What Your Handwriting Says About You

Is this real? Do handwriting analyses really say *this* much about your personality? Okay, so a cyber-acquaintance posted a handwriting analysis of Joseph Smith (a funny prospect in and of itself) and I surfed into the web site and did a little analysis of my own hot self. I have no idea how I feel about the results but I thought I’d post them and those who know me can see if you think this stuff works or if it’s just another kind of palm reading. [Also note the funny usage error in bold]:

 Todd is moderately outgoing. His emotions are stirred by sympathy and heart rendering stories. In fact, he can be kind, friendly, affectionate and considerate of others. He has the ability to put himself into the other person’s shoes.

Todd will be somewhat moody, with highs and lows. Sometimes he will be happy, the next day he might be sad. He has the unique ability to get along equally well with what psychology calls introverts and extroverts. This is because he is in between. Psychology calls Todd an ambivert. He understands the needs of both types. Although they get along, he will not tolerate anyone that is too “far out.” He doesn’t sway too far one way or the other.

When convincing him to buy a product or an idea, a heart rendering story could mean a great deal to him. He puts himself in the same situation as the person in the story, yet he will not buy anything that seems overly impractical or illogical. Todd is an expressive person. He outwardly shows his emotions. He may even show traces of tears when hearing a sad story.

Todd is a “middle-of-the-roader,” politically as well as logically. He weighs both sides of an issue, sits on the fence, and then will decide when he finally has to. He basically doesn’t relate to any far out ideas and usually won’t go to the extreme on any issue.

 People that write their letters in an average height and average size are moderate in their ability to interact socially. According to the data input, Todd doesn’t write too large or too small, indicating a balanced ability to be social and interact with others.

 Todd will be candid and direct when expressing his opinion. He will tell them what he thinks if they ask for it, whether they like it or not. So, if they don’t really want his opinion, don’t ask for it!

 In reference to Todd’s mental abilities, he has a very investigating and creating mind. He investigates projects rapidly because he is curious about many things. He gets involved in many projects that seem good at the beginning, but he soon must slow down and look at all the angles. He probably gets too many things going at once. When Todd slows down, then he becomes more creative than before. Since it takes time to be creative, he must slow down to do it. He then decides what projects he has time to finish. Thus he finishes at a slower pace than when he started the project.

He has the best of two kinds of minds. One is the quick investigating mind. The other is the creative mind. His mind thinks quick and rapidly in the investigative mode. He can learn quicker, investigate more, and think faster. Todd can then switch into his low gear. When he is in the slower mode, he can be creative, remember longer and stack facts in a logical manner. He is more logical this way and can climb mental mountains with a much better grip.

 Todd is a practical person whose goals are planned, practical, and down to earth. This is typical of people with normal healthy self-esteem. He needs to visualize the end of a project before he starts. he finds joy in anticipation and planning. Notice that I said he plans everything he is going to do, that doesn’t necessarily mean things go as planned. Todd basically feels good about himself. He has a positive self-esteem which contributes to his success. He feels he has the ability to achieve anything he sets his mind to. However, he sets his goals using practicality– not too “out of reach”. He has enough self-confidence to leave a bad situation, yet, he will not take great risks, as they relate to his goals. A good esteem is one key to a happy life. Although there is room for improvement in the confidence catagery, his self-perception is better than average.

 Todd is sarcastic. This is a defense mechanism designed to protect his ego when he feels hurt. He pokes people harder than he gets poked. These sarcastic remarks can be very funny. They can also be harsh, bitter, and caustic at the same time.

 Todd has a temper. He uses this as a defense mechanism when he doesn’t understand how to handle a situation. Temper is a hostile trait used to protect the ego. Temper can be a negative personality trait in the eyes of those around him.

 Todd has a healthy imagination and displays a fair amount of trust. He lets new people into his circle of friends. He uses his imagination to understand new ideas, things, and people.

 

Thinking about Gay Heroes for Some Reason

I walked around the Castro a couple of times when they were shooting this new bio-pic about Harvey Milk here in the city. I have been dubious about this project, mainly because mythologizing real people always seems to dehumanize them in some ways and rob them of their complexity and subtlety (usually their flaws are the first casualties). But I like Sean Penn okay and so was waiting to judge. The trailer blew me away.

Before you see this film, if you haven’t seen the documentary about Milk’s life called “The Times of Harvey Milk“, you should really see that first. I got a major headache from bawling when I watched it, but so did all the other gay folk in the theater with me. My former therapist was a friend of Harvey and the worked on several issues together in the mid-1970s. Apparently he was kind of an asshole, and more than a little ego-driven. But my friend still loved him and said he really did change the city for gay folks in ways that I couldn’t imagine, moving here 20 years after he was assassinated.

I suppose these older activists are on my mind lately, as Del Martin died last week at age 85. She was a brilliant, strong, funny woman who stood up for lesbians in the 1950s when the Mattachine Society was ignoring them; stood up for gay men in the early 1960s when the churches and police here in SF were hounding them; organized everything from police watches (the police would entrap and beat up gay men, who had no recourse at the time) to suicide help lines to food kitchens for homeless gay men and women who had been kicked out of their homes or fired; she moved on to become an impressive advocate for women’s rights in the late 1960s; and by the 1980s was helping organize to take care of gay men dying of AIDS. Her partner, Phyllis Lyon, and she have been together since they met in the early 1950s.

Rest in peace Harvy, although you died many years ago at the hands of a homophobic lunatic, you created a city that would welcome me decades later; and to Del who lived long enough to go from a closeted professional woman in the 1940s to being legally married in the State of California just weeks before her death, your trailblazing began 20 years before Harvey’s and what you did for me and mine can never be repaid.

 

Sei still, mein hertz

I haven’t been posting about the olympics (or much of anything this past year), but I have been watching them avidly. For some reason, I can’t stop swooning over the german gymnast, Fabian Hambüchen.

 

Relationships (Happiness Hypothesis, Part 4)

This Chapter was really complicated to get through for some reason, mostly that it’s the thing that is most bothering me in real life. Here’s the itty-bitty (hazel?) nutshell:

We have attachment patterns that are determined (no surprise) by a combination of genetic predisposition and environment (but this is much less clear than the happiness state in general, according to Haidt). Attachment disorder is real, and normal human development requires attachment to adults when you’re a child. Haidt then shows how we basically transfer our attachment patterns with parents/caretakers from childhood onto our adult relationships. 

Children’s (and later adults’) attachment is understood as the relationship between moving away from the safe relationship into the world of play (or work in adults), and how the transition between play and security unfolds. The three basic styles of attachment in children are 1) secure attachment (smooth move between play and security-seeking at appropriate times); 2) avoidant attachment (children suppress their distress and try to manage their fear and pain by themselves while showing few outward signs of distress); 3) resistant attachment (extreme distress when separated from the safe relationship; cling to mom when she returns, never really settle down after her return). According to Haidt, this corresponds roughly to three adult attachment patterns, which I’ll paraphrase from the book:

1. relatively easy to get close to others and comfortable depending on them and having them depend on me; don’t often worry about being abandoned or someone getting to close to me;

2. uncomfortable being close to others; difficult to trust completely or allow myself to depend on others; nervous when someone gets too close; partners often complain that I am too distant or lack intimacy;

3. others are reluctant to get as close as I would like; worry that my partner will abandon me and doesn’t really love me or want to stay with me; want to merge completley with another person, a desire that scares potential partners away.

“Romantic” partners become attachment figures for adults and, interestingly, it uses the same neural and hormonal pathways and mother-child bonding (and Haidt says actually both men and women have the whole system and both men and women function perfectly normally as attachment figures for children). Haidt’s discussion of how this evolved jibes pretty closely to other things I’ve read and my own conclusions about the evolution of pair-bond love among humans.

Unfortunately, Haidt gives no suggestions for addressing your attachment style; his point is simply that the single biggest predictor of happiness and health among humans is the strength of their social connections and pair-bond relationship.

Fuck.

 

Flow and Life Goals (Happiness Hypothesis, Part 3)

In the Happiness Hypothesis that I talked about yesterday, he keeps talking about a couple of things that are making me really uncomfortable and really really sad. 

The greatest predictors of happiness across cultures are 1) being in a committed relationship (and to a lesser degree having a circle of close friends) and 2) having a purpose or goal in life that you’re working toward (this doesn’t mean one big goal, but rather that you’re always working toward something).

I’m avoiding the chapter on relatinoships and happiness because it’s just too painful. I lead a very isolated existence. One of the things that I’ve become increasingly aware of over the past 18 months or so is a contradiciton in how I lead my life. On one hand I have a very deep and fiercely loyal connection to people that spans decades; my love and connection is real and once you have it it’s for life. But on the other hand, I have deep and abiding doubts about other people’s commitment to me; I live in every relationship with the knowledge (not rational) that I am  not worthy or capable of a relationship with Person X, Y, or Z. I feel like my presence is a bother in people’s lives or that I’m a burden. I don’t remember ever NOT feelings this way. And so I see a slate of behaviors I have that basically sabotage all my relationships from the inside, mainly centering around my withdrawal from the relationship. It is hard to be nearly 40 and to realize that a good deal of the reason you’re alone is because of things you’ve done to make sure you’ll always be alone. If you add a romantic or sexual component to the list, then forget about it. J’en suis nul.

But more disturbing to me has been the realization that I have no purpose in life, of my own making or otherwise. Mormonism served that function in life for the first 24 years or so; then it was grad school and becoming a professor. Now I am a professor, and I have nothing else to wor k toward. 

Haidt says that finding things you’re passionate about, figuring out your current strengths, and then creating goals for yourself is a key to a happy life. And so I realize that I’m not happy because I’m a purposeless, goalless, lonely individual?

The thing that is pissing me off the most about this damn book is how true it’s turning out to be, or how deeply it’s resonnating. I don’t think I”m a profoundly unhappy person, but I am prone to depression and have been my entire life. And I don’t feel an overall satisfaction with life that would be that “baseline” happiness or “set point” Haidt talks about.

I keep hearing that damn song from Saturday’s Warrior in my head: “Who am I? Where am I going? …”

 

My Five Weaknesses (Happiness Hypothesis, Part 2)

Below I posted my five psychological strengths at the moment. The test ranks all 24 areas, so I thought I’d post my bottom five. They were, I have to admit, a little disturbing; or at least one of them is disturbing. Thought some friends might have some feedback for me. #20 is hard for me to see, but also makes sense given how isolated and lonely I’ve been feeling the past couple years and the fact that I have always doubted that the love I have for other people is reciprocated. 

Strength#20

Capacity to love and be loved You value close relations with others, in particular those in which sharing and caring are reciprocated. The people to whom you feel most close are the same people who feel most close to you.

Strength#21

Spirituality, sense of purpose, and faith You have strong and coherent beliefs about the higher purpose and meaning of the universe. You know where you fit in the larger scheme. Your beliefs shape your actions and are a source of comfort to you.

Strength#22

Industry, diligence, and perseverance You work hard to finish what you start. No matter the project, you “get it out the door” in timely fashion. You do not get distracted when you work, and you take satisfaction in completing tasks.

Strength#23

Self-control and self-regulation You self-consciously regulate what you feel and what you do. You are a disciplined person. You are in control of your appetites and your emotions, not vice versa.

Strength#24

Hope, optimism, and future-mindedness You expect the best in the future, and you work to achieve it. You believe that the future is something that you can control.

 

The Happiness Hypothesis (Friends Version)

As I’ve mentioned several times recently, I’m slowly working my way through Jonathan Haidt’s The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding MOdern Truth in Ancient Wisdom. Haidt is a “positive psychologist”, a new subfield of psychology that arose in the late 1990s following a couple decades of sort of groundbreaking research in psychology. The subtitle is a little misleading, however. What he’s actually doing in the book is evaluating human ideas about happiness based on the last 30 years of research; the book is a description of what we know right now about baseline happiness, written for a lay audience. This is my pleasure reading, so it’s going slow; but it’s really worth it.

To understand the book, you have to know that psychologists differentiate between baseline happiness (life satisfaction) and moments or events of extreme emotional pleasure. So happiness is a state of being distinguishible from moments of excitement or joy or pleasure that are fleeting. (The way they started measuring this is fascinating and I’m really glad I wasn’t in the experiment because I would have found it intolerably irritating.)

 

In Ch. 5, “The Pursuit of Happiness”, Haidt talks about Buddhist ideas of non-attachment. I won’t rehearse the whole thing here, but here’s the formula that positive psych has put on baseline happiness:

H=S+C+V

Happiness is an interaction between genetic Set point, life Conditions, and Voluntary activities. S=Briefly, about 20 years ago, the research started showing a strong genetic component to baseline happiness, which has since been refined; that is, happiness turns out to be extremely heritable. Recent research has shown that this is a range for each individual, rather than a set level of satisfaction. Where you are in that range is highly influenced by other factors.

C=Life conditions are mostly things you can’t change (sex, age, race, etc.) and some things that change very slowly under normal circumstances (wealth, occupation, education, residence, marital status). It turns out that people in general adapt to their conditions and return to a baseline happiness rather quickly (surveys of quadripelegics and lottery winners show both returning to their pre-accident, pre-windfall levels within a year). There are, however, six life conditions that people seem not to adapt to: noisy environments, commuting, lack of control, shame, conflict in relationships.

V=There are then things that we do that change our affect with more or less permanence. Haidt divides these into two categories: pleasures and gratifications. Pleasures are usually physical, namely sex and food; they give real emotional impact, but they can be overdone and become banal. They are real forms of happiness in human life but cannot be depended on for lasting change in our baseline happiness.

Gratifications are activities that we engage in that last for hours or days or weeks afterwards. They come from engaging in activities where we feel confident in our abilities but where we are slightly challenged, so we are fully engaged in what we are doing. Researchers call the affective state “flow” and people remember the state long after and get real emotional pleasure long after the activity is completed. 

The chapter contains lots of different examples and research about what kinds of voluntary activities fit the bill, but there is one thing that stands out for everyone regardless of their strengths: pursuing objects that enhance your status, while humanly normal, do not bring happiness because socially, status is a zero sum game. Pursuing activities that you find personally, emotionally satisfying, especially when you share it with other people, bring the longest, most enduring affective response. In short, psychologically speaking, it is better to spend 100 dollars on a really good dinner with a loved one than to spend it on a luxury item or an object. Doing seems to always be better than an object.

Haidt suggests trying to incorporate at least one activity per day that is in your strengths, where you can experience “flow” to gradually (it takes time) increase your baseline happiness. The psychologist who coined the phrase “positive psychology” at Penn has a web site with a (rather long) test to determine your current strengths (these change over time as your life and you grow and evolve). [url]http://www.authentichappiness.org/[/url]

According to the test, here are my top five strengths:

Your Top Strength

Appreciation of beauty and excellence You notice and appreciate beauty, excellence, and/or skilled performance in all domains of life, from nature to art to mathematics to science to everyday experience.

Your Second Strength

Judgment, critical thinking, and open-mindedness Thinking things through and examining them from all sides are important aspects of who you are. You do not jump to conclusions, and you rely only on solid evidence to make your decisions. You are able to change your mind.

Your Third Strength

Forgiveness and mercy You forgive those who have done you wrong. You always give people a second chance. Your guiding principle is mercy and not revenge.

Your Fourth Strength

Fairness, equity, and justice Treating all people fairly is one of your abiding principles. You do not let your personal feelings bias your decisions about other people. You give everyone a chance.

Your Fifth Strength

Love of learning You love learning new things, whether in a class or on your own. You have always loved school, reading, and museums-anywhere and everywhere there is an opportunity to learn.

 

My Apartment Smells Like Basil

I’m in one of those moods today. After physio, I went to whole foods and bought some heirloom tomatoes and fresh basil for tonight’s dinner. And a big bunch of zinas, bright pink. The piercing color combined with the Mediterranean smell of basil hanging in the air has me relaxed and vibrating at a low frequency.

There are odd, unpredictable moments when, for the smallest of reasons, the universe seems to stop spinning and come to rest and it all feels okay.

 

The Unbearable Lightness of an African Pachyderm*

This struck me as both profound and brilliantly funny.

And for some reason reminded me of this:

*spelling corrected per Wry’s keen eye

 

Gay Coupling

The past couple weeks have not only had the legalization of gay marriage in California, but ongoing news about research into the causes of homosexuality and a debate about the ethics of parents aborting gay fetuses or undergoing in utero treatment to make their potentially gay fetuses straight. We’re still some years away from this being a reality, but we’re close enough for it to be scary. Although I’m sick of reading research about GLBT folks and am looking forward to my book being done and moving on from there, I do try to keep up in the field as easy as possible (i.e., without having to actually read it) for my own personal reasons.

Although I’m perfectly fine with scientists figuring out what makes a fetus turn out gay, I’m still not ready to figure out how I feel about the possibility of a treatment or test, so that parents can choose the orientation of their offspring. To be honest, it makes my stomach turn.

So let’s focus on the fun stuff: couples. Last week, On Point had a couple of researchers talking about their findings about gay marriage and gay couples in general.

This reminded me of some of the funnier stuff that had happened in this research before the 1999 Vermont civil unions: In the 1970s, Masters and Johnson were doing research for a book to convince gay men and lesbians that they should try to go straight. So they did very M&J research about how various couples had sex and their level of arousal, and enjoyment. With the best equiipment of the day, they studied a bunch of gay couples and compared them to a bunch of straight couples. They found that gay couples enjoy sex significantly more, have sex longer per session (more than twice as long!), tend to get a lot of pleasure out of giving pleasure to their partners, and have more intense orgasms. It is hysterical to read them trying to spin this research as a reason that gay men and women should seek therapy to repair their orientation. teehee.

Here’s a summary of the recent findings about gay couples from stuff I’ve been reading and the researchers on On Point (these are averages in large bodies of work; the work on lesbian couples, for example, is a 27 year old longitudinal study; I expect some of these to change and be corrected as time goes on and the research develops):

1) they have roughly the same divorce rate as straight couples when they have children (i’m not sure about when they don’t);

2) they have dramatically different modes of conflict resolution a) both gay male and female couples have much lower physiological anger responses to conflict, are more prone to be emotionally open to their partners during conflict, and have significantly lower withdrawal rates during conflict (that is, they stick around and work it out); b) lesbians are much more likely to hash it out and reconnect immediately; whereas gay men have a blow up and then it blows over a few minutes later as if nothing had happened;

3) lesbians are much more concerned about the quality of their relationship and talk about it frequently, which can lead to greater more frequent conflicts within the relationship;

4) gay men tend to never talk about their relationship per se, but tend to recover much more quickly from conflict and to not hold grudges than either straight or lesbian couples; but they tend to be competitive with each other which can lead to hurt feelings and misunderstandings;

5) gay men and lesbian have added stress in their relationships of dealing with homophobia and discrimination which they bring into their relationships and deal with together, which can either be beneficial or detrimental, depending on the couple;

6) gay couples tend to have much more egalitarian division of labor in home and childcare

7) gay couples tend to negotiate and talk about everything (straight couples tend to fall back on socialization and expectations)

8 ) with children, gay couples tend to let their children assign them particular roles within the child’s life rather than rely on gender to pre-assign roles, which means they tend to mix up what the father/mother would “traditionally” do with each doing some of both (although the couples tend to joke about the gendering of their parenting styles and roles) In a study that came out a few years ago, the only long term difference between children raised by gay parents and those raised by straight parents were a) they were far more likely to be liberal than the general population; and b) they were far more likely to have sexually experimented, although in adulthood they tend to settle into an orientation which statistically matches the rest of the population.