“Johnnie, your hair looks so nice today!” the receptionist exclaimed as he walked by. “Oh, Johnnie, your hair looks wonderful!” one of the secretaries echoed. When Johnnie entered the psychiatrist’s office, instead of sitting in a chair as asked, he crouched down and intently peered at himself in a thin strip of chrome on the chair. “What are you doing, Johnnie?” the doctor asked him. Johnnie didn’t answer. Instead, he tilted his head, examining his hair from different angles, patting it and smoothing it out. He also grinned at himself, examining and touching his teeth.Johnnie was excessively worried about his hair, which he thought “wasn’t right” or flat enough. He was also obsessed with his teeth, which he thought weren’t white or straight enough, and his “pot” belly. He frequently checked mirrors and excessively brushed his teeth. He often touched and groomed his hair, using special hair creams. If he couldn’t get his hair to look right, Johnnie cried, dunked his head in water, and started his grooming routine all over again. “I wish the whole world was bald,” he said, “including me, so I wouldn’t have to worry about my hair!”Over and over again, Johnnie asked his parents, “Is my hair okay?” “Am I fat?” His mother estimated that he spent at least three hours a day focused on his appearance and asking for reassurance. Johnnie was only five years old.*152\204\8*

There is no doubt that breakdown due to excessive environmental stress is associated with physical violence. Studies have demonstrated a relationship between poverty, environmental stress, and violence. Gil (1969, 1970) found that family violence in poor families with high levels of stress from socio-economic deprivation was more frequent, less restrained and more lethal than family violence occurring in middle-class families under less stress.
It might be argued that poor people are more violent because of some factor other than that of increased stress, but other research supports the relationship between the stress level itself, as measured objectively, and the tendency to violence.
A lot of the violence associated with stress occurs in the second stage of stress breakdown, which can be easily identified and prevented. When drugs have been used as a means of staying in the stressful situation without feeling the discomfort of anxiety symptoms, violence is even more likely. I think it is quite probable that simple education on stress breakdown might help to prevent some of the violence in our too-busy society.
I would hope that the reader has understood the following points:
•     Anxiety is an alarm reaction triggered when the nervous system is failing to process incoming information adequately.
When a person experiences anxiety, there are five questions to answer. These may point to the cause of the anxiety.
•      Anxiety can be caused by excessive stress – an overload of the nervous system. Anxiety is thus the first sign of overload, that is, stage one of stress breakdown.
•      By ignoring the warning of anxiety symptoms, people experiencing anxiety under stress may use up their inhibitory and will-power reserves, and develop the symptoms of stage two -loss of emotional control and inability to motivate the self.

*24/129/5*

Dreams are to be forgotten, but can we really forget them, even if we think we do not remember them?

Deja vu can be an experience closely related to these apparently forgotten dreams. Occasionally we have some vague idea, perhaps mat we have been to a place before and yet we are certain that this is not possible. This vague familiar feeling of recognition is called deja vu. How do we explain this? The answer lies in the many, many dreams that we dream every night but which we apparently forget.

Memory is one of those interesting psychological myths that we are still trying to understand. All of us have had the embarrassing experience of meeting an old friend that we have not contacted for years, and fail to remember his name. You try to call him by his name, but fail to remember; you know it starts with J, one of those-John, James, or Jack. The name is at the tip of your tongue but it just does not come. Finally he gives you his business card and tells you to call him one day. After he leaves, you look at the card and recognize his name immediately. It is a name you know-James Bond. Memory works in three stages:

* Registration-information is passed on to the memory bank

* Retention-this information is stored in the memory bank

* Recall-retrieval of this information, when required, from the memory bank.

Whether the information is remembered or not depends on the ability to recall. Inability to recall does not mean we have forgotten about it. Given the right cue, we may begin to remember more and more. Of course, as in the above case, looking at the business card and recognizing James Bond implies you have not really forgotten him.

Our memory bank is bombarded with a variety of information from the dreams we have night after night .We never seem to remember the dreams, and as far as we are concerned they are not in our memory. However, one day we visit a place we have never been before. This place has some features similar to those in one of our forgotten dreams. We recognize some of the similar features, which gives us the feeling that we know the place and have been there before. This is deja vu.

*27\174\4*

Basic cause of anxiety is the arrival at the brain of more nervous impulses than can be properly sorted out by the brain. In other words, there is incomplete integration of the impulses. A good sleep helps the brain in reaching this integration. We go to bed tense with anxiety, and wake refreshed and with things clearer in our mind after a good night’s rest. Sleep then is a help in the integration of the inflow of nervous impulses. But a regressed state of mind is very much more effective in this respect than is sleep. This is clearly shown by the fact that people with severe chronic anxiety may be given drugs to make them sleep well; but anxiety of any severity is not relieved by this means. However, these people usually lose their anxiety if they can be brought to a regressed state of mind, and if they practise this consistently, the condition is gradually alleviated. In other words, the regressed state of the relaxing exercises aids the integration of the impulses arriving at the brain, and so reduces the general level of anxiety.

*53\57\2*

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• DEJA VU