Beauty Wellness Collective

If you think your mental health might benefit from psychotherapy, booking an appointment with a professional—often an Herculean task—is only the beginning. Before you start, there might be some mental cobwebs you’ll need to clear out to make therapy work for you.

Maybe you feel like your problems are insurmountable, or even doubt a therapist’s ability to make a difference. Maybe you fear or distrust the medical system, and opening up seems terrifying.

Therapists often see these hesitations with their clients and assure that by addressing them, you can overcome them and fully benefit from your time, financial, and emotional investment in the process.

“Me and my therapist didn’t click”
So you went to a therapist and after talking to them for an hour you decided there was no connection. It happens—as much as they’re professionals, they’re also just people, and it’s impossible to connect with everybody. Maybe they were poorly trained, which is not only discouraging, but also downright harmful, says Josh Jonas, a psychotherapist at The Village Institute, a therapy practice in New York City.

This is why it’s so important to find a good fit. Meeting with multiple therapists in your quest to find a dynamic that works for you is normal. Whenever it doesn’t feel right, just try another one. But, as anyone who has looked for this unicorn knows, it’s easier said than done.

[Related: Boost your health with a little nature therapy]

Mental healthcare needs have spiked in the US over the past four years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and a shortage of mental health professionals that predated the COVID-19 pandemic only worsened after the health crisis. This has made it hard to find a therapist that’s a good match. The reality is even grimmer for the 160 million Americans that live in states like California, Texas or Arkansas, where mental healthcare access is limited.

To increase the chances of finding a match, ask for a quick intro call with the therapist you’re planning to see. Even if you are using an online platform where you are matched with someone through a questionnaire, you can request to interview them ahead of your first session and change therapists at any time.

You can ask them anything you want that will make you feel more at ease about working with them. But if you don’t know what to ask, Jonas suggests some ideas to get you started:

What is your typical process for getting to know your patients and their concerns?
What type of therapy do you use and why?
How quickly might I anticipate seeing some sort of progress?
Do you anticipate me needing to set aside time outside of therapy for “homework” or other to-dos?
It will take time and some effort, but Jonas says finding a good therapist is a fight worth fighting.

“My therapist won’t ‘get’ me”
Your therapist might be a person with an entirely different background than you, which might result in them not understanding you at first. But even if that’s the case, they should really want to try.

“People can have the sense that because of disparities, you might not get the same treatment,” says Marlene Watson, a licensed therapist and director of training at the Ackerman Institute, a family therapy clinic in New York City,

People of color, for example, might feel an inherent mistrust in psychotherapy (a field where the grand majority of professionals are white) based on the known history of systemic racism in the medical community.

In addition, some women might be concerned that male providers will be more dismissive of their experiences based on a history of sexism in healthcare. A 2021 study published in the journal Psychological Services, shows that women with serious mental illness are often overlooked in mental health and rehabilitation settings, and have a higher risk of treatment bias, abuse, and violence compared to men.

But even if you and your therapist have physical, cultural, or communicational differences, Watson says a good professional will not only have training on cultural bias, but will actively and openly talk to you about not feeling understood.

“We talk about communication as our business […] a therapist engaging in that type of dialogue is a sign you are in the right place,” she says.

Sci-fi author Brian Herbert once wrote, “The only guarantee in life is death, and the only guarantee in death is its shocking unpredictability.” These words ring true to researchers who investigate what happens in a person’s final moments—and the frustration that comes with these studies. One big problem almost always gets in the way: How do you ask people what dying feels like when they’re no longer here?

Because we haven’t yet figured out how to communicate with the dead, the best-case scenario is talking to people who have had a close brush with death. They often mention seeing bright lights, their life flashing before their eyes, or visions of deceased loved ones. Some have even reported spotting the Grim Reaper by their bedside. It’s a paradoxical situation, says Kevin Nelson, a professor of neurology at the University of Kentucky: A few perceptions are common—a shining light, for instance—but the near-death experience is unique to each individual.

There’s still a lot of mystery when it comes to the cause, but the field is progressing thanks to people who have allowed scientists to study their brains in these situations. People who have survived these close calls say the encounter can be life-changing. One thing is certain: medical experts say near-death experiences are not a figment of the imagination.

And figuring out the mechanisms behind this phenomenon goes beyond general curiosity. One goal is to better understand how cardiac arrests happen. It could also potentially save lives, because doctors would have more knowledge for when to continue resuscitations after a patient’s heart stops.

“The research not only benefits our understanding of consciousness, but also in understanding the importance of the heart, lung, and brain in our everyday physiology,” says Jimo Borjigin, an associate professor of neurology at the University of Michigan Medical School.

Unreal recall
A near-death experience can happen to anyone. In fact, 1 in 10 people have reported sharper senses, slowed time, out-of-body sensations or other features associated with near-death, despite not being in grave danger. Research shows that near-death experiences come in four types: emotional, cognitive, spiritual and religious experiences, and supernatural. Of the four, people often recall supernatural activity, particularly the feeling of detaching from a physical body.

About 76 percent of people report an out-of-body experience during a near-death experience. While some people may attribute this to a spiritual experience, this is actually a sensory deception caused by the brain, which scientists have successfully replicated in people who are asleep. Research has shown that direct electrical stimulation of a brain area normally inactive in REM sleep can provoke an out-of-body experience. “Like a flip of a switch, you can literally throw somebody out of their body and back into their body,” Nelson says.

[Related: CPR can save lives. Here’s how (and when) to do it.]

Often, though, people with cardiac arrest will recall near-death experiences. “About a quarter of people who suffer and survived cardiac arrest have memories about some aspect of near-death experience, Borjigin says. This is because people with cardiac arrest have decreasing blood pressure, she says. With the heart unable to pump properly, oxygen is unable to travel to the rest of the body, which is essential for every single cell in your body to survive. When a brain is alerted to a sudden decline in oxygen, your brain undergoes certain changes that contribute to the perceptual distortions that accompany a near-death experience.

Electrical surges in the brain
Ten years ago, Borjigin and her team observed that rats in simulated cardiac arrest still had fully active brains even 30 seconds after their hearts stopped. What’s more, their brains increased in electrical activity. To confirm whether this happens in humans, Borjigin recently tested the brains of four people who were critically ill and removed from life support.

Most nutritionists advise people to “eat the rainbow” to balance their diet—think greens like kale, purples like eggplant, reds like tomatoes. Consuming nutritious and naturally occuring orange foods like carrots packed with vitamin A, fiber, antioxidants, and pigments called carotenoids is a must to get a full and healthy spectrum. Carotenoids even got their name because they were first isolated from carrots. But what is exactly behind the bright hue of some of our favorite carrots? Only three specific genes are required to give orange carrots their signature color, according to a study published September 28 in the journal Nature Plants.

[Related: Carrots were once a crucial tool in anti-Nazi propaganda.]

In the study, a team from North Carolina State University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison looked at the genetic blueprints of more than 600 varieties of carrots. Surprisingly, they found that these three required genes all need to be recessive, or turned off.

“Normally, to make some function, you need genes to be turned on,” study co-author and North Carolina State University horticultural scientist Massimo Iorizzo said in a statement. “In the case of the orange carrot, the genes that regulate orange carotenoids—the precursor of vitamin A that have been shown to provide health benefits—need to be turned off,” Iorizzo said.

In 2016, this team sequenced the carrot genome for the first time and also uncovered the gene involved in the pigmentation of yellow carrot. For this new study, they sequenced 630 carrot genomes as part of a continuing study on the history and domestication of the crunchy root veggie.

The team performed selective sweeps, or structural analyses among five different carrot groups. During these sweeps, they looked for areas of the genome that are heavily selected in certain groups. They found that many of the genes involved in flowering were under selection, primarily to delay the flowering process. This event causes the edible root that we eat called the taproot to turn woody and inedible.

“We found many genes involved in flowering regulation that were selected in multiple populations in orange carrot[s], likely to adapt to different geographic regions,” said Iorizzo.

Additionally, the study created a general timeline of carrot domestication and found more evidence that carrots were domesticated in the 9th or 10th century CE in western and central Asia.

“Purple carrots were common in central Asia along with yellow carrots. Both were brought to Europe, but yellow carrots were more popular, likely due to their taste,” said Iorizzo.

[Related: WTF are purple carrots and where did they come from?]

In about the 15th or 16th century, orange carrots made their appearance in western Europe, potentially as the result of crossing a yellow carrot with a white one. The bright color and sweet flavor of orange carrots likely made it more popular than other varieties, so farmers continued selecting for them. In northern Europe, different types of orange carrots were developed in the 16th and 17th centuries and orange carrots of various shades can be seen in paintings from that area. They continued to grow in popularity as more understanding about the importance of alpha- and beta-carotenes and vitamin A in the diet for eye health progressed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The findings in this study shed more light on the traits that are important to improving carrots and could lead to better health benefits from the nutritious vegetable.