Abortion, Dissociation & Development of Emotional Diversity Lexicons

Several years ago, during a time of professional prosperity, I participated in every opportunity that came my way to inspire young girls in the early stages of their careers (ages 12-30). I told them about myself and answered their questions. Mostly I was there to expose them to possible career options and say "if you'd like it too, it is possible".

I was in the 11th week of pregnancy when I came in for another day of work. That day high school girls came, and I volunteered to tell them what we were researching. It was after a difficult night, in which our little son was crying for many hours. When he finally fell asleep and I shut my eyes, I woke up from a bad dream about the pregnancy and did not fall asleep again until the morning.

I was standing that day on a stage in front of the school girls, presenting the Eyes-of-Watson. I felt that something was wrong. It was so weird. I usually loved to teach and mentor. Teaching fills me with joy and satisfaction. I am filled with energy when I teach. But at that moment those feelings did not ignite, but the opposite. It was as if a great darkness had fallen. I felt that my face could not smile. I didn't know what was wrong with me, I felt extremely sad and didn't know to tell exactly why. I kept asking myself "what is wrong with me?" And also "What am I doing here?". I felt a wave of mourning wash over me.

Two weeks later, in the 13th week of pregnancy, I had a routine pregnancy test. The doctor said: "I'm sorry...", to which I replied "I knew it. It happened two weeks ago, right?"

Indeed.

I left the doctor's room. I shed tears, than I cried and sobbed. After a few minutes I calmed down and went into the doctor's room again for him to explain what should be done next.

I searched the internet and read in professional forums regarding the various options. I read also in non-professional forums testimonies of women about the terrible suffering of waiting until the scraping and I had no idea what they were talking about.

I felt nothing. Nothing at all.

After the surgery,
I wanted to draw in panda colors, which requires the use of force,
and smearing, working with the hands, close to the material,
with bold colors, of red and blood
as if the body wanted to bring out aggression in a subtle way.

During my previous maternity leaves,
I painted colorful and abstract paintings with a brush.

For half a year after that, I suffered from the side effects of pregnancy without being pregnant. As if the body had not completely come to terms with it being over.

No one around me knew (not even my parents). We did not yet tell anyone of the pregnancy, so there was also no point in telling that it ended.

It was only after a few months that I told a close friend. While I was telling him, he told me, "You know, it's very strange. It seems that you went through something very difficult, while you tell it with such nonchalance."

It was the first time I had thought about how it is that women usually report abortion as a mentally and spiritually painful experience, while I did not feel anything.

~ * ~

In current research I am involved in, we examine the emotions expressed in text. One of the topics that came up in a brainstorming session was about “emotional disconnection”. For example, a patient might describe an experience using certain emotion words that are not consistent to the emotional state reported by him (like experiencing a painful event without feeling the negative emotion). That was the first time I wondered if I have ever experienced emotional dissociation. With respect to the abortion I went through, it is hard to tell. Inside, I had a feeling of full awareness and did not feel something is different or missing. But that might be an illusion or a blind spot, like a defense mechanism designed to protect me.

~ * ~

By the way, the emotional analysis of texts started two years ago, while I was leading psychology students in a research practicum, where students chose a topic and researched it. There were a couple of students that chose to review 'emotional diversity', which made me curious to learn more about it.

From Ong et al. (2018) paper -
differentiating between a patient with that experiences diverse emotions
 vs. a patient that lacks some of the emotional experience.  

In order to be able to explore emotional diversity from a text, one needs the ability to identify emotions in the texts. 

So in the following year, the practicum helped develop lexicons for various emotions, by suggesting and tagging emotion words for the different emotions.

We have also publicly released the lexicons and an accompanying software package for common use.

At the same time, we developed a software based on deep learning on Hebrew Twitter data (emotion-rich text) for predicting text-based emoji ("emotion faces").

"Are you happy?" (from Rita's song )

~ * ~

With respect to my doctoral studies, I completed my duties to the psychotherapy research lab. 

Tomorrow I start an internship at Amazon on the subject of humor. I hope the new research topic will bring feelings of humor and happiness!

The Corona and Me (2)

 

We are today at the end of the third lockdown in Israel. A lockdown that lasted six weeks in which parents are supposed to continue with the routine of their lives to work and function vigorously while simultaneously caring and educating their children.

We all grew up in a year. For my little daughter it's half her total life.

We learned to adapt to the situation.

The children learned to manage themselves. They developed the responsibility to get by on the zoom and to take care of food for themselves (they even once prepared for us!).

My husband and I found it more efficient and relaxed to divide the time by days of the week: 'Today I take care of the children, maintain the house and take care of meals for everyone and you work from morning to night and tomorrow the opposite' (unlike previous lockdowns that we tried to manage every day in shifts - 8 hours of work and  8 hours being with the kids - It was exhausting).

This time it was a lot less stressful (and even fun).

Writing code while the little one curls up on me and the third one practices with the ring-fit

The 30 Must Read Books/Authors

Recommended by a network of lovely friends (more than 50 people, mostly computer scientists) :

Books:

• Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984) / George Orwell
• The Fountainhead / Ayn Rand
• Ender's Game / Orson Scott Card
• The Time Traveler's Wife / Audrey Niffenegger
• Bobiverse / Dennis E. Taylor
• The Alchemist / Paulo Coelho
• The Catcher in the Rye / J. D. Salinger
• Catch-22 / Joseph Heller
• The Coincidence Makers / Yoav Blum
• Atlas Shrugged / Ayn Rand
• The Bronze Horseman / Paullina Simons
• The Kite Runner / Khaled Hosseini
• In the Woods / Tana French
• Fermat's Last Theorem / Simon Singh
• Dune / Frank Herbert
• The Glass Castle / Jeannette Walls
• Tuesdays with Morrie / Mitch Albom
• The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide / Douglas Adams
• To Say Nothing of the Dog / Connie Willis
• The Shadow of the Wind / Carlos Ruiz Zafón
• Nine Tomorrows / Isaac Asimov

Authors:

• Ayn Rand
• Connie Willis
• Yoav Blum
• Simon Lehna Singh
• Jo Nesbø
• Isaac Asimov
• Richard Feynman
• Douglas Adams
• Orson Scott Card
• Arthur C. Clarke

Only those voted at least twice are included in these lists.
More recommendation can be found here:
https://www.facebook.com/natalie.shapira.9/posts/10160022611249782

The Corona and Me (1)

All educational institutions, including nurseries, are canceled in Israel for two weeks now.

So, in addition to 100% of my research job and 100% of my husband's research job and 100% of our regular parenting job (6:00-8:00 and 16:00-21:30), we now have additional 100% job to replace the teachers and nannies 8:00-16:00. That is 400% work time as a family, 200% for each one of us. After all, in the 24 hours (reducing 7 hours of sleep and one hour of eating etc) there are only 16 hours, which is exactly 200%.

I hope you now understand why I don't have time to answer your phones, whatsapps or emails.

Good night.

Hacking the system: trying to work during my shift 

When an Introvert Opens her Mouth

"If there is something that will prevent you from getting really far," he stopped for a second, thinking how to say it and than continued: "it's your fear of talking in front of an audience".

It was several years ago and my team leader said it to me. We worked close and had the chance to get to know each other professionally. He felt comfortable to give me that criticism and I appreciated it. I pondered on his statement. I never thought about myself as having glossophobia. Is it true?

Blind spots are states, emotions, thoughts or feelings that we have no ability to see, feel or maybe even understand.
'It might be my blind spot' I thought to myself, trying to recall all actions and interactions I made around him to understand what could have made him think that.

Hmm... maybe its because I never asked to present my work and let him speak for me with management or clients. I just thought that he does it much better than I, and that he enjoys it. I didn't care about ego or getting attention.

Oh.. and the group meetings... I was pretty silent... although I was the most senior in the group. I always thought its because I have nothing important enough to say. But.. wait a minute, he is right... the group meetings are full of content and are necessary, how is that everyone else has something to say...? I never thought of them as speaking about unimportant issues. Why did I have nothing to say to them? It's because I would not wait for the group meetings, but rather say things one-on-one when relevant. Is this the real reason or is it just an excuse of the subconscious to hide from myself the fact that I have a problem talking to a crowd?

He wasn't the first one who noticed this characteristic of mine. One of my previous team leaders also implicitly tried to improve similar "problems" I had... I remember one argument when he told me "There is no place for humbleness here!" 

But how could it be??? I talked in front of dozens of students on a daily basis in the university, while teaching the most complex courses. I was also managing meetings as a project manager and also performed in piano concerts since I was a 3 years old. I can do it if I want to. I usually speak when I have something to say, without fear.

22-year-old Natalie, I was teaching rehearsals before the exam for Algorithms course, all the students from the different groups arrived

So what is it? perfectionism? low confidence? altruism? shyness? something else?
I started with Wikipedia... exploring all those concepts, trying to understand them deeply. Crawling through other psychology concepts. I got to the conclusion that I have all of them... and also none of them. I was confused, so I continued with my research. For the next days I read 3 psychology courses' material - Personality, Organizational-Psychology and Abnormality.

Then I got it, I'm an introvert.

Introversion:
In the basic definition introverts are people who gain energy from being alone and lose energy in interaction with groups. They enjoy being alone, interaction could be easily overwhelming, some even described it as "introvert hangover". Though, they may enjoy interactions with close friends which they will choose carefully, trust is usually an issue of significance. They are said to be good listeners, hate conflicts, and described by the environment as pleasant and quiet. Introverts prefer one-on-one conversation over group activity. They would rather celebrate a birthday in a small band. Introverts will take pleasure in solitary activities such as reading, writing, playing music, using a computer etc. Artist/writer/scientist/engineer/composer/inventor is the archetype of a highly introverted person. Introverts prefer to concentrate on a single activity at a time and prefer not to talk about a task or job until it is completed. Introverts like to observe situations before they participate. They are more analytical before speaking and may struggle with word retrieval though they can express clarity of mind while writing and thus prefer to express themselves in writing.

There are different levels of introversion. Its a spectrum, and though I'm not at the extremity, that cluster of properties exactly describes me.

So, as I saw it, my quietness wasn't a matter of fear - but a default feature in my personality-type: While extroverts automatically-unconsciously think "Do I have a good reason not to speak?" introvert's default is the opposite: "Do I have a good reason to speak?"

Although introversion is not "preventing from getting really far" (well... Einstein was an introvert... I also see living examples around me, like my father who founded and ran factories and serves as a community leader while being away from the spotlight), I decided to take my team leader's advice and to be more aware of it. As an experiment, I tried to play like an extrovert.

I started with the group meetings - I forced myself to speak. I was actively asking myself during the meetings "What am I thinking right now? ... OK. Do I have a good reason not to say it?"
and it worked. I had a lot to share and it raised conversations and action items.

Last week, presenting at the AI4HumanLanguage

Then, whenever I had the opportunity to speak in front of an audience
- I said: YES, I'll do it!
I saw immediate implications for impact in the organization. I improved my visibility and doubled exponentially the number of people who knew me. I was invited to join interesting committees and many other doors opened.

It was a new world. All my life I have developed my technical skills and the recent happenings have been something else, like another dimension. Move laterally instead of in depth. I wanted to acquire more knowledge in this new area and thus took every course my work place suggested related to soft skills:

• Influential skills workshop - Itay Tsur
• How to impact by using "IBM Connection" efficiently - Shiri Kremer-Davidson
• Marketing and social media - Tomer Zuker
• Build your personal brand - Ana Gomez Lara; Know your strengths, build your elevator pitch in an impactful way, learn your network objective
• Building effective mentoring partnership - Ana Gomez Lara; Understand more about mentoring and the value it adds, the qualities of an effective mentor and mentee, how to establish and nurture a mentoring partnership
• Writing a script for a video pitch workshop - Fady Copty
• Writing papers course - Cindy Eisner and Orna Raz

This blog for example is a result of Shiri's advice.

Since then I made a growth spurt. I was being recognized for my achievements and accomplishments, started to lead people, became a project leader and promoted ideas - because - "you could be great, your ideas could be genius, but if it stays only in your head, no one will know about them" (Cindy).
I was ready and all I needed was that the outside world will know it too.

Summing the four years of experiment:
The benefit:
Some of the things became part of me. I got positive reinforcement seeing the results: professional growth, the ability to make an impact, exposed/discovered new interesting opportunities. I no longer need to actively think about processes going inside my head and whether to speak or not**, its my nature now. New people who meet me today and hear that I used to be the quietest person in the room at a workplace, can't believe it.
The cost:
There are things that are still not part of me. I require a lot of preparations before 'extraversioning' and a long quiet time with myself after to clear my mind from the "high"/"introvert hangover". I don't know if its just a matter of more practice or whether it's just how I am programmed. It is time consuming -- precious time that could have been channeled into developing other skills. It keeps me away from things I like and am much better at. Additionally, it is difficult to isolate the exact factors that have led to successes and whether the obstacles are indeed worth it or can be given up. Lastly, new colleagues tend to get confused and think I am horizontal much more than I am deep, and suggest that I progress in the management track. How do I explain that I'm in the middle of an experiment and I haven't yet reached conclusions?

---

I like hearing\reading this:

TED talk about the power of introverts:
https://www.ted.com/talks/susan_cain_the_power_of_introverts#t-117744

"Introvert revenge: The shy boy will show you who is king" (in Hebrew):
http://www.mako.co.il/home-family-kids/education/Article-8b46fdacdbf4631006.htm

and blog-posts about blind spots:
http://psych-your-mind.blogspot.co.il/2011/08/friday-fun-psychological-blind-spots.html
http://marthabeck.com/2011/11/seeing-your-emotional-blind-spots/
http://psych-your-mind.blogspot.com/2011/08/friday-fun-psychological-blind-spots.html


** Well, several weeks ago my supervisor told me 'people should know what you are working on'. I suspect it has to do with my introvert preference not to talk about a task or job until it is completed. So I still has blind spots and work to do...

How does a Startup (almost) Start Up? or - A Real Story From My Experience

February 2018
Two years ago,  I left the industry back to the academia to pursue a PhD combining clinical psychology and artificial intelligence. I was four months pregnant, not the best timing for a transition, surely not the best time to start thinking about a venture. Sometimes plans and reality conflict. 

The first PhD research goal was detecting a person's distress level from their language. Several months earlier I started collecting every piece of work regarding diagnosing mental state through text (see: my private space oddity). The work that caught my eye most was about methods for identifying posts in support communities that may indicate a risk of self-harm.

I was already thinking about what is waiting out there after finishing the PhD. 
I was both curious and worried:
In the functional level - What am I going to do next? Will I go back to the hi-tech industry? Will it be in a large corporation? Will I freelance, be a consultant or maybe start something of my own? (how does a startup start up?) I amused myself with the thought of  breaking down the statistics by being a woman-startup-founder (see: from birth to a startup where do all the women disappear).
In the content level - Will this PhD be used for something? for me? to the world? will my next job combine both of my interests - psychology and computer science?
In the global level - What will happen with the technology I'm researching? To date, psychological tools were reserved for psychologists. They went through a very long filtering process to become psychologists, have been undergoing long training, and are committed to ethics. Now, we are going to develop technology that may fall into the wrong hands -- hands that might take advantage of it.

I was actively looking for answers to my questions. I joined various industrial and entrepreneurial circles: forums, Facebook communities, meetups, conferences, work-spaces, Google for startups (see: a visit to the Google campus), the Israel innovation authority, and more. I looked for mentors that (1) succeeded with establishing a startup and reaching an exit (though, I must say that an "exit" isn't a goal of mine) (2) combined their academic PhD knowledge with their own business (3) combined parenting and entrepreneurship. I found a few who gave (and are still giving) helpful advice.
I also looked for interesting data outside the university. Data that could leverage the things I was researching and hopefully - a potential research collaboration, customer or a partner.
Since I care about the world, I was carefully choosing the connections I made. I was hoping to find a good worthy home for the technology of identifying people's mental state (so it would not be utilized in a manipulative manner). For example, for the judicial system or for helping people with disabilities etc.

While I was doing these things, I didn't think about it at all. I didn't feel like I was making a special effort. A mysterious force pushed me to do it and things just happened, on the move, in harmony, without restricting me or requiring me to give up on anything. These things happened when waiting for a doctor, while driving to university or back home, while watching my kids playing in the yard or in the evening after the kids went to bed and I would be left exhausted for anything else.
March 2018
The same mentioned mysterious power led me to join the amazing community called Yazamiyot (Women Entrepreneurs) and later on register to the first meeting. The event title was "A LEGACY OF INNOVATION" and included a talk on behalf of the Israel Innovation Authority (IIA). I didn't think twice whether to attend or not. I was interested in hearing about the funding options that IIA has to offer. The title of the event also sounded interesting as I like thinking of myself as innovative. Lastly, I wanted to meet managers from the industry face to face, hoping to find a potential match for the research I was working on and maybe make them interested in the idea.

April 2018
At the beginning of the event, the organizer suggested that everyone in turn will present themselves. I presented myself too. I listened carefully to each woman's pitch, running in my head all the questions I'm bringing along with me everywhere. The last participant to present herself was Zina (name changed for privacy). Zina is the CEO of a social media platform. When she said "... I employ three women to read all the uploaded texts in the platform in order to monitor distress ...", I thought "BINGO!!! if she is willing to pay for it - she will understand the value of automating it". The moment she sat down, I turned to her and whispered "We need to talk". She looked back at me and said "I know".

May 2018
I was visited Zina's office. Along with me I brought a stack of articles. We first had a 1x1 where I convinced Zina that automatic mental state detection from text is possible, by citing and summarizing article after article. When I finished, she gathered all the rest of the team, introduced me, and asked me to tell every one about the new idea. I re-summarized the articles' main ideas. They where astonished, amazed, couldn't believe what they just heard. It was a bit funny to see them shocked since I was reading those articles for several months and got used to the idea. Now it was my turn - "Show me the data".

July 2018
Nine months pregnant, already with labor contractions, I couldn't walk, I couldn't sit, I couldn't stand, I couldn't lay, I couldn't do anything besides thinking about the pains. But instead, I was sitting for several hours in a meeting with representative of the Israel Innovation Authority**. We were asking for a nominal fee (only a few hundred thousand shekels) to build a POC, explaining the motivation, the potential, and that we know how to and are able to do it.

August 2018 - August 2019
I was holding Michal. Somewhere around October, we were awarded the nominal fee. I was really excited to hear that. Choy (a fake name) started to implement the system according to the plan. I was with my eyes open, I knew I'm giving up the chance to be the CTO. What could I do? I had a little sweet lovely baby to care for. I did the best I could. All this time I was in the background - advising, teaching, mentoring, using my network to solve problems, attending (remotely) important meetings for patents, planning, strategy, etc. At the end of the year, while we were planning our tasks, preparing to submit another IIA application for the next year, I was crowned by Zina and Choy to be the Chief Science Officer (CSO) and just then, I realized, that actually, I didn't lost the chance to be the CTO but won role which I enjoy much more, that puts me in the position of my aspirations (see: what it means to be a researcher) and integrates in perfect harmony with my life and with the new team.

September 2019
Zina, Choy and I were sitting again for several hours in the meeting with a representative of the IIA. Now we asked for much more money. We had to go productize our POC.

October 2019 - January 2020
We have been waiting for the IIA response which was delayed to arrive (probably due to the unstable state of the government). During that time we were looking for "matching", i.e., an investor that would match the same amount of money we were asking for. We met an interested angel investor and started an evaluation process. We have also been looking for customers, and found some potential leads. We signed up for startup related activities such as accelerators, conferences and meetups. Eventually the IIA approved the entire budget (!) and we continued to look for matching.

February 2020
Unfortunately, our team had some disagreements which we could not overcome.

Closure
This is all fresh and I'm a bit overwhelmed. I'll have to take some time to digest, to learn the lesson and wait for a new passion to sprout.
Michal is one and half years old. She is walking, speaking and still nursing.
The PhD is also advancing, we submitted a paper to a psychotherapy journal and presented the work for several audiences (come to see us - WiDS 23.2.2020  SPR-Israel 26-27.2.2020 and AI4HumanLanguage 5.3.2020)
This year is devoted to researching language interactions. This is awesome, can't wait to see the fruits.

** If there is something that impresses me most in this two-year summary, it is the fact that I sat on a chair for several hours with labor pains. I don't know how I did it.

Soft Skills (2)

This is an amazing video. I encourage you to see it by yourself (direct link).
Anyway, here is an TL;DR:

"High-achieving groups were not those where they had one or two people with spectacularly high I.Q. Nor were the most successful groups the ones that had the highest aggregate I.Q. Instead, they had three characteristics, the really successful teams. 

First of all, they showed high degrees of social sensitivity to each other. This is measured by something called the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test. It's broadly considered a test for empathy, and the groups that scored highly on this did better. 

Secondly, the successful groups gave roughly equal time to each other, so that no one voice dominated, but neither were there any passengers. 

And thirdly, the more successful groups had more women in them."