First, the degree of romantic attachment you feel with your significant other is positively associated with how satisfied you are with your romantic partner.  The happier you are with your romantic partner, the more attached you will be to this person.  This is true regardless of your perception of yourself – even if you believe you are a negative person, are prone to self-criticism, feel dependent on this person, or are depressed.   What is key in this finding is that your view of your partner affects how much you can feel connected to him or her.

Second, the degree to which your self-criticism affects your general self-perception affects how satisfied you are with your romantic partner.  Self-criticism is a natural behavior.  The study finds that if you are self-critical, you will have trouble finding your partner to be good enough or the right fit for you.

Last, the study found you may have a tendency to self-criticize if you tend to avoid relationship situations that may frighten you or if you obsess over a romantic attachment. Being self critical is clearly a detractor in forming satisfying, connected relationships.

Further research is needed to investigate these findings.  However, these research findings give us clues to our own behavior and own perceptions that affect the relationships we have with the people we love.  If you are concerned that you have low self esteem which is affecting your relationships, it would be a good idea to seek professional help.  You could seek help as an individual or in couple’s therapy.

Finding the right partner, may indeed be about finding yourself.

Despite the research pointing to the dangers of indoor tanning, young adults are tanning more now than they have in the past. In fact according to a recent article “roughly 30 million Americans visit tanning salons at least once a year.”

The research study, conducted by Catherine Mosher, PhD, and her partner from the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, surveyed 421 undergraduates about their tanning habits.  Questions such as, “Do you ever get annoyed when people tell you not to use tanning beds or booths?” or “Do you ever feel guilty that you are using tanning beds or booths too much?” were used to measure the addictive quality of indoor tanning.  The researchers found out that as a person gradually becomes more attached to the emotional “lift” by tanning, the addiction becomes stronger.

People start to depend on tanning to help them feel good. However, just like anything addictive, the short term high has long term consequences.

The treatment for these “tanning addicts” may be to get mental help for an underlying emotional problem. As the researchers explained, “Anxiety and depression are often comorbid with substance dependencetions for tanning… Treating an underlying mood disorder may be a necessary step in reducing skin cancer risk among those who frequently tan indoors.”

And if you think your tanning, helps your Seasonal Affective Disorder, think again. Light therapy (used to treat Seasonal Affective Disorder) uses a different type of light. The bright bulbs used in tanning booths can actually ruin your eyes.

More research came out recently which said the best way to appeal to heavy tanners was not to preach about skin cancer, but rather explain the nasty wrinkles their leathery tanned skin will have in years to come. In a recent press release, professor of dermatology at Northwestern University June Robins found young college girls are more afraid of being “unattractive” then they are of getting melanoma.

Getting along with siblings is a significant challenge of growing up. Brothers and sisters help us learn how to negotiote with others, work in a group, and play together.  Of course, we also have some of our worst conflicts and difficult experiences with our siblings. Sibling rivalry can last into adulthood for some. The tumultuous relationship causes some adults to cut ties from their brothers or sisters entirely. We choose our friends, but we are born into our family. Sometimes people that are genetically related have such different personalities they just don’t – and won’t – ever get along.

The study, which took place over the course of 68 years, focused on 229 men who were followed between the ages of 20 through 50 and beyond. It is one of the longest longitudinal studies of adult psychosocial development in history. The researchers conducted interviews with the participants and their parents at the beginning of the study, and continued with follow-up interviews and questionnaires with the participants. The data obtained evaluated the quality of relationships with siblings, the quality of parenting received during childhood, family history of depression. Additionally the study looked at whether by age 50 the participants had any bouts of depression, alcoholism, or if they used mood-altering drugs such as tranquilizers, sleeping pills and stimulants.

Turns out that having a bad relationship with a sibling did in fact predict depression and drug use in adulthood. Furthermore a bad relationship with Mom or Dad was not a predictor of either drug use or depression, if family history and poor sibling relationships were taken into account. The researchers concluded that more depression related research needs to be done focusing on the relationship between siblings.

Family dynamics are complex and siblings will fight and often times they will also learn how to make up.

The five experiments the professors devised ran through different morality-testing scenarios such as stealing a bicycle and evading taxes.  Each scenario led to a common conclusion: while leaders hold their followers to high standards, they are not nearly as strict when it comes to their own personal behavior. The participants assigned the most powerful status indicated they would look down on others the most for fudging numbers for financial gain. Participants were told that for helping with the experiment, they could enter a lottery to win a prize. Participants privately rolled dice to determine the number of lottery tickets they would win (more tickets, more chances to win). The high-power participants also won the highest number of lottery tickets, indicating that they in fact cheated to gain more lottery tickets. Meaning the high-power participants judged others harshly for cheating, and then turned around and cheated themselves.

The researchers selected twenty-five college-aged heterosexual couples to be the test subjects.  Each couple was seated in close proximity to one another at separate stations.  The woman was asked to pinpoint her “targets,” images of landscapes, from a quick succession of pictures flashing on a computer screen.  Simultaneously, researchers instructed the male to rate the beauty of pictures of landscapes on his computer.  Halfway through, the experimenter switched the male’s task to rating the looks of local, single women, while his girlfriend continued searching for targets.

At the experiment’s conclusion, each woman rated how uncomfortable she felt while her boyfriend assessed other women’s attractiveness.  According to the data, the women who felt most insecure during the experiment were also the individuals who did the poorest in identifying their targets.  Furthermore, their performance was better during the first portion of the test before they heard the announcement that their boyfriends would be evaluating other women.  Jealousy proved to be a distracting factor and consequently lowered their visual processing.

Thus far, the research has only focused on heterosexual women, so whether jealousy has a similar effect on men and homosexuals is yet to be tested.  Still, the initial data suggests that jealousy is such a powerful emotion that it may impair people’s cognitive abilities.

Jealousy is a response to a situation in which you feel threatened.  Jealousy is a complex reaction made up of many feelings occuring at the same time such as anger, envy, hurt, anxiety, sadness, and paranoia.  It makes sense that the complicated mix of emotions could easily lead to difficulty focusing, as demonstrated by this research.

Perhaps, jealousy should come with a warning label, “do not operate heavy machinery while jealous.”

The study, led by Ian H. Gotlib, professor of psychology at Stanford University, sought to assess whether a diminished ability to experience pleasure is detectable before depression occurs or if it is a consequence of the disorder. The study focused on 26 girls ranging in age from 10 to 14. The girls in the high-risk group had mothers who suffered from recurrent depression, but the girls themselves hadn’t experienced any depressive symptoms. The girls in the low-risk group had no personal or family history of the disorder.

The participants were monitored through MRI scans as they completed a task that offered possibilities for reward or punishment. The task was made up of 100 six-second trials, and each contained an anticipation phase and a feedback phase, when the girls learned if they won or lost points. At the end of the task, the girls could redeem their points for prizes.

The girls in the high-risk group had diminished neural responses to the anticipation and receipt of reward in comparison to the low risk group. The results specifically indicated that the high-risk girls did not show any activation in the brain area that is involved with reinforcing past experiences to facilitate learning. However, the high-risk girls showed increased activation in this brain area when receiving punishment, suggesting that they may process the experience of loss and punishment more easily than they process the experience of pleasure.

If parents need another good reason for helping their daughters manage stress and depression, a new obesity link study seems to demand it. It’s no secret that obesity is a major health issue in America, and according to the CDC “childhood obesity has more then tripled in the last 30 years.” Overweight girls are more likely to remain obese in adulthood; plus they are at a higher risk for developing various health problems, including Type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Being overweight can be emotionally devastating for a young girl trying to fit in socially at school, where the pressure to be thin is omnipresent.

According to research in the Journal of Adolescent Health, depression raises stress hormone levels in adolescent boys and girls, but may lead to obesity only in girls. Scientists suggest that early treatment of depression could help reduce stress and control obesity for girls at risk.

Symptoms of depression were assessed in 111 children 8 to 13 years old, and cortisol levels were measured in saliva before and after stress tests, along with BMI. Although it is still unclear why cortisol reactions are linked to obesity only in girls, scientists believe the physiological and behavioral differences in the way boys and girls cope with anxiety may be to blame.

Childhood and teen depression is a serious health issue, as is obesity. The key to helping young girls is teaching them coping skills to handle stress that don’t involve eating.

Samantha Dockray, Elizabeth J. Susman, Lorah D. Dorn, ‘Depression, Cortisol Reactivity, and Obesity in Childhood and Adolescence’, Journal of Adolescent Health, October 2009, 45(4), 344-350; doi:10.1016/j.jadohealth.2009.06.014

BDD is a serious condition where people obsess on a particular physical flaw. The doctors may say they are underweight, but ask an anorexic suffering from BDD and they may only be able to see the fat.  People with BDD may not want to look in the mirror, they may use clothes and makeup to cover up their flaws, they often times seek plastic surgery, and yet they never seem to feel pretty. Why? It’s not just that these patients are thinking about their body, it’s the side of the brain they are using to think about their body.  Dr. Jamie Feusner a psychiatrist out of UCLA conducted new research on BDD using an MRI brain scan.  The study concluded the BDD suffers used the left – more analytical side of their brain – then the control group when looking at pictures of a face. Whereas the right side of the brain is used for seeing the whole image in it’s entirety, the left side of the brain is used to pick things apart and scrutinize the details.

Is there a lesson to be learned in this for all of us with body image issues? Yes, the next time you catch yourself cursing a wrinkle, Google searching liposuction, or daydreaming about a smaller nose remember that you are probably hyper critiquing that body part. You can’t look through a microscope to see the world, so why would you look through a microscope to see yourself?