Joel Dames

Total Self-Renewal through Attention Therapies and Open Focus Joel Dames

We live in a world teaming with sensory information that our brain compresses. Our brain offers our conscious mind but a sliver of this sensory information. The body receives 11 million bits of sensory feedback, but we consciously process only 50 bits max. An unrelenting, ruminating Narrator hijacks our 50 bits of conscious attention bringing anxiety, stress, depression, and mental and physical illness. We do have some say though, as to what data survives the brain's harsh compression. We are always paying attention to something. We can spend our attention ruminating on the Narrator's BS or we can focus our limited attention on a process of self-renewal. Joel Dames has worked as school psychologist, counselor, and teacher of grades elementary through university. He has published in professional journals including Contemporary Issues in Reading, Journal of Experimental Psychology, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Rational-Emotive & Cognitive-Behavior Therapy. He coauthored "Scripting the Mind with REST, Rational-Emotive Self-Talk," (in Japanese with English Introduction by world-renown American psychologist Albert Ellis) Mikasa Shobo Publishing Co., Tokyo. At 79, his life has been one of incredible suffering and incredible self-renewal. He writes with the wisdom of a psychotically violent monster self-transformed into a loving husband and father.