You have home remedies. I have them. Everyone has them. They might work. They might not. I suppose that if we keep using them, we must believe that they do work. And some probably do.
But home remedies beg a question. If they have not been subject to rigorous double-blind testing, why do we put our faith in them? They might be mere placebos whose “testing” is limited to anecdotes. “This is what grandma used to do.” They might work for some, but not for others. Other than hope and belief, we don't have an iron-clad warranty on home remedies. That applies to emotional problems, also.
Anecdote: I was standing in a garnet mine pit on Gore Mountain in the Adirondacks one May. I had taken geology students there to study the mountain’s mineral setting (Some of the garnets pulled from that mine were as large as a person). We weren’t the only visitors that day. The black flies were out. They were hungry. They bit students—repeatedly. But not all the students were flyfood. Some of them and I had eaten a pizza laden with garlic the night before. Flies would land on our garlic effusing arms or almost land, and then quickly depart hungry. Students who had not had any garlic were the main course; they were saved only by the occasional gust of wind that chased the flies away.
If I were to go to the Adirondacks during black-fly season, I would probably eat garlic. But my home remedy isn’t listed among the preventative measures offered by Adirondack.net (https://www.adirondack.net/hiking/black-flies/). That website advises the use of vanilla extract, lavender, and pine branch extract. I guess those aromas work if one wants to smell like a gift-shop candle, but I think I’ll stick to garlic as the volatile of choice during an Adirondack spring.
Adirondack.net refers its readers to The Farmers’ Almanac as a source of information on black flies, so I clicked onto that site (https://www.farmersalmanac.com/black-flies-17347), where, to my surprise I found this: “Garlic. A clove of garlic a day might help keep the bugs away! Simply eat a clove of garlic each day, starting several days before you anticipate exposure to mosquitoes and black flies. For some people, eating garlic may cause you to release a sulfur compound present in garlic called allicin. This is what causes garlic’s smell and when the scent is produced by your skin, it’ll help mask your natural scent. It might keep the bugs (and people) away!”
I had not read such advice the first time I stood on Gore Mountain. My eating garlic was a happy coincidence. My deducing that garlic warded off black flies was a strange trick of the mind coupled with another coincidence. As we walked into the mine pit, conversation for a few minutes centered on what and where people ate the previous evening. My seeing those who had not eaten garlic being bitten led to my hasty conclusion and my “science” by anecdote.
And that anecdotal basis—now apparently backed up by the prestigious scientific journal The Farmers’ Almanac—makes me think of not only home remedies, but also other practices we adopt without much more than surmising a link that might, in fact, not exist. So, here I’ll borrow a story told by the author of a new book called Walking through Anger: A New Design for Confronting Conflict in an Emotionally Charged World* by Dr. Christian Conte (Yes, to answer your question): A little girl watched her mother cut off the ends of a pot roast before placing it in the pot for cooking. When she asked her mother why she cut off the ends, the mother replied, “That’s the way Grandma taught me.” So, the little girl went to her grandmother and asked why she cut off the ends of the beef. She got a similar response, “That’s the way Great Grandma taught me.” Fortunate to still have her great grandmother in her life, the little girl went to her and asked the same question. The great grandmother said, “When I was little, we had only one small pot, and that was the only way we could fit in the beef.”
It is difficult for any of us to examine all the reasons we believe and act as we do. We might stumble upon a solution that appears to work for us but that is inapplicable to others. That’s where science and experimentation come in to play. Sure, garlic seems to work because it does, in the words of the almanac, cause some people to exude allicin. But there are no scientific data on the amount of garlic necessary for that release, an amount that is scaled to body weight and size, blood type, skin color, ethnic origin, or gender.
And that same lack of science is what people rely on when they deal with emotional problems. Thus, one can hear the advice “Never go to bed angry” or “Get it out by screaming or breaking something” or even “Count to ten.” But even if such behaviors were effective (they aren’t), they offer nothing about dealing with the emotions of others in the midst of conflict or high emotion. In light of the numerous angry people who know all those anecdotal “remedies” for emotional management, yet still run around in various states of conflict, one has to ask whether or not there is a practical step-by-step way to manage emotions and handle the conflict so prevalent in our time. That practical step-by-step methodology is now available to any who wish to acquire it in a rather entertaining book.
So, if you find yourself searching for a mechanism to increase your self-control or for a mechanism to deal with others who just can’t quite live peacefully and effectively with their contemporaries, I recommend Walking through Anger over unproved or ineffective and anecdotally derived solutions that work only on a hit-and-miss basis. Yield Theory, the foundation of the book, is an evidence-based system used by the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, by an increasing number of organizations, including businesses and sports teams, and by individuals.
*Yes, Christian is one of my children. And, yes, this is a plug for a rather entertaining book that contains numerous interesting tales. That book—based on his clinical experience and his work with a cross section of people from the famous to the infamous, on experimentation, and on his Yield Theory—is published by Sounds True, Incorporated, and is available online or (after October 29, 2019) in bookstores. See also drchristianconte.com, YouTube for Dr. Christian Conte for short videos on emotional issues, and his other books offered on Amazon or on his website. You might also tune in to his call-in/write-in radio talk show Emotional Management on KDKA AM radio (and online everywhere) Monday nights from 8 (Eastern) to 10 p.m.
But home remedies beg a question. If they have not been subject to rigorous double-blind testing, why do we put our faith in them? They might be mere placebos whose “testing” is limited to anecdotes. “This is what grandma used to do.” They might work for some, but not for others. Other than hope and belief, we don't have an iron-clad warranty on home remedies. That applies to emotional problems, also.
Anecdote: I was standing in a garnet mine pit on Gore Mountain in the Adirondacks one May. I had taken geology students there to study the mountain’s mineral setting (Some of the garnets pulled from that mine were as large as a person). We weren’t the only visitors that day. The black flies were out. They were hungry. They bit students—repeatedly. But not all the students were flyfood. Some of them and I had eaten a pizza laden with garlic the night before. Flies would land on our garlic effusing arms or almost land, and then quickly depart hungry. Students who had not had any garlic were the main course; they were saved only by the occasional gust of wind that chased the flies away.
If I were to go to the Adirondacks during black-fly season, I would probably eat garlic. But my home remedy isn’t listed among the preventative measures offered by Adirondack.net (https://www.adirondack.net/hiking/black-flies/). That website advises the use of vanilla extract, lavender, and pine branch extract. I guess those aromas work if one wants to smell like a gift-shop candle, but I think I’ll stick to garlic as the volatile of choice during an Adirondack spring.
Adirondack.net refers its readers to The Farmers’ Almanac as a source of information on black flies, so I clicked onto that site (https://www.farmersalmanac.com/black-flies-17347), where, to my surprise I found this: “Garlic. A clove of garlic a day might help keep the bugs away! Simply eat a clove of garlic each day, starting several days before you anticipate exposure to mosquitoes and black flies. For some people, eating garlic may cause you to release a sulfur compound present in garlic called allicin. This is what causes garlic’s smell and when the scent is produced by your skin, it’ll help mask your natural scent. It might keep the bugs (and people) away!”
I had not read such advice the first time I stood on Gore Mountain. My eating garlic was a happy coincidence. My deducing that garlic warded off black flies was a strange trick of the mind coupled with another coincidence. As we walked into the mine pit, conversation for a few minutes centered on what and where people ate the previous evening. My seeing those who had not eaten garlic being bitten led to my hasty conclusion and my “science” by anecdote.
And that anecdotal basis—now apparently backed up by the prestigious scientific journal The Farmers’ Almanac—makes me think of not only home remedies, but also other practices we adopt without much more than surmising a link that might, in fact, not exist. So, here I’ll borrow a story told by the author of a new book called Walking through Anger: A New Design for Confronting Conflict in an Emotionally Charged World* by Dr. Christian Conte (Yes, to answer your question): A little girl watched her mother cut off the ends of a pot roast before placing it in the pot for cooking. When she asked her mother why she cut off the ends, the mother replied, “That’s the way Grandma taught me.” So, the little girl went to her grandmother and asked why she cut off the ends of the beef. She got a similar response, “That’s the way Great Grandma taught me.” Fortunate to still have her great grandmother in her life, the little girl went to her and asked the same question. The great grandmother said, “When I was little, we had only one small pot, and that was the only way we could fit in the beef.”
It is difficult for any of us to examine all the reasons we believe and act as we do. We might stumble upon a solution that appears to work for us but that is inapplicable to others. That’s where science and experimentation come in to play. Sure, garlic seems to work because it does, in the words of the almanac, cause some people to exude allicin. But there are no scientific data on the amount of garlic necessary for that release, an amount that is scaled to body weight and size, blood type, skin color, ethnic origin, or gender.
And that same lack of science is what people rely on when they deal with emotional problems. Thus, one can hear the advice “Never go to bed angry” or “Get it out by screaming or breaking something” or even “Count to ten.” But even if such behaviors were effective (they aren’t), they offer nothing about dealing with the emotions of others in the midst of conflict or high emotion. In light of the numerous angry people who know all those anecdotal “remedies” for emotional management, yet still run around in various states of conflict, one has to ask whether or not there is a practical step-by-step way to manage emotions and handle the conflict so prevalent in our time. That practical step-by-step methodology is now available to any who wish to acquire it in a rather entertaining book.
So, if you find yourself searching for a mechanism to increase your self-control or for a mechanism to deal with others who just can’t quite live peacefully and effectively with their contemporaries, I recommend Walking through Anger over unproved or ineffective and anecdotally derived solutions that work only on a hit-and-miss basis. Yield Theory, the foundation of the book, is an evidence-based system used by the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, by an increasing number of organizations, including businesses and sports teams, and by individuals.
*Yes, Christian is one of my children. And, yes, this is a plug for a rather entertaining book that contains numerous interesting tales. That book—based on his clinical experience and his work with a cross section of people from the famous to the infamous, on experimentation, and on his Yield Theory—is published by Sounds True, Incorporated, and is available online or (after October 29, 2019) in bookstores. See also drchristianconte.com, YouTube for Dr. Christian Conte for short videos on emotional issues, and his other books offered on Amazon or on his website. You might also tune in to his call-in/write-in radio talk show Emotional Management on KDKA AM radio (and online everywhere) Monday nights from 8 (Eastern) to 10 p.m.
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