Psychology

 An intelligence quotient (IQ) is a total score derived from a set of standardized tests or subtests designed to assess human intelligence.[1] The abbreviation "IQ" was coined by the psychologist William Stern for the German term Intelligenzquotient, his term for a scoring method for intelligence tests at University of Breslau he advocated in a 1912 book.[2] Historically, IQ was a score obtained by dividing a person's mental age score, obtained by administering an intelligence test, by the person's chronological age, both expressed in terms of years and months. The resulting fraction (quotient) was multiplied by 100 to obtain the IQ score.[3] For modern IQ tests, the raw score is transformed to a normal distribution with mean 100 and standard deviation 15.[4] This results in approximately two-thirds of the population scoring between IQ 85 and IQ 115 and about 2.5 percent each above 130 and below 70.[5][6] Scores from intelligence tests are estimates of intelligence. U...

 You’re headed to bed early – excited to finally get a full night’s rest. But as soon as your head hits the pillow, your brain is consumed with an unwanted, disturbing thought. You continue to dwell on that thought, tossing and turning all night long. Have you ever experienced a similar scenario where an unwelcome thought seemingly appeared out of nowhere? Most likely, you have. A study on the general population found that around 99.4% of individuals experience intrusive thoughts occasionally. However, only 13% of those individuals experience them frequently. What Causes Intrusive Thoughts? While it’s completely normal to experience intrusive thoughts from time-to-time, the underlying problem with them occurs when we continue to obsess and worry about them. So, it comes as no surprise that intrusive thoughts are associated with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and anxiety disorders. While intrusive thoughts can be random, a person’s own life experience or reactions to an event t...

How to Stop the Weird Thoughts Caused By Anxiety Anxiety can both cause weird thoughts and be caused by weird thoughts. Some types of anxiety, including obsessive compulsive disorder, are based on these strange and unexpected thoughts. Chronic anxiety can also alter thinking patterns, as can sleep loss from anxiety related insomnia. You can’t force weird thoughts to go away, but there are techniques that can be used to reduce their frequency. Eliminating anxiety can both prevent weird thoughts from occurring and reduce anxiety when an unusual thought does occur. This article has been fact-checked by our medical staff Fact Checked by Calm Clinic Editorial Team and Micah Abraham, BSc Micah Abraham, BSc Written by Micah Abraham, BSc Last updated March 1, 2021 How to Stop the Weird Thoughts Caused By Anxiety Anxiety genuinely affects the way you think. That's one of the reasons that so few people treat it. They have all of these weird thoughts and they feel so natural that they think t...

EMAIL ADAA website, with permission Source: ADAA website, with permission Everyone has passing intrusive thoughts that seem to come from outside their control: The content may feel alien, absurd, or threatening, and may pass after a few weird moments. Intrusive thoughts can be frightening worries about what might happen to you or someone you care about, or what mistake you might make, or what terrible impulsive act you might possibly commit. For some people, intrusive thoughts are part and parcel of panic or intense anxiety. These types of intrusive thoughts feel like they are a result of, or about the anxiety itself, and they function to add more fear to the anxiety you are already experiencing. The intrusive thoughts keep the anxiety going and maintain the fear-producing spiral. So, for example, you might think, "What if I have a heart attack?" in the midst of a panic attack. Or you might envision yourself knocking people over as you rush to exit the room. However, there is...

 Have you ever noticed how much time you spend thinking about negative or painful situations, ruminating and replaying what’s not working in your life? It’s not just you. The last statistic I read claimed 80 percent of our thoughts are negative, and 95 percent repetitive. Strangely, the more negative an experience, the more we return to it. Like vultures to a carcass, we’re drawn to what hurts. As the Buddhist saying goes, we want happiness, and yet we chase our suffering. Why? What’s at the root of our mind’s addiction to suffering, why do we compulsively cling to our pain, and how can we shift this unwise and unhelpful habit of ours? We return to our suffering, because fundamentally we’re trying to make the negative experience come out a different way. Our mental replays are attempts to re-script what we don’t want into a new reality. If we can just understand our pain more clearly, spend more time with it, we’ll be able to figure it out—in other words, make it go away. If we can...