Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Hello!

Hi, friends!

This is my third attempt to keep a blog.  This is also my first special interest-based blog, so I will have far more incentive to keep it up.  I wanted to give you some background on my interests, and how they have changed significantly over my undergraduate career.

I am very interested in women's reproductive health care and working on the policy regarding women's rights.  I am taking the LSAT this June so that I can actually do this.  By knowing how the law works, I will be able to incite change within it.  I have an extensive Cognitive Science background through classes taken at Brown University since Spring of 2007.  During the last year, I have become increasingly aware of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), and other Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) practices.  With limited meditation training from a converted Zen Buddhist, involvement with self-soothing exercises in the context of women's support groups, and taking classes in a women's program at Butler Hospital, I have realized the vast importance that this kind of therapy can have on individuals, even when they are under minor amounts of stress or suffering.  This kind of self-mindfulness is not commonly taught to us in classrooms, is not widely practiced at the workplace, and is rarely passed on to family members outside of specific religions or certain intellectual contexts.  It is often quite hard to start this conversation with important people in one's life, and I intend to help from a distance if I can.

This blog will serve as a means of presenting this kind of information to the public through articles, my commentary, and hopefully, eventually, your input.  For those individuals with illnesses like depression, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder, or bipolarity, just to name a few, it can be difficult to motivate oneself to achieve goals, even simple ones like personal hygiene or performing household chores.  I want to make this blog as easily accessible as I can, and to provide links with useful information and current events or opinions.  I also want to stress that self-awareness also involves an acceptance of the immediate state of being and working in the present, which is a means of reassuring oneself that the only moment to deal with is right now.

In addition to presenting useful techniques, I will post links as to political developments and international efforts, as well.  There will also probably be some posts as to my own personal involvement in both women's healthcare and MBCT.  And possibly some LSAT frustration/law school updates.

As promised, here are a few articles to start you off with:

Take care.

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