Get Me Out Of Here

I finished reading my latest book: Get Me Out Of Here by Rachel Reiland. A wonderful account of borderline personality disorder (BPD), how she suffered through it and most of all how she recovered. I especially liked the role of her therapist, who - while keeping himself totally distanced emotionally - was more of a father for her than her own.

Reading this kind of book gives you a lot of understanding in psychological illnesses. I do not know anyone with BPD personally, but it's pretty certain that many people you encounter in daily life show similarities but don't even notice.

One thing I have read about in this book is a very important one: many people do not want to be helped in the first place, but then are more than thankful that someone really cares for their problems. Most people only show understanding on a surface level - the real causes remain hidden even for the person dealing with them. Opening yourself up requires a lot of trust and time. And this is something that can hardly be found today.

Brain Scan

I had my brain scanned again. For all of you who don't know yet, I like to take part in psychological experiments. They do take some time and don't get me money, but you can learn a lot from them and sometimes you get pictures like this fMRI one - for free!

This experiment actually consisted of two parts. First I had to do three tasks (visually, cognitive and motion) in the fMRI scanner, two weeks later I had to do the same set of tests in a NIRS scanner. While the fMRI is the big magnet tube you have to lie in, NIRS is just like EEG but without sticky pastes and hours of setup time. It's only light beams going in your head and going out again.

As far as I know, the results of both tests will be compared later. I don't really care what they do with my thoughts now, as long as I have this wonderful pic.
Actually this is only one picture of many others. I have a 3D view of my head on my computer now that allows me to slice and dice it in whatever way I want to.