#648 Vent and Dust

A couple of breakthroughs from the world of psychology: Persnickety people don’t get Alzheimer’s, and dwelling on your feelings makes them worse.
First, the Felix and Oscar test. In a study done with 997 priests and nuns, those who originally scored higher on tests for “conscientiousness” were 89% less likely to develop Alzheimer’s than their less-meticulous peers. These are the people who control impulses, the study said.
Interestingly, autopsies done on those that died during the period of the study showed no decreased incidence of the brain plaque associated with Alzheimer’s in the Felix types.
The lead scientist proposes that the difference may be in the way persnickety people use their brains, relying more on the frontal areas, which deal with decision-making and planning. This makes them less vulnerable than people who use the lesion-prone more primitive parts of their brains.
Great, as if anal-retentive people weren’t already insufferable enough. Now we have to put up with the fastidious Felixs longer than the more likable befuddled Oscars.
The second science breakthrough involves a study that determined that discussing problems over and over can actually make them worse.
When the psychologist Amanda Rose studied various group-venting sessions of teenage girls, she found that the hours-long conversations were reinforcing depressing feelings, not eliminating them. “The more they talk about it, the more anxious and depressed they feel. Too much talk is too much of a good thing,” she said.
On the face of it, it makes sense. If I trip when I’m running and get some super road rash, it makes sense to go to a doctor to have him clean out the wound of all the gunk and rocks and bacteria and stuff.
It doesn’t make sense to go back every other day and have him reopen the wound and start rummaging around with his swab and scalpel and gouge me out all over again.
Before tomorrow’s research totally contradicts today’s, the lesson here seems to be pretty simple. Vent, and then get over it, possibly by conscientiously and fastidiously keeping your apartment as neat as a pin.
Or, talk less, dust more.
America, ya gotta love it