“I regarded the world as such a sad site, until I viewed it in black and white”-Adam Young

One of my favorite music artists and quite possibly my biggest inspiration in life would be Mr. Adam Young, more commonly referred to as “Owl City”.

Ironically, I was not a fan at all of his music at first. I thought it was a classic example of lyrical nonsense with absolutely no depth of meaning behind it. As I came to realize in time, nothing could have been further from the truth. This man is a metaphorical genius! The complexity behind his figurative language is so astounding that they really become disguised as “non sense” to the casual listener. It seems no matter how many times I replay the A.T.B.A.B album, I always discover new hidden meaning behind his words.

Sadly you don’t hear much of his style of writing from other artists mainly because some people simply don’t appreciate to be challenged while listening to music. If it’s not simple, direct, and repetitive…you will never hear it on the radio!

Regardless of how you feel about his style of music, this is actually not the primary reason why I consider him as my biggest inspiration.

Being that I am an “extreme” introvert myself, who does not foster well with large groups of people at once, I find Young very relate-able to me from a personal viewpoint. It really just fascinates me how someone with an introverted personality like him can achieve worldwide success in such a dominant extroverted music industry! More so than that, he goes on to say how much he cherishes his introversion and how his musical creativity revolved around it.

Personally, his success gives me a lot of hope for myself and my future as well. I may not live his life, but whatever challenges and goals I have planned are now all being faced with an unusually high boost of morale every time his music streams to my ears.

Thank you, Mr. Young

Some of my favorite photo manipulations found on the web. Creativity at its best!

“Reality is wrong, Dreams are for real”  The words of the great Tupac Shakur. I don’t think he ever realized in how many ways that line can actually speak the truth.

Have you ever had a dream where the context simply does not make any sense? Like past memories that suddenly show up years later without any clear basis of why? Probably on a good number of occasions like everyone else. Well, what if those out of place dreams did in fact have a meaning and a purpose, but you just failed to realize it? I don’t mean by using cheesy dream book “interpretations” or anything like that. No, what I’m talking about is analyzing dreams in accordance with you’re reality. Let me explain in further detail of what exactly I am trying to say. Dreams are almost always metaphorical, meaning they have no basis to be looked at logically. For example, lets say you’re feeling really angry because your boss didn’t give you that promotion that you have been wanting for so long. You have been a part of that company for as long as you can remember so naturally you feel a bit cheated. When you go to sleep that night, you end up dreaming about a big fight you had with a friend from years ago. Random? I highly doubt it. Again, logically it has no basis, you’re dream is not implying that you still hate that person! instead, subconsciously you’re mind is trying to get you to relate you’re current feelings with that past incident .That person may not even be in you’re life anymore but, something that person may have said to you at that moment might have suddenly become relevant to you’re current situation right now.

Dreams will never directly tell you what you need to know, instead it will turn into a bit of a puzzle that will require you’re own interpretation with you’re past experiences to solve. For example, maybe during the course of that fight, that person may have blurted out in rage about you being lazy, irresponsible, incompetent, and so on. You may have been really hurt by those words but didn’t care to think too much about it. However, going into the present reality of you not getting that promotion, maybe you’re mind is subconsciously trying to get you to confront to those words and accept that their may have been some underlying truth to it after all. Unlike the conscious self where you are free to make any self bias judgements of how you perceive yourself as being, the unconscious is a representation of you’re true inner self. If you avoid the unconscious, it will only be a matter of time before it makes itself known in you’re dreams. What do I mean by that? If you continue to have similar dreams almost every night, that means that you are failing to see what the unconscious is trying to show you. You are in a sense hiding from the truth, and because of it, the conscious mind is battling the subconscious instead of both working in harmony with each other.

So are dreams really real then? Well you can base that answer depending on how you look at them. If you look it at from a literal view then the answer is no. If you look at them metaphorically, then yes, they can be very true! but it can take some time to really figure out the hidden meaning behind them. Just remember, dreams are nothing but an unfiltered mirror image of your own self. If you accept your unconscious self for whatever it may show you, then in reality your accepting yourself as a WHOLE!

If you watch the show Lie to me, then you already know what I am going to be talking about in this post. One of my favorite things to study in the art of deception is micro-expressions. For people that don’t know, micro-expressions are the involuntary facial movements that are displayed when someone is not telling you the entire truth. For example, if someone was really angry at me but acted perfectly calm as if nothing was wrong on the outside, at some point depending on the context of the conversation, his facial expressions will display anger anywhere from 1/25 to 1/5 of a second. It is lightning fast and it absolutely uncontrollable no matter how good you are at hiding deception. It is extremely hard to detect in reality and requires the person to, in a sense, almost be classically conditioned to notice it. It is not impossible, just difficult.

There are 7 universal signs of micro expressions. Disgust, anger, fear, sadness, happiness, surprise, and contempt. These emotions may not look exactly the same on everybody’s face, however everybody shares the common characteristics in the movement of the facial muscles, so in fact they are known to be universal no matter what origin or culture you may be from.

It took me a REALLY long time to finally ace the training test that you can find online. (I’ll post a link in the bottom if you want to try it out for yourselves). As if micro-expressions aren’t already hard enough to detect on their own, distinguishing between the different emotions makes it that much more complicated. Since it happens so fast, a few of the emotions will look very similar to each other, most commonly mistaken is anger and disgust. That was definitely one of the most frustrating ones to learn for me personally. Anger and disgust both share some of the same muscles when expressed, but if you look closely at the image, you can see how the upper lip is raised when showing disgust, but in anger the lips are narrowed almost pressed together (though that doesn’t always have to be the case). You can also see how in anger the face seems very clean as oppose to noticeable wrinkles around the eyes and cheek bone area when showing disgust.

When you are attempting to learn, it can be a pain in the ass, but I will tell you that once you’re brain starts to get adapted to the speed, it starts to get easier and easier to pick it up. Let me just make this clear though, just because you finally end up scoring well on these tests DOES NOT mean you can just readily be able to apply it right away in real life situations. Learning to read them in real life is a whole another ball game! You have to take into account that the angle at which you are looking at won’t always be convenient for you, plus people won’t take kindly if they constantly catch you starting awkwardly at their face. Also on another note, basing deception simply off this technique is not advisable, it should be looked at as a tool and not the entire toolbox. Understand that micro-expressions are not a way to catch lies!, it is used to only catch hidden emotions that people are keeping to themselves.

If you want to try out you’re skills and see how you do, take the test on the link below

Micro Expressions Test

I want to get something off my chest today that has been bothering me for the last week or so. How many times do you hear about people going through rehab or AA or any other abstinence program to stop there drug usage? And how many times do you hear about those same people say 6 months down the line relapsing back into old habits? How many times after that happens do you hear family and friends say “What is wrong with him?, we gave him all the help and support he needs and still he goes back to that?” or “He was doing so well, what happened?” (I know I say he, but in reality more and more female addicts are also checking into rehab, just a quick FYI).

As a psychology major, who is deeply interested in human behavior in accordance with addiction, I have come to realize that these so called drug rehab and prevention programs are only geared to stop the addict from using again. You might be asking well isn’t that the whole point of rehab? Yes you are right, ultimately stopping the addiction and use is the focal point of all rehab centers, except stopping the addict from using doesn’t mean you are treating the underlying problem that caused that person to start using in the first place. Let me give a clear analogy of what I am talking about. Lets say for example someone who is clinically depressed gets prescribed anti-depressants to treat there depressive symptoms, and lets say the person’s depression is virtually non existent after starting the medication. Ok great! so what seems to be the problem? Well with just relying on the drug alone, essentially all you are doing is just treating the symptoms and not the actual cause of why that person is depressed in the first place. What happens when you don’t have your anti-depressants anymore?, or what happens when you’re body starts to develop a tolerance to it and years later it is no longer effective anymore?(don’t live in denial, I don’t care what drug you are on, it WILL happen, it is just a matter of time). Chances are you’re depressive episodes will come back with a roaring VENGEANCE! Are you going to just simply switch over to another medication to treat you’re problem? Are you saying you want to be on medication for the rest of you’re life to treat you’re problems? In no way am I objecting the use of anti-depressants because after all there made for a reason, but without the use of effective therapy, you are just masking the core of you’re underlying problem.

The same concept can be applied to  people relapsing after attending rehab. Most people don’t tend to abuse drugs unless they thought it was “fixing” some kind of emotional or traumatic problem in their life. In fact theirs a good chance the addict doesn’t even realize why he really started abusing in the first place. Subconsciously their could have been a possible trauma or abuse, or neglect when he was a child and as a result it is indirectly impacting his behavior patterns as an adult, which may have led him to using in the long run. For example, maybe that person was constantly judged by family and friends because of the way he presented himself in his childhood, maybe in turn this led to him acting out of his true character to “fit in” so to speak, maybe as time went by, he started to take on the role of a shape shifter, constantly altering his personality to fit the needs of his social network. Maybe that as result led that person to eventually partake in using substances, to fill that emptiness with loads of chemical neurotransmitters because he is so unaccepting of his true self, fearing people will once again look down at him just like they did all throughout his childhood. (If you haven’t figured it out by now, yes I am speaking from my own experience). The point I’m trying to make though is that drugs are symbolized as a short cut to cope with the immediate reality. Believe me when I say this that no matter what emotional pain you may have, I guarantee you, any mind altering substances will instantly mask your pain away,  you’re problems will seem as if they are competently vanished, you will feel better than you could ever imagine being, and feel like as if nothing can ever hold you back again. Unfortunately what starts to happen is that you’re mind starts to grasp that initial spike in you’re dopamine, as a false sense of security, meaning you’re mind will make you believe that you can only be accepting of yourself in society with that particular substance. Think about it, why do people really start to get dependent on drugs in the first place? Is it really because its that enjoyable? Maybe at first, but once that euphoria wears off why do you still feel the need to take it? My answer, its because you don’t care about feeling good anymore, no, you just want to feel normal like everyone else, you feel less of you’re self when you’re not on it. All that pain and hurt that you felt before using is now amplified to a whole another level and its at this point when you start to realize how much you miss you’re old life before you started to use. Of course by this point, you are also hopelessly addicted…that’s what drugs ultimately do to your mental cognition.

Though I have never abused any substances in my life, I can still see the mindset of how an addict is created. That’s why I personally think it is unfair to judge rehab patients who end up relapsing because, in reality it is the clinic that has failed to dig deep into the heart of the problem and instead are simply only using behavioral technique for short term success, leaving all the blame to be put on the addict by society if that person does indeed relapse.

I honestly think a better solution coupled with entering rehab would be for the patient to have frequent psychotherapy sessions as well. Trying to understand what from you’re past has led you to become an addict and confronting that issue will leave you to be more stable in the long run.  Whether that issue may have been feeling neglected, abused, or in my case being scrutinized for a good majority of my life, it doesn’t really matter, whatever the reason may be, it is still that, a REASON, an explanation you can finally give you’re self as to why all this has happened, and finally make peace with it and live out the rest of you’re life by you’re terms and not by what society or anyone else expects out of you.

I cannot believe it has been 10 years already since the attack, it seems just like yesterday when I was just a little boy in my 7th grade history class, when my teacher suddenly told everyone to stop what they were doing and turned on the news via the projector. As a 11 year old kid what am I suppose to believe when I see all the destructive live footage of this so called “superior” nation that we live in? Even ten years later as I gather the courage to watch in depth footage again, all of the emotions I felt back then start to immediately resurface in a matter of seconds, as if they are being felt all over again for the first time.

Watching people jump off the buildings, watching the second tower explode live, dead bodies and derbies just about everywhere are in reality only a micro fraction of the horror compared to people who were witnessing all of this live. Just writing this post right now is already hard enough without tearing up, part of me actually wishes I was there live at the moment, not for any convenience or thrill, but really so I could feel all of the pain and suffering along with all of those people who would be there around me. In a way I feel so guilty as I just sit in class and watch all of this unfold while people were actually going through all of this. It felt so unfair to me personally, how is my life any better than theirs? why do I deserve to sit and “enjoy” a normal life in Plano,Texas while more than 40,000 people are dieing hopelessly? Its been 10 years and you know what, yeah I still feel that way. I keep all of the emotional turmoil down to a point where its practically nonexistent. Even visiting the site 2 years ago did not bring it back for me. Subconsciously my mind knows the only way to bring it all out again was to fully confront it and watch the footage again, something I have avoided doing for the last 10 years because I didn’t want to go through it. Why? what would be the point? it would only bring hurt right? why bother, its in the past, it doesn’t affect me now, I can simply avoid it and move on my life like I’ve been doing for the past 10 years right? All this sounds highly selfish and conceded of me I know, but it’s also the truth, the fact is, it wasn’t just about the pain of 9/11 anymore, no, in reality it was every kind of emotional pain I have suppressed over the last 10 years of my life as result. Whether its family crisis,relationship problems, you name it, I’ve never shown it, I can’t even feel it. On the rare occasions that I do feel, it is to such extremes that it just becomes detrimental to me and everyone else. Avoiding it seems like such a good solution in general, unfortunately I’ve recently come to realize that those scares and hidden turmoil don’t ever go away. Just because you can’t feel them doesn’t mean there not there, it haunts you subconsciously, whether its in you’re dreams where you’re mind forces you to feel the pain by events that are metaphorical to what you’ve failed to confront, or because of the fact that you constantly wonder why you are so emotionally closed off and empty when compared to everyone else?

After finally confronting myself to watch the footage, and after finally letting myself feel after all of these years, it was somehow strangely gratifying that I didn’t have to hide it anymore. It is ok for me to feel vulnerable, it is ok for me to cry for such a tragic event that happened 10 years ago, it is ok to let people see me in that state, it just shows that I am indeed a human and not some emotionless creature so to speak. After all of these years I can finally start to feel true empathy again for myself and others and I want it to continue to every other aspect of my life as well. Just like how September 11,2001 consumed my emotions as a child, September 11, 2011 is showing me how to be free once again.