed they struggled/cried/ect. The sleep association may be to the TV but also the living room, you guys being around, the couch, or multiple. All of these are changes.

Since you are creating new habits/breaking a sleep association your son is going to struggle for a couple days at least so you may as well set something up you are happy with. You don't want to create even more habits you don't have to like and will break again.

For the bedtime routine first have TV completely off the table/psychically not on in the house before he has to go to bed so it's not a temptation. Have him get ready for bed (PJs, teeth) and then have something to look forward to in terms of quality time in his room with a parent doing something relaxing/without a screen. So he has the quality time to look forward to when he is doing his PJs teeth and won't fight it (once he catches on). The amount of the fun activity can depend on how quickly he gets this done. So once he has done his PJs and teeth maybe he could go to his room and play one on one with a parent for 20 minutes then read two books in bed then go to sleep. Whatever.

Since it will be harder for him to fall asleep when breaking his routine you want to start off with a later bedtime not an earlier one. You want him to be so sleepy by the time the two books are done that he conks right out. To ease this transition bedtime would be set 30 minutes or an hour (an hour is safer) after the time he normally falls asleep watching TV. So a time he is very tired and will have an easy time falling asleep. Until he if falling asleep in his bed at night without TV and without excessive crying or tantruming keep him at an extra late bedtime and do not add any extra naps or allow him to nap any longer then he did previously. He needs to be sleepy.

Once he is going to bed with the new routine then slowly move his bedtime back down. When you are trying to shift a child's sleep schedule it can often be hard to just put them to bed an hour or two earlier right away, as their body/natural rytum is not set to fall asleep then. So first move him back to when he was falling asleep in front of the TV and then move bedtime 10 minutes a day or something until it is where you want it. However, a good bedtime is based on your child getting the right amount of sleep overall and being tired when it is time to sleep. If you move it to early for him he may not be able to fall asleep then and that can cause power struggles as he just can't do it.

Ferber also has chapters on natural rytums and shifting sleep schedules. Honestly, it's a really good book. And make your husband read it. It's important he understand and get on board with being a good parent rather then one who just does what is easy. You have a special needs child and you can't carry the whole workload by yourself. He may think he is being nice to your son but he is actually creating problems for him. Have him read the chapter on sleep association and the chapter on limit setting as these will help him understand why how he has been handling this is not good for his child.

This book has helped me a lot.


The Expectant Father: The Ultimate Guide for Dads-to-Be (The New Father) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0789212137/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_GwqQDbN1V9PZN

I'm glad some of it worked for you but Tim Ferris is bullshit. He is friends with Ryan Holiday who is the author of "Trust Me, I'm Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator" (which is also a bullshit book but there Ryan reveals he is a media manipulator).

If you don't believe me, read the 1-star reviews of the book. They release a book and buy paid reviews of it from third world countries and I'm sure most of the 5-star reviews are just that.

I will summarize the four-hour body for people who haven't read it: "I am a really awesome guy and know a bunch of scientists that I am going to name drop here every now and then... none of what I write is backed by anything scientific though because it is all ongoing research yet to be published... you just need to buy a bunch of shit I get commissions from, eat a bunch of chemicals along with complex carbs and do some shitty variations of common exercises really fucking slow... and here is a bonus chapter about how to get bitches"

If you really feel like you need to read this book, get a pirated copy... read it and if it helps you in ANY FUCKING WAY, purchase the book... or just read the one star reviews instead and save yourself time.

>I'm a very skinny guy [...] Purely for gaining muscle/toning up [...] I can't afford a gym membership or any home equipment right now.

Insanity is more of a cardio-vascular workout. If you are very skinny it will certainly get you into very good shape (and maybe shed enough fat to make your muscles more visible), but will not help you gain much muscle. If this is your aim and access to equipment is out of the question you will probably be better off with a bodyweight strength programme such as Convict Conditioning, You Are Your Own Gym or The Naked Warrior (and eating enough).

Disclaimer: I have not used either of these three, but from what I've read in /r/fitness they all seem good enough. If you are interested, take a look at this subreddit, particularly the FAQ.

Pretty much all historical civilizations were sexist, since women were denied fundamental rights in them based on gender. Even if one were to agree with everything else you've written, your final conclusion/suggestion does not follow. I can't think of any significant, historical civilization that might be called non-sexist.

Biology is a fact of nature; you cannot "fight biology". That would be like fighting physics. No matter what you did, the laws of physics would still apply. What you are talking about, such as "scholarships for women only, to get them into areas of technology, engineering", and "specialized programs for boys only to help them in reading & writing" do not in any way fight biology, they leave biology just as it is. However, they do change society. Scholarships are societal creations designed to redistribute access to education, which is another societal creation. Education doesn't grow on trees; human beings artificially created the system of education. Hence, the educational system is an aspect of society, not biology.

The fact that there are some gender differences in the brain, statistically speaking, should be no big surprise. But many popularized studies tend to exaggerate or misinterpret these differences. I would suggest you read Delusions of Gender by Cordelia Fine, or Brain Storm: The Flaws in the Science of Sex Differences for a deeper look at these topics. Broadly, a study that shows no differences in how men and womens' brains, on average, perceive a topic won't make a good headline or blog post, so it will be unlikely to be reported compared to one that finds a difference.

Secondly, it's not clear what these differences have to do with social roles. For example, what does the fact that men have more spatial reasoning, on average, mean for social roles exactly? Since there are many intelligent and successful women in programming and engineering fields, and many men who suck in these areas, it does not follow that there is a casual relation between gender and STEM fields. On the other hand, engineering is clearly coded as a masculine profession in society, and girls may be turned away from studying engineering for fear of being seen as unfeminine. Scholarships that seek to counteract that would then be playing a positive role.

Finally, I see an assumption through your post that what is "nature" is automatically good and must be accepted by society. However, the whole point of civilization and society is go beyond nature itself to build something for ourselves, as humans. Is medicine natural? We are programmed to die from birth, yet we still use the medical system to prolong life. Since men are physically stronger than women, should men then dominate women and impose our wishes on them? No, we created a system of laws where all citizens are equal before it because we recognize the equal moral worth of each person. Freedom is the fundamental issue. Humanity as a whole, and individual people for their own lives, must have the freedom to define its own path and create its own society without being told that a certain path is required due to unnecessary extrapolations from natural facts.

"You Are Your Own Gym" is also a book i've been recommended.

The book Delusions of Gender by Cordelia Fine is absolutely brilliant.

Well, owing that you're a cis person, I am going to challenge you.

If I may direct you to references of authority, you will realize not only that this tack is inappropriate, but also inaccurate and quite offensive.

Julia Serano (around pages 28–32 of Whipping Girl: A transsexual woman on sexism and the scapegoating of femininity has written and published on this subject. What I have already explained a few replies up on this thread echoes that thesis. Another regular redditor, catamorphism, has touched on this subject several times over the last several months.

Also worth review:

• "Put the goddamn space in 'Transwoman', 'transfeminism', 'transmasculine', etc (language politics #1)"
  
  
• "What not to call trans people"
  
  
• "Transperson vs. trans person" [re: Press for Change (UK) 2011 amendment in style use]
  
  
• "Why I use cis and trans as adjectives rather than prefixes"
  
  
• • 
    
    >Also, since when is it "American-style" to create neologisms? Never mind; don't answer that. You've started responding to me with sarcasm and mild, personal insults. It's clear that this conversation isn't going to go anywhere positive.
    
    American-style refers to the American propensity to render compound words out of concepts which otherwise (and elsewhere) are not compounded elsewhere.
    
    As for the tone of my responses I am directing your way, I am being quite direct and quite serious with you. There is no sarcasm or insult coming from me. If you'd like, I could change that.
    
    But I would much rather read a straightforward response from you which gets to the crux of what I believe you're thinking and what you know you're thinking with respect to trans women whose bodies are morphologically transitioned: are they off-limits for/repulsive to you the same way a morphologically un(der)-transitioned body of a trans man is OK* with you — that is, "If they're A.F.A.B. then it's a'OK with me"?
    
    You need not answer for my sake. If you want to be forthwith, do it for others. I know already where you stand.

No one should have to go what you did. If my STBX had a younger twin sister, you married her.

I am so glad you are getting out. Save this post somewhere because you will want to occasionally remind yourself what you were going through, when you start to forget the bad stuff and think maybe it was not so bad. Right now it looks like you are in emotional turmoil but at least you are breaking out of the fog. You also might find http://psychopathsandlove.com/how-to-never-get-involved-with-an-abuser-again/ useful. You already found /r/raisedbynarcissists so you might also want to visit /r/bpdlovedones

Since you have recognized codependent behaviors in yourself, you can use the advice in No More Mr Nice Guy (there is a pdf you can browse first) to work on that.

Two useful books on your upcoming divorce:

Splitting: Protecting Yourself While Divorcing Someone with Borderline or Narcissistic Personality Disorder

Will I Ever Be Free of You?: How to Navigate a High-Conflict Divorce from a Narcissist and Heal Your Family

I am about a year ahead of you, and my head is a much better place now. You can do it.

MS1 here:

Is she a coffee or tea drinker? If so, there are companies that do some really cool "coffee or tea" of the month deals. I've gone through quite a bit of coffee since I began...

Here are some really awesome books: House of God, Emperor of All Maladies, and Complications to name a few.

I wouldn't recommend getting her a stethoscope/medical supplies because they can be very personal. Sure, they're all roughly the same but it's an instrument you're going to be using for many years to come. "This is my stethoscope. There are many like it but this one is mine..." Just my 2 cents, at least.

I hope that helps! If I come up with any others, I'll post them here.

Expecting Better is okay, but good to read with some skepticism. The fact that Oster is an economist, and not a doctor or a biologist really shows in some sections.

Before reading her book, I'd read some of the same primary literature she cites, and I was so surprised at what she wrote, I had to go back and check that I hadn't read the paper wrong. (I hadn't.) I also did some searching and found that the doctors/biologists that study alcohol metabolism, fetal kidney development, etc. noted that her explanations of the biology there were incorrect. Same with some of the info on e.g. salmonella.

I personally found her analysis of CVS vs. amnio to be lacking. (I think this summary from the Cochrane reviews is better.) And NIPT technology has also advanced, so that info is a bit dated. This article from the New England Center for Investigative reporting is a good layperson's summary of NIPT.

Those are just a handful of examples. It's not to say that the whole book is wrong....there are some parts that are okay. (E.g. The info on chemical pregnancies, unisome + b6, and caffeine.) But it's not a book you can trust blindly.

Women like this book because it says, "Have that drink", "Have that sushi". And Oster had one pregnancy and nothing went wrong--great for her.

But having experienced a loss from something rare, and participated in a parent perinatal loss support group full of parents who lost their kids to something rare, I really understand why doctors encourage women to error on the side of caution. Sure, chances are that nothing will happen to you, but that 0.5% is somebody and your doctor wants to minimize the chances that "somebody" becomes you.

The Mayo clinic book (2nd edition) is from 2011, but most of the information is still current. (Again, the genetic testing technology has changed a bit.) About 1/2 is pregnancy stuff, about 1/4 is labor/newborn care/breastfeeding/post-partum care, and about a 1/4 is special case stuff (genetic testing, VBACs, pregnancy loss, etc.) I like that it has an alphabetized "symptoms" guide that covers everything from "bleeding gums" to UTIs and explains what to do. Bonus: you can get used copies for cheap. (Or get from the library before buying.)

As for refined grains (white bread, white rice, potatoes, pasta, etc.), this is in part a glucose/insulin regulation thing. Women who develop gestational diabetes maybe be told to eliminate these high glycemic load foods from their diet to manage their GD before moving to medication. But this is more relevant in the second half of pregnancy. In the morning sickness stage, they basically tell you crackers, toast, etc. is fine if that's what you can keep down.

> If this goes on for days, I progressively end up in a more depressed/helpless state. Making decisions gets difficult, even something as simple as picking an item off a menu. Confidence at work or with any other hobbies gets low enough that I stop doing or achieving much of anything.

This is a very classic "freeze" response, also known as dissociation. Basically, if you're pushed into fight/flight long enough or persistently enough, you'll start freezing up. That makes it difficult to concentrate, difficult to connect to other people, and even difficult to take concrete actions like picking something up. It's one end of trauma-related emotional disregulation, with the other being fight/flight/anxiety/anger. It's very common for unchecked verbal aggression to put people into a state like that. It's also decently likely that you have some form of trauma history that made you more vulnerable to freezing up like that, and that made it difficult for you to get angry enough to push back when she becomes verbally aggressive with you. I'd suggest reading In An Unspoken Voice to learn more about how we get stuck in these fight/flight/freeze responses.

> The only consistent recommendation I see, besides medication, is DBT. What does that mean, for someone without good access to medical care? Buy her a workbook and tell her to read it?

You could try to do that, but it doesn't sound like she has either a lot of insight into how her behavior is harmful or a strong motivation to change. Most likely the best thing that you can do is to focus on improving your own ability to advocate for yourself, to understand what's happening in this situation, and to get clarity about your own conscious and unconscious patterns of thinking and reacting that keep you stuck in this situation. This is unfortunately a "put your own oxygen mask on first" kind of situation.

On another note, DBT might actually be really helpful for you. One area it covers is emotional regulation, or learning to work on your emotional responses so that you can respond in a way that fits the situation. That includes learning about the different basic emotion types (Anger/Shame/Fear/Guilt/Envy/Happiness/Sadness/Love/Jealousy), learning when they fit the facts of a situation, and also learning to recognize when you're skipping past the appropriate emotional reaction and jumping to another one. For example, it sounds like when your wife gets angry at you over nothing, you skip right past anger and into fear/shame/sadness. If you can afford it or are covered, it might be worth finding a DBT therapist to help you work on that. If you can't, this is the workbook that my therapist used with me.

> What can a person like me do to be more resilient to verbal aggression/abuse?

Learning to set boundaries for yourself is probably the key skill to get started with. There's a lot of confusion about boundaries out there. Sometimes it sounds like it's something that other people are responsible for ("they should respect my boundaries"), or that they're responsible for enforcing them once we communicate them. Instead, a boundary is an action that we commit to take ourselves in order to maintain our self-respect and ability to function. It could be something like "If someone is yelling at me or calling me names, then I will leave the area." Frequently, it's helpful to have a series of planned boundary-maintaining actions so that you don't have to take drastic action off the bat -- so in that example, you could plan to first ask the person to stop yelling, then leave the room if they won't stop, then leave the house if they follow you and keep yelling, then stay somewhere overnight if they keep yelling when you come back, then move out temporarily if they won't stop when you come back, then end the relationship if you can't come back without being yelled at.

Other times when people talk about boundaries it sounds like we should just already know what our boundaries are, when in reality it's a really messy difficult heart-breaking process to discover first that something is unacceptable to you and then that you're willing to enforce a boundary to prevent it. There may be significant new emotions or memories of past situations that you have to become comfortable with in order to -- for example, you may be deeply uncomfortable with the idea of being alone or seeing someone else suffering when they claim that it's your fault, and it may be related to difficulties in your childhood or past that seem similar.

There's also a significant chance that you've internalized at some level that you're responsible for your wife's emotional reactions, or that you've done something wrong, or that this is normal. So there's a significant ongoing rediscovery aspect where you'll revisit past relationship conflicts and go "Wait, that's not my fault at all!"

The other thing you can do is to look into whether you might be exhibiting codependent behaviors or in a trauma bond. No More Mr Nice Guy is a decent guide to working on this, although it's a little bit much to handle if you're still in the thick of it emotionally. You can also read When I Say No I Feel Guilty.

> What's the healthy approach towards me getting some kind of support system/network?

Keep on posting here regularly, for one. You can also take a look at /r/Divorce (I've been assuming from the comments from your friends that you're married -- apologies if I'm getting that wrong). I assume you've seen /r/BPDlovedones/ , but it might be worth reading their recommended resources. Work on exercising regularly, see a therapist or couples therapist if you can, try talking to any friends you have that haven't been dismissive before. A light 10-20 minute/day meditation practice might be helpful with learning about your thoughts and emotions, but there can be complications with large amounts of meditation if you have a trauma history or are in a stressful situation (see this book and this guide if you want to pursue that route).

Also just spend time with friends and social groups even if they're not resources for talking about your relationship. It can be important to remember that social relationships can just be fun/light and to provide a counterbalance.

> So... is there any healthy middle ground between "suffer through it, don't talk about it, relationships take work" and "run away, AWALT, borderlines are crazy"?

The middle ground is to work on asserting your boundaries, understanding and accepting your emotions, building a healthy set of activities and friends, and getting clear on what's acceptable to you. If it turns out that you have a trauma history, then something like somatic experiencing or EMDR can help you start to heal from that and become more confident. As you become more confident and assertive, set more boundaries, and work for the kind of relationship that you want, then you'll see w

Do you have kids together? If you don't, the standard answer to just go ahead and leave is probably "right" -- there doesn't sound like there's much good happening for you here. But the problem with "just leave" is that it's all or nothing, and doesn't provide you with an incremental path to building the skills and self-knowledge that will allow you to actually leave.

If you do have kids together, then "just leave" is definitely a bit tougher. This sort of situation can be a kind of crucible that allows for immense personal growth, or can just beat you down.

A couple resources that may help with clarifying the stay/leave question are:

• Too Good To Leave, Too Bad To Stay. This is a workbook with diagnostics for what relationships can be fixed vs should be ended. If you read it and your answers come out as overwhelmingly leave, then do your utmost to just leave, even if you have to move out while she's not there, text a breakup note, and ask your friends to help you.
  
  
• Wired For Love discusses attachment theory and adult relationship dynamics.
  
  
  Good luck and we'd love to keep on hearing how you're doing!

I think for most people some parts are obvious but it would be easier if we all knew it and used it as a playbook. If you’re interested you can find the workbook on Amazon: DBT® Skills Training Handouts and Worksheets, Second Edition https://www.amazon.com/dp/1572307811/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_nhcFDbDRAYEDQ

I went through it as part of treatment for an eating disorder, although less formally than usual. I think traditionally you do a lot of group meetings in a short, intensive period of time. But reading it at my own pace is helpful too.

Edited to add: the interpersonal skills section is essentially exactly like what my company pays good money for someone to come and teach us as “leadership training”

I think that what really happened with that gamergate shit (on meta-level) is that it split social constructivists on one side and geneticists/culturalists on the other in culture war. If you believe that any inequality in outcome is always result of oppression you will inevitably find lots and lots of oppression. If you believe inequality is result of cultural or genetic differences you'll find very little. You can also believe in something in between in which case you'll find something in between.

To continue with gaming as an example, if you look at gender disparity in gaming you can conclude one of two things: Either there is pervasive sexism that repels women from gaming. Or, most AAA games are designed to cater to hunting instincts of 16yr old males - thus sexism is the result of lopsided gender ratio, not the cause. (or, again, it is something in between)

Now, the geneticist side was seen as literally Hitler for a long time. And there is no doubt that it was endorsed by some literal Hitlers. But if you read Blank Slate by Steven Pinker (Harvard psychologist, not a neonazi) then it does seem that there is plenty of evidence that genes influence IQ and personality to a large degree. At least on individual level, he says nothing about differences between groups.

The evidence of genetic differences between groups is far more dubious and uncertain. It obviously doesn't help that the whole argument attracts some terrible people who misinterpret evidence to make differences seem much bigger than they probably are. (Although there are some seemingly convincing arguments for increased Ashkenazi Jews intelligence) Culturalist explanations are more convincing, however.

What I think annoys many people -- not all or even most of them Neonazi -- is that social constructivists are completely dominant in academia, and are thus in position to interpret every power differential as result of oppression.

I would recommend you read him and refute him for yourself.

It seems pretty lame to just look for the refutation to something.

http://www.amazon.com/Selfish-Gene-Richard-Dawkins/dp/0192860925

EDIT you can buy used for $0.99! :)

Try the book below by Tom Vanderbilt. It's a decent look at some of the social issues that come up in driving along with the mathematical background that makes them problems. Very interesting and changed my driving patterns substantially.

Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us)
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0307277194/ref=cm_sw_r_em_apa_RqvpzbQK98J47

Phantoms in the Brain is a great book by Ramachandran concerning what we can learn about how the brain works by studying brain damage and diseases.

Yeah it's pretty amazing. The doctor who discovered phantom pain wrote a book about it, if you're interested:

https://www.amazon.ca/Phantoms-Brain-Probing-Mysteries-Human/dp/0688172172/ref=nodl_

It's from 1998 so the science has probably progressed a fair amount, but I think it would still be an interesting read.

Many, many parents have a similar experience. I include myself in that category, and this period was one of the worst in my life. The way that you describe "ferberizing" as neglect makes me think that you haven't actually read Ferber's book. I strongly recommend that you do; the data and model of sleep that he describes will be useful even if you still reject his technique.

A similar, but less aggressive technique is described in this book which you may find more palatable.

Stay busy and productive as much as possible within the constraints of your primary goal being "heal my back as quickly and efficiently as possible". You cant fight her unconscious perception so if you are a temporary invalid rest assured she is silently judging you in your weakest most painful moments. Protip: that is okay.

So four things: 1. Be attractive and don't be unattractive. 2. Prioritize healing. 3. Try to internalize that physical ability is a single puzzle piece on a very large puzzle and that you can still make a woman attracted to you and lead her while disabled/invalid. 4. Delegate.

Also, a question: How would you behave if this was your life from now on? Are you fucked? Or can you make it work? Do that.

Also I have heard people with chronic back pain say this is the shit and it cures you permanently:
https://www.amazon.com/Healing-Back-Pain-Mind-Body-Connection/dp/0446557684

"Oh my gawd I would just curl up in a ball and DIE if I hurt all the time like you!! Anyway, let me tell you about this hike I went on..."

"You can't drink with your medication? Oh it's ok, just have a few, I'd totally be an alcoholic by now HAHH"

"Oh my goodness you poor thing, have you tried [insert naturopathic/homeopathic/other BS here]?"

"You can't really be hurting all the time, have you read this book to get rid of back pain?" (I do not have back pain..)

"Aw you're so boring, you never hang out with us and I miss youuuu"

"It's ok, you'll get better soon, I'm praying for you every day!"

...and many more reasons on why I dread in-person social interaction.

You may be interested in Phantoms in the Brain. It covers some of that weird, mind-body disconnect stuff.

There's a lot of scientific evidence for it—I did a quick google and found some stuff, although there are probably better explanations than what I found in a few seconds.

There was a study done in the past five years—at Yale IIRC—that indicated that exercise is equivalent to anti-depressant medication in treating depression.

Here is a psychologist being interviewed about what exercise does to the exerciser's mind.

Here, the American Psychological Association (APA) explains that exercise improves the brain's ability to handle stress, which in turn should reduce anxiety.

There's no cure-all; the one thing you need to do is actually a lot of things that will work together in a perfect storm to reduce and possibly eliminate your anxiety.

About exercise:

• don't worry about whether you feel a "runner's high"—it usually does come, but after at least several weeks of training
  
  
• what you are after is not only an endorphin rush; exercise is being shown to actually change the structure of the brain in positive ways, not the least of which is to be more resilient and less prone to anxiety
  
  
• if your pulse seems too high, slow it down. Remember, you're not out there to prove you're Superman/Superwoman. Speed and endurance will come; think of your mind/body as an engine that you're working on. You need to build it up before it's ready to race.
  
  
• Exercise is not punishment. Too many people get the idea that running/exercise is a way to do penance for bad behavior. You're out there to do good to yourself because you deserve it.
  
  I got a lot out of this layman's book about the effects of exercise on the brain (based science from the past 10-20 years); you may want to look at it.
  
  PS: I found this interesting article in The Atlantic about exercise and depression as well; looks pretty good, and it's from last year.
  
  edit: grammar

John Ratey discussed it at length in his book Spark back in 2007/2008

Children aren't aware of gender differences, but their caregivers are.

Cordelia Fine addressed a similar study in her book where babies were shown different toys like this, but it was later shown that the people presenting the toys to the babies were enforcing stereotypes themselves by shaking the toy they expected the baby to want more than the other.

Hi. Male here, with very similar circumstances. Actually I have two special needs sons and I also provide the financial support to the family (she was fine working but really crazy abusive to the kids when at home), but I also sort of acted as the parent to the kids and cleaned up after the emotional messes she made. Also I had even more reason to fear the legal system than you do because I'm male.

Here's what I did: Downloaded the Tape-A-Talk app on my phone. Memory chips for smart phones are amazingly cheap nowadays, and periodically I'd downloand the audio files to my work computer. Before I came inside I made it a habit to activate the app so it would record what went on. Other times you could tell from the tense atmosphere that there was going to be a blowup. So I'd go to the bathroom or something and turn on the app. Did this for many, many days. I didn't catch even 5% of the craziness, but over time even 5% adds up to enough to convince anyone with an open mind that the BPDer wasn't just having a bad day or was being taken out of context. At first it helped a lot just to know there was a 'witness' that this was happening and it wasn't my fault and it wasn't just my word against hers. I felt a lot better even though divorce seemed impossible. There was some record of my suffering, somewhere.

Collected a lot of these recordings. Couldn't really bear to listen to them at the time, but now that I've initiated divorce proceedings I've been going through them. I'm using a freeware app to cut them down to size for the court. I hired a Family Investigator to basically listen to a mass of her 'greatest hits', talk to various people, and write a report to the court dictating who is fit to be a parent. She, like many BPDers, has recruited and cultivated an extensive 'support network' of professionals and friends who believe her version. Lied about me being alcoholic, a child abuser, a wife beater, etc. But they haven't really heard my story and that's what the CFI does - listen to everyone's story and come to a conclusion.

Without the recordings I would have been dead in the water. Her lawyer is protesting various things about the recordings and the CFI's report, but ultimately family court will listen to all evidence even if it is 'tainted'. I highly recommend you make recordings like this. Even if you choose not to take action it makes a big difference and is saving the lives of my kiddos. State laws on recordings vary, but I'd record him even if it's illegal in your state/country. Even if the recordings can't be used in court itself, they can be used to, say, meet privately with the child advocate where it's just you and them and there's no one to say what actually was done during the meeting. If the child advocate really knows what's going on, it's a lot harder for them to fall under the spell of the BPD's charm.

I'd recommend setting up a meeting with a lawyer to talk about your situation and what options you have. Obviously you have to take precautions to maintain operational security though. I first saw a lawyer over a year before launching the divorce. She didn't believe me either at first, but the recordings convinced her and now it's almost comical in that she's become this sort of avenging fury of justice while I'm restraining her, preaching realism and moderation in the divorce.

There's more stuff - it gets incredibly complicated with a BPDer. If you want to talk message me.

Edit:

I also downloaded This book to my phone, which was helpful. I didn't read it cover to cover, but I skimmed through it to prepare mentally and it did help me anticipate some of the moves in the process.

Also, on reading the suggestions below, under my state's law, it's illegal to record someone's conversation that you're not a party to. Doing it via phone while you're carrying it in your pocket made all of those recorded convo's legal. leaving the phone on the nightstand and recording her behavior with the kids with me not being there is illegal - still useful, but technically illegal and a possible class IV felony. This is why meeting with a divorce lawyer is a good idea, to establish the boundaries of the law.

I wouldn't bother arguing with them. It's notoriously difficult to reason someone out of a position they didn't use reason to get into in the first place.

If you're interested in evolution, by all means learn more about it, but do it for yourself. You can start here for an overview:

http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/faqs-evolution.html

http://evolutionfaq.com/

And these books will explain in more depth:

https://smile.amazon.com/Why-Evolution-True-Jerry-Coyne/dp/0143116649?sa-no-redirect=1

https://smile.amazon.com/Blind-Watchmaker-Evidence-Evolution-Universe/dp/0393351491?sa-no-redirect=1

https://smile.amazon.com/Selfish-Gene-Popular-Science/dp/0192860925?sa-no-redirect=1

The real origin of memes for those of you interested.

If you are interested by this video, I would highly recommend the book Traffic. It is aimed at a layperson, and it touches on this and other sometimes counterintuitive concepts in Traffic. It is actually a really good read with a lot of academic sources (although they are just listed at the end of each chapter without direct citations).

The hook of the book: is it better for traffic flow if, when faced with a lane that will soon end, you merge over as soon as you can, or wait until the lane ends? (Spoiler: either works as long as everyone agrees, but no matter what, late merging is more efficient).

The synopsis says a lot more about it so I'll copy paste it:

>In this brilliant, lively, and eye-opening investigation, Tom Vanderbilt examines the perceptual limits and cognitive underpinnings that make us worse drivers than we think we are. He demonstrates why plans to protect pedestrians from cars often lead to more accidents. He uncovers who is more likely to honk at whom, and why. He explains why traffic jams form, outlines the unintended consequences of our quest for safety, and even identifies the most common mistake drivers make in parking lots. Traffic is about more than driving: it's about human nature. It will change the way we see ourselves and the world around us, and it may even make us better drivers.

Amazon.com links provided:

1 The Slight Edge

2 Mastery

3 The 4-Hour Workweek

4 The Art of Power

5 Thinking, Fast, and Slow

6 The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

7 The Power of Now

8 The Power of Habit

9 Whatcha Gonna Do with That Duck?

10 The 48 Laws of Power

11 Your True Home

12 Ego Is the Enemy

13 The 4 Hour Body

14 The UltraMind Solution

15 The Dip

• Leda Cosmides & John Tooby: Evolutionary Psychology: A Primer - central paradigm
  
• David Buss: Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind (4th Edition) - expensive but comprehensive
  
• Richard Dawkins: The Selfish Gene: 30th Anniversary edition - theoretical background, easy to read
  
• Steven Pinker: The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature by Steven Pinker - about the problems of cultural determinism
  
  If you're into original research, you should also check out (lots of PDFs)
  
  
• David Buss' Publication list
  
• Leda Cosmides & John Tooby's Publication list

How about a whole book on it written by a respected democrat in academia?

You really should just read that book. It's going to answer all your questions and give you things to think about you had never considered.

I have no firsthand experience but I just read this book called Spark: https://www.amazon.com/Spark-Revolutionary-Science-Exercise-Brain/dp/0316113514

In it the author argues strongly that 1) exercise is essential and 2) it changes your brain chemistry and form and 3) it helps many mental illnesses.

It's genuinely a fascinating book and I highly recommend it!

I recommend the book You Are Your Own Gym by Mark Lauren. Tons of ideas on how to do a full-body workout anywhere with nothing (or very common things)

Friggin' awesome.

Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference by Cordelia Fine. Because I like gender issues and topics.

Read the newly released "Testosterone Rex: Myths of Sex, Science, and Society" by Dr. Cordelia Fine for an introduction to this topic. It's very entertaining and easy to read, and also very informative - about the last 50 pages are notes and citations of the studies she mentions that you can investigate further if you wish.

>“Goodbye, beliefs in sex differences disguised as evolutionary facts. Welcome the dragon slayer: Cordelia Fine wittily but meticulously lays bare the irrational arguments that we use to justify gender politics.”―Uta Frith, emeritus professor of cognitive development, University College London

>Many people believe that, at its core, biological sex is a fundamental, diverging force in human development. According to this overly familiar story, differences between the sexes are shaped by past evolutionary pressures?women are more cautious and parenting-focused, while men seek status to attract more mates. In each succeeding generation, sex hormones and male and female brains are thought to continue to reinforce these unbreachable distinctions, making for entrenched inequalities in modern society.

>In Testosterone Rex, psychologist Cordelia Fine wittily explains why past and present sex roles are only serving suggestions for the future, revealing a much more dynamic situation through an entertaining and well-documented exploration of the latest research that draws on evolutionary science, psychology, neuroscience, endocrinology, and philosophy. She uses stories from daily life, scientific research, and common sense to break through the din of cultural assumptions. Testosterone, for instance, is not the potent hormonal essence of masculinity; the presumed, built-in preferences of each sex, from toys to financial risk taking, are turned on their heads.

>Moving beyond the old “nature versus nurture” debates, Testosterone Rex disproves ingrained myths and calls for a more equal society based on both sexes’ full, human potential.

Her previous book "Delusions of Gender" is also quite good.

If people are interested in how this kind of research tends to get stretched beyond its boundaries, check out Delusions of Gender.

I believe I remember reading that V.S. Ramachandran had an insight to this when he was dealing with phantom limb patients. The area of the brain that maps foot and toe sensations is right next to areas which are involved with sexual stimulation. When an area of the brain (especially involved with perception and sensation) lose their means of input and become disused (as in someone losing a limb), those neurons are gradually recruited by nearby brain regions to supplement their functioning. So, in some cases of people losing their lower limbs, those foot-sensation areas became cross-linked with the sexual stimulation areas causing the people to have a sexual reaction when imagining their phantom toes being sucked on.

This may be a neurological explanation for foot-fetishism, but I don't know off the top of my head if this has been followed up with concrete study; it only suggests an avenue for further experimentation. This also does little to explain some of the other, less common fetishes (tickling, scatalogical). It also doesn't concretely answer the question as far as genetic/environmental. We have genetic dispositions for particular brain areas being more interconnected than others, but environmental factors play a huge role in this as well, especially as far as deviations from normal development during childhood. As such, though I don't necessarily agree with them, I also can't 100% discount ideas like sexual imprinting.

tl;dr: This, like most other neurological questions, is really complex and the answer lies somewhere on the continuum between genetics and environmental factors.


edit: Looked it up to be sure. For those that are interested, this was discussed in Phantoms In The Brain.

Not until 6 months, and even then you're not supposed to let them cry for unlimited amounts of time. Please get your hands on a copy of Ferber's "Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems" before you even consider crying it out, because there are a lot of misconceptions about the method and if you do it wrong it might be traumatic for your child.

I couldn't find any when my wife was expecting. I looked, but everything that turned up online or even in the store was all written with the premise that the father-to-be is some beer-guzzling knuckledragger. I wound up buying this book in the end, and it's actually really helpful for almost everything you can think of.

https://www.amazon.com/Caring-Your-Baby-Young-Child/dp/0553393820

Apparently there is this one and a sequel book that look promising.

https://www.amazon.com/Expectant-Father-Ultimate-Dads-Be/dp/0789212137

>Emperor of All Maladies

There's fascinating book under the same title: https://www.amazon.com/Emperor-All-Maladies-Biography-Cancer/dp/1439170916 and I also recommend this (if I remember correctly 7 part) series "A note from history: landmarks in history of cancer" https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20960499 (can be downloaded for free).

First, congrats! :D

Next, if you are not taking any prenatals, you should get some sooner rather than later. The first few weeks are the most critical for getting enough folic acid, because that is when the baby's neural tube is forming and will close by about 6 weeks I think. Folic acid helps prevent spina bifida and other things associated with the neural tube. If you can't get a prenatal soon, eat lots of dark greens like kale and spinach which contain high amounts of folic acid. Personally, I buy one brand of prenatals that I love, but they are kind of hard to find. I took them in my first pregnancy, all through nursing and now with my second and they are very gentle on the tummy and really high quality. It also comes packaged with a DHA supplement which is good for eye and brain development. They are called Rainbow Light DHA Smart Essentials Prenatal Pack. I have only been able to find them locally at Rite Aid, but apparently they now sell them on Amazon too: http://www.amazon.com/Rainbow-Light-Complete-Mulitvitamin-Essentials/dp/B001HCDTCG

You also need to call your doctor and make your first prenatal appointment. Unless there is a question or a problem, most doctors will not have you come in for a pregnancy test, whether urine or blood. I've been told by my doctor's office that the HPT's are good enough now they don't do their own test unless needed. If you don't have an OB/GYN, do some research to find one in your area. You also have the option of a midwife. Most doctors won't have you come in until 8-12 weeks, again unless there is an issue. At the first appointment you will usually get an ultrasound to determine viability. This is to check for proper growth and a heartbeat. They don't usually do an u/s before that because you won't be able to see much and it's fairly pointless in most cases. They will also go over what ever questions and concerns you may have and schedule your next few months of appointments. If you need a Pap, you'll get one at that time as well. There will also be other blood work to determine your blood type, your immunity to measles (I think) and an HIV test.

I would suggest buying a couple good pregnancy books. I've heard the "What to Expect" book is awful because it is written in such a way as to scare new moms with information. I don't know how true that is as I avoided it. I do like the Mayo Clinic's book and the Pregnancy Week by Week.

http://www.amazon.com/Mayo-Clinic-Guide-Healthy-Pregnancy/dp/1561487171/ref=sr_1_cc_1?s=hpc&ie=UTF8&qid=1319128309&sr=1-1-catcorr

http://www.amazon.com/Pregnancy-Ultimate-Week-Week-Guide/dp/0696222213/ref=pd_sim_b31

Mayo Clinic Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy

A bit more clinical, and more information (IMO) than "what to expect..."


Be Prepared: A Practical Handbook for New Dads

AWESOME book for dads (me included). Similar info, but much lighter, and easier to read.

They should hand out free copies of Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do by Tom Vanderbilt to explain how/why this works.

There's solid science behind these signs...but of course you have to have signs that actually function correctly.

edit: added link to book.

Through all of this weight loss I have been following Tim Ferriss' book, the 4-Hour Body. It has helped me tremendously and I would strongly recommend it to anyone looking for a nice diet that won't leave you starving day after day. The best diet for me I have found by far.

I read a great book called Spark that goes into the details of this.

​

Exercise regulates the mood hormones and has been effectively used as a treatment for depression. IIRC he devotes an entire chapter to depression in the book (though it might have been a shared chapter on mood disorders). Super interesting stuff and there's also a lot of info on Alzheimer, anxiety, and a bunch of other neurological conditions affected by exercise.

if someone REALLY expresses interest in how I'm losing weight, I send them to https://idmprogram.com/blog/ or lend them a book https://www.amazon.com/Obesity-Code-Unlocking-Secrets-Weight/dp/1771641258/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8

but usually I don't talk about my diet

There is a really good book, Whipping Girl by Julia Serano, that would answer your questions. You could probably just read the first couple of chapters.

It's a bit of an oversimplification to say that gender is a social construct. We tend to use gender to mean anything that is not physical, anatomical sex, but to get to the root of what it means to be or feel like a man or a woman, we need more specificity than that.

Gender roles are societal expectations for how people of a certain gender should look, act, and live. These are relative to the culture and can be man/woman, or three genders, or six, depending on the society.

Gender expression is the personal choices people make to signal to themselves and to other people what gender they are. The specifics of gender expression also vary depending on the culture. So, one culture might see pink as a "girl" color, one might see it as a "boy" color, or the same culture might even change its mind. It's all relative.

Gender identity is a person's sense of which gender category in their society is right for them based on their own relationship to their body, and to other people. The ways in which people talk about gender identity vary from culture to culture (for example, Native Americans refer to gender fluidity or being dual gender as being Two Spirited).

Nevertheless, every culture has had to answer the question "what does it mean that there are males and females?" The specifics of that question and its answers may vary, but the question itself is based in humanity confronting its own biology.

The vast majority of people never really feel a disconnect between the sex their society designates them to be and the gender they see themselves to be, as you probably know. Some people don't have a problem with their biological sex, but they do have a problem with the gender roles that are expected of them. Other people have no issue with either, but they like to have an atypical gender expression because it feels authentic to their sense of self. So, there's a vast number of ways people can relate to gender without it coming into direct conflict with their sex assigned at birth.

Regarding people who are transgender, genderfluid, etc, this often refers to a specific relationship between physical sex and gender identity that goes beyond roles and expectations that society has of different genders. Usually there is a feeling of disconnect or dissonance with the gender identity assigned to you based on your sex. It just "feels wrong," so people who are transgender do a lot of exploration to figure out what feels right, and that has lead to a proliferation of terms for different gender identities because our own society hasn't been very accepting of gender diverse people and our language hasn't caught up yet. So people are trying out a lot of terminology trying to figure out what this all means.

I can't speak for agender or genderfluid people since I am not one.

I can only speak for myself as a transgender man who is also somewhat gender non-conforming. My sense of "being a man" or "being male" is the best language I have to describe the feeling that my body is supposed to be physically male and I am like other people who are male. It's like my brain expects a male body to be there and sometimes perceives it anyway despite what my biology is like. But my sense of what it means to be a man is definitely shaped by the culture I grew up in. I look at other men and women and locate myself within the spectrum of gender laid out for me in my social world. I compare myself to others and through self-exploration realize that it feels more authentic for me to align myself with other men than with women or non-binary people. This doesn't mean that I imitate them, just that it feels more natural for me to move through the world with others perceiving me as a man. So, the socially constructed parts of gender are ways I can live my gender with other people as opposed to just feeling it as this private thing.

[Edit: going back to the whole identity vs. expression vs. roles thing: One of the first things I did when I transitioned was go out and buy a pink men's shirt. I could never wear the color pink before because people saw me as a girl wearing pink. I did not want to be a girl wearing pink. I am a guy who likes the color pink. I found it uncomfortable to express myself through signals of femininity because people saw my role as female/woman and my identity was male. But once I had a male social role, I found it much easier to express my gender with things traditionally associated with femininity. I wanted the feminine expression to be seen in relation to my maleness, not to my perceived femaleness. I know that's convoluted! In practice it just means I stress out a lot less over the color of my clothing than before.]

For you, I would suggest you probably feel more male than you realize, it's just not at the forefront of your consciousness because it is not in conflict with anything. An analogy...When you are lonely, you become acutely aware of your individuality, your longing, your desires, and the various obstacles to ridding yourself of loneliness. When you are with loved ones, that individuality does not disappear, but you no longer feel lonely. Feeling yourself to fall outside of society's gender constructs of man vs. woman is like a type of gender loneliness. If you've always been in the company of people who validate your gender and are in agreement with you about your sex, you're probably not going to dwell on it much.

Not a story per se, but try reading Whipping Girl by Julia Serrano:

https://www.amazon.com/Whipping-Girl-Transsexual-Scapegoating-Femininity/dp/1580051545

http://www.reddit.com/r/transeducate

Wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender

Film:

She's a Boy I Knew (autobiographical documentary)

Non-fiction:

She's Not There by Jennifer Finney Boylan (memoir)

Whipping Girl by Julia Serano

Fiction (young adult):

Luna by Julie Ann Peters

Notice how people react more violently to men (or people perceived as men) in women's clothing than the other way around? It's rooted in misogyny.

Check out Whipping Girl by Julia Serrano. Good stuff.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1580051545

It's really hard to do. First and foremost, speak to an attorney. Don't give her any hints that you're planning to divorce her in advance. My post history from a couple of years ago shows all that I went through, including claims that she had already called the police on me (she had not. and I called the police the next day to see how I could protect myself), breaking into my email to get my correspondence with the attorney, and not being honest about large amounts of debt.

I recommend this book - Splitting: Protecting Yourself While Divorcing Someone with BPD or NPD. It is a good understanding of the steps you can take, and what is and is not within your control during the process. I'm not diagnosing your wife with any sort of certain illness or disorder, but I will say the behavior you describe certainly has a Cluster B flavor to it. In fact, the way you wrote about her objections to therapy are nearly word-for-word what I dealt with over the years when trying to get her to go to couples counseling with me.

Another person in this thread mentioned projection with your wife describing Laura as a Narcissist, and I experienced that as well. I wasn't falling back into the cycle of staying in the marriage yet again to make it work, because I always believed her that things would get better. She finally went to a talk therapist. Once my ex realized that, I was accused of being a sociopath, and that her new therapist agreed with her that I was the cause of all her mental and physical problems. The therapist I had never met, and during her first session.

What truly helped me was individual therapy for myself, and finding a group of people in /r/BPDlovedones who had bizarrely similar experiences to my own over the years. I was pointed there after telling a bit of my story in /r/Divorce and some users suggested I go take a look. It took a lot for me to understand just how toxic the relationship was, and my part in that cycle. Hell, I even had a similar experience in discussing my concerns with her parents, and that being used against me by her.

I also recommend the books Boundaries, and Stop Caretaking the Borderline or Narcissist: How to End the Drama and Get On with Life. Stop Caretaking was probably the best one for giving me concrete examples of how my own behavior and thought patterns were part of the problem.

It took me a long time and many false starts to leave that unhealthy relationship. I wish I had the knowledge, strength, and courage to have done it sooner.

First off, do yourself a huge favor and read this book.

I was in a similar situation as you-- married 11 years, two kids at about 7 and 9 at the time. Ex-wife didn't have substance abuse issues but she spent and spent-- constantly got angry at me that I "wasn't making enough" despite me making 6 figures and her taking time off to raise the kids and work on her second Masters degree.

I know you're doubting yourself and (like a good father) worry about the effect a divorce will have on your two boys... But let me cut through all the chaff and spell it out for you-- leave. Get out.

You've already acknowledged your possible co-dependency. My experience in giving my ex-wife "one last chance" as she promised to seek treatment back fired on me as she just cemented her relationship with the guy she was cheating on my with and took the time to legally prepare. Don't make the same mistake as I did and give yours that chance.

I can't 100% predict what you'll be after your divorce, but it was a huge relief for me to return to a calm, trouble-free home after work. I believe the removal of such a negative influence on my life (and your boys' lives, too-- let's not kid ourselves, her behavior will effect them if not now then certainly later) that I feel I became a better father to my kids. Not always having to be on the defensive will give you more energy to put back into being a dad. Less arguing in front of the kids because you got 80/20 ground beef instead of 90/10 will be less stressful for them.

If you feel your kids will be in harm's way when you start the process, make sure your attorney and court know this. We have 50/50 visitation and there was a lot of "parental alienation" on the part of my ex-wife (BPDs are "perpetual victims," nothing they did brought them to this point in their lives and everyone is out to get them) which after two years after the divorce was finalized is still going on today.

Now my oldest daughter is 12 and wants to live with me full-time; we'll be returning to court soon to hammer that out. The typical BPD is never thinking about the long-game, and that's why-- if properly handled-- they will always lose.

PM me for more info if you want.

This book does wonders for back pain, it actually cures it - I know it sounds unbelievable, but I tried it on myself, my relatives and coworkers, and everybody got relief:

https://www.amazon.com/Healing-Back-Pain-Mind-Body-Connection/dp/0446557684

Healing Back Pain: The Mind-Body Connection by John E. Sarno

In my experience, back pain is usually caused by tight muscles, injury, or your brain.

​

Because you don't appear to have gotten injured, I would suggest stretching your hamstrings, QL, and hips before and after you go to bed.

​

While stretching helped me, my biggest breakthrough was reading This book. I think our minds have a much bigger impact on muscle pain than we think.

​

Just my two cents! Good luck – you will figure this out.

If you like this, you should definitely check out his book, Phantoms in the Brain. It's one of the most fascinating things I've ever read.

Phantoms in the Brain, if you enjoy learning about neuroscience or how the mind works and what happens when something goes wrong upstairs, this book is for you.

In my opinion, no one should try "cry it out" without reading the book for themselves. It's a very informative read even if you don't end up using that method.

Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems: New, Revised, and Expanded Edition

His book (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0743201639/ref=cm_sw_r_udp_awd_1mHStb1PH9BDK) has been updated and SPECIFICALLY says that his method isn't just leaving the kid to cry. There's scientific background to his methods- plural! There are several potential complications for kiddos- we had a few we didn't even know about.

OP, please PLEASE read the book! It's a quick read and will give you actual science and strategy. Not saying it's right for everyone, but if you're considering using it, read the book in full.

Ferber's book talks about how to solve these types of sleep problems for kids your daughter's age. https://www.amazon.com/Solve-Your-Childs-Sleep-Problems/dp/0743201639

Congrats!!

Tips and suggestions... you're going to get nausea... I kept peppermints, gum, and crackers in my purse for at least the first 8-10 weeks. You never know when it's going to strike! Oh, and ginger ale was my bff for a while!

What to Expect is a fantastic book! If your husband is looking for one, I would recommend The Expectant Father. My fiance is reading it at the recommendation of my brother (who has two kiddos) and they love it!

If you're wondering about the studies of drinking/no drinking, chances for birth defects or miscarriage, and all the crazy polar stuff you see on the web... I recommend picking up Expecting Better written by an economist who analyzes all these studies, just in laymen's terms! It's comforting to know what's what, etc.

Other than that, welcome to baby bumps! There's SO much info that gets passed around here that I have found so incredibly helpful. If you have questions, ask. If you have fun things to share, share it!

My favourite is definitely Expecting Better, as the author looks at the actual scientific evidence behind most common pregnancy do's and don'ts.

I've also bought:

• What to Expect When You're Expecting
  
• Mayo Clinic Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy
  
• For husband - The Expectant Father
  
  And I've just ordered a pile of books from the library:
  
  
• Pregnancy Day by Day
  
• The Mother of All Pregnancy Books
  
• Ina May's Guide to Childbirth
  
• Birth Day
  
• The Happiest Baby on the Block
  
• Bringing up Bébé
  
• Retro Baby

I bought my husband the book "the expectant father the ultimate guide for dads-to-be" it is available on Amazon and is really informative.
https://www.amazon.com/Expectant-Father-Ultimate-Dads-Be/dp/0789212137/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1542296764&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=expectant+father+books&dpPl=1&dpID=61Qlu9et-vL&ref=plSrch

It is a little different in that it focuses on how the partner can help and not accidently cause a fight, as well as giving a perspective as to how she is feeling and what is happening with the baby. I got myself the book "day by day pregnancy" it is like a massive text book and let's me have a little to read each day with tips and ideas to make the experience more pleasant.

Good luck, most of all you need to let her know that you are in this together.

Congratulations! If you're looking for a book to read throughout pregnancy, The Expectant Father is kind of like a What to Expect When You're Expecting for dads. I like that it has practical things you can do to support your SO week by week. It also has things about what she may be experiencing emotionally and what you may feel. Some of it is kind of goofy but things like a list of questions for your pediatrician might be helpful.

One practical thing any pregnant woman probably would appreciate is having good food around. I love that my SO never judges what I eat, is always down to get whatever I'm craving and cooks for me. The Brewer Diet has recommendations specifically for twin pregnancies. She may not feel like eating for a while, but it's especially important for her to stay hydrated and get good nutrition when she can eat. B vitamins, especially B6 can help with the nausea.

On cancer, I can strongly recommend Siddhartha Mukherjee's The Emperor of All Maladies, which (among many other things) is a history of cancer and the ways we have treated it. (That is my source for the purposes of this comment, in any case - actual historians of science and medicine may be able to do better!)

One of the earliest cases Mukherjee talks about is recounted in Egyptian hieroglyphics, the tale of a woman with a breast tumor around 2000 BCE (very roughly). In that particular case, the physician recommended no treatment, but contemporary records suggest that surgery (to remove such tumors) was known of, though you can imagine what the prognosis for patients was like before the (very modern) age of antiseptic techniques.

So cancer's been around for a very very long time; part of the increase in frequency we see for such illnesses is a consequence of the fact that we are living so much longer, due to better nutrition and control of other infectious diseases. Mukherjee writes quite elegantly about the underlying nature of all cancers, their untamable desire to grow and expand and colonize, as a twisted reflection of the very processes that take us from fetus to infant to child to adult.

If I were to go on, I'd just continue summarizing his book, and it's eminently worth reading for yourself if you're interested enough in the topic.

Enjoy!

I read this book 2-3 years ago "The Brain That Changes itself Self" super fascinating all about neuroplasticity and how the brain can re-wire itself. One chapter talked about porn regarding people losing their jobs, relationships, social life etc. Because of porn, it can also lead to impotence. I will just take some quotes:

> [A 2001study] found that 80 percent felt they were spending so much time on pornographic sites that they were putting their relationships or jobs at risk.

>When I asked if this phenomenon had any relationship to viewing pornography, they answered that it initially helped them get more excited during sex but over time had the opposite effect. Now, instead of using their senses to enjoy being in bed, in the present, with their partners, lovemaking increasingly required them to fantasize that they were part of a porn script.

I can't suggest this book enough. My recommendation would be to combine through that chapter if you are interested.

EDIT: This book is on amazon and is well worth the cash side note I realized when I ordered it was in 2012....time is strange

Eu acho que o programa de educação física devia ser alterado. Exercício fisico é absolutamente crucial para um estudante. Li recentemente o livro "Spark" (http://www.amazon.com/Spark-Revolutionary-Science-Exercise-Brain/dp/0316113514/ref=sr_1_3/177-6089882-2280667?ie=UTF8&qid=1420361932&sr=8-3&keywords=spark) e tenho também estado atento aos vários estudos que provam que praticar exercício físico é das melhores coisas que alguem pode fazer.

Dito isto, o plano actual de educação física baseia-se em dança e vários desportos. Acho que todos ganhavamos se em educação fisica se aprendesse fitness e apresentasse vários estudos do efeito do fitness em transtornos tipo OCD, ansiedade, depressão e também os seus efeitos na concetração, circulação sanguinea e em doenças mais específicas.

Exercício Físico é a chave para uma população mais saudável.

There are a handful of other bodyweight books in the FAQ that people here speak really highly of. I've been doing YAYOG for a month, and it's been great for me. I don't want to parrot the whole book, but there's a lot of exercises in there, and more importantly a handful of different routines to keep your muscles guessing.

>I guess this is my kinda of my issue. How do you explain transwomen who date and marry ciswomen? If what you were saying is true all transwomen would be dating cismen and exclusively cismen. Right?


They’re heterosexual males with a sexual fetish.


Anne Lawrence


Blanchard


No. I said that they tell homosexual children (a small subset of trans) that they are the wrong sex and then sterilise them using cross-sex hormones after puberty suppression.


Then, we have transwomen telling lesbians (homosexuals) that they are bigoted for not liking penis or wanting to have sex with people that maintain or have previously maintained those organs.


There is a big hint in the word homoSEXual that would lead you to understand that sexual orientation for heteroSEXuals and homoSEXuals is based around the SEX of the person.

Telling lesbians (or gay men) that they must like people of the opposite SEX based on their “GENDER identity” is creepy and disgusting.


People are not obligated to re-evaluate their attractions because of someone else’s “identity”.


Years ago, psychologists and psychiatrists used to try and force homosexuals into liking people of the opposite sex. This is no different.


--------------------

>I think gender is a set of ideas on how someone acts and looks that is typically based on sex. That is to say that usually female people act and look in a certain way as a woman.



What.the.fuck? Act and look as a woman based on sex? That right there, straight up fucking misogyny.


What does a woman “act” like? You realise that is the antithesis of feminism. That women “act” and “look” a certain
way.


How does sex, one’s reproductive capability, have anything to do with how someone acts?



>I don't know if gender roles are innate, I really don't think they are.


Good. Because they aren’t.



>I don't know if its more real or less real. I think sex is pretty complicated in general and can't be decided by one characteristic but by using multiple different criteria simply because theres no real one defining characteristic that says you're either male or female. for this kind of stuff I typically look to places like the Olympics

Production of gametes. Bam. Simple.

Failing that? Structures for the production of gametes.

Failing that? Genetics.

Failing that? Organs.

Reproduction is real. Human biology is real.

How do you propose we classify people then? How is gender real? How does the way a person "acts" affect anything about their physiology? Things like rape shelters, bathrooms, prisons are all based around people's physiological needs.

Women can get pregnant to males, menstruate and pee sitting down. We have different cancers and different levels of medication tolerance (and alcohol tolerance) because of our physiology.

Men can impregnate and pee standing up. They do not need access to abortions or gynaecological medicine. They may need access to medicine based on their prostates and testicles. They have difference levels of tolerance to medicine and alcohol based on their physiology.

Why would you look to the Olympics? Why not ask a biologist?


>I think this would fall under gender roles again. I don't think a woman is really any one thing. Gender isn't based in your body and how it looks but rather in how you act.

Wrong. A woman is an adult female human.

How is gender then more important than a biological reality again? How is the way someone “acts” overriding this?

Am I no longer a woman because I don’t “act” like one?

The fuck?

Who governs these rules for how someone should act?

Why can't people act however they want? Just because you have certain bits doesn't mean you act any particular way.

Your physiology is just a fact of nature and your ability to produce offspring through the exchange of genetic material.

>If you mean a woman again I don't know if that's a biological reality meaning that you can definitely say that you identify with and are more comfortable with that set of gender roles.

And what of the millions (billions?) of women who aren’t happy with the gender roles place upon us? What if we’re not happy with ANY gender roles for anyone?

What is a gender role and why is it even important?

>If you mean female, I think that's more of a thing that happens as you transition rather than something you just become.

Nope. Males cannot become females. We are not gastropods or fish.

How does a male born become female? That makes absolutely no sense.

>It gets a little worrisome because this kind of thinking can lead to transwomen being excluded from places that most other females are allowed to be. Bathrooms, locker rooms, etc and I'm not sure if that's ok to do, although I'm a proponent of non-segregated bathrooms and changing rooms, I think its a little silly that we separate by sex.

WHAT?

NO! Males cannot become female.

You DO NOT produce oocytes, have menses or gestate and birth young. (Yes, I am aware that not all females can either)

Males disproportionately attack females for violence and sexual assault.

Look at the FBI or WHO statistics if you don’t believe me.

And “transwomen” maintain MALE levels of criminality which makes them just as likely as any other male person to cause us harm.

Males and females are separated because SEX is the only thing that is different between us. We can get pregnant and get “gender” bullshit because of that. We are somehow "weaker" and "less capable". We're also vulnerable because of our ability to get pregnant.

Males and females have different physiology, different medical needs.

You propose what? We separate on “gender”?

How is gender real?

IT FUCKING ISN’T. It was created by society. Biology wasn’t.

Here’s some links to transwomen violence:

One


Two

Three

Four
(This is a person who gained access to a women’s rape shelter by claiming to be a woman and then SEXUALLY assaulted women)


And I have more.

> would that teenagers are typically below the age of consent, IE below 16 and thus can't legally make a decision to have sex no matter what age the other person is.

But teenagers and children are able to consent to hormones and puberty blockers?

And yes, the brain develops as it gets older. Atrophy and damage can halt and stop the development.

So, how is "brain-age" less real than "brain-sex"? How is it any different to "negro-brains" or "jugglers-brains"?

If I scanned my brain and it had the same volume in certain parts as a medical professional does that make me a medical doctor?

>I think the only difference is the fact that there is some actual research done on the brains of transwomen vs ciswomen which shows some of the same structures not present in cismen.

Yes. We’ve all seen those.

First off, NONE of those studies have been reproduced which makes for bad science.

NONE of those studies identify why they are able to determine what a “woman’s brain looks like”

Actually, here’s a really succinct link that breaks it down

And I’m more than happy to refer you to read Sheila Jefferies new book Gender Hurts, Cordelia Fine’s Delusion of Gender and Michael Bailey’s The Man Who Would Be Queen


>I tend to defer to medical organizations for things like this and typically take them at their word if they say that the cause of transgenderism is due to different brain structures.

Medical organisations used to advocate for lobotomies of the mentally ill, the castration of gay men, and the “hysteria” of women.

You also can see examples of bad pharmaceutical practice in Ben Goldacre’s Bad Science

I’m not saying I agree 100% with any of the above texts. It pays to be well informed and to complete your own research.

Do not “take them at their word” about things like “brain” sex when the methodology for their premise is so unbelievable flawed.


>Does that make sense?

It didn’t make any sense, even a little.

I mean seriously? Fucking gender roles in 2014? We’ve come a long way baby from Suzie-Homemaker and Captain America.

After coming across this interesting article in Skeptic summarizing the evidence surrounding sex differences in cognitive ability I decided to pick up a book on the same subject by the author (Diane Halpern), Sex Differences in Cognitive Abilities, which I haven't read through yet but I noticed it did have the following discussion of Baron-Cohen's hypothesis:

>Numerous researchers have offered stern criticisms of the idea that female and male brains are "essentially different," especially in ways that Baron-Cohen has suggested (e.g., Eliot, 2009; Spelke & Grace, 2007). According to Baron-Cohen, it is high levels of prenatal testosterone that make the male brain good at systemizing. But males who are exposed to very high levels of testosterone while still in the womb (i.e., CAH males) are not more masculine or better at male-typical tasks than males who are exposed to normal levels of prenatal testosterone. In fact, the idea that high levels of prenatal testosterone cause autism, which might be expected from this theory, has not been supported. In addition, one prediction from this hypothesis is that autistic boys would be "hypermasculine," which is not supported with any research (Eliot, 2009). The experiment with newborns that Baron-Cohen frequently cites as evidence that girls are born with an interest in faces and boys are born with an interest in objects has been criticized on methodological grounds, including experimenter bias, small sample size, and failures to replicate (Spelke, 2005). ... In addition, numerous studies have found no sex differences in aptitude for science or mathematics in young children (Fine, 2010).

I would listen to the audio book or read: The Obesity Code: Unlocking the Secrets of Weight Loss https://www.amazon.ca/dp/1771641258/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_LFQCCb79W9S8D

Also: The Complete Guide to Fasting: Heal Your Body Through Intermittent, Alternate-Day, and Extended Fasting https://www.amazon.ca/dp/1628600012/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_HKQCCbETJPS2D

Mutiple studies have shown calories are not the driving force for weight increase, insulin is.

A 2000 calories made up of pizza, pasta, ice cream, cake, doughnuts, chips, bread and juice, is very different than 2000 calories made by steak, chicken, veg, eggs, nuts, seeds, avacado and whole fruit.

Fibre is also a key component of weight management, most western diets do get nearly enough fibre. Fibre protects the body from sugar.

Add chia seeds and flaxseed to your meals.

Dr. Fung doesn’t argue that you can’t lose weight in the short term on a traditional diet of calorie counting.

He does argue that you won’t keep the weight off on a traditional diet of calorie counting long term, once your metabolism slows by up to 40% in response to the weight loss.

Exercise only represents something like 1/4 or 1/5 of the energy expended each day at the most. The main component of energy expenditure is your metabolic rate. If you greatly reduce your metabolic rate along with weight loss, your body is essentially fighting to help you put the weight back on.

He recommends the combination of fasting, reducing overall daily meal frequency, & low carb dieting for long term weight loss without the metabolic slowdown that leads you to regain the lost weight.

——

Links if you care to learn more:


----

Free articles by Dr. Jason Fung:


The (Lack of) Evidence for Caloric Restriction in Weight Loss


The Useless Concept of ‘Calories’


The Science of Why Caloric Restriction Fails


Why Fasting Succeeds Where Caloric Restriction Fails


Controlling the Body’s ‘Fat Thermometer’


Books:


The Obesity Code by Dr. Jason Fung


Videos/lectures:


Video: Dr. Fung lecture on fasting, calories, weight loss, insulin, etc

> So what is the key to making that set weight point change? Is sticking to fasting and avoiding carbs the best way to do it?

Basically, yes. Dr. Fung talks about this at greater length in The Obesity Code, but the gist is you have to keep insulin levels low enough for long enough for your body to regain its insulin sensitivity. The longer you've been overweight, the longer this will take.

Yes it is healthy, but needs to be carefully implemented.
Depending on the severity of diabetes, and range and doses of drugs you take, you would ideally need to be supervised.

For instance, especially if you are following a combination of a Low Carb diet & IF / Fasting, taking too much insulin can be dangerous.

You need to head on over to Dr Jason Fung's website, he is a Toronto based nephrologist who specialises in treating obesity and diabetes. He has a host of resources:

1. Web site
   
2. Video Lecture Series
   
3. His book "The Obesity Code"
   
   He has reported phenomenal results with diabetics, many reaching the point where they no longer require insulin. I'm currently in talks with him to consult with my father's physician.

following up here, but take a look at The Emperor of All Maladies for a little history into how cancer became a huge marketing, PR, and money-raising machine in the mid 20th century, led largely by Mary Lasker.

This coincided with radical changes in breast cancer surgery from the mid to late 20th centuries. Breast cancer surgery used to be a mutilating procedure that would remove the entire breast and inner chest cavity, despite barely any differences in real outcomes. It was easy to champion breast cancer research partly for these reasons and partly because it was one of the first cancers in which we understood the biology of certain types (namely, BRCA genes as well as HER2-positive cancers that could be treated with tamoxifen). This gave the public added confidence in their money going to research which was leading to tangible improvements in cancer outcomes.

Why we sleep

Recent scientific research conducted by renowned neurologists has essentially proven that the shorter your sleep, the shorter your lifespan.

We are only now beginning to fully realize just how much damage even a week of sleep deprivation has on an individual. u/just-home, I suggest this bestseller if you're interested in making everyday life a lot better :)

Please don't pull all-nighters. If we're talking studying, work, or whatever, you'll be more efficient the next day and get more done than you would ever have gotten done during said all-nighter. It's a genuinely stupid, inefficient thing to do.

Copying a comment I made earlier today.

Everyone’s saying that the doctor’s wrong, and I get why. However, conquering depression, as a rule, does mean that you have to try despite how bleak things feel.

Know what’s empirically a good idea. I dont care if you shave, but shower once a day. Get your nutrients. People are in worse positions than you are and you should feel gratitude in that. Other practices are important too but a smidge unorthodox. Meditation is great and there is an app on iOS and Android called Waking Up that has made an enormous impact on countless people. If you cannot afford an account, they will make you an account for free and if after a year you can’t yet afford it, email them once more for another year of membership.

Email: [email protected]

Also, get an app that tracks your sleep. Android iOS

Do not forsake your sleep. It’s not cool. The middle class merely bought into it being “cool.” If you need some science here’s a book that knows its shit. If your depression is fucking you then get it on Audible with a free trial or listen, listen, listen. This is no small thing.

Forget your weight. Are you fat? So? Why does that matter? Americans are fat. I’m fat. Eat better. Smoothie. Try doing some exercises because it feels good to be limber or some cardio because your brain feels GREAT once you do. If your joints are fucked go swimming. Pay for a membership or use your school. They’re probably billing you to keep the lights on anyway.

Why do you think labeling yourself as a coward is a good thing? Genuinely, why? Even subconsciously, why? You have to choose to be better. The pills or this doctor will never ever fix your problems. Look, all of this was typed out in the bathroom. I’m on the can and I believe in you. And my ass hurts so im going to stop here, but I have more information and I will reply to you if you want to take this further. Ask your questions.

Get a prenatal vitamin ASAP- it's critical to make sure baby is getting enough nutrients, especially folic acid. I've found that the One-a-Day Women's Prental One Pill go down well for me.

I also highly recommend the Mayo Clinic Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy. It's a chill book that gives you the facts without any fear mongering. I bought a copy for myself before we conceived, but I also got a copy for free from my insurance company when I enrolled in their healthy pregnancies program.

Also, you're going to feel big ups and downs emotionally, regardless of how planned the baby was/wasn't. Our baby is 100% planned/wanted and I still have days where I'm like "OMG. I think this may have been a mistake." It was especially tough for me to have anything resembling a positive attitude during the morning sickness phase. My husband teases me a little bit about that because I went from "baby crazy with a ticking biological clock" to "So nauseous. I regret my life choices. Have we done the right thing?" within about a six-week timespan. Point being, there are ups and downs :)

We've felt the same frustrations. There are a lot of BS pregnancy and parenting books out there.

We've found that The Mayo Clinic Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy is quite good in terms of scientific approach, citing sources, and treating the reader like an adult. However, it's definitely written for people who have a college reading level and good scientific literacy. Sadly, that's a niche market in terms of American publishing.

We also like The Pregnancy Bible. Note that I think there's a newer edition now but I can't find it on Amazon.

IMO, the "What To Expect" series has degenerated into anxiety-inducing, cross-marketing ridden junk.

Absolutely no issues with flying during pregnancy. Some airlines restrict pregnant women from flying past ~36 weeks, but I think that's because they don't want you going into labor in their airplane cabin at 32,000 feet. After getting thru security, buy a bottle of water for your wife. I was on a 2-hour flight over Christmas and was dying of thirst waiting for the drink cart to come down the aisle. Also, give her the aisle seat if possible so she can walk the aisles periodically to keep the blood moving and access the bathroom quickly if needed.

As for books, I've read a lot of good ones. I've liked the Mayo Clinic Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy, and Elisabeth Bing's Six Practical Lessons for an Easier Childbirth and Ina May's Guide to Childbirth for info on labor and delivery, and The Happiest Baby on the Block and the Wonder Weeks for infant care. Also The Birth Partner is a great book on delivery for both pregnant women and husbands. If you can find a secondhand bookstore near you, check it out--a lot of people sell off these types of books once they're done with them.

Yes. Very helpful. It’s good for anyone who’s been through traumas. My son and I are both in separate therapy programs based on DBT. I suggest you get this book and explore; its great to have professional guidance, but the book is very common sense and practical so you can get a lot out of just the book.

DBT® Skills Training Handouts and Worksheets, Second Edition https://www.amazon.com/dp/1572307811/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_u1R2CbM1383VN

I can't give a good personal opinion, but an excellent scientific book about selfishness vs. selflessness is The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. People often only know him for God Delusion and other stuff like that, and forget that he is also one of the finest evolutionary biologists of our generation.

I'll try to summarize the thrust of the book, but really, you'd do yourself and him more justice if you just bought it and read it. Basically, people, like all animals, are simply vehicles for genes to replicate themselves. Literally everything instinct any animal ever has, be it toward altruism or to self-centered behavior is just an extension of that goal.

By that logic, we, as higher primates, have a natural disposition towards altruism and favorable behavior towards our cliques that will help us be protected. However, the selfish gene can also lead to more selfish behavior, if it means those genes have a higher chance of replicating. It depends on the situation, and the millions of years of evolution that have brought us to this point.

So, in a sense, we disagree, but not in the sense you might think. According to Dawkins' book, humans are neither inherently selfless or selfish, so your statement is nontrue rather than untrue. The genes, however, are "selfish" and our innate instincts reflect that.

Yep, I do the same thing.

Most people don't understand that tailgating is what causes waves of stop-and-go traffic.

More info: http://www.amazon.com/Traffic-Drive-What-Says-About/dp/0307277194/

And I am dismayed that so many people don't understand this concept: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f0/Zipper_animated.gif

Glad you got diagnosed and are doing so much better now.

Similar story for me. I wasn't diagnosed until ~29, though. I sometimes sit and wonder how much better life would have been had I been diagnosed back in college, or even in HS. But instead I just exhausted practically every SSRI and SNRI that my doctor would prescribe, to no avail.

Some 8 counselors / psychologists and 4 psychiatrists later, I got diagnosed and life has been night / day better ever since.

One book recommended to me was "Driven to Distraction" by Hallowell and Ratey: http://www.amazon.com/Driven-Distraction-Revised-Recognizing-Attention/dp/0307743152

It isn't exactly the most well-written book ever, and it is hardly perfect by any means, but never have I ever read so many accounts and experiences that I completely related to. It was very eye-opening.

edit: I should add that none of my psychologists and psychiatrists up to that point even mentioned or considered Adult ADD as a diagnosis. Furthermore, I was actually part of the group that thought, "ADD isn't real. People are just lazy. etc.". With the advent of that diagnosis at 29, I even laughed at my counselor and said that I thought ADD was a joke. I pushed forward anyway, because I had tried everything else. I was pleasantly surprised and have since reversed my stance since.

Please read this book!! I know people on both sides of the medication fence and only you and your son and his doctors/teachers can make the right decision. I'm glad you are being proactive about this now, you sound like a caring and attentive parent.
Anyway, I'm a teacher and this book helped a lot with my understanding of people with attention issues, including myself! Driven to Distraction

There's a possibility you might not convince her at all since she's made up her mind already. That's usually the issue with old school mentality that do not want to keep an open mind and no matter how much proof you bring to their attention they will not budge.

I highly recommend buying Driven to Distraction by Dr. Hallowell and try to have her read some of it. If you haven't read it I also recommend you read it too since he covers a lot about parents convinced that the person is just lazy.

Hey dude.

I can relate quite a bit.

I have the attention span of a gnat on cocaine, so I can definitely relate to the overall tone of your post.

I am going to give you a different perspective than all the other commenters...

Here are my initial impressions:

1.) I am guessing your job is not 100% predictable and there's a decent amount of unpredictability in the day to day activities? That's probably why you are doing fine in that role. Also, since you also run the risk of losing your paycheck (i.e: loss aversion) if you don't perform provides you with a decent incentive to keep showing up and producing results.

2.) Regarding your difficulty of learning and motivation: This provides more evidence about your ADD tendencies. It's not that you are not motivated or don't want to learn, it's just that your brain is wired to chase shiny objects. If you are not stimulated in conversation, work, or any other task at hand - no matter how important others deem it to be, you simply TUNE OUT.

3.) Based on everything you've said thus far, I am going to put forth the following theory:


You grew up in a very dysfunctional / precarious family environment and your relationship with your parents aren't the best. If anything, this was certainly the case in the first few years after you were born. ADD/ADHD is not a disorder, rather, it is a phenotype.

Actually, it's more accurate to say attunement deficit disorder than attention deficit disorder because one of the biggest factors of it is from your mother not giving you proper attention as a baby.

I am also going to guess that you have underdeveloped emotional circuitry as a result of emotional neglect as a child.

This is all related to ADD/ADHD. The area of your brain (pre-frontal cortex and orbitofrontal cortex) that deals with emotional regulation is heavily underdeveloped.

How do I know all of this shit? Because I've spent a decent amount of time trying to understand my own characteristics and it sounds quite similar to yours.

To confirm these theories, I highly recommend that you read or listen to the audiobook version(s) of these books:

• Scattered by Gabor Mate
  
• Driven to Distraction by Edward Hallowell
  
• Running on Empty by Jonice Webb
  
  ..Especially Running on Empty by Jonice Webb.
  
  Here's why: Unlike physical or sexual abuse, it is extremely difficult and subtle to know if you've been emotionally neglected as a child. The reason is that the former is an event that happened (i.e: my dad spanked me) and the latter is an event that didn't happen.
  
  Since you have no reference or experience of what emotional assurance feels like, you don't know if you've been neglected emotionally as a child AFTER you are an adult.
  
  Rather, the symptoms show up as being distracted, ADD, depression, alienation, loneliness etc..
  
  Take this test and if any of the above books confirm my theories, look into the work of Alice Miller and listen to everything she says.
  
  With that said, DON'T GIVE INTO THE UNREALISTIC PRESSURE OF WANTING TO BE AN ENTREPRENEUR.
  
  Because, in the grand scheme of things, it's not a big deal. Not only that, when you read /r/Entrepreneur and see a 23-year-old making half a million dollars from a business he started 6-months ago, you are going to feel even shittier if you are so attached to being an entrepreneur.
  
  Remember:
  
  
• Frank Llloyd wright didn't make Falling Water until he was 68
  
  
• Colonel Sanders (who wasn't even a real colonel) didn't start KFC until he was 62
  
  
• Sidney Frank didn't start Grey Goose Vodka until he was 77
  
  
• Ray Kroc didn't even get the ball rolling with McDonalds till he was 60
  
  
  On and on....
  
  Take care of your mental health first.
  
  And remember, ADD or being distracted is NOT a disorder, it's a phenotype. (or as I like to call it: Multifocus) -- What you need to do is figure out how to use your tendencies to your benefit and design your life around it.
  
  
  We have sensationalized the idea of being an Entrepreneur so much so that, all we hear about are successes (i.e: Survivorship bias).
  
  What no one talks about is the psychological toll and the number of suicides that happen as a result of the unrealistic (self-imposed) pressure of wanting to succeed as an Entrepreneur. For example, Austen Heinz was running an incredibly successful startup and abruptly killed himself.
  
  Your happiness and sense of self should be 100% derived from within.
  
  The moment you start basing that on external factors, you are likely going to go down the wrong road.
  
  RELAX.
  
  You got plenty of time.
  
  This ain't a sprint.

It gets better if you understand exactly what it means to have ADHD. You'll feel empowered if you read up on the subject.

I recommend you

• watch this intro from Russell Barkley
  
  
• start watching these videos, also from Russell Barkley
  
  
• And read this book
  
  
  There are lots of misconceptions about ADHD out there, so it's hard to understand exactly what to expect or do next until you listen to the experts.

Check out p. 27 here

In her diagnostic interview, an ADHD woman says:
>I was slow to learn how to read, but once I did, I was a voracious reader. Little Women, The secret Garden, Hans Brinker-these were my books. On top of the water tower, under the kitchen table, wherever I could find a spot to be left alone, I'd tug a book out of my pocket and read.

It is NOT true that if you can concentrate and focus enough to read, you cannot have ADHD.

Source: Driven to Distraction: Recognizing and Coping with Attention Deficit Disorder by Edward M. Hallowell M.D. & John J. Ratey M.D.

Edit: formatting, grammar.

Have you seen their Highlights for High School feature?

Also, there are sites like Academic Earth that might be useful.

Here are a few blogs with potential. You'll have to decide for yourself if they have inappropriate content.

Here are a few book recommendations covering various fields, in no particular order (though they should all read #1):

1. A Short History of Nearly Everything
   
2. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
   
3. Einstein: His Life and Universe
   
4. The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined
   
5. The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood
   
6. Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers
   
7. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
   
8. The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer
   
9. This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession
   
10. Cosmos
    
11. The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language
    
12. The Theory That Would Not Die: How Bayes' Rule Cracked the Enigma Code, Hunted Down Russian Submarines, and Emerged Triumphant from Two Centuries of Controversy
    
13. Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind
    
14. The Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist's Quest for What Makes Us Human
    
15. The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature
    
16. Thinking, Fast and Slow
    
17. Chaos: Making a New Science
    
18. Isaac Newton
    
19. Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain
    
20. The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat: And Other Clinical Tales
    
    And here's a video interview with Richard Feynman they might enjoy.

I gotta say reading evopsych definitely paved the way for my unplugging, so I commend you on that decision.

I have read and recommend:

• "The Moral Animal: Why We Are, the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology" by Robert Wright.
  
• "The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature" by Matt Ridley.
  
• "The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature" by Steven Pinker.

Personally I've found there to be few helpful books which directly relate to management consulting / business strategy. The only one that I've found really helpful is:

• Winning - an overall look on business strategies and philosophies used by Jack Welch (former CEO of GE)
  
  But here are some books that are very helpful in developing people / soft skills essential to effective consultants:
  
  
• Getting to Yes - an incredible book on negotating skills.
  
• How to Argue and Win Every Time - not as argumentative as it sounds, this is a great book which is hugely helpful on how to present your positions and how to get the best outcome for everyone in a situation.
  
• Influence - brilliant book on the ways in which we are influenced to do things.
  
• The 48 Laws of Power - a very Machiavellian put pragmatic look on the ways in which personal power is gained / lost.
  
• Vital Lies, Simple Truths - how to recognise self deception that we're all prone to and how to overcome its limitations
  
• The Blank Slate - a mindblowing book on human psychology and what we're naturally predisposed to be. Helps you to better understand people and their motivations in not just business but all aspects of life. Read from Part 2 onwards.

Books like The Brain that Changes Itself, Phantoms in the Brain and The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat are all really great reads. They're different cases and accounts of patients treated by the authors who are, I believe, neuroscientists and psychologists. I learned a LOT about how the brain works and relates to the body - but I'll warn you, when you see how flawed our perceptions of the world can be (how easily damaged, fooled or changed), you may have a slight existential crisis. I did. :)

Yes, there are lots of studies about the addiction patterns in the brains of video game players. I don't think he is implying that massive amounts of video gaming is healthy either. But 303030... is right. It is an addiction that affects a lot of things about you. If you want to read a layman's explanation by great neuroscientists, read The Brain That Changes Itself (there's a section specifically about porn) or The Compass of Pleasure (touches on masturbation, orgasm and I think porn).

There are lots of great techniques (like these) to help you remember specific things, but if you want to train your brain to remember things better, you have to work daily on this effort. I've been using Lumosity for the last few months for this reason. I'm not sure yet whether it's actually improving my memory, but at the very least it's a nice way to get your brain going in the morning and brush up on a few basic skills.

There are different games focused on various "brain skills" (memory, focus, spatial recognition, etc...) - I love the games that help you remember names and faces. Thus far the only research about this was sponsored by the company- hopefully others will dig into this interesting topic soon. Still, everything I've read about brain plasticity suggests these kinds of activities do improve your thinking skills.

I signed up for the 30 day free trial and set a calendar reminder to cancel it by the end of the trial, but after 15 days of using it I was hooked. I get to work and do this for the first half hour or so instead of obsessively checking Facebook and it wakes up my brain and makes me feel productive without having to do real work before the coffee kicks in. There's at least one other website doing the same kind of thing called Posit Science, but I haven't tried it.

You could get a similar result by playing free games that use your memory every day, like matching games, but I like that Lumosity training programs give you different games to play each day so you don't burn out. I just click "Start Training" and it will give me 5 games to play. I also like the ability to track my progress.

If you join, add me- I have the same screenname on there. :)

</theyshouldpayme>

The Brain That Changes Itself by Norman Doidge
https://www.amazon.com/Brain-That-Changes-Itself-Frontiers/dp/0143113100

The greatest show on earth or Why evolution is true are both very good overviews of the evidence for evolution. Probably a good place to start. Evolution is such a huge topic that no one book is a comprehensive overview of it all, once you understand the basics of evolution however I really suggest the selfish gene. You can also pick up a very cheap copy of on the origin of species, though remember that the book is 150 years old and predated genetics (still remarkably accurate however).

Your idea is awesome. You created by yourself Richard Dawkin's theory for his first published book, ["The Selfish Gene"](http://www.amazon.com/Selfish-Gene-Richard-Dawkins/dp/0192860925 "Amazon Books linkage"). You can get a used copy for under $5 or from your local library for free.

On a side note, in this book he also coined the idea of a meme in 1976.

In no specific order: The Dictator's Handbook: presents a realist perspective on international and intra-national politics, specifically it presents a real-world analysis of politics through the lens of Selectorate Theory.

Something from Chomsky, I'd say Manufacturing Consent or Understanding Power or both. Chomsky has written about 40 books so it's impossible to keep up with him and you may end up disagreeing on substantial points, but I think he's probably the most important to read because he situates his political analysis outside the invisible constraints of American political culture, and American political culture tends to be naive about the goals and methods of government and other institutions.

Watch this CGP Grey video and consider how it applies to political parties, political discourse, and political activism. Afterwards you should either read the meme wikipedia page or Dawkins' book The Selfish Gene.

Looking back I notice all my recommendations circle around studying politics itself as a phenomena, I don't know if that's what you meant but you might enjoy it. If you're more wondering which political stances you should take, decide that by which policies have empirical evidence of working and base your decisions on how robust you think the evidence is.

except for you know, the one child policy, abortion debates, materity/paternity leave, tax breaks for dependents, hundreds of articles on declining birth rates across tons of countries, and the very foundation of evolutionary development. Sure there isnt as much to teach exactly but our very genetic foundation is to reproduce or to help offspring develop to the point they can reproduced.

Why dont you read The Selfish Gene
https://www.amazon.com/Selfish-Gene-Popular-Science/dp/0192860925

As mentioned countless times in this subreddit before (and for good reason), the go-to book for better understanding is definitely Julia Serano's Whipping Girl. There is a section in it that I've found really helps my cis friends and family better understand the pain caused by trying to live in the wrong body. It's where she talks about cognitive dissonance and in one paragraph writes:

"Sometimes people discount the fact that trans people feel any actual pain related to their gender. Of course, it is easy for them to dismiss gender dissonance: It's invisible and (perhaps more relevantly) they themselves are unable to relate to it. These same people, however, do understand that being stuck in a bad relationship or in an unfulfilling job can make a person miserable and lead to a depression so intense that it spills over into all other areas of that person's life. These types of pain can be tolerated temporarily, but in the long run, if things do not change, that stress and sadness can ruin a person. Well, if that much despair can be generated by a forty-hour-a-week job, then just image how despondent and distressed one might become if one was forced to live in a gender that felt wrong for twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week."

I highly recommend this book:

Splitting: Protecting Yourself While Divorcing Someone with Borderline or Narcissistic Personality Disorder

It's a quick read, and is seriously helpful.

Been there, done that.

How a BPD Love relationship evolves:

http://bpdfamily.com/bpdresources/nk_a101.htm

This is word for word what we went through.

Now we're at this stage:

http://www.amazon.com/Splitting-Protecting-Borderline-Narcissistic-Personality/dp/1608820254/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1321083926&sr=8-1

The start of that book has a list of ~25 or so BPD behaviors in a divorce. She's following 22 of them.

She's working from a script, and you're not part of it.

The person you think you're marrying doesn't exist. No one exists there. Instead, she's little more than a grab-bag collection of needs fears, insecurities, and coping techniques.

I didn't know. You don't have that excuse.

You need her to be in therapy NOW. You both need to go regularly. You MUST go by yourself to a different therapist once a month. That therapist will help you keep your boundaries. A BPD has no boundaries, and without professional help, you will lose your boundaries too.

No slap intended at all. My apologies that it was expressed that way.

It's just the process and the reality of it. In my experience, Family court doesn't care, the lawyers don't care, and unless there is photographic evidence someone is beating / abusing the children, the family court kind of dismisses these complaints about the other spouse as emotional background noise, so to speak.

Here's my peptalk for you:
If taking a bunch of raggedy OLD toys and clothes is all it costs to get her out of your house, don't think of it as money lost - then think of it as tuition for the education you are getting - she's teaching you how she will behave in the future. And when people tell show you who they are, believe them. You can look into getting NEW toys and clothes for the kids. Or make it a new activity, you and the kids check out garage sales on the weekends to get replacement toys.

Go for 50-50 shared joint and legal custody and don't accept anything less. The property division, who gets the microwave - it's all bullshit compared to your relationship with your kids. One bit of advice - don't ever move more than short distance away from where your kids are. Stay in their day-to-day lives. It's so super important.

Maybe others have had different experiences, but that's been mine. The higher earner gets screwed and the drama should hopefully all be ironed out within a few years.

At the end of the day, you have to ask yourself, "Is this really worth the cost of what it's doing to me emotionally?"

She's angry, and taking it out on you by trying to grab all the cookies she can. You're absolutely right, the way she is behaving is childish, aggressive, petty, and only serves to make the situation much more hostile. She's wrong for doing that. She and her mother are equating objects and property with value. The kids are the most valuable thing here.

One of life's most basic laws is that every single act of generosity will multiply and return to you many times over. Her actions will have consequences - a good deed is a seed for future kindness; a bad deed is a landmine which will be brought up again and hurt others in the future. She's going to poison her relationship with the kids by these actions, kids aren't stupid.

It sounds like you have been dealing with the emotional rollercoaster for a while. I don't know your situation, but I'd like to suggest you check out the book: https://www.amazon.com/Splitting-Protecting-Borderline-Narcissistic-Personality/dp/1608820254 by Bill Eddy. He's a mediator and it's a fantastic book for explaining why people do the things they do during divorce. I think you'll recognize your ex in a lot of that book.

I completely and totally understand feeling like "WTF?!?! Attorney you're supposed to be fighting for me!!" Here's the reality - the more you want your attorney to fight, the more money they will be charging you and it's a never ending cycle. You can always make more money.

Good luck to you. I am sorry you're going through this. It's like being an emotional burn victim for a couple of years. You carry the scars with you, but you live to fight another day. Sorry for the novel. : )

> Has anyone wrote an email or letter to his/her SO (ex or not) AND SENT IT, and gotten a positive result from it?

Yes. But not in the way you'd expect. I've gotten a response where she wrote down a lot of paranoid accusations after I emailed her a well thought out explanation of the multiple reasons (with documented historical incidents for each reason) we can't be together.

Among other things she accused me of planning to murder her and being a Moriarty-level criminal mastermind. LOL.

Very delusional and paranoid "fantasies".

That email reply from her is an exhibit in divorce court in the child custody case.

So yes, you could say it had an unanticipated positive effect in cutting a potentially long, drawn out process of proving that she's got mental health issues and is not a fit parent.

TLDR: Email response from STBX extremely useful in showing divorce court that she's paranoid and delusional, cutting to the chase in my custody fight.

Other than what I've written above, nothing good can come from emailing your undiagnosed BPD ex.

Also whatever you do, do not admit any fault in writing for anything you did or did not do OK?

She will use that in court against you in the child custody case.

One other thing, just FYI. There is no hope in having an amicable divorce with your BPD ex. It will be pure hell (* I'm you, only 6 months into the divorce process, divorce will take at least 1 year if not 2 or 3)

I recommend getting and reading this book Splitting: Protecting Yourself While Divorcing Someone with Borderline or Narcissistic Personality Disorder in addition to Stop Walking on Eggshells: Taking Your Life Back When Someone You Care About Has Borderline Personality Disorder

I had chronic lower back pain for several years even as a relatively young guy. I tried chiro, physical therapy, yoga, etc. and nothing really made a difference. The biggest factor that finally helped me to get rid of it was this book: https://www.amazon.com/Healing-Back-Pain-Mind-Body-Connection/dp/0446557684/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1521724371&sr=8-1&keywords=healing+low+back+pain

Maybe it was placebo effect or maybe it actually works, but either way my back has been waaaaay better since reading it a couple years ago.

Gurl, the brain is the true dick of the body. It is a trickster. If you ever want a fascinating read, pick up "Phantoms of the Brain" http://www.amazon.com/Phantoms-Brain-Probing-Mysteries-Human/dp/0688172172/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1462300137&sr=8-1&keywords=phantoms+of+the+brain.

Some excellent popular book options are:

The Tell Tale Brain - V.S. Ramachandran

Phantoms in the Brain - V.S. Ramachandran

Synaptic Self - Joseph LeDoux


Also mentioned by other posters, Norman Doidge and Oliver Sacks.

All of these are really approachable for beginners and I enjoyed them all greatly as an undergrad way back when.

This book does have really great information in it, but I couldn't get over how poorly written it is for such a successful book. Really badly organized, and for sleep-deprived parents it was really hard to get at the information we needed.

Ultimately, we had great luck with the Ferber book. Ferber is famous for the "cry it out method" but his method is a little less "extreme" than Weisbluth's (if you are uncomfortable letting the baby cry for long periods without checking in, as we were).

The single most useful thing I learned from the Ferber book is that all babies will wake up many times per night, and that if their environment is different than when they went to sleep it will wake them up completely. E.g. imagine you go to sleep on your bed and wake up on the bathroom floor... you'll become aroused and completely awake. To a baby, this is the same as when they go to sleep in your arms or with you in the room and wake up alone in their crib.

There are different ways to get there, but ultimately it was finding a way to let the baby fall asleep without us in the room (i.e. the same way he'll wake up 4 or 5 times per night) that was key.

Also really benefited from "The Baby Whisperer" and her Eat Activity Sleep routine for newborns.

The real secret is that each baby is different, and different techniques will have differing levels of success with different babies. Ferber solved our problems where some of the advice in the "no-cry" books did not seem to apply to our child.

I read The Expectant Father. Highly recommend it.

https://www.amazon.com/Expectant-Father-Ultimate-Dads-Be/dp/0789212137

Having a kid will completely change your life, and it's not easy, but there will be more times where you and your wife can't stop laughing versus times where you can't get the kid to stop crying.

This is also a really good book to pick up if you want to be more involved in your wife's pregnancy, as a show of solidarity for what she's going through.


https://www.amazon.com/Expectant-Father-Ultimate-Dads-Be/dp/0789212137/ref=sr_1_4?keywords=fatherhood+books&qid=1566405539&s=gateway&sr=8-4

I literally LoLed! I bet many dads to be could use that!

My husband read this book. It had a whole section on what mom is going through and how to show empathy and support. Hope you find something similar.

Aside from the urgency of the car seat if breast feeding is important get with her insurance co to get a pump in the mail sooner rather than later.

Also, I found this to be a good read for dad https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0789212137/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1465559783&sr=8-1&pi=SY200_QL40&keywords=the+expectant+father&dpPl=1&dpID=614oOzzkWRL&ref=plSrch

The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee This book presents how our understanding of cancer evolved over time, from Ancient Egypt until the present. Not only does the human and societal element keep the science interesting, but it also gives you an understanding of the experimental method, the (sometimes cringe-worthy) history of medicine and how clinical research works. As someone who is equally interested in science and the humanities, this book was awesome.

The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer - Siddhartha Mukherjee

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE

The Emperor of All Maladies is a magnificent, profoundly humane “biography” of cancer—from its first documented appearances thousands of years ago through the epic battles in the twentieth century to cure, control, and conquer it to a radical new understanding of its essence.

http://www.amazon.com/Emperor-All-Maladies-Biography-Cancer/dp/1439170916/ref=la_B003SNL6EA_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1397799083&sr=1-1

I am going to come right out and say I am not an oncologist and this is getting to the periphery of my clinical knowledge.

The easy answer is that the cancer cells produce chemical that trick your body into growing blood vessels toward and supply it with nutrients. There is a lot of research into blocking these signals. One example is VEGF or Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor

To get to the second part of your question, our immune system does mop up the majority of mutated cells. What we end up seeing as clinical cancer is actually the small subset of mutated cells that can both a) recruit support for growth and b) avoid the immune system.

For anyone looking to get a (relatively) accessible lesson on cancer and it's medical history, I recommend The Emperor of All Maladies.

I highly recommend your checking out this recent book, Why We Sleep. It's stuffed full of studies from recent decades showing the vast importance for the physiological and psychological effects of sleep, and warns of all kinds of bad things that happen when short sleep occurs, impacting memory, learning, the immune system, and so on. I point this out because if you're not getting enough sleep on a regular basis, your body is paying a heavy, heavy price. :(

I suspect advanced meditators are more susceptible to thinking that they don't need sleep because of their increased conscious power, even though the science shows that sleep is a universal necessity across the animal kingdom.

I met a black belt at a globetrotters camp who recommended Why We Sleep to me, it's a fascinating book and really changed how I view sleep and gave me a renewed focus on getting enough sleep.

I would recommend the book Why We Sleep. It really changed my thoughts on sleep. I now consider sleep the most important thing you can do for your health followed by eating well and exercising. I was getting up at 5 am to run but life made it hard to be asleep by 9 pm so I ended up finding ways to fit my runs in elsewhere. 7 to 9 hours of sleep a night is incredibly important.

I recently finished reading a book called Why We Sleep that changed the way I think about it in a dramatic way.

The author (Matthew Walker) addresses the issue of insomnia and offers tips to overcome insomnia.

He talks about using a specific form of cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) as a way to address underlying sleep problems instead using a band-aid approach. There are some apps for CBT-I, but I don't have any experience using them.

Looking at your situation, there are a few tips that will probably be more helpful than others. First things first: define a time to go to sleep and a time to wake up. Stick to those times every single day, even weekends. If your experience is anything like mine, it could take 4-6 weeks to get used to the change.

Next, if you're laying in bed unable to fall asleep (after 20-30 minutes), get up and do something relaxing. You want your bed to be associated with sleep and rest, not anxiety from not being about to sleep.

I often use the Sleep With Me podcast to help me fall asleep. Highly recommend giving that a try.

It's worth nothing that melatonin isn't actually effective, except in older people and while trying to deal with jet lag.

If you're a fan of the Joe Rogan podcast, the Matthew Walker episode is basically his book condensed into a two hour conversation.

ETA: Rogan podcast
List of good sleep tips
The book also goes into the negative effects of sleeping pills, as well as the incredible benefits of good sleep. Highly recommend for a better understanding of what is going on and things you can do to make the changes.

I know a lot of people love it, and I do think it has tons of useful information in it, but I was never a fan of What to Expect.... I just never liked the tone of it.

As far as development, pregnancy issues, etc., The Mayo Clinic Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy was the most useful of the pregnancy books. If the baby will be breastfeed, A Nursing Mother's Companion was pretty useful.

Websites were also useful, babycenter.com has some videos and the pregnancy tracker, as moosen25 mentioned, but unless you are big into drama, beware the forums. Some of the smaller threads, like the first timers for a particular birth month are less drama-filled, and I found it reassuring to see/share what other people who were at the same place in their pregnancy were experiencing.

I think the biggest pieces of advice I have are:

• 1. You will be overwhelmed with information. There is so much out there, just remember, books and websites have detailed information about every possible little thing that can go wrong. In reality, there is a very, very small chance that any of the horrible things you read about will happen.
     
     
• 2. Really think about the kind of birth experience that you want, and be open to the possibility that as much as you plan for what you want to have happen, you need to accept that it may not go as planned.
     
     
• 3. If you are thinking of a home birth with a midwife, read other peoples birth stories and experiences with labor, but read up on having an epidural, inductions, and C-Sections as well, because it is better to be able to prepare yourself beforehand in case any of those other scenarios become necessary. You will find from reading that one intervention usually leads to requiring more interventions and increases the probability of needing a C-Section.
     
     
• 4. Find a doctor that you feel comfortable with, but if you are having a child in a hospital, prepare yourself for the possibility that the person you have been seeing for nine months may not be the person who delivers your child. If you would like an additional advocate in the hospital and someone to help with labor look into a doula. I can't offer much advice as far as using a midwife, but I'm sure some of the other parents can help you out with ways to find a great midwife.
     
     Finally, congratulations. Take some time and let it sink in, and enjoy it.
     
     Edit: One more thing...before the pregnancy gets to far advanced take a vacation with your SO and have some special alone time before you become a trio.
     
     Being a parent is great, to me, my son is the absolute best thing in the world, but don't forget to take some alone time to be with your SO every once in awhile.

Congratulations! I'm jelly!

Look into getting some pregnancy books, they generally do a good job of demystifying the process. Here are some suggestions:

Ina May's Guide to Childbirth is an excellent place to start. It's all about how natural birth is, and has a bunch of positive birth stories.

The Panic Free Pregnancy is definitely useful. You'll be bombarded with all the things that are unsafe for you during your pregnancy, and this book helps determine fact or fiction and provides an explanation.

Lots of people suggest What to Expect When You're Expecting, but others find it kind of fear-mongering. I skimmed through it once and the list of adverse side effects you can expect to experience is pretty intimidating.

The Mayo Clinic's Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy is a more clinical approach. I haven't read it myself but I've heard good things about it. Less fluff than some pregnancy books, more fact.

Although with everyone else, I don't think the 4 prenatals a day is correct. Just take one for now until you see your OB. You can find these over the counter in the US. I take Nature Made Prenatal. You don't want to take too much vitamins, this could be very dangerous for your baby-- just take the amount the bottle says to take.

I don't think just getting an ultrasound is going to make a difference. It's not the ultrasound but the interpretation (by an obgyn or radiologist) that matters. So unless you have a lot of extra money, I think getting extra ultrasounds will be a waste.

You won't have to deliver in a bathtub. If push comes to shove, just go to the ER when you are ready, but I don't think it will resort to that. Next time you call an obgyn and they say no, ask them who will take me. Religious and community health organizations might also have an idea of places that can take you. Friends and family might have an idea. You are not the only or first person at all to find out this late a long, someone will take you. You just need to call a lot. Do you have a family physician you can make an appointment with? He/She might be able to help guide you in the right direction and get you into a place as well-- all medical providers have some training in ob stuff so a general practitioner should be able to tell you the very basics at least (or at least help guide you).

Make sure you stop drinking alcohol, tobacco products, and illegal substances if you are taking any . Medications are tricky-- sometimes you don't want to stop them right away, I would wait to talk to a medical provider for advice on that.

Finally, go to the bookstore (like now) and get a good pregnancy book. I like Mayo Clinic Guide to pregnancy. Keep in mind there are bad pregnancy books- try to stick to something medical.

https://www.amazon.com/Mayo-Clinic-Guide-Healthy-Pregnancy/dp/1561487171

Take this one day at a time, you still have some time to go and even though this is tough, this is certainly do able! Please try not to think about the past and things you did when you didn't know you were pregnant- we can't change the past and babies are really resilient.

On a side note, I work in health care, and a year ago had a gal a few weeks less than you who ended up pregnant (like you she also came in complaining of abdominal pain!). She was super worried about it-- she even admitted to some instances drinking a lot and was on some prescription meds that aren't exactly considered safe during pregnancy (which we took her off of)-- and she of course stopped drinking right away.. In the end, the baby came out FINE and is adorable. You can do it too!

My wife and I looked at Mayo Clinic's Guide to healthy pregnancy. It was neat to look up what was going on on the given week. We also took a trip to Babies R' Us early on to get an appreciation of what we'll need, what we'll want, and how much everything will cost.

For after the baby comes out: The Happiest Baby on the Block and Mayo Clinic's Guide to Your Baby's First Year, also.

Also see if you can find free pdfs (they're around) of:

http://www.schematherapy.com/id202.htm

https://www.amazon.com/Skills-Training-Handouts-Worksheets-Edition/dp/1572307811/

Tomorrow or something I'll dig up those files from whatever Fb group I found them on and put them on dropbox or something :)

Here are some links for the product in the above comment for different countries:

Link: Whipping Girl


|Country|Link|
|:-----------|:------------|
|UK|amazon.co.uk|
|Spain|amazon.es|
|France|amazon.fr|
|Germany|amazon.de|
|Japan|amazon.co.jp|
|Canada|amazon.ca|
|Italy|amazon.it|




This bot is currently in testing so let me know what you think by voting (or commenting).

The book "Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain" includes a lot of research that describes benefits to morning exercise.

Exercise, especially cardio, can work wonders.

https://www.amazon.ca/Spark-Revolutionary-Science-Exercise-Brain/dp/0316113514/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1540418106&sr=8-2&keywords=Spark

There's an entire book on this topic of exercise and the way it affects our brain: http://www.amazon.com/Spark-Revolutionary-Science-Exercise-Brain/dp/0316113514/

It seems like we have a lot of pedantic individuals in this thread who like to trash-talk studies without even considering the possibility that they may have some merit.

This is based on the information you have been cleared by a doctor that your heart function is normal. Exercise and anxiety have the same physical symptoms in terms of how your heart responds. That is why it scares you. Exercise feels like anxiety in your body but it isn't. In fact, exercise is the anti-anxiety. Reference a book by a neurologist who shows how exercise rewires your brain https://www.amazon.com/Spark-Revolutionary-Science-Exercise-Brain/dp/0316113514

I have had GAD since I was 15. Years of cycling has taught me how my body feels under physical stress and it actually relives mental stress. I ride 8,000 miles a year, no panic attacks and no meds. I'm not saying exercise will eliminate all your anxiety but it won't hurt. Mindfulness meditation also helped me.

If you are healthy and according to your doctor you are, try exercising and when your panic hits, intellectually override your feelings and push onwards - you will find out nothing will happen and you will teach yourself how your body feels and feelings are not scary. Wear yourself out. Your anxiety will lessen when your exhaust yourself.

Research what exercise can do for anxiety and depression. The results are backed by numerous scientific studies.

Read Spark (here on Amazon). It really breaks down the awesome benefits of exercise on a vast array of mental benefits. It does discuss depression and it is more dependant on the person, but exercise and medication is a powerful combination which he works toward getting the patients to just exercise.

Craigslist is a great place to get cheap weights. I would also suggest getting a pull up bar and this book.

You Are Your Own Gym: The Bible of Bodyweight Exercises https://www.amazon.com/dp/0345528581/

My friend, You Are Your Own Gym, and you didn't even know it.

Well, you could take a look at Cordelia Fine's book Delusions of Gender.

Here's a quick overview of her argument.

However, given the tone of your comment, I sincerely doubt you will take any time to consider the evidence. And I suspect that there isn't anything that will change your perception. You, therefore, are part of the problem. Bitch.

Here is the good news - /r/Keto and IF are powerful for controlling blood sugar and managing diabetes.

Two years ago my A1C was 13.4 and I was in losing toes/kidney-damage territory. I went hardcore Keto 18:6 IF and frequently OMAD. MY doctor put me on Metformin and blood-pressure meds.

9 months later, my A1C was 4.9. Technically non-diabetic. I asked my doctor to take me off Metformin which she didn't like the idea of, but she agreed. 6 months later my A1C had stabilized at 5.3 and has stayed there. I'm off all diabetes and blood pressure meds and my last BP was 110/60. I lost 40 pounds. I'm 53.

Here are the most important things I can share with you;

• If you don't want sugar in your blood, don't put it into your mouth.
  
  
• Bread, pasta and rice are all basically complex forms of sugar.
  
  Eat all the meat and vegetables you want and give your body a break from high insulin levels. You've caught this early and there is no reason you can't reverse the symptoms of diabetes with delicious food and skipping a meal or two a day.
  
  It's really that simple.
  
  I can't recommend Dr. Jason Fung's book The Complete Guide to Fasting which will give you all science behind low carb diets and intermittent fasting for treating diabetes. His other book The Obesity Code is even more in depth if you want more science.
  
  Now here is the bad news. Doctors will likely fight you about this. I was sent to a class at a hospital after my diagnosis. The nutritionist said diabetes was progressive and irreversible and medication could only slow it down. Their goal of management is an A1C of 7.0 which means they want to keep you diabetic.
  
  Why? Healthy people don't make doctors any money.
  
  You need to take this seriously and do your homework. You can absolutely manage this and do it with food alone. But there are a lot of people who will tell you it's impossible or too hard to do.
  I've read that at least 80% of T2 diabetics could manage the disease with diet alone, but only 5% choose to do so.
  
  It breaks my heart when T2 diabetics I know will have a slice of pie and say "Well, I'll just up my meds tonight".
  
  F*ck that. I'm not going to inject insulin years from now for pie today.
  
  You got this. You can do it. I'll gladly answer any questions you have here or by direct message.

Dr. Jason Fung.

/r/keto/comments/5qlfrg/sv_6_months_keto_fasting_and_exercise_120_pounds/

/r/fasting/comments/5m3rgf/log_6_week_fast/

https://intensivedietarymanagement.com/

https://www.dietdoctor.com/category/science-and-health/dr-jason-fung

https://www.amazon.com/Obesity-Code-Unlocking-Secrets-Weight/dp/1771641258

https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Guide-Fasting-Intermittent-Alternate-Day/dp/1628600012

/r/fasting

Dr. Jason Fung, author of the Obesity Code looks at your question here:
https://www.dietdoctor.com/what-happens-if-you-eat-5800-calories-daily-on-an-lchf-diet

"There’s a difference between calculated energy surplus and real energy surplus. Apparently Feltham didn’t have a large real energy surplus, as he didn’t gain more weight.

The most likely explanation to me is that his energy expenditure increased substantially during the experiment. Maybe there are other explanations? Perhaps his body also adapted by not taking up all the nutrients he ate?

I’m not surprised by the results. If you starve long term you don’t lose as much weight as simple calorie counting predicts. The body will decrease the metabolic rate. If you overeat you don’t gain that much weight. The body adapts and tries to maintain an appropriate fat mass."

i'd recommend his book. it was very thought provoking.
https://www.amazon.com/Obesity-Code-Unlocking-Secrets-Weight/dp/1771641258/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

I would strongly recommend Phinney and Volek's book I linked. I have not read Dr. Jason Fung's book but it appears to be strongly recommended as well. There are also a few MDs here who do recommend or follow the keto diet. /r/ketoscience is also a great place that your wife would be able to dig into actual research articles and make her own decision.

I am a nurse who lost 45 lbs in 3 months plus 10-inches off my waist a couple years ago and easily maintained that weight loss until I stopped emphasizing a keto diet. I did this while several of my co-workers told me what I was doing "could not work" or "was dangerous" and over the same time they struggled to lose 10 lbs I lost 4 times as much. My cholesterol panel is perfect regardless of my diet or weight, so good genetics there with a small improvement on keto.

During that time I was able to discuss the diet with cardiologists, nephrologists, endocrinologists, and internal medicine doctors:

• Out of about 10 MDs probably half were against it but did not substantiate why beyond "I don't like low-carb/keto diets" (I'm sure the objections were valid however these were hallway conversations with busy men and true discussion probably wasn't reasonable at the time)
  
  
• A nephrologist didn't like it but admitted that in an otherwise healthy individual it did not pose a risk to kidneys and no amount of protein intake in an otherwise healthy individual would pose a risk to them
  
  
• A cardiologist admitted that as long as your cholesterol profile was not at risk it was probably safe as long as it did not raise your profile
  
  
• An internal med doctor discussed it at length with me because of my weight loss and confirmed he had heard it was effective for weight loss, did not raise cholesterol, and had several questions as well as asking who I had discuss it with
  
  
• The strongest supporter I had was an endocrinologist who strongly supported low-carb diets for his patients and was also a Crossfit guy and had been low-carb (although not necessarily keto) himself for over 10 years.
  
  Ultimately, your wife may not be swayed that this is the best way. But at least she may realize it should not be dangerous to try.

OMAD. The Obesity Code says that the only thing that lowers insulin is time. If you want to reduce your insulin spikes during meals, shift your foods to ones with lower insulin indexes. This means moving to a low-carb, moderate-to-high-fat diet.

In general, carbs spike your insulin more than proteins and proteins spike your insulin more than fats. Fats don't raise your insulin levels. That said, there's wide variation in insulin responses even among different types of carbs and among different types of protein sources.

I don't fully agree with that. Gender is a complex and nuanced topic. Some portions can rightly be regarded as social constructs, however not all parts can. For instance, gender explained as entirely a social construct fails to account for transgender people who feel strongly identified in a way that is discouraged by cultural norms. There is clearly some intrinsic part of them that is drawn to these cross-gender activities or characteristics.

For a more in depth examination of this topic, I highly suggest you read Whipping Girl by Julia Serrano.

yo. For one. Situations defined as real are real in their consequences. Ergo, gender is real. Even independent of some hypothetical evidence about gender being entirely performative and phenomenological (which there really isn't. I mean, western society obviously hyperexaggerates the difference between the masculine and the feminine, but to flat out deny that there's any reality to gender is almost as bad as being a complete essentialist.) the differences exist in society. Deities probably not existing doesn't mean that the catholic church doesn't exist.

For two: read this: http://www.amazon.com/Whipping-Girl-Transsexual-Scapegoating-Femininity/dp/1580051545/sr=1-1/qid=1171236918/ref=sr_1_1/002-9653913-0811203?ie=UTF8&s=books because it's basically the best book on the situation ever.

People here recommend it a lot, so you may have already heard of this book, but you might take a look at Whipping Girl. It was the first book about trans topics I read that made me feel like my experiences were legitimate.

P.S. Legos, dinosaurs, etc. aren't necessarily "boy toys;" it sounds like you just liked stuff that was awesome.

A book that deals extensively with this subject ("male" traits being valued more than "female" traits) is Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity by Julia Serano. I highly recommend it to everyone, especially my cis-sexual friends.

She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders: This would be my highest recommendation. Jennifer Boylan is a great writer, and succinctly articulates what a lifetime of low-level dysphoria is like. This one or something like it, would help greatly with fleshing out your character's personality.

Whipping Girl: Probably needs to be read so that you don't make a tremendous misstep and offend a ton of people. Julia Serrano is an activist. She comes off as a political warrior, which was a bit off-putting for a mostly apolitical person such as myself, but her information is solid and comprehensive.

Warrior Princess, A U.S. Navy Seal's Journey to Coming Out Transgender: I haven't read this one yet, so I can't really say if it's an interesting read but, this one is sure to have some of the qualities that you're searching for. For someone to complete Seal training, and succeed in that extremely masculine environment, while suppressing her female nature seems to be just the kind of insight you need for your story.

Also, you can gain a better understanding by reading up on "dysphoria" here on AskTG. The experiences of the people here are vast and varied, so you may find a better feel for your character by delving into this subject. Does your protagonist just feel as though something is slightly off? Do they feel shame for wanting to be female, because of the lower social station? Does your character experience crippling fits of anxiety and depression, or anger at their plight?

Hope you find what you're looking for. We could use more trans-positive literature to counteract the bile that has been present for far too long.

Read Whipping Girl, it's an awesome book.

Regarding this, the author suggests that it's often used as a way to say that transgender feelings aren't legitimate, by classifying the trans-feminine impulses as either 1) repressed homoerotic urges (when it's a trans-feminine person who's attracted to guys), or 2) autogynephilia (when it's a trans-feminine person who's attracted to women). I think she even goes so far as to suggest that some outsiders use this as a way to say that no trans-feminine person is legitimately transgender.

I don't think it's quite that pernicious -- I know someone who openly identifies as autogynephiliac, and they have lots of experience exploring themselves. But it does seem to be an overly convoluted explanation, that you trick yourself into becoming what you're attracted to. Since there aren't a lot of people who, after a lot of contemplation, identify this way (and many end up deciding that's not the best explanation), it seems like Occam's Razor is enough to say that those urges aren't so convoluted, that you really just want to become the way you honestly see yourself.

BPD is really tough and creates its own set of issues with divorcing. You need to prepare yourself and there are some great resources that can help get you through this. I'd suggest two books, which are both quick reads: Splitting: Protecting Yourself While Divorcing Someone With BPD or NPD and Stop Caretaking the Borderline or Narcissist. Document everything and keep a daily journal of events including care of the children. Learn everything you can about BPD and how to help your kids through this. Do not expect cooperation but be thankful when and if it happens. Best of luck to you - it's a tough road and I'm also starting the same journey.

In the event that you are genuinely curious about what causes traffic jams, I'd highly recommend checking out "Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us)" by Tom Vanderbilt.. Better yet, listen to it on tape while you crawl the Kennedy.

This is actually the optimal way to drive. Every bit of road should be used. You may seem like an asshole if you're the only one doing it but ideally everyone would do it. It leads to better traffic flow. Source is somewhere in here:

http://www.amazon.com/Traffic-Drive-What-Says-About/dp/0307277194/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1397025677&sr=1-1&keywords=traffic

This is part of what bothers me about all of the vilification of driving with cellphones. It's not that cellphones aren't bad on the road, it's just that the proportions of the crackdown don't match up with the data about the actual danger.

In Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us, the author delves pretty seriously into the data about distracted driving. The real moments of danger are picking up the phone, dialing, and hanging up. Talking with the phone to your ear is not particularly problematic once you get to the point that you can keep your eyes on the road.

Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0307277194/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_pOa6CbZG52RDA

You would probably enjoy this book. Seriously. I read it and now dealing with traffic is kinda fascinating, watching as all this data compiled yields insight into patterns, and how to anticipate and avoid them. (Yes, all puns intended)

mentioned in Tom Vanderbilt's Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us)

I read a book about this. Pretty interesting stuff. Also that if people actually obeyed variable speed limit signs they would get there faster than when they tailgate and the accordion effect jams everything up. http://www.amazon.com/Traffic-Drive-What-Says-About/dp/0307277194

Yeah, we have all been brought up to see those people as self-righteous assholes, but transportation engineers have determined that a zipper merge, occurring as close to the point of obstruction as possible, is most efficient (40-50% more efficient than current practice). The Minnesota DOT recently adopted this practice and began a campaign of awareness.

If traffic interests you, check out the book Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us) by Tom Vanderbilt. Super interesting quick read, and you'll learn a lot about interacting with urban traffic efficiently.

Michigan DOT Citations 1 2.pdf

There is also much research that shows that the more rules you give someone, the less they think logically. This creates a problem when things happen that do not have prescribed rules as the driver/biker is used to a operating in an environment on "auto-pilot."

The book "Traffic" is a fantastic read and details a couple of studies, a really great read, highly recommended:
http://www.amazon.com/Traffic-Drive-What-Says-About/dp/0307277194/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1334102136&sr=1-1

There's a link between how at ease you feel as a driver and the speed that you drive. If you feel perfectly at ease, like when you're on the highway and no one is around you, you'll drive faster. If you feel unease, like the road is narrow or there are kids playing with a ball near the road, you'll drive slower.

It seems a bit counter intuitive that making an unsafe road smaller makes it safer, but it really does change driving behavior. I'd recommend Tom Vanderbilt's book Traffic if you're interested in this kind of thing.

I agree. From the book Traffic, it mentions a study where 1 in 3 accidents occur from not paying at attention at the exact wrong moment where a reaction needed to happen to avoid a collision.

She also had enough distance to actual stop in time. Anyone is a liar if they never admitted to having a near miss from not paying attention. It happens, people can make it happen less by paying attention more, its never 100% though. Its why drivers are supposed to leave a good following distance or never perform aggressive lane changes, it allows a buffer to be able fuck up and prevent a potential collision.

No, he's not a chef. He's the author of 4 Hour Body and 4 Hour Workweek.

But still, I wouldn't eat those eggs, either.

I was diagnosed at 5 and thought I grew out of it.

I did not. Instead I was just barely coping. Always in trouble at work, always half-finished projects, all my bills paid late, moving every 6 months. Getting help has changed me from being someone who is chronically late to someone that's 5 minutes early.

To all my ladies with ADHD. YOU ARE NOT A FUCKUP OR A FAILURE.

What's changed my world is understanding how my brain and body work and creating sustainable routines in my life. The way I think is different and I have learned to work with myself instead of against it.

You may needs meds, or counseling, or a combination. But you are not a shitty person. Help is out there.

Recommended reading:

Driven to Distraction:
Recognizing and Coping with Attention Deficit Disorder

Link to Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/Driven-Distraction-Revised-Recognizing-Attention/dp/0307743152

The book that I'm reading is Driven to Distraction, one of the authors (Hallowell) also has a podcast about ADHD.

The book was recommended to me by my therapist, from there I found the podcast on my own.

I hope it helps. :)

Oh man do I get you. I've been there/am there and there's great news for you. There's so much you need to hear that will help. I don't have a ton of time and a lot of this you will learn on your own with time so I'm just gonna run though the highlights.

1)You think you need to be somebody else. You're not that person, stop living up to expectations that don't define your reality. Be who you are, not who you think you are. Your thoughts and judgments about who you ought to be are real but they are not reality. In other words. focus on what is and not what you think it should be. That's a recipe for constant struggle throughout your life. I'm 33 and still struggle like you with many of the same issues. It's a good sign that you've caught it this early. Be patient with yourself. Don't love the person you want to be. Love who you are. Be a good friend to yourself and accept that you're not perfect.

Watch this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYlCVwxoL_g

2)Your parents love you. But you don't love them in the same way. It never will be. You can't comprehend the lives they lived before you came along and what it meant to them for you to be in their lives. It's an unequal relationship. It's a pay it forward system. You can appreciate them and show them how much it means to you, but you won't really understand until you have children. One day you will pass that kindness and guidance on to someone else, and they won't return it to you either at least until they are old enough to understand (which tends to be far into adulthood). Be grateful for them, but realize that you are not them. You are not what they want you to be, or even what you want you to be. You are you. Be you. Warts and all.

3)You are procrastinating because you realize subconsciously that you don't have the attention span or the desire to open that can of worms and sort it all out at that moment so you push it till later. It's normal, and lots of people do it because its easier to see the path than to walk the path. You see the route you need to take but you aren't doing anything about it because you are mistaking your intelligence for understanding. Always choose the harder path. Your ability to suffer through the things that you want to do despite them being difficult or uncomfortable will be the single greatest skill you ever learn. Hard work always beat talent when talent doesn't work hard. You are smart enough to see this problem, that most people never even notice. But you haven't learned self discipline yet. It takes years of study and practice. Sometimes it takes lifetimes. Settle in for the long haul. It's a marathon, not a sprint. Be patient with yourself. The only way out, is through. And the only way to make progress is one step at a time.

Read these The Most Important Question of your Life. https://markmanson.net/question

Procrastination https://waitbutwhy.com/2013/10/why-procrastinators-procrastinate.html

How to beat procrastination https://waitbutwhy.com/2013/11/how-to-beat-procrastination.html

4)You need to be honest with yourself. You don't know anything about yourself. Like seriously. You know NOTHING compared to what you are going to learn in the next 20 years. How could you? You've only just started being self aware a few years ago. You are just starting your path and that is the most wonderful place to be because you get to make mistakes and learn. You try to fail you learn. The difference between the master and the novice is that the master has failed more times than the novice has ever tried. You write as though you've been failing for years. Stop kidding yourself. You don't yet realize how far you are going to go on your journey. All that failure is learning. Be happy for failure. It teaches you WAY more than success ever will. All that failure is so good for you, but you push it away because it feels uncomfortable, because you don't LIKE it. What I'm saying here is you need perspective. You should realign how your looking at this problem. You are on the path little brother. You're already doing what you need to do, relax. Give it lots of time and fill your life with wondrous experiences and you will start to see that this problem you are having is just part of the journey. It's necessary. Learn to love the struggle. Learn to love the fight and not the victory. Your perspective will color your whole mindset about the problem. You seem so worried about fixing the problem, about being better, about acting how you think you SHOULD, but all of that is focusing on the FUTURE! None of that is going to help you get there, focus on what you are doing now and you will be able to get there. Just looking at your destination on the map doesn't help you get there. Take a step. Then another. Repeat. Keep your focus on the step you are taking. Chip away at it. You'll get there.

5) You should seriously consider going to therapy. It's super helpful. They aren't there to fix you. They are there to help you fix you. To be a mirror for you to bounce ideas off of and their job is to reflect what you are doing and saying and show it back to you so you can SEE yourself from the outside (a little bit). They aren't your friend or your parent. They are impartial. They don't care. And that lets them tell you the truth about you. It's seriously one of the best steps you can take for this kind of problem. But remember, they can't do it for you. You have to do the work. Going to therapy doesn't help if you don't take it seriously. It's an active step towards helping yourself.

6) Consider for a moment, that you might be wrong a bit about your depression. You might not be far into it but this struggle is really common for people with depression. In fact it's even more common in people with ADHD, which often leads to depression. Fuck what everyone on the internet and tv says about it. Read for yourself and decide for yourself if the dots line up. I was 27 before I realized I had ADD. It's crazy how you can go your whole life looking through life with tinted glassed and not realize you were wearing them the whole time. Depression is like that too. You don't even realize you've got it until you do some reading. Learning about it will help you deal with it, prevent it, manage it.

Watch this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LO1mTELoj6o

Read the book Driven to Distraction by Edward M. Hallowell M.D. and John J. Ratey M.D..
https://www.amazon.com/Driven-Distraction-Revised-Recognizing-Attention/dp/0307743152

It's the book that blew the doors open about the subject in the 90's and showed how prolific is really is. Both authors are doctors who have ADHD. This book changed my life. I had no idea how much I needed it. Even if you don't have ADD this book will help you understand tons of behaviors like procrastination and many of the feelings you described. It's cheap you can get a used copy for like 4 bucks. You may not think it's for you, but in my opinion, I see many of the same feelings and thoughts in your post that I had before I knew what my struggle was.



Final thoughts. You are alive. Enjoy it. Don't let this shit get to you. It's not important. You're only real responsibility in this world is to exist. You don't have to understand it. In the long run everybody's gonna die and eventually the whole planet will be swallowed by the sun. There isn't a great purpose or task of life. The purpose of life is to live. Like dancing. You don't pick a spot on the floor and say you're going to end up there. You just do it. You do it just to do it. Just wiggling because it feels good. Reveling in the fact that your alive. Celebrating for the shear joy of movement, vibrancy and life. There is no purpose. You are free. You are already holding the jewel in your hand. All you have to do is realize it. It's a choice. Happiness is a choice. Love is a choice. Love yourself. Be happy.

Peace


Edit:: If I took all this time to write this to you, then you should take the time to read the readings and videos I sent. Decide right now. I'm going to do these things. Do it now. If you can't do it now, then right now take out your calendar and schedule a time to examine these resources. That's the last thing I forgot to tell you. SCHEDULE YOUR LIFE!!!! IT HELPS SO MUCH! TIME MANAGEMENT IS SUPER IMPORTANT!!!

Time Management from a person with terminal cancer : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTugjssqOT0

Maybe you are just within your ideological bubble within google? it has been know to happen... unless maybe they only hire progressives now? you know the memo did claim conservatives didin't feel confortable coming out, neither did classical liberals, and im sure libertarians neither... anyways.. here is a recompilation of people who claim other sciences disagree on social constructionism of gender, or at least that is more defined by Biology that they claim.

https://www.amazon.com/Why-Gender-Matters-Teachers-Differences/dp/0767916255

https://econjwatch.org/articles/undoing-insularity-a-small-study-of-gender-sociology-s-big-problem

https://www.amazon.com/Blank-Slate-Modern-Denial-Nature/dp/0142003344/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

https://youtu.be/cQNaT52QYYA

https://youtu.be/rBNtOCCSSRc

On science and evolution:

Genetics is where it's at. There is a ton of good fossil evidence, but genetics actually proves it on paper. Most books you can get through your local library (even by interlibrary loan) so you don't have to shell out for them just to read them.

Books:

The Making of the Fittest outlines many new forensic proofs of evolution. Fossil genes are an important aspect... they prove common ancestry. Did you know that humans have the gene for Vitamin C synthesis? (which would allow us to synthesize Vitamin C from our food instead of having to ingest it directly from fruit?) Many mammals have the same gene, but through a mutation, we lost the functionality, but it still hangs around.

Deep Ancestry proves the "out of Africa" hypothesis of human origins. It's no longer even a debate. MtDNA and Y-Chromosome DNA can be traced back directly to where our species began.

To give more rounded arguments, Hitchens can't be beat: God Is Not Great and The Portable Atheist (which is an overview of the best atheist writings in history, and one which I cannot recommend highly enough). Also, Dawkin's book The Greatest Show on Earth is a good overview of evolution.

General science: Stephen Hawking's books The Grand Design and A Briefer History of Time are excellent for laying the groundwork from Newtonian physics to Einstein's relativity through to the modern discovery of Quantum Mechanics.

Bertrand Russell and Thomas Paine are also excellent sources for philosophical, humanist, atheist thought; but they are included in the aforementioned Portable Atheist... but I have read much of their writings otherwise, and they are very good.

Also a subscription to a good peer-reviewed journal such as Nature is awesome, but can be expensive and very in depth.

Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate is also an excellent look at the human mind and genetics. To understand how the mind works, is almost your most important tool. If you know why people say the horrible things they do, you can see their words for what they are... you can see past what they say and see the mechanisms behind the words.

I've also been studying Zen for about a year. It's non-theistic and classed as "eastern philosophy". The Way of Zen kept me from losing my mind after deconverting and then struggling with the thought of a purposeless life and no future. I found it absolutely necessary to root out the remainder of the harmful indoctrination that still existed in my mind; and finally allowed me to see reality as it is instead of overlaying an ideology or worldview on everything.

Also, learn about the universe. Astronomy has been a useful tool for me. I can point my telescope at a galaxy that is more than 20 million light years away and say to someone, "See that galaxy? It took over 20 million years for the light from that galaxy to reach your eye." Creationists scoff at millions of years and say that it's a fantasy; but the universe provides real proof of "deep time" you can see with your own eyes.

Videos:

I recommend books first, because they are the best way to learn, but there are also very good video series out there.

BestofScience has an amazing series on evolution.

AronRa's Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism is awesome.

Thunderfoot's Why do people laugh at creationists is good.

Atheistcoffee's Why I am no longer a creationist is also good.

Also check out TheraminTrees for more on the psychology of religion; Potholer54 on The Big Bang to Us Made Easy; and Evid3nc3's series on deconversion.

Also check out the Evolution Documentary Youtube Channel for some of the world's best documentary series on evolution and science.

I'm sure I've overlooked something here... but that's some stuff off the top of my head. If you have any questions about anything, or just need to talk, send me a message!

The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature by Steven Pinker

A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History by Nicholas Wade

On Genetic Interests: Family, Ethnicity, and Humanity in an Age of Mass Migration by Frank Salter

The Culture of Critique: An Evolutionary Analysis of Jewish Involvement in Twentieth-Century Intellectual and Political Movements by Kevin MacDonald

On Sparta by Plutarch

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

Beyond Good and Evil and The Anti-Christ by Friedrich Nietzsche

Confessions of a Reluctant Hater and New Right vs. Old Right by Greg Johnson

From you are describing your grandfather is doing pretty good and it is looking positive for him as he can walk and say some words. It is possible for him to be functioning like before but it is hard to predict how he will recover.

I had a brain hemorrhage: what I learned from this on going experience is that it takes a lot of time to heal; months and years. Some people won't have any side effect from a brain injury, others will die. Your age and your lifestyle will affect how much and how fast you will recover but luck is an important factor also.

A brain injury is not like breaking an arm or losing a leg : those type of injuries are simple, you can see them and they don't affect the brain directly, they heal quickly. A brain injury is invisible and it is hard to predict the outcome.

After having read Ziferius comment, I would suggest watching this ted talk by Jill Bolt Taylor and reading this book : The brain that changes itself. Here a link to an episode of the nature of thing on CBC (Canada) talking about the book which I found interesting.

I wish your grandfather and you good luck on your journey !

What book are you reading? I've been reading The Brain that Changes Itself. I believe it mentions the same experiment with the monkey.

I also remember reading a line that said addiction causes permanent brain damage. Scary stuff.

This is simply how evolution works. Read The Selfish Gene if you enjoy this topic. I promise it won't disappoint.

Our genetic makeup allows us, or rather doesn't hinder us, to rape someone. Sadly I doubt that eugenics would be very much helpful for hindering rape as I believe everyone, even you and me, are capable of rape if we had a good reason to do so. As shown by the Milgram and Stanford experiment most people are capable of inducing a fatal shock or torturing innocent people as long as there is no social or legal repercussions.

Many people think that humans are some inherently noble beings when the truth is that we are just animals evolutionary geared towards reproduction that happens to be able to self reflect over our actions.

Luckily for us altruism is also shown to be a highly successful evolutionary trait(would recomend The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins).

I've just ordered the book Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain hoping to get some answers to exactly that question.

What exercise, how much and what benefits are shown? I was rather surprised the other day, when I saw that a meta-analysis about prescription stimulants and cognitive performance compared the enhancement from said stimulants (effect size: small) with exercise, and quoted this meta-analysis.

>e.g., physical exercise, the cognitive effects of which have been found to be similarly small; see Chang, Labban, Gapin, & Etnier, 2012, for a meta-analysis.

Full reference >[Chang, Y. K., Labban, J. D., Gapin, J. I., & Etnier, J. L. (2012). The effects of acute exercise on cognitive performance: A meta-analysis. Brain Research, 1453, 87–101]


I haven't had time to look it up and investigate it yet - but, I must say, it's rather disheartening if the effect size is "similarly small" for exercise. I honestly thought it had quite drastic effects on cognitive performance.

We'll see how (if it does) the book differs in contention.

----------

EDIT:

I grabbed some interesting meta-analyses' for you that may be of your interest:

> Roig, M., et al. (2013). "The effects of cardiovascular exercise on human memory: A review with meta-analysis." Neurosci Biobehav Rev 37(8): 1645-1666.

EXCERPT: "Data from 29 and 21 studies including acute and long-term cardiovascular interventions were retrieved. Meta-analyses revealed that acute exercise had moderate (SMD=0.26; 95% CI=0.03, 0.49; p=0.03; N=22) whereas long-term had small (SMD=0.15; 95% CI=0.02, 0.27; p=0.02; N=37) effects on short-term memory. In contrast, acute exercise showed moderate to large (SMD=0.52; 95% CI=0.28, 0.75; p<0.0001; N=20) whereas long-term exercise had insignificant effects (SMD=0.07; 95% CI=-0.13, 0.26; p=0.51; N=22) on long-term memory.... Strategically combined, acute and long-term interventions could maximize the benefits of cardiovascular exercise on memory."


>Verburgh, L., et al. (2013). "Physical exercise and executive functions in preadolescent children, adolescents and young adults: a meta-analysis." Br J Sports Med.

EXCERPT: "Results suggest that acute physical exercise enhances executive functioning. The number of studies on chronic physical exercise is limited and it should be investigated whether chronic physical exercise shows effects on executive functions comparable to acute physical exercise. This is highly relevant in preadolescent children and adolescents, given the importance of well-developed executive functions for daily life functioning and the current increase in sedentary behaviour in these age groups."

----------

A review article that may also be interesting to read called Reviewing on physical exercise and the cognitive function.

I haven't looked for a comparative study re: exercise vs. nutraceuticals/meditation - but that would definitely be interesting to see, so do tell if you find something relevant and share it!

I just have to add, I personally wouldn't recommend Crossfit. I don't have anything against it, and I've never been to a Crossfit gym, but for someone starting out in exercise and fitness I wouldn't advise it. Just from what I've seen it can be pretty intense, and it seems the chance of injury is higher than with other forms of exercise. Having said that, I totally believe it will get you in incredible shape, but it might be better suited for someone who's fairly experienced in fitness/exercising. Just my two cents.

I would start on mastering good form in some basic bodyweight exercises like pushups, squats, and pullups. A book that I've found extremely helpful is You Are Your Own Gym. It's great for beginners and more advanced users alike because he offers good progressions for exercises. But, I'm biased because the majority of my workouts are bodyweight exercises.

TL/DR Try bodyweight fitness but maybe stay away from Crossfit for now.

I'd suggest that you not start slow and ramp it up. Find a good beginner program and get active now. Skip the pussy footing around stage. If you try and 'ease in' and never push yourself, you won't get anywhere.

For example, I'm doing the program in this book. It has a beginner level for me to start at and only takes 30 minutes, 4 times a week. Start there. (And look at your diet or any activity you get up to will be less effective at getting you 'fit'.)

Honestly, as convenient as it is to point to studies showing brain differences and claim its a biological difference, there are also studies that indicate there isn't much brain difference between men and women to begin with. I don't believe that being trans is determined solely by biology, even if that does turn out to be a factor for some people.

The real truth is that no one is 100% sure why some people are trans and some people who present and act almost the same way are not. There's no way to tell who will be trans and who won't.

Think about a quiet person, who is sitting on their own in a busy coffee shop. They could identify themself any number of ways - maybe they are shy and anxious and wish they could reach out to people. Maybe they are introverted and enjoy being there on their own. Maybe they are just waiting for someone. But their behaviour looks the same to an outsider regardless of their internal identity. Only they know the truth of the matter.

Gender identity is a combination of many factors. It can be related to sex, sexual orientation, or behaviour for some people, and for some people it has nothing to do with any of those things. Gender identity is the personal relationship that you have to your body (i.e. to your biology), your relationship to the way other people view your body as a gendered body (i.e. to society's ideas about your assigned gender), and your relationship to your own thoughts and feelings about gender (i.e. how you have incorporated ideas about gender from society). If you grow up and all of these things align in a positive way, you are cisgender - you feel that your internal thoughts and feelings about your gender, the way society sees your gender, and how your body looks to you all match up. If one or more of these things don't gel with you, you might be trans or you might just play around with gender.

It's really something that most people have to explore for themselves to figure out - while there are some trans people who just inherently know they are actually a different gender than people say they are from a young age, there are also many trans people who have to experiment until they find out what works best with them and then base their identity off that. There are cisgender (non-trans) people who experiment with gender presentation but still feel most comfortable identifying as the gender they were assigned at birth.

Basically, what it means when someone says they are 'male' or 'a man' means that they identify as and are a man. Just think about the immense amount of difference between cisgender men. There are feminine cisgender men, masculine cisgender men, androgynous cisgender men, cisgender stay at home dads, cisgender businessmen, every possible variation under the sun. Almost half our population is made up of cis men. What does it mean to belong to such a huge population? Well, it's dependent on what that man's culture says being a man is, and how that man relates to that, and how that man relates to himself. It's entirely determined by us, whether we are cisgender or transgender.

(edited to add links to an article about Cordelia Fine's research and the amazon page for her book, Delusions of Gender)

This is a recent and well-acclaimed book on the subject, although I have not read it myself.

I once had the pleasure of hearing the feminist biologist, Marlene Zuk, speak. She was fantastic and I think you should check out her book [Sex on Six Legs] (https://www.amazon.com/Sex-Six-Legs-Lessons-Language/dp/015101373X)

Also, if you're not afraid of delving into psychology and neuroscience. I'd also recommend Cordelia Fine's [Delusions of Gender] (https://www.amazon.com/Delusions-Gender-Society-Neurosexism-Difference/dp/0393340244/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1494261794&sr=1-1&keywords=delusions+of+gender)

At the risk of further entering a debate in which I have already blundered, Cordelia Fine's excellent book Delusions of Gender discusses a number of examples of early gender socialisation including a self study done by a feminist woman on how her attitude to her unborn child changed after she discovered it was female. Fine's commitment to nurture brings up problematic issues with regards to trans* individuals experience of an internal gender dissonant with how they have been socialised, but her analyses of existing studies are worth reading.

First off, that sucks.

I have not read this, but a friend of my swears by this book. (no shortage of hurt backs on us veterans) He said his back pain is gone, no surgery and no more pain meds. So I figured I figured I would link it here.

https://www.amazon.com/Healing-Back-Pain-Mind-Body-Connection/dp/0446557684

Healing Back Pain: The Mind Body Connection by John Sarno is an awesome book on this subject. Really you can apply this information to so many things in your life

The book he wrote discussing his work on phantom limb sensations is called 'Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind'. I found the experiments and really the whole book fascinating.

The Mirror Box, at least to me, shows how bizarre and flexible the human brain can be while also showing a relatively simple hack that can help reduce the pain and unpleasant sensations from a phantom limb.

Edit: modified some wording

I'm going to pull the Psych card and suggest that you guys attend family counseling to get to the bottom of this. It sounds like she has a lot of anger from the divorce, and you're going to need to deal with this quickly before she gets much older and it starts to manifest itself in self-destructive ways. You need to take care of this now.

That said, You also need to set rules and enforce them. What you're doing, by giving in each time, is letting her know that you're not serious about setting rules. If you want her in bed, then you need to tell her the rules up front, and then put her to bed. If she starts screaming, then you need to come in and tell her that if she keeps this up, nothing is going to change. But she is still going to stay in bed and she'll just have a sore throat tomorrow. If it's disturbing her sister, then just arrange for your other child to sleep on the couch for the time being. Put her to bed, and then let her scream. I recommend this book http://www.amazon.com/Solve-Your-Childs-Sleep-Problems/dp/0743201639/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1300251518&sr=8-1 . Lots of people don't like this - but it's the kindest, best way to get your kid to sleep. My own copy is completely destroyed from being loaned out to so many others. Follow the directions, and your problem will be over with this. You need to stay firm, and mean what you say. In EVERYTHING. She's going to be testing you quite a bit for the next decade.

I still highly recommend you getting your family into counseling as soon as possible. If you cannot afford it, there are lots of alternatives available to low income families.

This is never popular when I share it, but this saved us. I start sleep training at 4 months. My second child was sleeping solid through the night at 6 months. From 15 months to 2 years they regress and will call out every 3 hours. If you follow the book, you just go in for 1 minute and leave then they're good, on average.

https://www.amazon.com/Solve-Your-Childs-Sleep-Problems/dp/0743201639

Best of luck!

>wait until 6 months.

[That's straight out of Ferber.] (https://www.amazon.com/Solve-Your-Childs-Sleep-Problems/dp/0743201639/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1491771431&sr=8-1&keywords=Ferber) - well 4-6 months is straight out of the Ferber book.

You mention cry-it-out, but have you read Dr. Ferber's book? It changed my life. It explains a lot about a baby's sleeping needs and cycles. I found that all the other books I read seemed to get their information from his book while drawing different conclusions. Anyway, you don't have to take a look at it if you don't want to, but if you're having trouble with a sleeping baby I just want to share what helped me.

My husband was excited and wanted to tell his dad as soon as possible. I bought him this book The Expectant Father: The Ultimate Guide for Dads-to-Be and he is really enjoying it. He says that he likes that it explains what's happening for the mother, but also talks about the father-to-be's feelings. Im relieved because reading a few chapters has convinced him we should wait until after our doctors appointment to tell people, even family.

That said, he did spill the beans to my friend this weekend though by asking if I was drinking decaf coffee, which she told me later was a dead giveaway! Luckily she is my best friend and has two kids of her own, and I explained to her that we haven't even told our parents. So our secret will be safe with her until February.

There’s a book I really liked called The Expectant Father. It’s divided into pregnancy months and takes you through what’s happening with your baby and with your wife. I read a chapter each month as we progressed through the pregnancy and it was really helpful.
It’s cliche and everyone says it but time will go by so fast so enjoy every minute. Being a dad is likely to be the best thing you’ll ever do in your life. Congrats!

Edit: link to the book- The Expectant Father: The Ultimate Guide for Dads-to-Be https://www.amazon.com/dp/0789212137/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_mPvCCb3621E49

i liked this one. https://www.amazon.com/Expectant-Father-Ultimate-Dads-Be/dp/0789212137/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1493832134&sr=8-1&keywords=the+expectant+father

touches on science, if not too deeply, has some nice historical tales about how modern fathering developed from ancient times, breaks down the experience month by month with what's going on with you and what's going on with your partner.

also, as a nice added touch, it offers insights for adoptive and ART dads. that said, i found it easy to skip sections that did not pertain to me and pick up later in the chapter without missing anything.

edit: the authors also have a subsequent book that's geared more to the new father rather than the expectant one.

If you have any interest in cancer at all - The Emperor of all Maladies is an amazing book. It's titled a "biography" of cancer and tells how scientific advances have changed how doctors/patients/society have dealt with cancer through history, and ultimately guides the reader towards a modern understanding of the disease. It sounds dry but really isn't - it's a compelling book, and I especially loved how the science wasn't "dumbed down".

I'm sorry. I know what you're going through is really hard.

Cancer is part of the reason I started reading Stoic philosophy tbh. To calm that animal fear of death we all carry.

I'm coming to that moment in my own life as well. Someone I love very much is very ill and I suspect it will come to this sooner rather than later in our family.

I was thinking, I'll probably be the last of my little family to die. Everyone I love will die before me.

My mother will die- she's very ill.

My husband is much older than me.

My sister is older w approaching health issues of her own.

And my younger brother is struggling w mental illness.

I'll probably have to bury them all one by one someday. I dunno that anyone will be left to bury me.

On my worst days I'm sad about it. I feel sorry for myself. Why me? I never asked for it.

But then on other days, I'm grateful for the opportunity. It's one final duty to discharge, one last chance to honor someone very special in my life.

Who else would I want to shoulder my burden?

If I'm not the one to bury them all, then it'll fall to my brother. I love him but his life is a mess even in the best of times. Leave my sister to do it? Her big heart might crack under the strain.

We shared a little bit of time together and it's been lovely. I can do my part.



The funny thing is I'll be dead soon, too. Whether it's a week from now or 100 years it doesn't much matter I guess. I must've read it somewhere but can't recall where (Marcus Aurelius probably):

'We're all dead already, we just haven't been buried yet.'

I try to live my little chunk of time in a way that will leave people around me with a good memory and a warm feeling in their hearts.

Take my blessings with you. I wish you well! Say hi if you see me somewhere on the other side.

Edit: I'm a big reader. These are the books that helped me through the worst of it. Maybe they can help you, too.

• Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, free online ebook
  
  
• The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee. It's a super interesting read, all about how cancer has dogged the human race for millenia. How treatment has stumbled and how it's advanced. It really put things in perspective for myself and my mother. Cancer is just one of those human things we all might become subject to
  
  wiki, author discusses book, Amazon
  
  
• The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot. It brings up interesting questions about what it means to live and what it means to die. Like what are you? What's the smallest part of you that is still you? Are you dead if parts of you live on? What if all your DNA lives on and gets replicated over and over for decades, resulting in more biomass than you ever were. What if your DNA goes all over the world, into space even, long after you've succumbed? Are you really dead? How should your family think of you if the last 60+ years of medical research hinge upon the fact that "you" never really died at all?
  
  wiki, Amazon

Off topic but you should considering swapping some of that exercise for more sleep. Source: https://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Sleep-Unlocking-Dreams/dp/1501144316

https://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Sleep-Unlocking-Dreams/dp/1501144316

The Mayo Clinic Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy is my favorite pregnancy book, and Happiest Baby on the Block is great for the newborn stage.

Mayo Clinic Guide

Happiest Baby

I swear by the Mayo Clinic. It's informative without being fear-mongering, and does a good job of presenting things without bias.

http://www.amazon.com/Mayo-Clinic-Guide-Healthy-Pregnancy/dp/1561487171/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1374619889&sr=8-1&keywords=mayo+clinic+pregnancy

Are you familiar with Dialectical Behavior Therapy? It was based on CBT and has a large mindfulness component. It's an empirically supported treatment for many presenting problems, as well.

This book and [this book] (https://www.amazon.com/Mindfulness-Solution-Intense-Emotions-Personality-ebook/dp/B0197SJPDI/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1523374715&sr=8-5&keywords=dbt+book) might be helpful and along the lines of what you're looking for.

THIS book has everything you need. I would recommend starting with mindfulness (the book has all of the skills and handouts as well as the worksheets/homework associated with them). Then work through the other modules (Emotion Regulation, Interpersonal Effectiveness, and Distress Tolerance) in any order. If you're in a bad place now I recommend starting with Distress Tolerance because that is the most immediately useful.

Most DBT classes introduce one skill per week and assign the associated worksheet(s) as homework. You can work through the skills at any pace you'd like but I like having a whole week to focus on practicing and using a single skill.

DBT stands for Dialectical Behavioral Therapy. It is a treatment developed by Marsha Linehan, originally to treat chronically suicidal patients and those with Borderline Personality Disorder. It has since been shown as an effective form treatment for many other diagnoses as well, such as those with PTSD, substance abuse, mood disorders, eating disorders, and ADHD. Those who seek DBT are frequently those who experience intense emotions and emotional distress. It is made up of four components: mindfulness, emotion regulation, interpersonal effectiveness, and distress tolerance. A typical DBT program consists of a once-weekly 2 hour DBT group that lasts 6-12 months, a once a week therapy session, and the ability for the client to have access to their therapist via phone for phone coaching.

• Here are some links explaining DBT
  
  • https://behavioraltech.org/resources/faqs/dialectical-behavior-therapy-dbt/
    
  • http://www.opaldbt.com/dbt/
    
• Here's a list of some studies done on DBT and their results
  
  • https://behavioraltech.org/downloads/Research-on-DBT_Summary-of-Data-to-Date.pdf
    
• Here is a list of some DBT workbooks that you can work on your own if you'd like to try that instead of enrolling in a full on DBT program
  
  • https://www.amazon.com/Dialectical-Behavior-Therapy-Skills-Workbook-ebook-dp-B0041D8UWM/dp/B0041D8UWM/ref=mt_kindle?_encoding=UTF8&me=&qid=1536867241
    
  • https://www.amazon.com/Skills-Training-Handouts-Worksheets-Second/dp/1572307811/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1536867241&sr=8-1&keywords=dbt+skills+training+handouts+and+worksheets+second+edition
    
    Hope this helps. Let me know if you have any more questions!

I approach therapists the way I do online dating. Instead of looking for things I want, I look for red flags and stop the conversation there.

I think not wanting to be on meds shouldn't be something to focus on if your mind is set, and if they seem like they want to push on that, it's not going to be productive.

Does the therapist talk more then you do? For me, that's a deal breaker. I don't want to hear anecdotes or a long explanation of their credentials. I want to be guided, not lectured. Maybe personal preference.

Note how "challenging" the therapist is with you. Do you want someone who will push back against you/call you out (this is extremely helpful in many cases), or do you want someone with a more subtle approach? I'm personally sensitive to criticism so I need a lighter touch.

Does the therapist seem to have negative attitudes or limited experience regarding groups you belong to? LGBT, POC, bipolar patients (I once had one for couples therapy whose ex husband was bipolar; that didn't work out), age, gender, etc.

In your sessions, with a tight budget, you want to maximize efficiency. You need to target the most impacting areas of your life so you can get the most overall improvement from your time there.

They're going to want to know what your current most pressing issues are. Bring a little list of ways your bipolar has impacted your life.

Also see if you can identify the most important/relevant details from your life history so you can quickly give them background information. "I was raised in city, my family was generally supportive/dysfunctional/close/etc., I've had these experiences with therapy in the past, these three events changed the course of my life, I was diagnosed years ago, my worst manic/depressive episode was like this..."

If you want to get into DBT, read about the four major aspects about it and see if you can identify the part you want to focus on the most. I highly recommend getting the official manual. Using part of your budget on this will help you further your therapy along on your own between sessions, making therapy more targeted to your needs based on your own progress. (Sorry for formatting, I'm on my phone.)

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1572307811/ref=sxts_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1501518111&sr=1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65

Good luck!

We're all a little nuts here :) I'm happy that you, too, are trying to work on it and improve your life, and I wish you the best of luck!

If you're interested, my husband started DBT a few months back with his therapist and has been using this workbook, which seems to be helping him. We also just discovered this series of posts, which helped him express some things to me and helped me to conceptualize what's going on in his head and what I can do.

On EMTs refusing care to trans people: Maybe pbjay is thinking about Tyra Hunter.
> Tyra Hunter, a transsexual woman who died in 1995 after being in a car accident. EMTs who arrived on the scene stopped providing her with medical care—and instead laughed and made slurs at her—upon discovering that she had male genitals.

Quoted here from Whipping Girl by Julia Serano.

On the less extreme side, the National Transgender Discrimination Survey Report on Health and Health Care found 5% of survey respondents reported that EMTs treat them unequally.

On legally attacking and killing trans people: "Trans panic" is a legal defense against assault and murder charges that asserts the defendant became temporarily insane because they were so freaked out their victim was trans. The "trans panic" defense hasn't been used very often or successfully. The most famous "trans panic" case is the murder of Gwen Araujo. Other examples include Chanelle Pickett whose murderer was acquitted of the three more serious charges—first-degree murder, second-degree murder, and voluntary manslaughter— and found guilty only of assault and battery.

If you want to read more about the "trans panic" defense, I suggest (Trans)forming The Provocation Defense by Morgan Tilleman

• edited for (still not awesome) formatting

Now that I'm at home I've looked at the bookshelf and would like to add:

Almost Human -- written by a primate researcher about her experiences studying baboons in the wild. I read this book several years ago and still think about it regularly. Lots of interesting lessons about primates and people in here.

The Emperor of all Maladies -- a history of cancer, won a Pulitzer for best non-fiction.

Agree with The Ghost Map. The Emperor of All Maladies is good if you are interested in cancer-related health and public health.

The Gawande books are good. Another one I've liked recently was "The Emperor of all Maladies" - it's essentially a biography of cancer.

If you want to read more about it, check out the book Emperor of All Maladies, it's an absolutely fascinating story.

The Emperor of All Maladies, by Siddhartha Mukherjee

It is literally a biography of Cancer. Its a bit slow during the first 50 pages but really picks up at the end.

http://www.amazon.com/Emperor-All-Maladies-Biography-Cancer/dp/1439170916/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1425782502&sr=1-1&keywords=emporer+of+all+maladies

How's your sleep?

Chronic sleep deprivation (meaning a habit of less than 8 hours a night) will shred even a non-ADHD-brain's ability to focus. Starting with an ADHD brain means you get seriously impaired that much quicker.

I can speak from experience over the past few years of getting only 6-7 hours on average (on purpose, to treat my sleep disorder, but WOW what a cost). I felt like I was losing my mind and stuff like reading novels or learning was impossible most days, where before I inhaled books like nothing. Even dropped out of college because the slight burden of a part-time course was annihilating me.

I've changed my schedule to let myself sleep more and noticed a small difference so far. There's a useful introductory book that came out recently and goes into the science of sleep; https://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Sleep-Unlocking-Dreams/dp/1501144316

I've been reading through it, very slowly, and it's won me over to prioritising 8 hours of sleep as my main health goal right now. Might not help everyone but if you're not sleeping enough that would affect anyone so it may be somewhere to start.

I highly recommend learning more about the critical importance of sleep. Sleep apnea is not innocuous. It increases your risk for cardiovascular events and neurodegenerative disorders. Here's one of the best books, if not the best, on the subject: https://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Sleep-Unlocking-Dreams/dp/1501144316

and here's a three-part podcast with the author that is incredibly informative: https://peterattiamd.com/matthewwalker1/

Somewhere in their they talk about dopamine's role in memory formation and how that, among other mechanisms, is involved with sleep deprivation and memory loss. But yea, do your best to lose weight. Let me know if you want any direction there.

The guy talking, Matthew Walker, authored this book. It goes into a lot of detail on the mechanisms you're referring to.

https://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Sleep-Unlocking-Dreams/dp/1501144316

https://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Sleep-Unlocking-Dreams/dp/1501144316

I can recommend his book "Why We Sleep"(https://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Sleep-Unlocking-Dreams/dp/1501144316)

Not that it fixed my sleep problems, but it's a good read/listen!

There is no substitute for 8 hours of sleep per night. If you need evidence, here's evidence: Why We Sleep

Yo do not need a sleep substitute, you need a non-negotiable daily 8 hour sleep opportunity and your husband needs to get on baord with that. I would have a sit down with him where you explain this is a health issue and brainstorm ways to make this workable. Maybe having a teenager come as a mother's helper in the mornings would help. Maybe he needs more opportunities for time for himself. Maybe you need to work on finding a day job eventually. Anyway, focus on those opportunities, not ways to cheat yourself out of even more sleep.

ETA: Just wondering if the 3yo and 1yo are sleeping well. Maybe your husband is grouching because he is sleep deprived too? Getting him some daytime help so he can take a nap may really help even if you have to stretch the budget for several months.

This is actually a genetic thing that people have little to no control over. You are preprogrammed to be a night owl, a morning person, or somewhere in between. Source: Why We Sleep -- https://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Sleep-Unlocking-Dreams/dp/1501144316

The way I understand die-off type reactions is that they mean that your detoxification pathways are overwhelmed...not necessarily that lots of things are dying (but it may be both). Medications, natural or otherwise, can be harsh and may need to be processed by our liver or other detox pathways.

So, before we start trying to kill things, I think it's wise to try and support our detoxification pathways. We also need to work to support our immune system that will naturally kill (or at least make them weaker to supplements) things like candida even without external supplements or medication that.

So - once this "die off/dextox pathway overwhelm" stops - or even before then - I would look very deeply these aspects of your life:

• sleep - the book why we sleep - nearly everything recommended in that book is free and high quality sleep over time can massively improve your and immune function and support your detoxification pathways https://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Sleep-Unlocking-Dreams/dp/1501144316
  
• blood sugar control - figure out how to manage your blood sugar - things like protein, fat and fiber are your friend in this regard. Meal spacing can be another factor.
  
• stress - the more intense the stress and the longer lasting it is, the more we need to sort this out. We may need to make significant changes to our life - we may need to change our perspective for things we can't change - or we may need to make a longer term plan...not easy, but has a massive impact.
  
• movement - I would look at the recommendations for elderly people and start to make sure that those minimum thresholds of movement are met every day --- I've found in my own life that BM's, energy and arthritic symptoms get completely turned around with the right intensity and type of movement. You shouldn't do things that make you feel terrible - eg. if you feel like you were run over by a bus the day after working out, dial it back

For actual pregnancy, I loved the American college of obstetrics and gynecology's book and I know a lot of people loved the mayo clinic book.


Planning for Pregnancy, Birth And Beyond: Second Revised Edition https://www.amazon.com/dp/0525941401/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_PLZHAbPZ6V85C


Mayo Clinic Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy: From Doctors Who Are Parents, Too! https://www.amazon.com/dp/1561487171/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_tMZHAbRTF0RMQ


I also read what to expect when your expecting but it was a lot of the same info in my apps, except the actual birth and labor part. There was some helpful stuff in there!


For laboring I read Ina May's guide to Childbirth and I LOVED it. I feel SO prepared after reading it!


Ina May's Guide to Childbirth https://www.amazon.com/dp/0553381156/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_VNZHAbQ7T2S9D


I tried to read

Natural Childbirth the Bradley Way https://www.amazon.com/dp/0452276594/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_HOZHAbRC89D39


But I couldn't take it seriously!


And for breastfeeding I read


The American Academy of Pediatrics New Mother's Guide to Breastfeeding (Revised Edition): Completely Revised and Updated Third Edition https://www.amazon.com/dp/0399181989/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_9PZHAbSMPXVX9


And for baby feeding and sleeping I read


On Becoming Baby Wise: Giving Your Infant the Gift of Nighttime Sleep https://www.amazon.com/dp/1932740139/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_JQZHAbS5P7824

Grats!

We're in our 17th week, so I'm right there with you. I picked up all 3 of these from a local used book store, and I like to read at the same pace as the pregnancy is going because these first 2 are broken up by month.

For you, there's The Expectant Father: Facts, Tips, and Advice for Dads-to-Be. Good book from the father's perspective. Covers the often overlooked male emotional issues that you may go through.

For both of you, there's the Mayo Clinic Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy. Covers a lot of medical and physical issues she'll be going through. Almost like a school textbook, but a good one.

And if you're into geeky and funny, there's The Baby Owner's Manual: Operating Instructions, Trouble-Shooting Tips, and Advice on First-Year Maintenance. There is some good tips here, but it is humor first and informational second.

I bought a ton, and I keep going back to the Mayo Clinic book. While it has the mostly same information, I found that The Mother of All Pregnancy Books was a little less well organized.

I thought I wouldn't like it because it was un-cited fluff, but I was pleasantly surprised by the candor of the Girlfriend's Guide to Pregnancy. Having the two types of books back-to-back felt reassuring.

Finally, I just bought Ina May's Guide to Childbirth, and I'm really liking her approach. The first section is all natural birth stories (to counteract some of the horror stories that may be more salient in our minds) and the second section is all about the physical process of labor with her (surprisingly well-researched) tips and philosophies on how natural labor actually works. If you're low-risk and have the attitude that childbirth is a natural function (which needs obstetrical care only in extreme or unusual cases), this book is an amazing guide to labor.

A positive is a positive - no matter how faint. Congrats!!

• Start looking for a doctor.
  
  
• Make an appointment somewhere between 8-10 weeks for your first ultrasound.
  
  
• Pick up the Mayo Clinic Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy.
  
  
• Start taking daily prenatals with Folic Acid right away.
  
  
• Relax. If you go online looking for information, especially in baby forums, take everything with a grain of salt. There are disproportionate numbers of women with issues (and not necessarily mental, though it's also true). You'll see a big skew towards miscarriages, and bleeding, and spotting, and cramping, and panicking, and horror stories of doctors, etc, etc. Remember that the vast majority of pregnancies are normal.
  
  
• Sit back and chill for a bit. This is your last 9 months alone.
  

Check with a local hospital or parent store, many offer or know of where you can sign up for classes including New Dad Bootcamp (or Basecamp, either way it's got a masculine title). I'm attending mine in two weeks.

I'm not nervous about being a dad or hurting the baby, I just want to get my skills down pat so I don't do something stupid.

Check for those in your local area and sign him up late 2nd trimester, early 3rd trimester.

Edit: Also have him read The Expectant Father book and the Mayo Clinic Pregnancy guide. They are AMAZING resources. http://www.amazon.com/Expectant-Father-Advice-Dads---Be/dp/0789210770/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1420916442&sr=8-1&keywords=The+expectant+father

and

http://www.amazon.com/Mayo-Clinic-Guide-Healthy-Pregnancy/dp/1561487171/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1420916466&sr=8-1&keywords=mayo+clinic+guide+to+a+healthy+pregnancy

Dialectical behavior therapy, mentalization based therapy, transference focused therapy - all created for people like us. With the diagnosis you can now know that other people suffer in the same ways you do, it's not hopeless, and you're not doomed to a life of being alone. I was in therapy for 10 years before confirming the diagnosis and starting DBT - I've made more progress in the last year than I ever did in those 10 years. I think probably there's nowhere to go but up.

DBT workbooks:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1572245131/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_JBD3zb2DPCBBR

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1572307811/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_qnD3zb1J2N742

When I was waiting for therapy to start I soaked up as much info as I could in video form on youtube, which I actually found more helpful than DBT in terms of feeling real validation and emotional healing.

I found a torrent of From Chaos to Freedom which is basically Marsha Linehan (creator of DBT) teaching the skills herself. I like her, she’s pretty weird. Here’s a clip: https://youtu.be/Im3aLArs2nc “If it lasts forever and you think it’s a crisis... it’s your life, it’s not a crisis”

Tons of short videos of experts talking about borderline and DBT:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0RQwa3uLto4y2R8Eg1hKTg

This one is full of lectures (many by the same experts) on more specific topics that I really liked:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDSIYTQX_dk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvfe3n2SGow

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ux8-7EniZBM

This is the one I used

DBT® Skills Training Handouts and Worksheets, Second Edition https://www.amazon.com/dp/1572307811/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_0m80AbYQFE8AA

It sounds like living with your dad might be the best of those 3 options. You'll still be in contact with the girl you like but you wont be challenged with as many changes. BPD is EXHAUSTING, I know. I find that the solution that is driven as equally as possible by both logic and emotion fits best. Suicide may seem like a good third option, but remember that there is always a possibility for even more options than you listed. I would sometimes confront that idea with "I''m pretty sure I've explored every option and angle and this is all I got", and I did....with the information I had at the time. Group therapy helped me with finding more options to help solve my problem from my peers and from the ppl running the group. I think it's important to be open to gathering up more information on what you can do and what support you can get. This forum is the perfect place!

Also, Dialectical Behavioral therapy (DBT) is extremely usefull in treating BPD. You can find a number of online resources and workbooks to help you. There are also DBT group therapies out there that take insurance or do sliding scale. I'll link the books below. Some of the worksheets inthese books can be found on forums or other websites for free, uploaded by wonderful ppl that just wanna give ppl access to something helpful.

Book 1: DBT® Skills Training Handouts and Worksheets, Second Edition https://www.amazon.com/dp/1572307811/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_C12QybM6GZ5PF

Book 2 (my personal fav): The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook: Practical DBT Exercises for Learning Mindfulness, Interpersonal Effectiveness, Emotion Regulation & ... Tolerance (New Harbinger Self-Help Workbook) https://www.amazon.com/dp/1572245131/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_w22Qyb6Y42T7S

You can just google it but here it is

There could be cheaper options but that’s the price I paid for mine.

There's a therapy called DBT. You can buy the book from Amazon (there's a manual and a workbook most people recemmend from Dr. Linehan). but here's a pdf that someone from this group linked up (can't recall who or I'd give them daps) that looks like a nice overview and it's free wooo lol. Learning about this therapy has given me soooo much hope. I hope it does the same for you!

If you buy this book, you can get all the pdfs from the workbook for free through Guilford Press.

I haven't read this one, but it seems to be the recommended book if you want to learn more about DBT conceptualization.

Sorry I thought of two more that are a little more political, they are "Gender Outlaw" by Kate Bornstien and "Whipping Girl" by Julia Serrano.

https://www.amazon.com/Gender-Outlaw-Men-Women-Rest/dp/0679757015/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1466321943&sr=8-1&keywords=gender+outlaw

https://www.amazon.com/Whipping-Girl-Transsexual-Scapegoating-Femininity/dp/1580051545/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1466321964&sr=8-2&keywords=whipping+girl

I like the idea of a trade off. She's not the only one with a viewpoint here and if she wants you to understand where she's coming from, it's only fair for her to gain an understanding of where your coming from. For the record, the reference to Serrano is regarding Whippping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity, by Julia Serrano.

Edit: Verbiage

http://www.amazon.com/Whipping-Girl-Transsexual-Scapegoating-Femininity/dp/1580051545/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1319412332&sr=8-1

Not 100% on the topic of your question, but it's quite good, and potentially very helpful if having a difficulty understanding transgender folks is something you'd like to correct. Also available slightly cheaper in Kindle form (which is how I read it, to avoid potential awkward questions from coworkers...).

I think the other point to consider is the degree to which knowledge equals intelligence.

While we love our meme's here on Reddit, in actuality memetics is far more complex. Memetics is the study of how evolution occurs in intelligent minds, where memes evolve by changing through minds over time. Intelligence, then, is a combination of a) the memes you know; and b) how you associate/combine/transform them.

Putting this another way, without the basis/foundation that we inculcate into ourselves by living in the age we do, we would just be like empty workshops, full of tools but with no wood to form into ideas.

That's approaching it from one angle of Cognitive Science - I would love to hear what others can offer biologically / psychologically.

*The Selfish Gene is when Memetics was first introduced. It is proposed once all matter of genetics is discussed, and offered as one theory of intelligence.

This is not a civil engineering book, but one of my favorite 'engineering' stories is "Skunkworks" about Lockheed's secret development division.
https://www.amazon.com/Skunk-Works-Personal-Memoir-Lockheed/dp/0316743003/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1473165192&sr=1-1&keywords=skunkworks


Other than that I recommend:
"Traffic, Why we Drive the way we do"
https://www.amazon.com/Traffic-Drive-What-Says-About/dp/0307277194
;

"Rust: The Longest War"
https://www.amazon.com/Rust-Longest-War-Jonathan-Waldman/dp/1451691602/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1473165145&sr=1-1&keywords=rust

If you read the book "Traffic," it specifically says that vigilantism like what the Civic attempted just breeds contempt in the eyes of bad drivers, and doesn't actually serve as any sort of corrective measure. The truck may not have thought he did anything wrong, despite the Civic.

https://www.amazon.com/Traffic-Drive-What-Says-About/dp/0307277194

You should read this book, it's pretty informative on this topic

Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0307277194/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_chthDbB4MT26E

Traffic is a great book. I bore everyone by recommending it constantly.

I t deals with the paradoxes of human cognitive biases and traffic. Economist Tyler cowen likes it

A good starting place would be "Traffic" by Tom Vanderbilt. But all you need to do is watch the behavior of beans falling down a chute to observe the exact same behavior (see my other reply).

On a bike you are moving at or near the speed of traffic, in other words you make sense to drivers. Running you are not, it is best to leave it up to your own instincts.

If you read the book Traffic it describes how poorly drivers react to things moving slower than they are. It's chock full of statistics and law.

I live on a road that connects to Chenoweth Lane and really fear a widening. There's always foot traffic along the road, even a crosswalk so students can walk to Chenoweth Elementary. If the road is widened and it looks more like a speedway than a lived-in area, cars will act accordingly. If you all are interested in how traffic patterns affect our behavior, I really recommend this book: http://www.amazon.com/Traffic-Drive-What-Says-About/dp/0307277194

Reminds me of a book I read that suggested driving a car inflates our sense of personal space and in turn, our ego. Interesting book for people who drive.

I don't get violent road rage, but I do get verbal road rage. The other day I was driving my girlfriend home from work and someone made a bad lane change or turn and I was like "I hope everyone in their family dies. sees dog by a house OOH! LOOK A DOGGY!" I don't really mean the things I say of course, it's just shit talk (except when I see a dog).

There is a book by Tom Vanderbilt, “Traffic”, that actually debunks this fallacy. You don’t even have to buy the book to read the section apropos to this topic. see excerpt here

I believe I read that in Tom Vanderbilt's "Traffic"

http://www.amazon.com/Traffic-Drive-What-Says-About/dp/0307277194

But it's been awhile and I don't have the book handy to check.
Worth reading in any case.

There was at least one chapter on this in Traffic: why we drive the way we do. Removing signs and other 'safety' warnings forced people to be more perceptive and careful when driving. Also mentioned that many of the 'dangerous' roads (no guardrails, cliffs, etc) were actually safer than normal highways because people drive more carefully in those situations.

edit: from an interview with the author:

Q: You write, "The truth is the road itself tells us far more than signs do." So do traffic signs work?

A: We’ve probably all had the somewhat absurd moment of driving in the country, past a big red barn, the pungent smell of cow manure on the breeze, and then seeing a yellow traffic sign with a cow on it. Does anyone need that sign to remind them that cows may be nearby? To quote Hans Monderman, the legendary Dutch traffic engineer who was opposed to excessive signing, "if you treat people like idiots, they’ll act like idiots." Then again, perhaps someone did come blazing along and hit a crossing cow or a tractor, and in response engineers may have been forced to put up a sign. The question is: Would that person have done that regardless of the sign?

The bulk of evidence is that people don’t change their behavior in the presence of such signs. Children playing, School zone? People speed through those warnings, faster than they even thought, if you query them later. To take another example, the majority of people killed at railroad crossings in the U.S. are killed at crossings where the gates are down.

If this is insufficient warning that they should not cross the tracks then is a sign warning that a train might be coming really going to change behavior? At what point do people need to rely on their own judgment? We as humans seem to act on the message that traffic signs give us in complex ways — studies have shown, for example, that people drive faster around curved roads that are marked with signs telling them the road is curved. We tend to behave more cautiously in the face of uncertainty.

Lot of people use it to alleviate muscle soreness. It's controversial whether it actually works or not, but it does make me feel better, at least for a short time.

I actually use it to burn body fat, which I learned in Ferriss' 4 Hour Body.

Did you even read the book? All of your questions are answered there and it's not like they are hidden bits of info in some random chapter these are major themes of the diet.

1: Working out is great, do it, the book has lots of tips
2: You don't like beans because you don't know any better, i'll bet you love beans you just don't know it yet. Try different ways to cook them, also try lentals. But You need a GOOD high calorie item it's hard to do just meat because you will get hungry fast.
3: Once again in the book, your measurements matter, in fact I went an entire month with out losing weight but i did lose inches. Also we should all measure our BMI that's the "real" number.

Also it's $16 go buy it

http://www.amazon.com/The-4-Hour-Body-Incredible-Superhuman/dp/030746363X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1331676821&sr=8-1

Tim Ferris a book wrote on this. I can honestly recommend that: https://www.amazon.com/Hour-Body-Uncommon-Incredible-Superhuman/dp/030746363X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1496420347&sr=8-1&keywords=tim+ferrris

I'm currently in Monk Mode myself. I'm probably only going for at most a 3mo. term at this (Started Dec. 1st). It sounds like you have a good plan. I'm focusing on the following things:

• Meditating: the best way to re-program your brain IMO ("Wherever you go there you are")
  
• Teaching myself Jazz piano
  
• Diet (Here's my diet)
  
• Fitness (Here's my fitness bible)
  
• Career Development (This)
  
• Productivity & Time Management (too many books to mention, OP PM me if you want this list)
  
• Not watching Porn & Masturbating less frequently (Highly recommended /r/NoFap)
  
• No Alcohol
  
  For learning to cook I highly recommend this book.
  
  For addressing approach anxiety I recommend The Rules of the Game.
  
  This is an excellent book on habit change. (OP this is how you start to break down those "masturbatory" habits)
  
  Also, Monk Mode is basically an exercise in stoicism. This book is awesome.
  
  
  Since you'll have plenty of time to read here are some other Books I recommend:
  "No More Mr. Nice Guy"
  "Models: Attracting Women Through Honesty"
  "The Talent Code"
  "Man's Search for Meaning"
  "Flow"
  
  Final thoughts OP. 6 months is definitely a worthy goal however studies show that 90 days is usually what it takes to create new habits and routines. You have to be consistent though. Just food for thought.
  
  
  (Edit: I suck at formatting)
  
  
  
  
  

You typically get a referral to a psychiatrist from a family doctor. However, a lot of family docs will write prescriptions for the non-addictive meds. I have had a long-standing prescription to one of the more addictive/potential for abuse ADHD medications, so I have to get mine from a psychiatrist.

I highly recommend the book "Driven to Distraction"
http://www.amazon.ca/Driven-Distraction-Revised-Recognizing-Attention/dp/0307743152

As someone who was diagnosed with ADHD at a young age and dealt with it from kindergarten through college, I'll be the first to say that medication is, at best, a "band-aid." There are practical solutions and strategies one can implement to help live with ADHD that don't involve medicine. Depending on severity, this can take years of practice, but it's ultimately worth it.

First, of course, you need to make sure you're diagnosed correctly by a doctor who specializes in working with patients who have ADD or ADHD. ADD/ADHD can be confused with all sorts of different disorders (e.g. auditory processing disorder, etc.) If you're looking for a book, I'd recommend Dr. Edward M. Hallowell's Driven to Distraction. Personally, I worked through some of his books (among others) while seeing a psychotherapist who specializes in ADD/ADHD. Take your time finding a good one or get a recommendation from a friend if possible.

Girl, I am in exactly the same position as you. Actually created an account just to comment on this b/c it really struck a chord with me. I did get to a psychiatrist to officially diagnose me -- but couldn't afford to keep seeing him every 3 months to renew the prescription, so I am now medicine-free again :/

Here are some things that I've been working with over the past year:

1. Fish oil pills. My DR told me to start taking these ASAP when he diagnosed me. His advice was to find a pill with an Omega-3 balance of 700 mg EPA/300 mg DHA, and take two doses of that a day (so 2000 mg/day). Clinical studies show a big relief in ADHD symptoms after about 3 months if you maintain this; big relief in mood/anxiety (if that's a problem for you) after 2 weeks. I am inconsistent with this but feel a big relief when I take them regularly. Dr. warned me that there is significant variation in how effective these pills are, so it's important to get high-quality pills and check the labels for dosage information, or you won't see a benefit. Store 'em in the freezer if they give you fishy burps.
   
   
2. Exercise. Hard but SO helpful. Clinical studies show amazing benefits; benefits keep increasing the more you exercise, up to 1 hour of vigorous exercise/day. (Sorry no citation, this was also told to me by my DR.) I became SO much happier when following the couch to 5k program.
   
   
3. Coffee. Adderall for cheapos. I drink more than is healthy, but it helps me focus when I feel myself "drifting" and I personally think that's worth the health trade off. Your mileage may vary.
   
   
4. Sleep. 9 hours a night and I am a motherfucking HERO. That's hard to get but it truly, truly makes an impact for me personally. I try to turn off all screens/electronics an hour before bed, take a melatonin 30 min before turning off the lights, and turn off lights at least 8 hours before I need to get up, earlier when I can.
   
   
5. Self-educate. Off the top of my head, the book that's helped me the most is this one, almost certainly available fo' free at your local library. Check everyone on ADHD out of the library, who knows? Something might click for you.
   
   That is the sum total of my current low-cost ADHD self-care system! If I am consistently implementing all those things, and engaging supportive and helpful friends as coaches, I feel really good about my life. I am still a space cadet, but the important shit gets done and more importantly, I don't hate myself so much. Er, too real? No we're cool. Keeping on keeping on.
   
   Good luck!

Try Driven to Distraction
http://www.amazon.com/Driven-Distraction-Revised-Recognizing-Attention/dp/0307743152

Audio book is on youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdQH9i5-aUo

As the one with ADD in my relationship, I highly recommend you get a copy of Driven To Distraction. It has a chapter specifically dedicated to relationships, and it's for both the one "afflicted" and the one "inflicted" if you get my meaning. ;) I don't know if it's worth owning, so check it out from your library if you can. It has a lot of insight to the kinds of questions you're asking and it says things a lot better than I ever could.

Hey sorry to hear about your troubles but we all here appreciate you taking the time to talk and ask about your husband and what he's going through. To answer your questions...

1. First of all, it sounds like your husband is in desperate need of treatment or medication. Everything you listed, the inattentiveness, inability to follow through or complete tasks, and the complete lack of motivation, sounds like another day for me when I don't take my Adderall. If it seems like he's trying really hard, that he wants a better life but he gets in his own way, it's incredibly possible he has ADHD.
   
   
2. A well structured regimen looks different for each person. Personally this is how mine goes.
   
   Wake up, take meds, have a protein filled breakfast, internet, shower, study, chores, exercise, dinner, video games, bedtime.
   
   Everyone on this sub uses different tips and tricks to help get through their day. Some use alarms and sticky notes to remind them of appointments and meetings. I keep my wallet and my keys in the same place so I know where they both are when I go to leave.
   
   3
   
   There's a wonderful book called Driven to Distraction written by a psychiatrist with Attention Deficit Disorder. It's a critically acclaimed novel filled with personal stories of different people who all have ADHD and what their lives are like. I bet if given the chance, your husband would find himself in one of those stories.
   
   Lastly, ADHD requires a saintly level of patience. We are not easy people to deal with. We're absentminded, forgetful, late all the time, sometimes messy, and always distracted. We stare off into space, get lost in our own heads, and need to be told things repeatedly. We are not lost causes though. People with ADHD can surprise you, it just takes us a little longer than the rest of us :)
   
   
   

Honestly, it's going to get easier, and then it's going to get harder. Expect to take a few months (at least) to figure out the appropriate meds and the right dosage for you, to learn what the meds can fix and what they can't, and to learn how to deal with side effects like insomnia and irritability. Then you'll need to come up with strategies for stuff the meds won't touch, because as half the people on this sub will tell you, Adderall can just as easily be used to keep you focused on homework as it can be to spend seven hours sorting everything in your living room by color. It helps. It helps so much. But it's not magic and you have to point it in the right direction.

If you've got any kind of student health coverage, you might have access to a therapist who has ADHD-specific experience who can help you explore coping mechanisms like planners, calendars, checklists, etc. and sort real tasks from small distractions. (In my experience, therapists who don't have ADHD experience aren't much use. If I had a nickel for every one who told me to study harder, I'd have at least 15¢.) If not, read the books Taking Charge of Adult ADHD and Driven to Distraction.

Source: I was diagnosed halfway through college, and even with medication, it took me an extra two years to get my undergrad degree. (The meds also fucked with my sleep something fierce.) My undergrad capstone project came out all right, but I ignored all my other coursework and scraped by with a 2.3 in-major GPA. Years later, I'm working in industry and have put together a suite of checklists and calendars to get me through the day-to-day, but long-term planning and prioritization are still rough.

Sounds like me a few years ago! Not sure what country you’re in because it means different access levels. My GP in Canada sent me to a specialized adhd clinic for rigorous testing which cost me a cool $1000. My bf managed to find a psychiatrist who was covered by the provincial drug plan and cost nothing. So you could ask your GP for a referral to a psychiatrist, conversely you could try asking for a referral to a psychiatrist at a walk in clinic.

This will be a tough road and honestly it’s going to come with a lot of judgement because you’re still “school aged” and even when you’re not, because the medication is a controlled substance you’ll get judgy reactions from pharmacists, insurance companies etc etc because they’re jerks and they just think we’re trying to get high on a medications we rely on to get through the day. Obvs not all are like that. I’m only saying this so you can be prepared to stand your ground and remember it’s ok that you’re seeking treatment to better yourself.

So until you are able to secure a diagnosis (keep pushing because it’s so important for your success if you do have adhd!) there are a few resources that really helped me you can check out:

I always want to be where I’m not: https://www.amazon.ca/Always-Want-Where-Not-Successful-ebook/dp/B00K1LGMJG

Fast minds: how to thrive if you have adhd or think you might: https://www.amazon.ca/Fast-Minds-Thrive-Think-Might/dp/0425274063

Driven to distraction: https://www.amazon.ca/Driven-Distraction-Revised-Recognizing-Attention/dp/0307743152

I hope you find a bit of peace in a few of these things, and remember that you know yourself the best, keep pushing until you find someone that will listen to you.

Just take it one day at a time. I know living away from home for the first time can be scary, but you've made it this far and you can do this!

It's natural to wonder if you've made the correct choice, but try to take comfort in following the choices you have made so far. Just follow through with those choices. Going to school is almost always the correct decision to do, and since you left to go to school you're on the right path.

Just focus on your education and learn as much as you can in your classes. Get help from the professors or Teaching Assistants. Your college may even have free therapists if you want to get specific help. Be aware of all the perks you get as a college student.

Over the next few weeks you'll be establishing new routines and habits as you adapt to this new environment. It's going to be new and uncomfortable at first, but you will get used to it. I recommend exercise as a habit because it can be as effective as medication for keeping stress under control.

I'd also suggest trying to make friends. It took me a long time in college before I finally found a friend or two I felt I could trust and be myself around, so I feel a little hypocritical giving this piece of advice. But having someone to talk to can be very helpful. Check out what clubs your school has, you're bound to find something that interests you. And if you go to any nerdy clubs (Sci-fi clubs, writing groups, anime clubs, video game clubs) you might be able to ask around and see if there are other Bronies around if those are the kinds of people you are looking for for friends.
You can also always call your parents, I'm sure they'd love to hear from you too as they are also dealing without having you around.

But don't sweat it, you can do this!

If you're a science-y kind of person and have time to kill I recommend watching Youtube videos featuring Dr. Jason Fung. He's the author of the book The Obesity Code and actually recommends not eating until later in the day (i.e. intermittent fasting) as a way to stabilize insulin and cortisol (which for many people results in weight loss). The book itself has great content devoted to tearing apart the food industry and its influence on the US government's dietary recommendations, including the "breakfast is the most important meal of the day!" mentality.

Perhaps this might be a good starting point for your research:

https://www.dietdoctor.com/diabetes

https://intensivedietarymanagement.com/ The author of this site has a great book which you might like.

Good Luck!

Check out Stop Walking on Eggshells.

I'll be completely honest with you. Leaving her may be the easier path in the long run. If you decide to divorce, check out Splitting: Protecting Yourself While Divorcing Someone with Borderline or Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

Most people start with 16/8, meaning eat during an 8 hour period, and abstain for 16 (including sleep). For most this means skipping breakfast and no snacking.

Another version is 20/4 sometimes called the warrior diet. All food consumed within 4 hours.

Still another is eating one large meal a day (normally dinner, although i have done lunch). OMAD. Basically 23/1.

Here are some resources i have collected that are helpful to people getting started. Good luck.

Intermittent fasting - good intro video:
https://youtu.be/dFT2IKmwyfg

Good second video (rewind if needed).
https://youtu.be/tIuj-oMN-Fk

Good write up
http://www.burnfatnotsugar.com/intermittent-fasting.html

DietDoctor website:
https://www.dietdoctor.com/intermittent-fasting/guides#basic

Brad Pilon website:
https://bradpilon.com

Dave Asprey website:
https://blog.bulletproof.com/bulletproof-for-beginners/

Third video. Interview with Fung. https://youtu.be/jXXGxoNFag4

Great book - The Obesity Code (can likely get at library)
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1771641258/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_FkAyCbGNPWEXN

Obesity Code

An amazing book promoting Keto by doctor that uses the treatment to reverse T2 diabetes.

https://www.amazon.com/Obesity-Code-Unlocking-Secrets-Weight/dp/1771641258

Edit: Forgot the title of the book...

Get this book. I got it digitally from my local library:

Splitting: Protecting Yourself While Divorcing Someone with Borderline or Narcissistic Personality Disorder
by Bill Eddy and Randy Kreger

It was a real eye opener for me. They will rush into court looking for "emergency" court orders etc. and it is very important to know how to deal with that. It even includes a chapter on how to find a lawyer who understands how BPDs behave.

Here are some of the resources I've read, and what I think about them:

• Transgender 101: A good introduction covering a lot of what you mention above. It's more focused on the transsexual experience, though. Non-binary identities and others under the "transgender" umbrella get their own chapter, but it's stuck at the back of the book. Chapter 6 has a really good section on whether transgender should be considered a mental disorder, and talks about the insurance issue.
  
  
• Whipping Girl: Although it's not too hard to get through, I'd consider this to be "advanced reading" for those who already have a grounding in basic trans thinking/terminology. I really enjoyed it and agree with many of Serano's arguments, but it's less textbook and more opinion piece (although Serano has also written a number of academic papers for respected journals). It's mainly focused on the MTF transsexual experience.
  
  
• True Selves: You might hear this one mentioned in lists of good trans books, but it's now 20 years old, is very heavily weighted toward a limited view of the transexual experience, and it defends the gatekeeper mentality. I'd honestly avoid it, unless you're interested in reading about how things used to be, in which case I'd highly recommend Harry Benjamin's The Transsexual Phenomenon (who knew that people used to be arrested just for crossdressing?). Don't show that one to your professor!
  
  
• WPATH Standards of Care v7: Presents a good overview of gender non-conformity and dysphoria with references to contemporary research. Written for a medical/academic audience but easy enough for a general audience to understand too. Focuses significantly on mental health aspects of transgender and medical transition options. The standards of care seem to have become more liberal with each new version, to the extent that they're now presented as guidelines rather than hard rules and are approaching the "informed consent" approach. Still, they're an example of the gatekeeping approach, which some people are dead against.
  
  
• National Geographic magazine gender special edition: Has some good stories covering the whole range of transgender people (i.e. talks about non-binary identities as well as the traditional transsexual experience). Also interesting is the wide discussion of gender issues in various world cultures, although this is of less relevance to what you're looking for.
  
  Obviously there's a lot more out there, and I'm sure others can add to this and/or argue with my take on the above list. This is just some of my admittedly limited reading - please don't take this in any way as an authoritative list of the best resources!
  
  I'd be careful relying on websites and blog posts for information. You need to be critical of the authors' credibility and biases, and there is a lot of poorly-researched, poorly-written stuff out there, some of which is downright wrong, made-up, nonsensical or hateful (I've read a lot on Blanchard's typology and the paraphillia/fetish view of transsexualism, and I'd advise you to avoid it at all costs!). On the other hand, I'd say don't stick entirely to books and academic papers, because there are a lot of interesting thoughts/perspectives from those in the community who don't write books or publish papers.

>I'm not surprised everything we thought was incorrect. Every time anyone has a discussion about this stuff at my school it turns into a circlejerky who is the most PC contest and I think most of these people get their information from tumblr

Probably. There's nothing wrong with asking questions - it's healthy and wanting to learn is never a bad thing.

>You've lost me a little. I don't understand the difference between gender identity and gender roles. I can understand wanting to identify as another role, but I don't understand what gender identity is without sex or roles.

Okay so to really simplify -

Gender identity: whether you're a man or a woman

Gender role: how society says men and women should act

They're entirely separate and unrelated, although there is obviously a strong correlation between people who are men and people who like to act masculine, and between people who are women and people who like to act feminine. But that's all it is - a correlation. There are plenty of people who are men who don't like to be masculine but do like to be feminine, just as there are plenty of people who are women who don't like to be feminine but do like to be masculine. And there are masculine trans women and feminine trans men. At the end of the day, though, a feminine man is still a man and and a masculine woman is still a woman. Preferring a particular socially constructed gender role doesn't change your innate gender identity. Liking dresses doesn't make a man not a man, you know?

This would be much easier to understand, I think, if we didn't use the term "gender identity". It leads to far too much confusion of exactly this type and I think something else would be a better term (Julia Serano - who writes brilliantly - uses the term "subconscious sex" as in the sex of your subconscious, which I quite like), but the important thing to take away is that although they happen to be similar phrases they're very much not the same thing, or even similar. One is who you are, the other is how society says you should act based on that.

(Also in terms of gender identity there are non-binary people who don't feel themselves to be men or women but something else or both, and there are agender people who don't feel any gender at all)

>Okay you're starting to make me think this is where I lie. I really don't understand feeling a certain gender in context outside of social roles or genetics. I hate periods/the ability to get pregnant/having a uterus in general. I hate that my friendships with males always fall apart when I don't want to fuck them. I hate feeling unsafe walking around at night. I hate feeling worth less than male and socially would definitely DEFINITELY rather be a dude. But all of this is just out of convenience. I'd never transition because if I did, I'd never be treated like a cis dude

You probably would, though. Most people greatly underestimate the power of hormones (and other things such as surgery) and their potential to change someone's appearance from undeniably female to undeniably male (or vice versa). Most trans people end up blending back into society eventually and being treated just as cis men or women. Trans people that you see who are obviously or visibly trans are usually early in transition (or are just unfortunate) and aren't representative of trans people generally.

>and half the inconveniences would still be there + new ones would be created. Basically, how I feel about this is basically "let's do whatever is most beneficial/convenient". In the same way everyone wants to be rich instead of poor since it's simply the better option. IDK.

In an ideal world would you rather be male or female? Or neither, maybe?

If you started growing thick facial hair tomorrow how would you feel about it? If your voice dropped how would you feel about it?

>I just don't think I'm going to understand, as much as I'd like to. I feel like a lot of that comes from being a cis female though.

No, I don't think this is the case. A lot of or even most cis (or nominally cis) people - I think those with a stronger sense of their own maleness or femaleness - get it instinctively when it's explained to them, some don't. The latter tend to either be people who have just never thought about it and can't imagine that it would cause any problems to just switch sex because they don't know what they're talking about, or people who - like you, I think - just maybe don't have a particularly strong sense of their gender, or even might have no gender at all.

It might be really helpful for you to read about non-binary identities or agender people - if they don't resonate then fair enough, but you might find they do. You might even find out that you're not quite as cis as you thought you were. But that's entirely up to you.

> For some reason I just can't wrap my head around genders having feelings though

So it's not like genders have feelings, it's that you innately know and understand yourself to be one gender rather than another.

When I think about myself I think "woman" or "girl" or "female". When I look around at other people I subconsciously group myself with the other women rather than the men. I want to fit in and be accepted as a woman not as a man. When people mistake me for a man it makes me uncomfortable. Having a body that is more female feels right in a way that having a body that was more male never did. That's how it works for me, roughly, if such an abstract concept as gender identity can ever be put into words. It's kind of like trying to describe hunger to someone who doesn't need to eat, it's always going to be difficult to properly get it across.

Well, I strongly identify as a trans-feminist, and I am often hesitant of feminist spaces that aren't queer-centric for the very reasons that you list. However, for me it is important to educate those feminists who are transphobic or cissexist etc to help broaden feminist thought into a more intersectional frame of thought that addresses the sexism of all different identities.

I personally really care about LGBT+ things (and as you can see the LGB movements have not always been trans friendly either), and feminism as well. I assure you that not all feminists are like those individuals your friends experienced, and I am sorry they both had to go through that. It sounds like what they experienced is what Julia Serano has called "cissexism" or, "the belief that transsexuals' identified genders are inferior to, or less authentic than, those of cissexuals." This sort of sexism is something that I think the feminist movements would benefit from addressing.

I know that it can get really depressing reading and experiencing feminists being transphobic and cissexist etc, but one author (and really great speaker) who I have really enjoyed reading is Julia Serano, who is a trans woman and a feminist. You can check out her book "Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity" and I am looking forward to her new book coming out called "Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive" which I think is something you might be interested in looking into.

Ok, so it's a fantasy story where one of the characters happens to be trans. I'll go down the list of your original questions:

a) The no big deal approach is a good way to handle it.

b) Pitfalls? Read The Whipping Girl. That should help you with that.

c) I would use the "whatever pronouns they use at the moment" approach if you're having the character realize they're trans somewhere within the novel. Maybe have the character come to a realization, and from there on refer to them as that pronoun.

d) This seems to contradict the idea of making it "no big deal." Illustrating a trans woman is uncomfortable by saying "her testicles retract" Really??? That's incredibly strange. Stay far away from such things. I wouldn't touch that with a ten foot pole.

e) Read the book I suggested. Spend a few weeks just reading through the archives of this subreddit. Also read through r/ftm. Just by reading through the questions and answers people have posted, you'll gain quite a bit of insight into the diversity of issues and experiences trans people face.

f) We already touched on this, but essentially don't use magic as a way to trivialize trans people's struggles. A lot of what trans people struggle with is coming to terms with what is feasible and possible. As a trans gal, I need to make peace with certain limitations. I'll never be able to get pregnant. I'll always have a few masculine features, scars from my past. I'll always have people who consider me something less than a "real woman." I need to learn to live happily even with these limitations. If your trans character ultimately finds happiness and becomes whole through magical transformation, it suggests that trans people in the real world can never find happiness and never be whole. Be very, very careful with this.

I'm currently reading Whipping Girl, by Julia Serano. I'm finding a lot of it applicable to me, particularly chapter 17, "Crossdressing: Demystifying Femininity and Rethinking 'Male Privilege'". I might post some choice quotes later.

I'm so sorry.

Purchase and read Splitting from cover to cover before you do anything. When you initiate the split, things will get worse and you need to know how to protect yourself.

>I'm starting to wonder if I have BPD

You don't have BPD. At worst, it's very common to 'catch fleas' from your BPD partner. If you leave, your BPD-like symptoms will diminish. I would also suggest therapy once you're out.

I got the name of the book wrong. It's this one:
https://www.amazon.com/Splitting-Protecting-Borderline-Narcissistic-Personality/dp/1608820254

You can do a search for high-conflict divorces on BPD loved ones. I lurk there occasionally, but never post. I don't think it would be safe.

Bill Eddy has a great book called "Splitting," about divorcing people with personality disorders. His website also has useful information.

1. Get this book https://www.amazon.com/Splitting-Protecting-Borderline-Narcissistic-Personality/dp/1608820254 read it, and follow the instructions
   
   
2. Get a lawyer who understands the behaviour patterns. My first one didn't and kept expecting XW to be reasonable. This failed. My new lawyer took one look at her communications, said "you will never, ever reason with this person" and has helped me get it to court asap. Mediation etc is fine for two normal people who are having difficulties communicating because they are dealing with the emotional fallout of a marriage ending. If one of those people has a PD, it's generally a total waste of time (unless you have a specialist mediator, I suppose).
   
   
3. Get a counsellor who has experience helping people recover from narcissistic abuse. The sooner you start seeing her the better.
   
   
4. Expect hell. Your STBX will lie, cheat, blame to a far greater extent once they know the game is up. But as Churchill said - if you're going through hell, keep going.
   
   
5. Take notes and evidence constantly. Cross reference things. N's are quite convincing liars on the surface, but they have trouble maintaining consistency . That's where you trip them up in conjunction with your lawyer
   
   
6. NEVER, EVER suggest to them or the court that they have a PD. That will go very badly for you. You're not qualified to make that diagnosis, and it may turn the court against you. Instead just focus on patterns of behaviour.
   
   
7. I found this book very useful - it's a book on philosophy which is great for dealing with situations where you have very little power. https://www.amazon.com/Guide-Good-Life-Ancient-Stoic/dp/0195374614
   
   
8. Get your family and friends and support network in place before you make your move. Warn them that your STBX may play the victim and try and manipulate them. My XW took to messaging and calling my business partner's wife constantly in an effort to turn him against me. It caused me some problems initially, but we have it sorted now.

One more thing - saw this mentioned today and it might help you: https://www.amazon.com/Splitting-Protecting-Borderline-Narcissistic-Personality/dp/1608820254/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1480342616&sr=8-1&keywords=book+splitting

What's stopping you from moving all your shit into a storage space RIGHT NOW to keep it safe from her and finding somewhere else to stay until you can find a new job? Then you can move and persue divorce at that point.

Use credit card if you don't have the cash saved, get out NOW and get out FAST.

Read http://www.amazon.com/Splitting-Protecting-Borderline-Narcissistic-Personality/dp/1608820254. Good luck.

I find people recommending Delusions of Gender a lot. Seems to relate more to debunking "scientific" explanations of differences between men and women, but it could be a good foundation for looking over some cultural assumptions about gender.

That's called "biotruths", friend, and those are fairly strongly debunked by science. A decent basis in psychology, anthropology, or any of the other social sciences will lead you to notice that nearly all differences in men and women are based in social conditions and the society they are raised in than based on physical differences or hormones. Men are not naturally prone to violence, this is based upon cultural assumptions of gender normatives which forces the penchant for violence upon the child, regardless of the personal family environment of the child.

Remember that there are far greater differences between individuals within a single gender than there are between individuals in separate genders. A good way of thinking of this is to imagine that we have put numerical differences upon the traits and men score around 1 - 85 and women score around 15 - 100. Sure, there are differences, but there's so much variety within the genders that the differences are basically irrelevant. Most people are a smattering of "masculine" and "feminine" traits.

You should engage the social sciences, friend. There's a lot of interesting and exciting data coming out of the field of gender studies!

Suggested Reading:

Hyde (2009) The Gender Similarities Hypothesis

Cordelia Fine (2011) Delusions of Gender

Peterson and Hyde (1997 - 2007) A Meta-Analytic Review of Research on Gender Differences in Sexuality

Article: There really is no difference in men and women's math abilities

Article: Transsexual differences caught on brain scan

EDIT: A good place to learn and discuss Trans issues is /r/SRSDiscussion. There's a large variety of different users on there with deep knowledge of the topic at hand. I highly suggest you post any questions you have regarding Trans issues there with them. If you think that "some kind of cis-sexism may be based in biological reality, not culture", then I'm sorry friend, but you have very little understanding of what Cissexism is and have a lot to learn about gender. Start there and read more into the topic. It's a fascinating topic. I think you'll enjoy it!

There's little dispute that women are better at giving birth and men are better at growing mustaches, but almost everything else is, to a certain extent, a social construct rather than a biological truth. The notion that men are better at mathematics has to do with generations of girls being discouraged from pursuing higher education. The notion that women are better caregivers comes from generations of (almost) every career save motherhood being closed to women.

Most studies that have sought to "prove" that one gender is better than the other at whatever have been deeply flawed, and carried out by researchers more interesting in confirming their own beliefs than in gathering actual data. There are a ton of examples in this book.

It's also interesting to note that people who are stereotyped as being bad at something perform worse when reminded of those stereotypes, even indirectly. For example, female students and black students perform worse on math tests when required to fill out demographic information beforehand. Food for thought.

Got you.

Its called Brachial hanging.
It was on one of the steve maxwell episodes (probably the latest one.) He tells Joe about a book he read on the subject of shoulder pain.

John M. kirsch book:

https://www.amazon.com/Shoulder-Solution-Prevention-Revised-Expanded/dp/1589096428

its good shit. also check out John E. Sarnos book for chronic pain issues:

https://www.amazon.com/Healing-Back-Pain-Mind-Body-Connection/dp/0446557684

I have a herniated disc at L4/L5. I've been severely limited and in constant pain for over 3 years.

I've recently read a book that I am confident will change my life.

Most people have severely degenerated discs at the L5/S1 level by the age of 20, but many of them never experience pain from this.

Many people have disc bulges/herniations/protrusions that are discovered accidentally in CT scans or MRIs done for other reasons, and which never cause pain.

Nerve compression - the supposed mechanism of back pain in disc herniations - normally causes numbness and paralysis, not pain.

Studies have been done showing that there is no correlation between disc herniations and back pain - that is, people who have no history of back pain are just as likely, on examination, to have a herniated disc as people who do have a history of back pain.

The book is called Healing Back Pain. Do yourself a favor and read it. It will change your life.

Opiates are a bitch. Worst scourge ever to hit this country, but that's another topic altogether. Doesn't matter. A drug is a drug is a drug, and if it's effing with your normal life, get the eff off of it as soon as it's medically feasibly/possible. Some doctors are in it for the money writing scripts, most are trying their best to ease your pain. Pain is (hopefully) temporary. depends on the injury, be it physical or mental.

There are ways to deal with physical pain, there is a mind/body connection sometimes. If that's your case, I'd recommend reading Dr. John Sarnoff's books ( https://www.amazon.com/Healing-Back-Pain-Mind-Body-Connection/dp/0446557684 ).

I once worked with an ex-heroin addict, clean and sober when I knew him. While doing the morning drive to a job I struck a match to light my cigarette, and that gave him thoughts of cooking heroin in a spoon. I asked him what was so great about that shit, he got a faraway look in his eyes as he drove and thought about it, like someone thinks about a lost love. He said to me, "It's like everything's okay! No matter what life's really like, it made it all not matter." And that's not dealing with life on life's terms, it's an illusion that traps and kills many of us. All opiates are heroin in pill form. You've gotten off them, my advice, stay the eff off them, it's too great a risk. Learn different ways to deal with any pain, whether it be a real physical or a psychological one. The price of going back to drugs may not be one you would make it back from. No shit.

Again, pat yourself on the back for getting off the drugs. Live your life without them. Yeah, I know, it sucks sometimes, you'll survive. And that's the point of it all really. You will survive. They say God's got a master plan for us all, as long as we don't get in the way of it.

;^)

I fully endorse his book - Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind

Do you like a good read? If so:

Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind

The Believing Brain: From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies---How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths

V.S. Ramachandran's The Tell-Tale Brain goes into detail regarding synesthesia, among other curious neurological topics. See also: Phantoms in the Brain.

Both books are very easy to read and deliver amazing insight into how the brain actually works. Ramachandran addresses synesthesia (along with mirror neurons and empathy, which are fascinating as shit) more in The Tell-Tale Brain.

I agree with The Selfish Gene and Surely You're Joking and would like to add:

• How The Mind Works by Steven Pinker
  
• Phantoms In The Brain by V.S. Ramachandran

First, read Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind.

Then do your presentation on pretty much anything in the book. It is about how physical changes to the brain can cause very weird psychological results, and not just your standard "Phineas Gage" personality changes, either. We're talking the inability to perceive motion, or hallucinating cartoon characters in blind spots... all kinds of crazy stuff.

"Can you walk?"

"Sure I can walk." Mrs. Dodds had been lying in her bed or sitting propped up in a wheelchair for the past two weeks. She had not taken a single step since her fall in the bathroom.

"What about your hands? Hold out your hands. Can you move them?"

Mrs. Dodds seemed mildly annoyed by my questions. "Of course I can use my hands," she said.

"Can you use your right hand?"

"Yes."

"Can you use your left hand."

"Yes, I can use my left hand."

"Are both hands equally strong?"

"Yes, they are both equally strong."

Now this raises an interesting question: How far can you push this line of questioning in these patients? Physicians are generally reluctant to keep on prodding for fear of precipitating what the neurologist Kurt Goldstein called a "catastrophic reaction," which is simply medical jargon for "the patient starts sobbing" because her defences crumble. But I thought, if I took her gently, one step at a time, before actually confronting her with her paralysis, perhaps I could prevent such a reaction.

"Can you touch my nose with your left hand?"

Her hand lay paralyzed in front of her.

"Mrs. Dodds, are you touching my nose?"

"Yes, of course I'm touching your nose."

"Can you actually see yourself touching my nose?"

"Yes, I can see it. It's less than an inch from your face."

At this point Mrs. Dodds produced a frank confabulation, almost a haullicnation, that her finger was nearly touching my nose. Her vision was fine. She could see her arm perfectly clearly, yeet she was insisting that she could see the arm move.

I decided to ask just one more question, "Mrs. Dodds, can you clap?"

With resigned patience she said, "Of course I can clap."

"Will you clap for me?"

Mrs. Dodds glanced up at me and proceeded to make clapping movements with her right hand, as if clapping with an imaginary hand near the midline.

"Are you clapping?"

"Yes, I'm clapping," she replied.

I didn't have the heart to ask her whether she actually heard herself clapping, but, had I done so, we might have found the answer to the Zen master's eternal koan or riddle - what is the sound of one hand clapping?

___

from Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind

my thoughts: mere curiosities

I would recommend books by neurologist V.S. Ramachandran such as Phantoms in the Brain

From a more psychiatric slant, books by Ronald K Siegel like Whispers and Fire in the Brain are collections of case studies about delusions and hallucinations

I would love to do this, I suggest Phantoms in the brain.

I haven't seen this come up in the comments yet, but there is well known condition called Phantom limbs and phantom pains. It was well-documented in a book called phantoms in the brain by VS Ramachandren (sic?).

In the book he describes people that were in accidents and had amputations but still felt very real pain in their Phantom limbs. He discovered that the solution was to create an illusion of the missing limb by using a mirror contraption, and then somehow performing therapy on the reflection of the limb. There's something about the visual feedback of seeing the phantom limb undergoing therapy that helped.

Edit: phantoms in the brain - http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0688172172?pc_redir=1395668249&robot_redir=1]

My LO is the same age and was also waking up multiple times a night and would need us to rock her back to sleep or replace a pacifier. We were also rocking her to sleep at bedtime and for all naps. The broken sleep was not sustainable but we wanted to wait until she was at least 6 month before starting any kind of sleep training.

We knew we needed her to learn to self soothe so we decided to read Dr. Ferber's book. His method to break sleep associations, like being rocked to sleep, is often referred to as CIO but it really isn't and is not as bad as it sounds. You do let the baby cry but you go in to soothe them by patting, talking, etc, but don't pick them up. It sounded like the best option for us since we knew the pick up put down method would just frustrate and keep her up. We would do her bedtime routine (nurse, change, stories and rocking) and then put her down with her lovie but without the paci while she was still awake.

The first night we did 1 min crying, 1 min soothing, 3 min crying, 1 min soothing, 5 min crying 2 min soothing and then repeated the 5:2 pattern until she was asleep which took about 30 minutes. I felt ok letting her self soothe and cry a bit because we know her cries. We know what is her tired cry, her angry cry, her sad cry and her pain cry. For the most part she would just fuss and whine and occasionally escalate up to an angry cry. If she started to get quiet we would hold off going in for a minute since you do not want to interrupt when they are learning to soothe themselves. The next nights we did a 2 min: 1 min, 5 min: 2 min and 7 min: 2 min pattern and I don't think we even made it to the 7 min one.

It only took 3 nights and she was able to go down for naps and at bedtime with very little fussing. The only time she now gets upset is if we put her down way past her nap or bedtime. Then we just use the same basic pattern and usually only have to go in once. She does still wake up in the night and fuss sometimes for 1-2 min but will almost always fall back asleep on her own and if she doesn't then it's just me or SO going in for 10-30 secs to replace her lovie and make a few shushing sounds. I am still feeding her sometime between 3-5am, but am hoping to night wean in the next couple months.

Also, I've heard it repeated a lot that sleep training often has to be refreshed. Teething, travel, time changes all can cause regressions. I'm not sure how helpful all this will be but I wanted to share what worked for us. I think the key things in our case are her lovie, keeping the routine and sticking to the pattern. Good luck!

Edit: I also should have included that we don't have a super strict bedtime or naptimes. We watch for tired signs (fussing, eye rubbing, the usual) and then start her bedtime or naptime routine.

Read the Ferber book! My husband and I were in a similar situation because we are night owls and I nursed to sleep. My daughter is finally okay with letting me walk away at 3 years old. She would want me to lay in bed to nurse all night. When she was deep asleep, I would be able to sneak away. However, when she woke up, she would run to our room because she was expecting me to be there. The book has a lot of similar situations on what to do. We didn't use the cry it out method by leaving her alone but got a lot of ideas from the book. The game changer for us was having my husband put her down at night. She hated it but after a few days she was comfortable enough to fall asleep. She still wakes in the middle of the night but no longer insta-screaming when I (or usually my husband) will walk her back to my daughter's room. She still will ask for back rubs but we are weaning those out. We found a trick by saying, "I'll be right back." If she's calm, she is okay us leaving and will fall asleep before we do a check in.

You can skip a lot of sections of the book to get to the good stuff. My husband and I had to look through the book together so we could make a plan.

We had this issue with our daughter--we got to 11 months and she couldn't sleep through the night unless one of us was with her. We were seriously stressed, depressed and not having a good time. Then, I read about Dr. Richard Ferber here--his cry-it-out method had our daughter sleeping through the night within a week. Granted, there's a difference between 5 months and 11 months. The primary difference with Ferber is the fact that you don't ignore the baby. You go in, you comfort without picking them up, then leave. Come back in longer intervals. For most kids it seems to work at helping them self-soothe. Obviously, feeding would be a concern, but I believe the book covers that.

• Take steps to prepare the baby to sleep. This includes night-time rituals and day-time activities.
  
• At bedtime, leave the child in bed and leave the room.
  
• Return at progressively increasing intervals to comfort the baby (without picking him or her up). For example, on the first night, some scenarios call for returning first after three minutes, then after five minutes, and thereafter each ten minutes, until the baby is asleep.
  
• Each subsequent night, return at intervals longer than the night before. For example, the second night may call for returning first after five minutes, then after ten minutes, and thereafter each twelve minutes, until the baby is asleep.
  
  The book was originally written in 85, and revised in 2006 to cover different situations that it had't previously.

I strongly recommend getting the actual book. Do not google search it or go to some random mom's blog: there's a metric crapton of misinformation on the method. Remember: anyone can post pretty much anything on the internet. It might be well-written, but that doesn't make it fact, and it doesn't mean that that person has actual qualifications beyond "I pushed a baby out of my vagina that one time."

You'll eat a lot of crap from people for doing "cry it out" because they think it means just abandoning your kid to scream alone in a dark room until they eventually pass out ((which is what our doctor told us to do.)) The book explains what the method actually is -- progressive waiting -- why it works, and why the misinformation version of the method doesn't. It was really eye-opening to read Ferber himself explaining everything, particularly from a clinical point of view. He uses real cases and real kids, from all sorts of ages and sleep problems, and details how the parents used the method and what kind of results they had. It's not just "do X and you'll get X" and "if you do X you're a bad parent": he really takes the time to explain and show it.

Because I can't seem to find this anywhere on the internet, here is the waiting chart out of the book. My scanner is kind of crappy, but it's legible. I can scan more of the directly relevant pages if people want.

Here are two, one for pregnancy and one for the first year.

https://www.amazon.com/Expectant-Father-Ultimate-Dads-Be/dp/0789212137/

https://www.amazon.com/New-Father-Dads-Guide-First/dp/0789211777

The Expectant Father: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0789212137/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_l7zGDb87JH4XY

I've been reading "The Expectant Father" on. Recommendation from here. It breaks it down month to month and was very easy to follow

See here

Also congrats!

Edit: I screwed up the link, should work now

People love to give advice on sleeping patterns, how to take care of baby, what baby needs and they love to build diaper cakes. But no one really prepares you for how to take care of yourself and I’ve found that’s where my biggest deficits are despite months of meticulous planning. So the books I like focus on pregnancy and post partum transitions as well. Happy healthy momma, happier healthier baby.

The Fourth Trimester

The Fourth Trimester: A Postpartum Guide to Healing Your Body, Balancing Your Emotions, and Restoring Your Vitality https://www.amazon.com/dp/1611804000/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_sT1wCbXZWZY32

And I’m currently reading Strong As A Mother. I really like it so far. It has three sections, pregnancy, the first year, and continuing motherhood. I’m having some struggles with mood and having a two week old alone since my husband is always on trips for work and that I didn’t have a great birth experience. Lots of help from other moms and their stories

Strong As a Mother: How to Stay Healthy, Happy, and (Most Importantly) Sane from Pregnancy to Parenthood: The Only Guide to Taking Care of YOU! https://www.amazon.com/dp/1250105587/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_TW1wCb8KTC08A

I got the expectant father for my husband. He referenced it a lot the first half of my pregnancy when doctors appointments were more spread out and he was like wtf is happening to your nipples, why are you eating that, why are you crying? You know, stuff that you don’t always anticipate or think about

The Expectant Father: The Ultimate Guide for Dads-to-Be https://www.amazon.com/dp/0789212137/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_mY1wCb9XR6Q7P

Good luck and congratulations!

Thanks for reminding me! I got my husband "the expectant father" last time I was pregnant. Unfortunately, I miscarried just days after it arrived so I don't think he got very far in it. I'll have to dig it out from where it's been stashed for the past two years...

Link: The Expectant Father: The Ultimate Guide for Dads-to-Be https://www.amazon.com/dp/0789212137/

I got this book for my husband and he really likes it! He always brings up little facts and tidbits he learned from it.

https://www.amazon.com/Expectant-Father-Ultimate-Dads-Be/dp/0789212137/ref=dp_ob_image_bk

I agree that hospital parenting classes are the best way to go. But you can also find some books on Amazon or videos on Youtube just by searching things like "new dad tips" or something. Here's a few links; I'm not sure how many are targeted to single dads, though. You may find a lot of references to "your partner" in the books, but there still is some truth to that -- you're not romantic partners, but you still need to be parenting partners.


http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0743251547?keywords=new%20fathers%20book&qid=1452471002&ref_=sr_1_3&sr=8-3

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0789212137?keywords=new%20fathers%20book&qid=1452471002&ref_=sr_1_4&sr=8-4

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0316159956?keywords=new%20fathers%20book&qid=1452471002&ref_=sr_1_7&sr=8-7

http://www.amazon.com/The-New-Father-Guide-Series-ebook/dp/B00VPPYEWY/ref=dp_kinw_strp_1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSfPqgtdmAo

The Expectant Father! Both my SO and I read this book, and I LOVED it more than most of the lady-focused ones.

And, Conscious Parenting. I grew up in a family that was similar to your SO's. This book was great for me.

Congrats!

I had to tell my coworkers so that I didn't go crazy from not telling anyone else. I would read some books about becoming a father and what she is going through right now. I started to read a book called the The Expectant Father.

My wife and I are both 28 with our first kid on the way. When my wife first told me we took alot of tests and even went to urgent care on fathers day just to make sure. I was shocked and in disbelief. It took a few weeks and visits to the doctor to make it feel real. If you want to talk or anything feel free to shoot me a PM.

Have not seen that app. What we are learning now is that cancers may share similarities with other cancers that were not previously known. For example, certain lung cancers may be more similar to cervical cancers or melanomas due to the mutations they share. So I do think it is possible that one treatment may help treat other cancers. Good book here http://www.amazon.com/The-Emperor-All-Maladies-Biography/dp/1439170916

Not fiction, but I'm reading The Emperor of All Maladies. It's spectacular -- definitely one of the best books I've ever read. I can't figure out why I never read it before, considering my career (I diagnose cancer every day).

I also tend to forgo sleep when I'm reading really good fiction!

As far as the book recommendations go, it would be good if you could qualify what kind of books you're interested in (e.g. philosophy, psychology, history, science, etc.).


Books I recommend:


Psychology (or: On Human Nature)

The Anatomy of Violence: The Biological Roots of Crime

Thinking, Fast and Slow (my personal favorite)

The Undiscovered Self

The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature

History

Strategy: A History

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

Marxism, Fascism, and Totalitarianism

Economics

Economics in One Lesson

Basic Economics


Politics

Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government

As always, the list of books to read is too long, so I'll stop here.

OK.

The single best evo-psych book I can think of is

The Blank Slate by Stephen Pinker. It's extremely readable as well as very informative.

Where you'd want to go next depends on what you'd like to learn more about, and whether you liked Stephen Pinker as an author.

If you'd like to know more about the genetics that underlying the evo-psych then you want.

The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins

If you're interested specifically in what evo-psych has to say about human sexuality you want

The Evolution of Desire by David Buss

And if you really like Stephen Pinker and want to know what evo psych means for human societies I'd recommend

The Angels of our Better Nature by Stephen Pinker

or (if you don't like Pinker)

Origins of Virtue by Matt Ridley.

I've given you US Amazon links, and no. I don't get a cut :(

I don't know of anywhere else it's available. It's more aimed towards researchers and serious academics than for everyday readers though.

For more accessible and cheaper reads I recommend these books:
http://www.amazon.com/Sex-Brain-Biological-Differences-Between/dp/0140263489

http://www.amazon.com/Demonic-Males-Origins-Human-Violence/dp/0395877431/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1427266852&sr=1-1&keywords=demonic+males

and the chapters on violence and gender in this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Blank-Slate-Modern-Denial-Nature/dp/0142003344/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1427266870&sr=1-1&keywords=the+blank+slate

All of those should be available at any library.

> The idea that the mind is in some way non-physical.

The mind is a product and an element of the physical brain. It may not be concretely tangible (i.e., you can't hold a mind), but that does not mean it is not a part of the physical universe. Physics explains the mind quite well, actually. The neurons in our brain are developed in compliance to the laws of physics and biology, the neurochemicals in our brain are physical substances, and the electric currents in our brains that communicate signals between neurons operate in compliance to the laws of physics.

Evolution also provides insight into the development of consciousness. While, sure, humans are the only terrestrial species with advanced enough consciousness to develop religious and philosophical ideas, we know now that many animals have forms of consciousness and proto-consciousness like what we would expect if humans evolved consciousness from simple origins. The mind is perfectly explainable through naturalistic sciences, and our naturalistic model of human consciousness makes predictions that are falsifiable.

I'd suggest reading Steven Pinker's How The Mind Works. Here's a talk he gave on the book. I'd also suggest his The Stuff of Thought, The Language Instinct, and The Blank Slate.

I'd also suggest Sam Harris' The Moral Landscape. While it's main thrust is to show how science can inform morality, it offers some pretty decent layperson explanation of consciousness, and it is written by an accomplished neuroscientist (whatever your opinion on his religious works may be). His pamphlet-esque Free Will also covers some good ground here.

> All able-bodied humans are born with the ability to learn language.

Not at all true. You can be able-bodied and learning disabled. There was a nonverbal autistic student at my middle school years ago who ran track. Trivial point, but still incorrect.

> I would argue humans also have a Spiritual Acquisition Device.

I would argue that this argument is SAD. (pun; sorry.)

You're positing a massively complex hypothetical neurological infrastructure to link human brains to a divine alternate universe or dimension that has never been shown to exist. Not only has this neural uplink never been observed, but it is entirely unnecessary, as neuroscientists and psychologists have a perfectly functional, testable model of consciousness without it. You're adding a new element to that model that is functionally redundant and untestable. Occam's Razor would trim away your entire posited element out of extraneousness and convolution.

If you want to delve into layman level reading on this sort of thing, look up books and videos by Robert Sapolsky. The book Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers will teach you a lot about chronic stress, and why it's a bad thing.

Stress in and of itself is not bad, but chronic, prolonged bouts of the stress response, leads to a lot of issues. There are a plethora of physiological things going on, so it's sort of beyond the scope of this one post for me to list all of it, hence why I'm pointing you towards something to read on the layman level.

You can also read up on glucocorticoids.

EDIT: Just 'cause I like when people link me to stuff (I know the laziness, it is strong in us all), here:


Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers

Monkeyluv: And Other Essays on Our Lives As Animals

The Trouble With Testosterone

The Brain That Changes Itself

The first three are R. Sapolsky, who is amazing. He also has a bunch of video lectures online you can find. I have to go do stuff now, so I can't go link to those, but they should be easy to locate on YouTube.

The last book is one that deals with neuroplasticity stuff, which is what you seem to be interested in, speaking on the malleability of the brain and all that. It's fascinating stuff, I know - that's what got me to pursue neuroscience all those years ago.

If you have anymore questions, or want more resources, just ask - I have a ton of stuff bookmarked or on harddrives, just have to set aside time to locate it.

> Truthfully, I've never actually been seen by anyone about my PTSD beyond being prescribed Xanax and various antianxiety antidepressants.

You've treated the symptoms, but not the cause.

> I almost called a therapist the other day. But of course phone calls are too scary.

What about online therapy, via messaging?

> Also I've never had a particularly good experience with them. I was seeing one during my abuse and they didn't pick up on it.

Have you tried a trauma therapist?

> I feel like admitting I need help makes me weak and makes them the winner.

This is a false belief, not a feeling. If you need help, getting help will meet your need. You deserve to get your needs met.

> All this to say, I feel dumb. Specifically emotionally dumb.

This is perfectly ok. It's not a block to getting help. Seek rational understanding, if you feel your emotions are blunted.

> Like I'm stuck in the mind if a twelve year old. I just can't explain it other than sometimes I feel like a petulant teen-ager, but totally justified in my actions.

This perfectly ok too. A good trauma therapist can work with this.

> My brain is just WRONG.
>I simply tell him to treat me like I've got a brain injury

This is a result of trauma. It contains two sides;

1. In some sense, those of us who lived through trauma in our childhoods, suffer 'brain damage' of a sort. Our brains form in response to the trauma, which is not how the brains of those without trauma form.
   
   
2. It leads us to believe we are forever brain damaged. However, this simply isn't true. The brain is plastic and changes throughout our lives. We can heal ourselves from trauma. Although it isn't trauma focused, you might want to check out the book The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science. This book is full of real life stories, as well as experiments, which repeatedly prove how capable the brain is of repairing itself, whether from strokes or far worse.
   
   > Will I ever feel safe again.
   
   This I can't say. I don't feel safe myself. I was born into trauma and suffered it from birth to age 18. We can create safety for ourselves, but ultimately, there is no such thing as 100% safety at all times.
   
   > Good god reading that last bit, I'm a fucking monster.
   
   You're no monster. You've been traumatized, for quite a long period of time.
   

The Brain the Changes Itself is a good laymen's book on brain plasticity.

Another book I read said that some amputee patients would feel like someone was touching their face when they tried to move their amputated fingers because of the proximity of those areas on the sensory/motor cortex. (Guessing the sensory area for the face took over the motor area for the fingers?).

If anyone remembers the book? It was the professor that come up with the mirror trick to help with pain after amputation.

So now I'm googling because I've always been curious about this and I found a couple books on the subject, though they don't deal with MS specifically:

https://www.amazon.com/Brains-Way-Healing-Discoveries-Neuroplasticity/dp/014312837X/ref=pd_sim_14_2?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=014312837X&pd_rd_r=7Y8WFEFKSJZ804H9V4JF&pd_rd_w=R6eC4&pd_rd_wg=LDtma&psc=1&refRID=7Y8WFEFKSJZ804H9V4JF

https://www.amazon.com/Brain-That-Changes-Itself-Frontiers/dp/0143113100/ref=pd_sim_14_1?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0143113100&pd_rd_r=ZKM6NP8A26MXV4D7BVBR&pd_rd_w=Ra4iU&pd_rd_wg=6KI75&psc=1&refRID=ZKM6NP8A26MXV4D7BVBR

The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science https://www.amazon.ca/dp/0143113100/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_ieCWCb4N9CXJP

This book will probably bring you more hope that her life will be normal than any comment here could. It's very scientific, and has a lot of reassuring information for you.

Please check it out!

Amazon.com version

Sorry to break it to you. But it just ends. Just the way it ends for ant, dog, cat and any other species.

Just ends. It's living organism. It's only purpose is to pass on genes.

Read this beautiful book: https://www.amazon.com/Selfish-Gene-Popular-Science/dp/0192860925

Might make you more humble more amenable to live in the moment and enjoy what you have.

I mostly agree with you and am wary of worsening your mood even more, but I disagree with this:

> In no way does natural selection apply to either ideas or morality.

That's wrong. Ideas can be shown to be subject to propagation, mutation, and natural selection just like genes are. This was the core of Richard Dawkins' work on memetics. Aside from his book The Selfish Gene, you can read about these theories applied to religious ideas in Daniel Dennett's Breaking the Spell.

That quibble aside, I agree with you, of course, that the OP's pseudo-scientific ideas have no foundation in real science.

Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood by Oliver Sacks. Sacks is best known for writing case studies of his patients as a neurologist, such as The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat. Uncle Tungsten is part memoir, part history of and introduction to chemistry. There's nothing quite like it out there.

The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. Dawkins's Twitter antics notwithstanding, this book is an unmissable classic in biology.

Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter. An ode to consciousness, full of puns, music and metamathematics.

Mind, Body, World by Michael Dawson. This is a textbook, but it's (legally!) available for free online, and it's totally engrossing. The author uses his work in music cognition to introduce the major theories and paradigms of cognitive science and show how there isn't as much separation between them as it seems.

Loved the monkey with the cucumber.

On Selfish Gene, Dawkins shows mathematical proof that natural selection can and will select animals with altruistic behaviour. If the environment is such that doing so would be advantageous for both, then that's the "evolutionary stable strategy".

Really good book if you're interested in the nature of morality, I highly recommend it.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Selfish-Gene-Richard-Dawkins/dp/0192860925

Exercise. Helped my depression and anxiety better than anything else.

And not just a couple of miles a week. I mean intense exercise. (I prefer barbell training.)

Try taking up a martial art. The best type of physical activity for improving cognitive function is that which is both physically and mentally challenging.

I recommend skimming through this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Spark-Revolutionary-Science-Exercise-Brain/dp/0316113514

Another parallel story here – law school, smart, lack of progress, etc.

Diagnosed with depression at 35. Once treatment had me somewhat stabilized, I started reading up on depression and mental health. (lifelong habit: must learn all the things. right now. unless required by school or job.)

Anyway, that eventually had me reading Spark by John Ratey (co-author of Driven to Distraction). I was reading for the chapter on depression, and found I related to it quite well. But then I skimmed through the rest, and got to the chapter on ADHD...and was stunned. It was so clearly me. Then started reading all the things on ADHD to make sure I wasn't out to lunch, and made an appointment to see my doc.

Doc talked to me for about 20 minutes, asked a whole bunch of questions, then sent me home with a questionnaire to complete and send back to him. Did that and went back for a follow-up, which was more questions. Ended with confirmation of what I'd known since the day I hit that chapter in Spark.

Now I'd say I'm doing okay – awareness and Adderall are both helping, but it's a long road. I'm confident my career (in particular) would have had a different trajectory if I'd been diagnosed years ago, but I'm still in an okay spot. I've also been able to see how my ADHD has affected me as a spouse and parent – and I'm trying to find ways to be better at both.

Yes, very much so. Exercise has many many benefits for both your body and mind. There is an excellent book on these benefits called Spark that delves into some of the brain benefits and mood elevating effects of exercise.

Anecdotally I have found that many adventure sports enthusiasts believe in helping their fellow athletes as an ethical imperative. Many races emphasize this as a key aspect of the event.

• The Tough Mudder Oath emphasizes teamwork over competitiveness, encouraging participants to put the needs of others over their own accomplishments.
  
  
• The Ragnar Relay challenges teams of 12 to work together to run 200 miles. Far more than most amateur athletes can do on their own.
  
  
• The GoRuck Challenge emphasizes that "It's not about you", forcing teams to work together towards a common goal.
  
  Each of these events are wildly popular and attract people from varying backgrounds.

The two most common tips that I regularly see are Exercise and Meditation.

John Ratey says in Spark that 30 minutes of moderate exercise is best for women with ADHD (he recommends 15 minutes of intense exercise for men)

Meditation can help build up practices to help you build good practices. Dan Harris's new book would probably be a good start. I listened to 10% Happier and found it to be good. You can also listen to him on the 10% Happier Podcast.

That's at least for starters.

Give it some time for the medication to start working before trying much else. I use a couple of supplements through the advice I found on examine.com but I would recommend giving yourself a few months before speaking to your doctor before looking into supplements.

From there it depends on what you struggle with. There are a lot of things to try but just try a few at a time. I've tried doing everything at once and had it all crash down in front of me.

Science-wise, smoking is clearly damaging to the brain, and causes problems in the long run, whatever your self perception.

But it is both a stimulant, and a depressant... a form of medication. You have to learn to get the same effect without it. I recommend listening to music from India with headphones, and good English black tea, not over-steeped. And make sure you're developing your cardiovascular abilities... more oxygen to the brain.

https://www.amazon.com/Spark-Revolutionary-Science-Exercise-Brain/dp/0316113514

I'll just leave this here though I post it so often, I should start using an affiliates link and earn a few pennies on it.

Edit - fixing link

Look into You Are Your Own Gym or Convict Conditioning. You could also visit the people at /r/bodyweightfitness for ideas. If I had little or no dough, I'd be doing push ups, pull ups and chin ups for starters.

bodyweight exercises are perfect for working out at home. Check out You Are Your Own Gym

There are several great books on training either with no equipment or with minimal equipment. Depending on how broke you are, find "alternative means" of acquiring these books:

Convict Conditioning is probably the most popular, and it's basic program is well balanced, simple, and easy to follow. Since you mentioned push ups: Convict Conditioning starts at wall push ups (super easy) and ends with one arm push ups (very difficult), and provides a progression from one end to the other.

I also really like You Are Your Own Gym. It has a great catalogue of body weight exercises that you can pick through.

If you ever do get access to weights, don't let the comments on weight lifting in either book concern you; both are full of hyperbole that should be taken with a grain of salt.

Steven Low : http://www.eatmoveimprove.com/
 
Pavel Tsatsouline for strenght
 
Bret Contreras : http://www.amazon.com/Bodyweight-Strength-Training-Anatomy-Contreras/dp/1450429297/
 
Mark Lauren : http://www.amazon.com/You-Are-Your-Own-Gym/dp/0345528581/
 
Etc... Google to find known authors and coachs and avoid pseudo-expert... You don't need to follow a lot of guys, choose just 3-4 very good ressources and it's sufficient.

I'd recommend taking a look at the Body by You book. It's basically the You are Your Own Gym workout, but redesigned specifically for women, with different progressions, etc.

My wife started YAYOG, but didn't make it past the first couple of days due to the difficulty. She's had much better success with Body by You though, and has stuck with it as a result.

Also, if you do end up getting that book, I'd recommend the paper version. It's going to be easier to reference the exercises, plus it has places to log your workouts, etc. And, it's only $.10 more than the Kindle version right now.

I have seen a lot of people over on fitocracy use the book You Are Your Own Gym Seems like a of people like this guys books. Also I have heard good things about the Convict Conditioning.

Linkys
http://amzn.com/0345528581

Also one just for women
http://amzn.com/0345528972

I don't think there will ever be a perfect rule that can be applied across all possibilities without fail, but for me one of the major things I look for is whether the author is a respected scientist actively working in the field (or, if they're retired, had an active history in the field).

So your Gazzaniga and Brown books I wouldn't even hesitate to recommend to others, without even having read them. It helps that I've read other books by those authors and their research, but their names alone are enough for me to give them a tick. Of course that doesn't guarantee that they're good books, but if you're asking for a rule on how to judge a book before reading it, then that's probably going to result in more success than failure.

The second thing I look for is whether the author has a history of writing polemics and intentionally controversial books in order to increase sales (a sort of "clickbait" approach to books), and whether their names are associated with criticism for misrepresenting basic issues in the areas they discuss. As such, people like Gladwell and Pinker would be ruled out by this.

>I'd also love to hear /r/skeptic 's suggestions for reading specifically about learning, drive, motivation, discipline...

My personal suggestions would be:

Understanding Behaviorism - William Baum (touches a little more on rigorous academic work rather than being a purely pop work, but still has some good pop chapters).

The Science of Self-Control - Howard Rachlin

Breakdown of Will - George Ainslie

Some related books but not directly on those topics:

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat - Oliver Sacks (It's a cliche suggestion but still a good book).

Brainwashed: The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuroscience - Sally Satel and Scott Lilienfeld (More methodological issues with neuroscience research and reporting).

Delusion of Gender - Cordelia Fine (Critical look at some of the research on gender differences).

I don't really agree with him.

This whole 'you can't flip masculine things and feminine things' is just a social construct like 'masculine' and 'feminine' things are to begin with. I also don't think 'believability' is a relevant trait considering we're already dealing with fantasy universes. Who is to say that women aren't just as strong as men in Random Fantasy Universe #754 or whatever? I mean, they already have magic and completely impossible creatures. It doesn't seem like that big of a stretch.

The whole idea of gender as some immutable thing with factual qualities that can't be defied in any way and any attempt to do so innately repulses people pretty much just reinforces the gender norms of society, which I think we'd be way better off without anyway. Delusions of Gender, a really good book, goes into how false ideas about the immutability of gender do real damage to people.

This is probably more of a question for a neurologist than a psychologist, but - have you read Delusions of Gender? I found it to be pretty damned compelling but it's well outside of my field of study so I can't gauge how authoritative it is. Thoughts?