Couples who say "we" have a better shot at resolving conflicts and marital issues

By Yasmin Anwar, Media Relations 

A new study from the University of California, Berkeley, suggests that spouses who use "we-ness" language are better able to resolve conflicts than those who don't.

UC Berkeley researchers analyzed conversations between 154 middle-aged and older couples about points of disagreement in their marriages and found that those who used pronouns such as "we," "our" and "us" behaved more positively toward one another and showed less physiological stress. Marital issues are more easily resolved with a "we" attitude.

In contrast, couples who emphasized marital issues that arise from their "separateness" by using pronouns such as "I," "me" and "you" were found to be less satisfied in their marriages. This marital approach was especially true for older couples. Their use of separateness pronouns was most strongly linked to unhappy marriages, according to the study.

Moreover, the study found that older couples identified more as "we" than did their middle-aged counterparts, suggesting that facing obstacles and overcoming challenges together over the long haul, including raising families, may give couples a greater sense of shared identity.

"Individuality is a deeply ingrained value in American society, but, at least in the realm of marriage, being part of a 'we' is well worth giving up a bit of 'me,'" said UC Berkeley psychology professor Robert Levenson, a co-author of the study published last semester in the journal Psychology and Aging.

Previous studies have established that the use of "we-ness" or "separateness" language is a strong indicator of marital satisfaction in younger couples. These latest findings, however, take this several steps further by showing how powerful this correlation is in more established couples, linking it to the emotions and physiological responses that occur when spouses either team up or become polarized in the face of disagreements, researchers said.

"The use of 'we' language is a natural outgrowth of a sense of partnership, of being on the same team, and confidence in being able to face problems together," said study co-author Benjamin Seider, a graduate student in psychology at UC Berkeley.

In addition to Seider and Levenson, co-authors of the marital issues study, "We Can Work It Out: Age Differences in Relational Pronouns, Physiology and Behavior in Marital Conflict," are Gilad Hirschberger and Kristin Nelson, who conducted their research while at UC Berkeley's Institute of Personality and Social Research.

American Bird watchers coast to coast are invited to take part in the 13th annual Great Backyard Bird Count, Friday, February 12, through Monday, February 15, 2010.  Participants in the free event will join tens of thousands of volunteers counting birds in their own backyards, local parks or wildlife refuges. 

Each checklist submitted by these "citizen scientists" helps researchers at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology,the National Audubon Society , and Bird Studies Canada learn more about how the birds are doing--and how to protect them. Last year, participants turned in more than 93,600 checklists online, creating the continent's largest instantaneous snapshot of bird populations ever recorded.

Anyone can take part in the Great Backyard Bird Count,
from novice bird watchers to experts.

Participants count birds for as little as 15 minutes (or as long as they wish) on one or more days of the event and report their sightings online at www.birdcount.org. One 2009 participant said, "Thank you for the opportunity to participate in citizen science. I have had my eyes opened to a whole new interest and I love it!"

Winter is such a vulnerable period for birds, so winter bird distributions are likely to be very sensitive to change.

There is only one way--citizen science--to gather data on private lands where people live and GBBC has been doing this across the continent for many years.

GBBC has enormous potential both as an early warning system and in capturing and engaging people in more intensive sampling of birds across the landscape."

Bird populations are always shifting and changing.

For example, 2009 GBBC data highlighted a huge southern invasion of Pine Siskins across much of the eastern United States. Participants counted 279,469 Pine Siskins on 18,528 checklists, as compared to the previous high of 38,977 birds on 4,069 checklists in 2005. Failure of seed crops farther north caused the siskins to move south to find their favorite food.

Bird Count Website

On the www.birdcount.org website, participants can explore real-time maps and charts that show what others are reporting during the count. The site has tips to help identify birds and special materials for educators. Participants may also enter the GBBC photo contest by uploading images taken during the count. Many images will be featured in the GBBC website's photo gallery. All participants are entered in a drawing for prizes that include bird feeders, binoculars, books, CDs, and many other great birding products.

Canadian Bird Studies Birdcount

In 2010, Bird Studies Canada (BSC) joins the GBBC as the program's Canadian partner. "Bird Studies Canada is delighted to be the Canadian partner for this extremely valuable program," said George Finney, President of BSC. "Participating in the GBBC is an excellent way for Canadians to reconnect with their love of nature and birds."

For more information about the GBBC, visit the website at www.birdcount.org. 

CAREGIVING IN AMERICA is a monthly magazine published by Minnesota publisher Kay Sauck, premiered in December 2009 to address the needs and concerns of the 50 million caregivers of family and friends. 

The magazine and website, www.CaregivingInAmerica.com, will draw on a stable of experts in health and aging and two organizations devoted to caregiver support: the Rosalynn Carter Institute for Caregiving and the Aging with Dignity organization.

In primary care settings, prevalence estimates of major depressive disorder range from 5% to 13% in all adults, with lower estimates in those older than 55 years (6% to 9%).

In 2002, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recommended screening adults for depression in clinical practices that have systems to ensure accurate diagnosis, effective treatment, and follow-up.

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is common, with an estimated lifetime prevalence of 13.2%.

In primary care settings, prevalence estimates of MDD range from 5% to 13% in all adults, with lower estimates in those older than 55 years (6% to 9%).

Primary care practitioners manage approximately one third to one half of non elderly adults and almost two thirds of older adults  who received treatment for MDD. The severity of depressive symptoms in patients who receive treatment in primary care is equivalent to that of patients treated in psychiatric settings. For example, approximately 43% of such primary care patients report some degree of suicidal ideation within the previous week.

In 2002, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recommended screening adults for depression in clinical practices that have systems to ensure accurate diagnosis, effective treatment, and follow-up.

Subsequent reviewers have concluded that screening does not improve health outcomes, but care management systems for depressed patients improve depression remission rates. Commentators on these divergent reviews have been divided.

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality conducted a systematic review to aid the USPSTF in updating its 2002 recommendation for adult depression screening in primary care. We sought to

1) identify evidence published since the previous review on the benefits of screening for depression in primary care and integrate it with the previously identified evidence and

2) review the evidence in several areas in which evidence was insufficient at the time of the previous review or not was examined by the previous review.

This includes the benefits of depression treatment in older adults, the harms of depression screening, and the harms of depression treatment with antidepressant medications.

Conclusion:
Depression screening programs without substantial staff-assisted depression care supports are unlikely to improve depression outcomes. Close monitoring of all adult patients who initiate antidepressant treatment, particularly those younger than 30 years, is important both for safety and to ensure optimal treatment.

Read more at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality

Local food is fresher and tastes better than food shipped long distances from other states or countries. Local farmers can offer produce varieties bred for taste and freshness rather than for shipping and long shelf life.

Shipping food for thousands of miles not only loses freshness and its related health benefits, but it increases use and dependence on petroleum for transportation -- which affects air quality, and soil and habitat health.  Local production of consumables is common sense, and this online local food locator can help you make buying local and fresh food practical.

The Buy Fresh Buy Local Campaign, a project of the Community Alliance with Family Farmers, helps consumers find and choose local products while building relationships between growers, food artisans, farmers' markets retailers, restaurants, and institutions.

Buy Local Buy Fresh:  http://guide.buylocalca.org/

Baby boomers may be popularly portrayed as whiners, complainers and narcissists, but a new study by University of Massachusetts Amherst psychology Professor Susan Krauss Whitbourne says the 50-somethings are getting a bad rap.

Connection to Younger Generations...Social Conscience

"It's wrong to say baby boomers are selfish and only care about staying young," says Susan Krauss Whitbourne. "They have a feeling of connection to younger generations and a social conscience."

Whitbourne's findings, based on three decades of data from two groups of baby boomers, were published in the September issue of the journal Developmental Psychology, published by the American Psychological Association.

The study began in 1966 at the University of Rochester in New York, when a group of students participated in a research project on personality development. Similar studies of successive generations of students at Rochester as well as follow-up surveys with participants in the earliest groups have yielded 34 years of information about the life changes experienced by leading edge boomers, who were in their mid- to late 50s, and trailing edge boomers, who were in their mid-40s, at the time of the most recent survey.

Boomers in Midlife

"What's most interesting is seeing what happened to baby boomers in midlife," says Whitbourne. "Some became more fulfilled, others became despairing, and yet others remained relatively stable. My research design allowed me to suggest which changes in their lives were most closely connected with a growth in fulfillment. 

• More fulfilled
• Despairing
• Relatively Stable

According to Whitbourne, the results suggest that personality growth doesn't follow a ladder model where one stage succeeds another, but more closely resembles a matrix, in which issues associated with early stages of life are continuously revisited through life.

Matrix of Early Life's Issues

For Whitbourne, the study illustrates that we are not locked into a narrowly defined life by the time we are of college age. "I've seen people overcome social deficits over the course of the study," she says. "This really shows that you don't have to give up on yourself. People can change through their entire life."

Fulfillment Beyond the Workplace

Since the last study, the boomers have found fulfillment beyond the workplace, says Whitbourne. In the 1980s, the "me generation" was working hard and making a lot of money, but something was missing from their lives. At the time, Whitbourne said the results were shaped by Reagan-era social values.

Volunteerism

By the '90s, however, the volunteerism of the Clinton years seems to have taken root among those unfulfilled boomers, she says. "There is a real concern about social well-being that goes back to the core values they developed in college."

Industriousness

Another change Whitbourne notes concerns "industry," a personality trait associated with the work ethic. The oldest boomers in the study had measured far lower on industry than other age groups in earlier surveys, but the latest data show they've caught up with their peers.

"It would appear from the present analyses that the very lowest industry scores were obtained in college from participants who, in early adulthood, had jobs with extremely low prestige," says the study. "However, they managed to exceed their peers in industry scores throughout the course of the study."

Self-confidence and Determination in Women

For midlife women, the results also support other studies that found gains in self-confidence and determination through the workplace, says Whitbourne. "It is possible that for these leading-edge baby boomer women, feelings of competence were suppressed in college, when it seemed as though their careers would play an important role in their future success," she writes.

Intimacy and Relationships are Not the Only Change Agents

The study also reinforces the idea that individuals can overcome early issues with intimacy and relationships, notes Whitbourne, and "catch up" with their psychologically more fortunate peers.

According to the data, participants who were not in a committed relationship early in adulthood showed continued gains throughout the period of the study and moved toward an increasingly favorable resolution that exceeded those peers who were in a committed relationship in early adulthood.

Later Parenting

"Enhanced development gains" were also noted for boomers who became parents after the age of 31. By waiting until their careers were established, those study participants may have been "best able to enjoy their new parenthood status to the fullest," says Whitbourne.

What Midlife Crisis?

Whitbourne says the study also lays to rest the myth of the midlife crisis. Based on the interviews and surveys, she says, "My study confirms others in the empirical literature that despite its popularity in the pop culture, the majority of adults don't freak out in their 40s or 50s."

That's not to say the study participants haven't had their ups and downs, says Whitbourne, but individuals grapple with their problems in a variety of ways. "People may experience depression in midlife, but it's too glib to write that off as a midlife crisis. Other factors must be considered."

The study is co-authored by Joel R. Sneed of Queens College, City University of New York, Columbia University and the New York State Psychiatric Institute, and Aline Sayer, visiting associate professor of psychology at UMass Amherst.

Source: Newswise

Some say that violence is part of the American psyche...but it doesn't have to be.  We need practical solutions for our stress, aggression and communication habits.  There ARE better solutions than violence.

Violence between couples is usually the result of a calculated decision-making process and the partner inflicting violence will do so only as long as the price to be paid is not too high.

Loss of Control Differs at Home and Work

This is the conclusion of a new study by Dr. Eila Perkis at the University of Haifa. "The violent partner might conceive his or her behavior as a 'loss of control', but the same individual, unsurprisingly, would not lose control in this way with a boss or friends," she explains.

Law-abiding, Normal People...Outside!

In this new study, carried out at the University of Haifa's School of Social Work, Dr. Perkis examined intimate violence based on the fact that in most cases the offending partner is a law-abiding individual living a normative life outside of the family unit. Dr. Perkis says that in most cases the couple continues living together and sustaining a shared family unit, so it is important that we learn to understand the dynamics of such partnerships in order to treat them.

Family Dynamics of Intimate Violence

First Dr. Perkis divided intimate violence into four levels of severity:

1. verbal aggression;
   
2. threats of physical aggression;
   
3. moderate physical aggression; and
   
4. severe physical aggression
   

Verbal Violence Escalates

"These four levels follow one another in an escalating sequence; someone who uses verbal violence might well move on over time to threatening physical attack, and from there it is only downhill towards acting on the threat," she explains. Dr. Perkis warns however, that the results of this study should not be correlated to cases of murder, since the dynamics between couples in such cases are different and such offenses are not included in the chain of violent acts being examined.

Solving Conflicts

The researcher found that acting on each type of violence is calculated, such that the violence constitutes a tool for solving conflict between the partners.

"Neither of the couple sits down and plans when he or she will swear or lash out at the other, but there is a sort of silent agreement standing between the two on what limits of violent behavior are 'ok', where the red line is drawn, and where behavior beyond that could be dangerous," she explains.

She adds that when speaking of one-sided physical violence, most often carried out by men, the violent side understands that for a slap, say, he will not pay a very heavy price, but for harsher violence that is not included in the 'normative' dynamic between them, he might well have to pay a higher price and will therefore keep himself from such behavior. 

Leaving or Reporting the Incident...Is a Heavy Price to Pay!

"A 'heavy price' could be the partner's leaving or reporting the incident to the police or the workplace. As such, it can be said that violent behavior is not the result of loss of control and both sides are aware of where the red line is drawn, even if such an agreement has never been spoken between them," she says.

Better Tools for Solving Conflict

According to Dr. Perkis, it is important to point out that use of violence is not a normative behavior; it is illegal, and of course, immoral. Therefore, it is only the violent partner who is culpable for the act. Nevertheless, once we understand that violence is being used as a tool for solving conflict between a couple that is interested in staying together, we can help them subdue such behavior by providing them with better tools to cope with the source of tension and conflict in their lives together.

"In couples therapy for partners who express the wish to stay together, therapy must be focused on identifying illegitimate motives, such as nonnormative tactics for solving conflict, and assisting the couple in acknowledging their ability to convert destructive patterns into effective ones and ultimately to run their lives better," the researcher concludes.

Solutions:

• Identify illegitimate motives
• Tactics for solving conflicts
• Ability to change destructive patterns into effective ones
• Run lives better
  

Ann Hettinger reports that brain experts say it's possible to corral your brainpower, filter out distractions, and master any task by improving your concentration.

Here's what to do about it.

Get organized

If you have several to-dos, decide what to tackle first, and clear all other projects off your desk and computer screen.

Participate

If you daydream during meetings, challenge yourself by thinking of questions and actively joining the discussion.

Change your scenery

When you start to lose concentration, leave your desk and take a walk outside or to the office common space for a mental breather.

For more tips on corraling your brain power, visit Interns Over 40 for a wide variety of Boomer work insights and tips.

In interviews, the first question I get in America is always: "What do you do to stay young?" I do nothing. I don't think aging is a problem. 

What irritates me a little is growing fatter.  It irritates me that if I eat what I want to eat it shows.

Yes, my face has wrinkles. But I don't find it monstrous. I'm so surprised that the emphasis on aging here is on physical decay, when aging brings such incredible freedom. 

Now what I want most is laughs.  I don't want to hurt anybody by laughing -- there is no meanness to it. I just want to laugh."

...as told to Johanna Schneller
O Magazine, September 2009

Community Recycling in Cooperatives

In New York City, apartment building residents, superintendents, porters, and management company employees are being encouraged to participate in a new program to improve recycling in their apartment buildings. The program is called the NYC Apartment Building Recycling Initiative (ABRI). It provides training for the participants.

The city Department of Sanitation's Bureau of Waste Prevention Reuse and Recycling enrolls a building, and helps  assess how the building is recycling. After the participants complete their training session, they receive a building evaluation based on the site visit with suggestions on how to improve recycling in the building.

Over 200 buildings are registered in the program and 133 buildings that have sent residents, supers, and even some building managers to the evening training sessions. Increasingly, ABRI is becoming very popular with cooperative and condominium boards.

Trained volunteers  are implementing cooperative recycling programs

1) improvements on how the building is set up for recycling;

2) regular education geared to all residents; and

3) the organization of a committee or ad hoc group to keep the focus on recycling all year round.

If your cooperative or condominium would like to take advantage of this free training, visit www.CENYC.org.

RECYCLING ELECTRONICS

1) Upper West Side Recycling also accepts and recycles batteries and E-waste and runs periodic collections at fixed locations. For further information, contact Jeff Twine at 212 865-9595.

2) Per Scholas is New York City's only electronics processing facility. It has been reconditioning and recycling E-Waste since 1999. In addition to making low-cost computers available to children and adults who cannot afford a new computer, Per Scholas also trains local youth for full-time jobs as computer technicians. For more information call Per Scholas: (718) 772-0651.

CLOTHING AND TEXTILE RECYCLING

Upper West Side Recycling  focuses on collection and recycling of materials that are not picked up by the NYC Department of Sanitation.

They help buildings recycle clothing and other textiles. They help buildings organize and publicize an in-house textile drive, and will furnish a portable 4 x 21/2 foot clothing bin so that building residents don't have to haul these goods to a collection site, or worse, dump them in the trash.

Recyclable textiles include clean clothing (wearable or unwearable, shoes, pocketbooks, curtains, sheets, blankets, comforters, and towels. By participating you can help resident do their spring cleaning, keep textiles out of our landfills and recycle in an easy, convenient way.

http://www.cnyc.coop/