Chapter 5: Oxytocin

In a battle between her body and her brain, her brain always wins! The rosy-cheeked girl continues to think. Thinking consumes her body! She continued to read the book...

God Helmet

Many people suffer from daydreaming because they lose their concentration, or they may even enjoy it. Some people daydream more than others, they are created that way, why is that? This question is similar to the question "Why do we daydream?". Are the motives of daydreaming similar to those of sleep dreaming? Are people who suffer from daydreaming considered unrealistic people? Are some people destined to be unrealistic? Daydreamers? Just as they are destined to be black or white. Are people destined to be honest, brave or liars? Are people destined to be extremists?

The rosy-cheeked girl's headset stopped playing the song, her phone's battery was almost dead, her phone could not play songs or videos when it was low on charge, and she did not know if that was a feature of the phone or a defect! She grabbed her charging cable, plugged it into her phone, and adjusted her sitting posture so she could reach the phone while it was charging, and so she could reach her cup! Only at that moment she wished for an online version of the book and tried to search for it in the browser of her smartphone. Suddenly she found some chats between her family members, she forgot about searching for the book, she checked the messages and then returned to her song, played it again and read back to the beginning of the section "God Helmet" because her phone had interrupted her thoughts, then she continued reading ...

The study of individual human characteristics or phonotypes can lead to interesting results. Take extremism as an example: in a study entitled "The cognitive and perceptual correlates of ideological attitudes: a data-driven approach," conducted by Zmigrod, extremism and dogmatism were found to be associated with a lack of cognitive flexibility!

Cognitive flexibility is the ability to think about concepts simultaneously or to switch between different ways of thinking. More flexible people can adapt more quickly to new rules. For example, someone with high cognitive flexibility would be able to prepare a meal with missing ingredients by inventing a new recipe, and they might be an easygoing person, perhaps sympathetic to the LGBT movement, and perhaps agnostic.

Decisive results regarding all characteristics related to cognitive flexibility are sometimes difficult to determine because humans are influenced by sociological and biological factors that affect the mind at any time and in any situation, and many studies of cognitive flexibility are being conducted and have yet to be conducted.

A study titled "Acute stress impairs cognitive flexibility in men, not women" concluded that stress impairs cognitive flexibility in men but does not significantly affect it in women. Another study by D. Bruce Carter, titled "Relationships between Cognitive Flexibility and Sex-Role Orientation in Young Adults," examined the contribution of masculinity and femininity to cognitive flexibility based on the Bem Sex-Role Inventory (BSRI is a measure of masculinity and femininity in psychological terms). The study found that, as expected, androgynous individuals (androgyny is the possession of both masculine and feminine characteristics in humans) exhibit greater cognitive flexibility than traditionally gendered individuals.

Back in school, the rosy-cheeked girl asked her friend why she liked to dress like a man, and the friend replied that her boyfriend had cheated on her with another girl, so she had decided to be a man to show him how a man should be honest. The rosy-cheeked girl left the book and stood up, then she tried to look at herself in the mirror, she put a finger on her face as a mustache and tried to do like the other girls in the hostel... She tried to imitate their way of walking and talking, then realized that her roommate could wake up at any moment, so she quickly went back to bed, grabbed her book again and continued reading...

From the previous results, it appears that there is an interactive relationship between genotypic and phenotypic traits and our psychology. Example: We consistently find that attractive people are given more chances than unattractive people, our brain is a beauty detector, and the halo effect can fool our brain most of the time, even though we know that the first impression created by the halo effect is not necessarily correct! Your attractiveness can affect your psyche and make you feel more positive, because you generally have no trouble with other people, except in some cases where other people are jealous of you!

Just as some studies have found a connection between cognitive flexibility and extremism, physical body structure and psychology, etc., from here we can ask ourselves some questions regarding dreams: Do daydreamers or dreamers in general also have special physical characteristics, special superpowers! Are there any physical characteristics or genotypes that clearly distinguish dreamers from non-dreamers? For example, do women dream the same as men? What types of dreams are there according to gender? These questions can be used to try to answer the question, "Who dreams?" Some studies have shown that women and men have different types of dreams, and that women usually dream more often than men and remember them more easily!

The rosy-cheeked girl was annoyed by the loud voices of the girls outside her room, who were playing and singing their songs and enjoying themselves as usual. Some of them were sitting outside talking, and one girl started playing loudly to some songs. Her phone was almost as loud as the speakers on the street! The rosy-cheeked girl wondered if she should go out of her room so they would be quiet and turn off the songs. The girl sitting with the other girls kept playing the same song, "Patakha Guddi" it's called, the girl kept playing it, once in a male voice, another time in a female voice. The girls sitting next to the girl did not care about the loud voice of the song and talked without interruption!

The rosy-cheeked girl starts to think that if she goes outside angry, she would probably fight with those girls, then the girls would try to disturb her mood, and then such a thing would ruin her day, the rosy-cheeked girl usually tries to predict the future scene when there is an upcoming fight. This is a method of her sophisticated mind to avoid fights! Sometimes she makes up a long story about what will happen when she fights with someone, and most of the time she imagines that her made-up stories will end badly!!!!

The rosy-cheeked girl then predicted that when she goes out to fight, one of the girls will try to bully her, then she imagined that she would punch that girl in the face, and they will all fight together and in the end, she will be fired from her job!

The rosy-cheeked girl then decided to be peaceful even if she felt like being a coward, but she ignored that and turned up the volume of her smartphone, played her favorite song and continued reading...

Daydreaming is an interesting phenomenon that causes people to become detached from their real world, causing them to drift into a realm between their conscious and unconscious minds. Daydreaming is where you lose the power of now to the power of the future, creativity, wonder, etc., but it distracts you from doing your tasks. Daydreaming is like sleeping with your eyes open, just like fish! So, if we were to study fish, would we understand what is going on during a dream? Daydreamers enjoy these moments the most, and they spend a lot of time daydreaming without even realizing it!

A study called "A Wandering Mind Is an Unhappy Mind" found that you spend almost half of your day daydreaming, which leads to not enjoying your life. You can hardly see what is happening in your surroundings, sometimes you watch TV or read a book without realizing it, and you daydream by picking up elements from what you see. And if you dream so often, then maybe you are someone who is avoiding reality. From here, let us think about the people who love movies and books are, they have a problem with reality!

Daydreaming is another form or state of hypnosis. More specifically, according to the article "What is hypnosis and how might it work?" by Ann Williamson, hypnotic induction involves focusing attention and engaging the imagination to the point where what is imagined seems real.

The commonality between a daydream and hypnosis is that both involve a trance state in which the mind loses consciousness in favor of unconsciousness, but hypnosis could be an umbrella term that encompasses daydreaming as one of its forms. According to Ann Williamson, hypnotic trance is a similar state to daydreaming, except that attention is focused rather than digressing or drifting. During hypnosis, the area of the brain responsible for your actions is disconnected!

There are also other forms of hypnosis, such as highway hypnosis or meditation. In highway hypnosis and when driving a car, sometimes you feel that the car has been driving itself for the last few minutes. An autopilot controls the car, which makes us do several tasks, during driving, after we become experts in driving. Maybe everyone remembers when they first learned to drive, learned anything at all, the first lesson was so hard, and if you now remember your first driving lesson, you will laugh at how childish you were driving at the beginning!

The rosy-cheeked girl remembered her first driving lesson at home, her father gave her his car and told her to drive. It was nighttime, and she told her father she didn't want to learn to drive at night. The father insisted on driving at night, claiming that driving at night was more difficult than driving in daylight, so it would be easy for her to drive in daylight! She got into the driver's seat and the father got into the next seat, and she wanted to drive first, but the father reminded her about the seat belt, and she put the seat belt on. The shoulder strap of the seat belt rubs against her neck because there's no height adjustment in the car, and she felt disturbed and bad.

The rosy-cheeked girl starts looking for the ignition switch until she finds it, she tries to start the car, but the car won't start, then the father orders her to move the key around on the ignition switch until the engine starts, which she does. The father put the car in drive and told the rosy-cheeked girl to press the brake pedal, then he taught her to press the gas pedal. She drove for a few hundred meters and then suddenly stopped when she saw a lot of lights and could no longer see the road. A car drove through her, and the driver was furious at the sudden stop!

You are reading story KARAZ, Names Out at novel35.com

The next day, the father tried to teach the rosy-cheeked girl to drive before sunset, and this time the rosy-cheeked girl complained that she couldn't see the road because the bonnet was so big. She drove fine and then parked, but she bumped into the sidewalks while parking and justified herself by saying that the bonnet was so big, and she needed a smaller car to learn how to drive!

The rosy-cheeked girl missed her father and thought about calling him, but she ignored it, assuming that her father would tell her to come home. She took a deep breath, then played her song again and started reading the book again...

Many questions can be raised, such as: If driving is considered an unconscious process, does that explain why we can react quickly? Is this evidence that a dream is faster than normal life events? William Dement, the father of sleep medicine, conducted two studies that showed that dream time is similar to real time! But we also cannot assume that driving on autopilot is like a nighttime dream, even if both interventions were considered as operations in unconsciousness, which leads to the fact that we have to redefine unconsciousness with each study result!

Meditation is another form of the hypnotic state. In hypnosis we open the mind to achieve a certain goal, depending on what the hypnotherapist wants to help you with, even if you are trying to hypnotize yourself, you are doing it for a certain goal. In meditation you want to relax and detach from life's problems, you want to connect with a higher level that will help you accept life's struggles, you want to find peace, or you want to find God! Meditation is considered by some analysts to be guided hypnosis; prayer is guided general hypnosis with a specific form of words and actions. General hypnosis can also be considered guided hypnosis, but the goals may be different. For example, you will not pray to stop smoking or because you have a sleep disorder, but you will practice hypnosis to do so, generally you would pray to clear your mind of thoughts. The instruction of hypnosis became an interesting field that attracted people's attention.

According to Ann Williamson, "general hypnosis" can occur through visual focusing such as a candle, auditory focusing such as music, kinesthetic focusing such as ideomotor activities, or by reviving a daydream. To approach hypnosis, one must focus intensely on a single object (hyperfocus) so that one is no longer aware of events around him or her. Neuro language programming (NLP) is a field that deals with the use of techniques that put people into a hypnotic trance state to help them cope with events such as a death, or even to help others break bad habits. NLP is considered a pseudoscience in academia. Hypnosis itself is sometimes considered a pseudoscience because it has been wrongly abused in stage entertainment.

Religions have adapted their own versions of prayers to put their own followers into a trance state. Religions also influence the human mind in general and could be the source of human perceptions, which is also easily challenged as pseudoscience. Many studies have been done to compare the brains of believers and non-believers, using some brain scanning techniques. Dr. Andrew Newberg, in his book "Principles of Neurotheology" on neurotheology (the intersection of science and religion), explains some observations he tested on prayers from different religions and found that each religion activates different areas of the brain. Since each religion has its own version of prayer or meditation, each religion may have its own God of some kind!

The existence of God is also interesting in terms of psychology and brain function. Michael Persinger invented a device called the "God Helmet" to test whether it could mimic the effect of a prayer or ritual in the brain (a religious experience). Persinger found that most religious people experienced the existence of superpowers when wearing the helmet, while others who were not religious generally did not feel superpowers. Persinger claimed that some people are simply genetically predisposed to sense God!

Perhaps some people are also predisposed to mysteries or for persons of ancient history. We humans tend to value people after they die, we humans tend to adapt our leader like a prophet more than any contemporary people, although there is no scientific evidence that people in ancient times were smarter than they are today, it could be the opposite, right? But people want to follow someone who cannot be easily criticized, who satisfies their need for mysterious and exciting stories!

Some studies have tried to determine the effect of stories on the human body, especially on the brain, Paul J. Zak, in his study "Why Your Brain Loves Good Storytelling," tried to figure out what the brain does during a story. He found that the oxytocin hormone (love hormone) is released when you feel emotionally connected to a movie, Paul explains that this hormone is important in building trust, for example, such a hormone would make you donate money!

"God helmet," said the rosy-cheeked girl, and stopped reading. Then she began to wonder and repeat the same phrase, "God helmet." Then she realized it should be "God's helmet" but not "God helmet"! She got her pen and changed the title to "God's Helmet"!

The rosy-cheeked girl concentrated on reading, but she lost control and started talking loudly without realizing it, and suddenly her roommate woke up, which made her unfocused. She felt that she was hypnotized while reading and started thinking about why she likes to read. She also feels love, but she still can't give love to the disturbing girls outside the room, she only feels love while reading!

“What're you reading?” the roommate asked the rosy-cheeked girl.

“Mmm... it's a science book, not a novel,” the rosy-cheeked girl said, trying to avoid talking to her about the book. The rosy-cheeked girl thought she needed her body to release oxytocin now to build trust and strengthen her relationship with the roommate, but she couldn't do it and she doesn't know why!

“Oh, that means I cannot read,” the roommate replied.

“I do not know, maybe!” the rosy-cheeked girl replied with a slight smile, pretending to read from the book, but actually losing her concentration and waiting to finish the roommate's conversation and long questions.

The roommate then tried to get the attention of the rosy-cheeked girl, “I found some names for you, so many names, and I think I dreamed of people with so many names!” The roommate starts to list the names, and the rosy-cheeked girl is interested because she wants to remember the name she forgot before, and she is the one who suggested this game before.

“Yeah sure, but just give me a few minutes, please!” said the rosy-cheeked girl, and the roommate became a little embarrassed.

Suddenly, the roommate decided to wash her face, the roommate wore her sexy pajamas, and most parts of her body came out, she always did that in the room, but when other girls entered the room, she wore non-sexy pajamas, she became shy! The roommate wears her non-sexy pajamas and goes outside with her non-sexy pajamas after changing.

The rosy-cheeked girl found it a chance to continue reading, the rosy-cheeked girl felt comfortable when she could finish talking about the book quickly, even inside she began to feel kind of guilty especially when she read about "God Helmet" and using God's name in this way, which is considered a forbidden topic as her parents taught her at home. She played her favorite song again, reached for her cup of noodle, opened the book and continued reading ...

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