NewsBreak Original

Brain fog. ADHD. Anxiety. Feeling constantly distracted. Between COVID and spending our waking lives glued to screens, we are living in a world of declining mental states. And millions of people are searching for a remedy. Medications work, but many bring with them unpleasant side effects that parents, especially, are loathe to impart to children.

What do you do when you’re born completely color blind, but are desperate to enjoy a full range of color vision? If you’re Neil Harbissoh, you implant an antenna into your head.

Once upon a time, I dated a man-child-thing who was lovely in some ways but prone to emotional dysregulation. (Aren't we all?) He told me he would meditate for long stretches of time, tapping into a sort of energetic high, or something. Meditating for an hour seemed, to me, an abhorrent waste of time, but I listened politely as he described how it helped him, or what he thought about, or whatever. Meditating for an hour also seemed like something most adults don't have the time to do, what with work and family and social things and hobbies and bills and car payments. But hearing him wax poetical about the benefits of meditation made me curious, so I downloaded one of those free meditation apps and started with an unintimidating 3 minute meditation session.

It’s generally understood that better focus leads to better athletes. Think about the steely-eyed marathon runner or the rapt attention of a pro-golfer before taking a putt. However, when someone is instructed to ‘focus,’ the suggestion is that their focus is presently off – that they aren't focused – and they just need to turn it on; as though focus were as simple as flipping a light switch.

Forget why you started an email? Unconsciously hopping from tab to tab without rhyme or reason? Doom Scrolling? If you’ve found yourself more distracted or stressed than usual lately, you aren’t alone. Two years after the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic, inflation, supply chain issues and the war in Ukraine have pushed people’s stress in the U.S. to unsettling levels, according to new polls conducted by the American Psychological Association.

Daydreamers. Chatterboxes. Manipulators. Plenty of kids go through phases that drive their parents and teachers crazy, but when is the time to start thinking that there might be something atypical about their behavior? One important step is to listen to what your child’s teachers are saying since their experience at school is wildly different than home.

The world has a population of 7.9 billion people. According to Statista, there are about 6.648 billion smartphone users worldwide. That means 83.96% of the world's populace owns a smartphone.

The words that follow are written in part from the perspective of a former mental health professional with dual training in Abnormal Psychology and Special Education. Though I left the field to become a full-time writer, I have continued my studies in the mental health realm. As with several of my articles for NewsBreak, personal anecdotes are included. Attributions for this article are included and linked below.

Flow, or hyperfocus can mean big gains for business productivityPhoto by jose aljovin on Unsplash. What is flow? Think of it as a heightened mental state; or for those athletes out there, flow is akin to a purely mental form of a runner’s high where moving forward in a task becomes meditative and progress nearly effortless. In 1975, renowned psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi identified this nearly magical state of productivity, and it’s believed that Sir Isaac Newton wrote his Principia Mathematica when in flow state.