An integral part of the DSM IV TR states that before you give a psychiatric diagnosis, the diagnostician rules out the possibility of alternate causes of psychiatric disorder. For example, a damaged thyroid gland may create mood instability. This doesn't mean the person can be diagnosed with a mood disorder, but rather the diagnosis should be some kind of thyroid related diagnosis.
Socioeconomics and lifestyle can lead to three common activities that lead toward behaviours that can be confused for psychiatric symptoms: Sleep deprivation, mal-nutrition and drugs misuse.
Sufficient sleep deprivation can lead to hallucinations, low concentration, confused diet, micro-sleeps and many other symptoms. Sleep deprivation can be caused by many factors, some of which can be psychiatric disorder, some can be drug induced, some can be poor diet and there are a host of living situations, stress, and biological sources. However, if you find that sleep deprivation is a significant part of your current situation, consider what may be contributing to your sleep deprivation, rectify that and see if some of your more concerning symptoms clear up.
Mal-nutrition is far more common in the Western world than many people think. If your diet does not consistently contain a variety for fruit, vegetables, grains and occasional meat, then your diet may be significantly out of balance. Consider this analogy to understand why a varied, nutritious diet is important to mental health. If you consider that your body is a complex biological machine, made of many small machines (cells), which build and maintain your body. If important nutrients are not regularly supplied to your body, then your cells cannot maintain necessarily health. It's like the car repair shop running out of welding rods and not being able to weld new pieces of metal to your rusted out car door. It just doesn't work. Or another thing to consider is how well will your engine run if it runs out of oil and you don't add more? Your mind is a finely tuned engine which needs a variety of vitamins, nutrients and proteins to work properly.
Drugs change the functioning of how your cells work. Sometimes we want this change, such as when we are trying to help our white cells identify foreign inimical biology to kill. When the function is how you think, you want to be very careful about what changes in function you are introducing. Most illegal drugs create unwanted long term changes in cell functioning, leading to mental processes that are not what you had hoped for when you took the drug. Drugs that many don't consider seriously include nicotine, caffeine and alcohol. All three directly change your behaviour. For example, caffeine changes your mood, alters your concentration (increased to begin with, then decreased after a few hours for many hours).
Society does not help us to recognise when we are abusing these drugs. Nicotine is currently in the bad books, so most people believe any nicotine consumption is bad. On average, that is true, however for altering blood pressure and a few other conditions, nicotine is quite useful. I highly recommend that you check with a health professional rather than take my word for it, however. If you are drinking more than 4 cups of coffee a day, then you are probably abusing it. Similarly, if you drink more than 1 standard drink of alcohol a day, then you are probably abusing alcohol as well. I would suggest that the best way you can test yourself for drug addiction is to consider how much your current life would be inconvenienced if you were to stop right now and not use any of the substance for 30 days. If your response includes an expletive or serious consideration of how hard that is going to be, then you are probably addicted and abusing the substance.
Consider that 20% of the population of Australia who smoke cigarettes are people diagnosed with a psychiatric condition. Those 20% of the population consume almost half of the nicotine, which is a disproportionate amount. Again, people with a psychiatric diagnosis consumer approximately five times more caffeine than people without. One of the reasons considered for this is that both caffeine and nicotine have short term benefits to concentration, and nicotine has short term calmative effects, which can often combat the negative effects of medication or stress.
If you find that your life is out of control, by all means get some help as soon as possible, which may include a prescription of medication. Be wary of just ignoring medical advice, however feel free to question your practitioner. If your diagnostician does not consider physical causes to your experience, then perhaps remind them or consider controlling and compensating for these, or other, physical factors.
Showing posts with label How to Recover. Show all posts
Showing posts with label How to Recover. Show all posts
August 12, 2011
July 12, 2011
The Thriving Framework
Thriving
How does thriving feel to you? Or, how should it feel?
Defining the Thriving Framework
The Thriving Framework is a heuristics for achieving a State of Thriving. It takes advantage of person centred planning, personal empowerment, the right for people to choose their own destinies and methods of achieving these destinies. It does not require people to admit to some ill, being faulty, broken or helpless.
Achieving a State of Thriving is the end goal which is defined by individual people as their destination at the end of their progress through the framework.While the emotional experience of most people who have reached this stage is similar (safe, satisfied, confident, content, empowered, capable etc), the specific context will vary widely and the string of goals needed to achieve this state will be individualised such that the journey through the framework will be the individual persons, not anyone else's.
Defining the State of Thriving
Thriving is a state of doing well, being well and succeeding at all of the important things in your life. If life were a game, it may defined as winning. Thriving does not mean that your life is over, only that you now have abundant resources to do what you want, how you want and as you want. People who are thriving are generally happy, are not struggling often, have most of what they want, have all of what they need and are generally fully integrated into society in such a way that they feel both wanted by and useful to society.
The State of Thriving is made up of two components. The Feeling of Thriving and the Context of Thriving.
Separating the Feeling and the Context
The State of Thriving is defined as the context you would fine yourself in to achieve the feeling of doing well and having "made it". Core to thriving is feeling like you are thriving. Their is no point to living prosperously if you are miserable.
The Context of Thriving allows you to define the most likely situation that you are going to find yourself thriving in and the components of this context act as the elements of your goals. The goals create a flexible path for you to journey over from where you are now to where you wish to be such that you are thriving.
An emotion that I may identify as being part of my thriving might be safety. To understand why this is important I need to look at how safety plays a part in my current and past experience. For this example, it is because I have moved houses many times and could not rely on my home being home. To achieve the feeling of safety does not mean bars on the window, or a security force, or that I think I am being followed. To achieve a feeling of safety I want my own home, which can't be taken I can not loose. In this example, the feeling is safety and the context in which I will feel safe is security in housing. If I do not recognise both components to this sub goal, then I may very well attempt to achieve the wrong thing and find myself escorted by safety professionals who do not actually address my feelings of fear at loosing my home.
The Spectrum of Thriving
Thriving is the end point on a spectrum of well being. In this case I define well being as how well my being is. My spectrum looks like this:
Death - Existing - Surviving - Coping - Achieving - Thriving
The size of the steps between each of these increases exponentially.
Death is the end of life, it is clinical death.
Existing is moving through life without feeling, without thought or personal power. It is close to death in that you can not or will not act and life just passes you by. Some people may wish to put this in a separate spectrum, but I feel it is the state of being just passed death. It can be placed alongside Surviving. People who are Existing do not feel a future that is different is possible and often have no motivation to change. People in this stage may feel that they are not worth goodness or positivity. Self esteem is the main challenge, followed by motivation.
Surviving is that state of managing minute by minute, or hour by hour, or day by day the meager resources you have so that you have control over your destiny. This is the point where you can act to prolong the event horizon (the point where you can no longer influence) of your destiny. People who find themselves in this state are generally worried about personal safety, housing, food, paying the next bill and just making it through the day.
Coping is easy to mistake as Surviving, however it generally means you are managing to succeed at Surviving and are further away from slipping down to Existing or Death. Often people who are coping have a plan for a week or two and the resources to influence that. The focus is less on the immediate now and more on goals for the future. A person who is Coping can actually make plans for more than today because, on the one hand, they can see a future is possible, and on the other hand, they have command of enough resources that they can start to make future plans. This shift in controlling resources is the primary distinction between surviving and coping.
This is the beginning point of where discussing the Thriving Framework makes sense. Before this, it is too vague to make sense since it does not answer the immediate needs.
Achieving is the making progress in plans made towards Thriving. Often people feel capable and accomplished during this part of the journey. It is easy to feel that this is the whole point to life and just to stay in this aspect of the Thriving Framework. It is particularly appealing to those who have spent some time Existing, Surviving or Coping. Some people may become disillusioned with Achieving if they spend their whole lives Achieving and never quite accomplishing Thriving. Generally people who are Achieving have very few supports as they are managing this stage on their own.
Thriving is the end goal of the Thriving Framework. It means having achieved the majority of the Context Goals and feeling like you are Thriving. If you have achieved the Context Goals and do not have a feeling of Thriving, then it is important to go back and look at what you want to feel and what you may need to change to achieve this.
If the stage of Thriving can never be achieved, why aim for it? It must be achievable. This does not mean that the early Thriving Goal should be practical or achievable. When first working with your own or someone else's goals, allow for unrealistic goals. This helps you to determine the governing emotions behind the unrealistic goals. From their you can work out how else to achieve these goals that is practical. The person on the journey through the Thriving Framework must choose and own these goals and this journey, otherwise you achieve nothing.
July 02, 2011
Depression and Catatonia
Sometimes we are reluctant to act because we are no longer certain what is right to do and we fear the consequences of doing wrong, so we focus on the little that must be right. Sometimes we have no energy to act so we focus our energy on what must be done. Sometimes the hurt of peering out from beyond our walls of safety is too much so we only venture out to do the minimum. This is often called depression. Our actions are depressed and we look like we are achieving very little.
Sometimes we can no longer be certain that anything is right, or have so little energy it is a struggle to breath, or the pain is so much that we do not venture beyond our walls. This can be described as psychotic catatonia.
In general there is a turmoil behind your eyes, in your mind, that is taking up a lot of thinking and feeling space. Something has change your tolerances so that wrong is more important, or sensory/emotional input is too high, and it saps our energy. Sometimes we forget to eat, or we eat all of the wrong things and run out of nutrients.
Memory plays a key part to recovering from this. We can look to our past and compare it to our present to discover what the external source is for our changed tolerance and try to do something about that. We can look at what we are eating and get back to what we remember was good and return to that diet. We can remember that this state of affairs began at some point, that it wasn't always like this, and so it won't always be like this because every beginning has an end. Thus, even when we can't act against whatever it is that has prompted this, we can wait until it stops affecting us.
Catatonia is harder. Generally this is just a waiting game because your inability to act negates your ability to change the situation and yourself. Instead of physical actions, the change must be internal. Find out what about you is negating your ability to physically act. Work on changing this.There will most likely be a great fear regarding the consequences of what this change will do to you and you may fear death of body or persona. I'm sorry, but if you have hit catatonia, you are already dying. It is better to change than to lose everything. Consider how much you will keep by making this change and hold on to that as a good reason to make the change.
Start with small physical actions - move a toe, move a finger, consciously blink or move your eye. The more you do, the easier it gets. When you are ready, speak. Speak about what needs to change in your environment to help you survive. This may be uncovering a secret, or asking for something selfish, or pushing someone or something away. The faster those around you know, the faster your environment can support the change you have made, the faster you can get back to living.
Feel free to contribute further ideas to how to escape from depression and catatonia below. Feel free to add other types of these conditions.
Sometimes we can no longer be certain that anything is right, or have so little energy it is a struggle to breath, or the pain is so much that we do not venture beyond our walls. This can be described as psychotic catatonia.
In general there is a turmoil behind your eyes, in your mind, that is taking up a lot of thinking and feeling space. Something has change your tolerances so that wrong is more important, or sensory/emotional input is too high, and it saps our energy. Sometimes we forget to eat, or we eat all of the wrong things and run out of nutrients.
Memory plays a key part to recovering from this. We can look to our past and compare it to our present to discover what the external source is for our changed tolerance and try to do something about that. We can look at what we are eating and get back to what we remember was good and return to that diet. We can remember that this state of affairs began at some point, that it wasn't always like this, and so it won't always be like this because every beginning has an end. Thus, even when we can't act against whatever it is that has prompted this, we can wait until it stops affecting us.
Catatonia is harder. Generally this is just a waiting game because your inability to act negates your ability to change the situation and yourself. Instead of physical actions, the change must be internal. Find out what about you is negating your ability to physically act. Work on changing this.There will most likely be a great fear regarding the consequences of what this change will do to you and you may fear death of body or persona. I'm sorry, but if you have hit catatonia, you are already dying. It is better to change than to lose everything. Consider how much you will keep by making this change and hold on to that as a good reason to make the change.
Start with small physical actions - move a toe, move a finger, consciously blink or move your eye. The more you do, the easier it gets. When you are ready, speak. Speak about what needs to change in your environment to help you survive. This may be uncovering a secret, or asking for something selfish, or pushing someone or something away. The faster those around you know, the faster your environment can support the change you have made, the faster you can get back to living.
Feel free to contribute further ideas to how to escape from depression and catatonia below. Feel free to add other types of these conditions.
June 11, 2011
Doing to find the being
Often when we don't know who we are, we flail around trying to do lots of things, hoping that one of them will feel right and define us. The problem is that most of the things we do feel wrong, so we mistakenly think that we are wrong. We forget that the flailing around is an experiment to help us discover what we are, and thus what we aren't.The ones that feel wrong should be celebrated as yet another step towards discovering who we are.
Another tactic is to step back and ponder who we would like to be. Sometimes this can help us work out who we are, since who we are isn't going to want to be something completely abstract from who we are. I appreciate that this idea seems a bit odd, but lets go with it a bit further. I am not suggesting that you carry out your hypothetical, but rather that you use the hypothetical to explore yourself. Someone who wants to be a mass murderer, as an extreme, can learn something about themselves from this desire. Why do you wish to create carnage and mayhem? Do you wish to murder specific people or random people? Why? What do these urges tell you about yourself? Often we seek to do violence because we feel helpless about something, and the violence is like a pressure relief valve to save ourselves or put of inevitable doom. Or there may be hatred involved, in which case who do we really hate and what can we do about it? If these people were 'gone', how would this change your world? What does this change tell you about you and where you are now?
Another thing we may wish to be is a benefactor of mankind. Why do we wish to be a benefactor? What does this change? What form of benefactor do you wish to be and how would you feel if you were to achieve this? Does this feeling tell you anything about how you are feeling or wanting to feel now? Are there other ways to feel this?
Perhaps a far less extreme becoming would also help. Perhaps you will identify that you would like to get a nice job. What is it about the job that you want? What does the job provide for you that you don't currently have? How are you defining nice? What would stop the job from being nice? What change does having a job provide you compared to now? Things that you may get from having a nice job is: money, social contact, structure, an excuse to get away from home, a feeling of purpose, ontological security, completion of a definition of self as a worker, your parents of your back and so on. If we don't look at why we want the job, how do we know what we need the job to do to feel success? Of, for example, we get a job that doesn't pay enough and is in a field we don't like that our parents don't support, we may feel that we have failed in getting a nice job, which we may then transfer as a feeling of us being the failure.
Three major things to take away from this:
1) Doing things to discover who we are often lead to us discovering who we are not, and that is success
2) Pausing to consider what we want can help uncover who we are
3) Once we know what we want and why, we can begin to choose to do things because of who we are
Another tactic is to step back and ponder who we would like to be. Sometimes this can help us work out who we are, since who we are isn't going to want to be something completely abstract from who we are. I appreciate that this idea seems a bit odd, but lets go with it a bit further. I am not suggesting that you carry out your hypothetical, but rather that you use the hypothetical to explore yourself. Someone who wants to be a mass murderer, as an extreme, can learn something about themselves from this desire. Why do you wish to create carnage and mayhem? Do you wish to murder specific people or random people? Why? What do these urges tell you about yourself? Often we seek to do violence because we feel helpless about something, and the violence is like a pressure relief valve to save ourselves or put of inevitable doom. Or there may be hatred involved, in which case who do we really hate and what can we do about it? If these people were 'gone', how would this change your world? What does this change tell you about you and where you are now?
Another thing we may wish to be is a benefactor of mankind. Why do we wish to be a benefactor? What does this change? What form of benefactor do you wish to be and how would you feel if you were to achieve this? Does this feeling tell you anything about how you are feeling or wanting to feel now? Are there other ways to feel this?
Perhaps a far less extreme becoming would also help. Perhaps you will identify that you would like to get a nice job. What is it about the job that you want? What does the job provide for you that you don't currently have? How are you defining nice? What would stop the job from being nice? What change does having a job provide you compared to now? Things that you may get from having a nice job is: money, social contact, structure, an excuse to get away from home, a feeling of purpose, ontological security, completion of a definition of self as a worker, your parents of your back and so on. If we don't look at why we want the job, how do we know what we need the job to do to feel success? Of, for example, we get a job that doesn't pay enough and is in a field we don't like that our parents don't support, we may feel that we have failed in getting a nice job, which we may then transfer as a feeling of us being the failure.
Three major things to take away from this:
1) Doing things to discover who we are often lead to us discovering who we are not, and that is success
2) Pausing to consider what we want can help uncover who we are
3) Once we know what we want and why, we can begin to choose to do things because of who we are
May 14, 2011
There is no dark side
Popularly emotions are described as good (joy, love, hope) and bad (anger, sadness, nastiness). Emotions are not good or bad, they are informative. The only "bad" emotion is one that is either too strong or too weak to be useful, while the only "good" emotion is one that informs you correctly about the situation you perceive. It is not the emotion, in general, that is good or bad, it is the situation that generated that emotion that is good or bad.
Emotions can be split into three major types:
1) Basic / Primary
2) Simple
3) Complex
Basic or Primary emotions have been studied around the world to try to get to the biological response that all humans have in common. The studies have attempted to take out cultural bias, age of the person (for the most part), and time in human history. On average the basic emotions are described as between 5 and 8 different basic emotions. For this article, I am going to use 6 - Anger, Joy, Sadness, Disgust, Surprise and Fear.
You may notice that only one of these is seen traditionally as "good" while the other five are traditionally seen as "bad". This type cast is because on average we like to feel "joy" while we don't like to feel any of the other five basic emotions. If I could choose which basic emotion I was feeling, "joy" certainly would be the one I pick.
Liking our emotions isn't really what our emotions are for though. Our emotions are here to inform us about the world we perceive. "Perceive" is the key word here, as it isn't what we sense at all. Our senses give us raw data about the world we live in, in a timely sense, which has no bearing on the past or future. This raw sensory information is filtered, passed through a pattern recognition section of our brain (which is generated via our past experiences) to create a prediction for what is coming such that we can act now to survive.
As a slight aside, consider that everything you see and hear right now is in the past. You can not sense the present as by the time the information gets to your body (let alone your brain), the thing that has occurred has already occurred, it isn't occurring. We are always slightly behind what is going on. If we try to catch a falling ball based on the assumption that what we are sensing is happening now, we will never catch the ball because the place we move our hand to the ball has already passed. To catch that ball, we need to predict where the ball will be, not know where it has been. Then we can move our hand to where the ball will be and catch the not yet occurring event.
Now switch the ball heading towards us to a saber tooth tiger (mainly because I like saber tooth tigers). We only want to know where the tiger has been such that we can predict where it is likely to be, and for us to not be in those likely places. This keeps us alive instead of dead (when we are right).
To bring this back to emotion, one of the components of how we sort our senses is for our predictions to colour our sensory data with emotion. When we recognise a pattern from the past that hurt us, we predict that pain coming and taint the perceived current experience with the colour of fear. If we did not have that fear, we would not act to avoid the upcoming pain and we would be harmed. Seen in this light, it is clear that fear is working for our protection and safety rather than against it. This makes it "good", right?
We often concatenate (that is put together and make as one) the situation that is good with the emotion we feel that tells us it is good, or alternately, the situation that is bad and the emotion that we feel that tells it is bad. We then mistakenly try to avoid or create the emotion instead of the situation. My intention here is to separate the emotion from the situation by understanding what the emotion is trying to tell you so that you can now use that source of information to analyse the situation you are in, and make intelligent decisions to act to change that situation into the situation you want, or preserve the situation if it is the situation you want.
As described above, the basic emotions are our biological survival mechanisms. These emotions are what helped each one of your ancestors get old enough to have at least one child, which eventually led to you. They must have done a pretty good job since you are alive to read this (I apologise to any undead who are reading this blog, but I have yet to receive proof of your existence - and technically your ancestors stayed alive long enough to produce you too).
The simple emotions are the culturally generated and acceptable emotions. Not all cultures share the same specific feelings or concepts. For example, razbliuto means the "feeling for someone you used to love but no longer do", which is a single word in Russian, but is quite complex and poorly understood in English. Simple, but culturally specific. Often their are large amounts of overlap, such as guilt, shame, pity, tiredness and so on. Yet not all cultures express it the same way, or have these feelings triggered by the same stimuli.
Complex emotions involve complexity about what you feel based on what you are stimulated by, combined with distortions due to your past experiences or expected future ones. As I said, it's complex. For example, the visceral feeling of fear you have in putting your hand in the outside bin to retrieve an item you accidentally threw out, complicated by your aversion to germs and cockroaches and knowing that often they inhabit these areas. Logically there will be germs, there may be cockroaches, but neither of these pose any significant threat to you. Yet if you have fears associated with these, your prediction of their presence creates an intense feeling of frozen fear baring you from retrieving that item, thus you accept that it is gone but kick yourself for being scared and wasting resources. Often you don't analyse these complex emotions, so instead you just feel awful but don't know why.
I will go into more depth about the basic six emotions I have hinted at above and throw in shame and guilt in a future blog.
Emotions can be split into three major types:
1) Basic / Primary
2) Simple
3) Complex
Basic or Primary emotions have been studied around the world to try to get to the biological response that all humans have in common. The studies have attempted to take out cultural bias, age of the person (for the most part), and time in human history. On average the basic emotions are described as between 5 and 8 different basic emotions. For this article, I am going to use 6 - Anger, Joy, Sadness, Disgust, Surprise and Fear.
You may notice that only one of these is seen traditionally as "good" while the other five are traditionally seen as "bad". This type cast is because on average we like to feel "joy" while we don't like to feel any of the other five basic emotions. If I could choose which basic emotion I was feeling, "joy" certainly would be the one I pick.
Liking our emotions isn't really what our emotions are for though. Our emotions are here to inform us about the world we perceive. "Perceive" is the key word here, as it isn't what we sense at all. Our senses give us raw data about the world we live in, in a timely sense, which has no bearing on the past or future. This raw sensory information is filtered, passed through a pattern recognition section of our brain (which is generated via our past experiences) to create a prediction for what is coming such that we can act now to survive.
As a slight aside, consider that everything you see and hear right now is in the past. You can not sense the present as by the time the information gets to your body (let alone your brain), the thing that has occurred has already occurred, it isn't occurring. We are always slightly behind what is going on. If we try to catch a falling ball based on the assumption that what we are sensing is happening now, we will never catch the ball because the place we move our hand to the ball has already passed. To catch that ball, we need to predict where the ball will be, not know where it has been. Then we can move our hand to where the ball will be and catch the not yet occurring event.
Now switch the ball heading towards us to a saber tooth tiger (mainly because I like saber tooth tigers). We only want to know where the tiger has been such that we can predict where it is likely to be, and for us to not be in those likely places. This keeps us alive instead of dead (when we are right).
To bring this back to emotion, one of the components of how we sort our senses is for our predictions to colour our sensory data with emotion. When we recognise a pattern from the past that hurt us, we predict that pain coming and taint the perceived current experience with the colour of fear. If we did not have that fear, we would not act to avoid the upcoming pain and we would be harmed. Seen in this light, it is clear that fear is working for our protection and safety rather than against it. This makes it "good", right?
We often concatenate (that is put together and make as one) the situation that is good with the emotion we feel that tells us it is good, or alternately, the situation that is bad and the emotion that we feel that tells it is bad. We then mistakenly try to avoid or create the emotion instead of the situation. My intention here is to separate the emotion from the situation by understanding what the emotion is trying to tell you so that you can now use that source of information to analyse the situation you are in, and make intelligent decisions to act to change that situation into the situation you want, or preserve the situation if it is the situation you want.
As described above, the basic emotions are our biological survival mechanisms. These emotions are what helped each one of your ancestors get old enough to have at least one child, which eventually led to you. They must have done a pretty good job since you are alive to read this (I apologise to any undead who are reading this blog, but I have yet to receive proof of your existence - and technically your ancestors stayed alive long enough to produce you too).
The simple emotions are the culturally generated and acceptable emotions. Not all cultures share the same specific feelings or concepts. For example, razbliuto means the "feeling for someone you used to love but no longer do", which is a single word in Russian, but is quite complex and poorly understood in English. Simple, but culturally specific. Often their are large amounts of overlap, such as guilt, shame, pity, tiredness and so on. Yet not all cultures express it the same way, or have these feelings triggered by the same stimuli.
Complex emotions involve complexity about what you feel based on what you are stimulated by, combined with distortions due to your past experiences or expected future ones. As I said, it's complex. For example, the visceral feeling of fear you have in putting your hand in the outside bin to retrieve an item you accidentally threw out, complicated by your aversion to germs and cockroaches and knowing that often they inhabit these areas. Logically there will be germs, there may be cockroaches, but neither of these pose any significant threat to you. Yet if you have fears associated with these, your prediction of their presence creates an intense feeling of frozen fear baring you from retrieving that item, thus you accept that it is gone but kick yourself for being scared and wasting resources. Often you don't analyse these complex emotions, so instead you just feel awful but don't know why.
I will go into more depth about the basic six emotions I have hinted at above and throw in shame and guilt in a future blog.
April 13, 2011
Understanding our experience
When an experience occurs that we do not understand and have nothing to compare it to, we humans slip into a state of survival and change. There are a number of reasons why we can not interpret the experience and many stories we can create to explain the experience. Our need to survive often leaves us vulnerable and looking for help from experts, which can de-localise our power and understanding.
An experience, in this case, can be something such as having an extreme mood (happy, sad, grief, etc), an odd perception (all the humans seem to be carrying demons on their backs, have turned into animals, the earth is actually attracted to us, not us to it, I am being of light and I must light up the dark etc), a survival of extreme pain and fear (persecution, rape, torture, bullying etc) or a physical difficulty (heat attack, diagnosis of terminal disease, kidney failure, vitamin/mineral deficiency/over load etc). Of course, there are so many more experiences that are beyond our prior expectation that we can have that it is impossible to list them all, or even to categorise them.
I am going to deviate the conversation just a little to discuss how we humans process ideas. When I receive a new idea (from someone/book/thought experiment etc), I link it to knowledge that I have via either similarity or contradiction. For example, that new thing is like this other thing, except for this and that. Or it fits between this knowledge I have and that knowledge I have. We create bridges in our knowledge with comparisons.
You can think of our knowledge pool as a jigsaw puzzle. We have pieces that fit together and create areas of knowing and areas of not. We bridge slowly into these ares of not knowing by building pieces of comparison to what we do know, piece by piece into the vacant areas. Often we are afraid of these areas because we feel blind and are not sure of what we know in these areas. We may avoid doing things so we don't have to populate the blank spots in our knowledge with pieces of jigsaw puzzle that we are unsure of. What if we don't like the picture of the world that is created with these new pieces?
Experiences expand our world by giving us knowledge, memories, ideas and so on to store. They change our world and our perception of it by increasing the understanding and stories we attribute to events. In effect, knowledge is the story pool we can use to explain how events link together.
What happens when an event happens, or knowledge is gained, that we can not link to any other? It isn't like anything, and it isn't opposite to anything, or the existence of this knowledge contradicts a large part of the puzzle we thought was sound. At this point we either become lost, or we reject the knew experience or we are forced to reject prior experiences to accept the new one.
Imagine how much of your thought process can be distracted by this amazing recreation of your knowledge pool. While this is going on, who is paying the bills, cleaning the house, cooking meals, looking after the kids, looking after the parents and so on? Also, how is your internal reorganisation being treated by those who care and love you?
There are two factors I have raised here - survival of self and survival in society.
First of all, we will often be forced to choose between reorganising our internal knowledge pool and surviving. If I have to do basic life things to keep surviving and I don't have the personal resources to spend time in working my knew experience into my knowledge jigsaw puzzle, then I may put the experience off and find some cheap and nasty coping mechanism such that I keep eating, keep my shelter and survive the day, the hour and the minute. Yet sometimes the experience can be so profound that it destabalises your efforts to maintain your life and you must address the experience over and above maintaining that status quo. For example, what if a conclusion you draw from the experience is that those who you thought were protecting and nurturing you have some very sinister and life threatening outcome in store for you? What if you are right? Your survival right now looks more like you have to run away from food, shelter and support. I appreciate to the reader that this may seem fantastic, but there are enough people who realise they are the child in a sexual molestation ring that running away is a very good thing to do. You can't just assume that your new insight is wrong and bad for you.
The second point I make is the effect your experience has on others. In the year 2000, I decided to change my life path considerably. Many people who socially interacted with me did not like the new me and some actively tried to intervene to bring back the old me. My change was relatively minor - I stopped being a prat and became a nice person. Many of my friends and associates had huge difficulties understanding where I was coming from, why I was acting differently and were quite worried about me. Imagine what they would say if my realisation was more profound than "I have become the person I didn't want to be". By profound, I mean life changing.
When we have experienced something extreme, we often find that our social supporters are scared, resist change and often do not understand what is happening to us. Quite frankly, the average Joe is not educated enough or trained in the right areas to know how to help friends who are experiencing a profound life experience. When we do not have the personal resources to process the experience, we outsource - that is, we turn to processionals.
Professionals are trained to minimise risk, categorise behaviour and to treat the categorised behaviour. Behaviour is seen as "abnormal" and put on a spectrum of "no need to act" and "treat". This is a part of containment, risk management, stabilisation and reputation protection. There are some excellent reasons why this system is in place and some fantastic instances of where it is exactly the right thing to do. It can also quite help people.
When it doesn't, it is very difficult for the person going through a profound experience to muster up the free personal resources to object to the mis-treatment. By mis-treatment, I do not refer to abuse as such, but a treatment regime that is misapplied. The person often has enough troubles surviving the experience and finding resources to process the change let alone argue against an authoritative professional who is well educated in the diagnosis of difference and oddity.
I would like to see professionals trained more in helping people understand their experience and filling in those blank spots in their knowledge jigsaw such that they can go back to running their lives independently of the professional system. I would like professionals to be trained in ways of retaining maximum personal power rather than de-localised power.I would like to see humanity and dignity returned to the system.
I appreciate that I got a bit ranty towards the end their. My apologies!
An experience, in this case, can be something such as having an extreme mood (happy, sad, grief, etc), an odd perception (all the humans seem to be carrying demons on their backs, have turned into animals, the earth is actually attracted to us, not us to it, I am being of light and I must light up the dark etc), a survival of extreme pain and fear (persecution, rape, torture, bullying etc) or a physical difficulty (heat attack, diagnosis of terminal disease, kidney failure, vitamin/mineral deficiency/over load etc). Of course, there are so many more experiences that are beyond our prior expectation that we can have that it is impossible to list them all, or even to categorise them.
I am going to deviate the conversation just a little to discuss how we humans process ideas. When I receive a new idea (from someone/book/thought experiment etc), I link it to knowledge that I have via either similarity or contradiction. For example, that new thing is like this other thing, except for this and that. Or it fits between this knowledge I have and that knowledge I have. We create bridges in our knowledge with comparisons.
You can think of our knowledge pool as a jigsaw puzzle. We have pieces that fit together and create areas of knowing and areas of not. We bridge slowly into these ares of not knowing by building pieces of comparison to what we do know, piece by piece into the vacant areas. Often we are afraid of these areas because we feel blind and are not sure of what we know in these areas. We may avoid doing things so we don't have to populate the blank spots in our knowledge with pieces of jigsaw puzzle that we are unsure of. What if we don't like the picture of the world that is created with these new pieces?
Experiences expand our world by giving us knowledge, memories, ideas and so on to store. They change our world and our perception of it by increasing the understanding and stories we attribute to events. In effect, knowledge is the story pool we can use to explain how events link together.
What happens when an event happens, or knowledge is gained, that we can not link to any other? It isn't like anything, and it isn't opposite to anything, or the existence of this knowledge contradicts a large part of the puzzle we thought was sound. At this point we either become lost, or we reject the knew experience or we are forced to reject prior experiences to accept the new one.
Imagine how much of your thought process can be distracted by this amazing recreation of your knowledge pool. While this is going on, who is paying the bills, cleaning the house, cooking meals, looking after the kids, looking after the parents and so on? Also, how is your internal reorganisation being treated by those who care and love you?
There are two factors I have raised here - survival of self and survival in society.
First of all, we will often be forced to choose between reorganising our internal knowledge pool and surviving. If I have to do basic life things to keep surviving and I don't have the personal resources to spend time in working my knew experience into my knowledge jigsaw puzzle, then I may put the experience off and find some cheap and nasty coping mechanism such that I keep eating, keep my shelter and survive the day, the hour and the minute. Yet sometimes the experience can be so profound that it destabalises your efforts to maintain your life and you must address the experience over and above maintaining that status quo. For example, what if a conclusion you draw from the experience is that those who you thought were protecting and nurturing you have some very sinister and life threatening outcome in store for you? What if you are right? Your survival right now looks more like you have to run away from food, shelter and support. I appreciate to the reader that this may seem fantastic, but there are enough people who realise they are the child in a sexual molestation ring that running away is a very good thing to do. You can't just assume that your new insight is wrong and bad for you.
The second point I make is the effect your experience has on others. In the year 2000, I decided to change my life path considerably. Many people who socially interacted with me did not like the new me and some actively tried to intervene to bring back the old me. My change was relatively minor - I stopped being a prat and became a nice person. Many of my friends and associates had huge difficulties understanding where I was coming from, why I was acting differently and were quite worried about me. Imagine what they would say if my realisation was more profound than "I have become the person I didn't want to be". By profound, I mean life changing.
When we have experienced something extreme, we often find that our social supporters are scared, resist change and often do not understand what is happening to us. Quite frankly, the average Joe is not educated enough or trained in the right areas to know how to help friends who are experiencing a profound life experience. When we do not have the personal resources to process the experience, we outsource - that is, we turn to processionals.
Professionals are trained to minimise risk, categorise behaviour and to treat the categorised behaviour. Behaviour is seen as "abnormal" and put on a spectrum of "no need to act" and "treat". This is a part of containment, risk management, stabilisation and reputation protection. There are some excellent reasons why this system is in place and some fantastic instances of where it is exactly the right thing to do. It can also quite help people.
When it doesn't, it is very difficult for the person going through a profound experience to muster up the free personal resources to object to the mis-treatment. By mis-treatment, I do not refer to abuse as such, but a treatment regime that is misapplied. The person often has enough troubles surviving the experience and finding resources to process the change let alone argue against an authoritative professional who is well educated in the diagnosis of difference and oddity.
I would like to see professionals trained more in helping people understand their experience and filling in those blank spots in their knowledge jigsaw such that they can go back to running their lives independently of the professional system. I would like professionals to be trained in ways of retaining maximum personal power rather than de-localised power.I would like to see humanity and dignity returned to the system.
I appreciate that I got a bit ranty towards the end their. My apologies!
April 04, 2011
Grief and loss - Simply put
Grief comes in all shapes and sizes. Actually grief is just grief, how we deal with it is the real question.
Grief is a response to loss. Simply put, it is adjusting emotional ties to someone or something that is no longer a part of your life, or is no longer in your life the same way. In effect, grief is the process of adjusting to change.
Loss is something that creates a change. For example, a change in your job - such as being fired, quitting your job, missing a promotion, getting a promotion and so on. Each affects your life, creating change. Each change opens new possibilities, as well as closing possibilities. Adjusting to the loss of possibilities- that is adjusting the emotions tied to those losses - is grief.
Loss and grief can be very subtle forces in our life. I recall the time I lost a magnet that I liked when I was a child. On average, it does not affect me unduly, but on occasion, I wonder what has become of my magnet and I grieve for it. I have also lost many other magnets in my life, but these haven't affected me as I did not form an emotional connection with them.
Emotion is the key behind grief and loss. If you don't form an emotional connection to the thing or person that changes, then the change does not affect you directly, or indirectly. As such, the change does not trigger a loss. The stronger the emotional tie, the greater the effect to your life and the more you may feel loss.
While all change means loss of some kind, this does not require a focus on that loss. If you focus only on the gains and opportunities that the change can give you, then you do not feel grief. If you only focus on the loss of opportunities, the broken emotions and missed opportunities, then you gain no joy from the change and risk being lost in a cycle of grief.
It is rare that a change evokes only one extreme of emotional consideration. Generally change evokes a mix of perspectives, which can lead to an internal contradiction in how you feel about the change. I can be happy that my grandmother is no longer in pain, but sad that she is no longer part of my life. If I am okay with this mixture of emotions, all well and good. However if I feel that I should not feel happy, because I should be "grieving" and this makes me a "bad person", then I complicate my adjustment to the change in my life.
In my next blog on grief, I will discuss the most commonly recognised text about grief - the Kübler-Ross five phases of expected loss model.
Grief is a response to loss. Simply put, it is adjusting emotional ties to someone or something that is no longer a part of your life, or is no longer in your life the same way. In effect, grief is the process of adjusting to change.
Loss is something that creates a change. For example, a change in your job - such as being fired, quitting your job, missing a promotion, getting a promotion and so on. Each affects your life, creating change. Each change opens new possibilities, as well as closing possibilities. Adjusting to the loss of possibilities- that is adjusting the emotions tied to those losses - is grief.
Loss and grief can be very subtle forces in our life. I recall the time I lost a magnet that I liked when I was a child. On average, it does not affect me unduly, but on occasion, I wonder what has become of my magnet and I grieve for it. I have also lost many other magnets in my life, but these haven't affected me as I did not form an emotional connection with them.
Emotion is the key behind grief and loss. If you don't form an emotional connection to the thing or person that changes, then the change does not affect you directly, or indirectly. As such, the change does not trigger a loss. The stronger the emotional tie, the greater the effect to your life and the more you may feel loss.
While all change means loss of some kind, this does not require a focus on that loss. If you focus only on the gains and opportunities that the change can give you, then you do not feel grief. If you only focus on the loss of opportunities, the broken emotions and missed opportunities, then you gain no joy from the change and risk being lost in a cycle of grief.
It is rare that a change evokes only one extreme of emotional consideration. Generally change evokes a mix of perspectives, which can lead to an internal contradiction in how you feel about the change. I can be happy that my grandmother is no longer in pain, but sad that she is no longer part of my life. If I am okay with this mixture of emotions, all well and good. However if I feel that I should not feel happy, because I should be "grieving" and this makes me a "bad person", then I complicate my adjustment to the change in my life.
In my next blog on grief, I will discuss the most commonly recognised text about grief - the Kübler-Ross five phases of expected loss model.
March 21, 2011
Neuroplasticity document
The Vermont Recovery page has some interesting articles. This one on Neuroplasticity is quite good. It is a downloadable PDF document.
"Neuroplasticity basically refers to the brain’s natural ability across the lifespan to form
new connections and change its structure in response to experience. This means the brain can
change itself physically and functionally at any age to compensate for injury and disease and to
adapt to new situations or changes in the environment."
"Traditionally, the adult brain was considered relatively hard-wired and fixed, a prognosis
that lowered expectations about the possibility of curing the alleged brain problems that
underlie psychiatric disorders. Thus, in the medical world, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder
have been conceptualized as life-long, incurable brain pathologies that a person can learn to
manage, but never completely resolve. However, these hypotheses have always been
problematic, for longitudinal studies have demonstrated again and again that a significant
amount of people diagnosed with schizophrenia completely emerge from psychiatric symptoms
and no longer use medications.
4
These individuals pose this challenge to neurobiology: if their
previous symptoms were in fact due to a broken brain, are their brains now fixed?"
"Neuroplasticity basically refers to the brain’s natural ability across the lifespan to form
new connections and change its structure in response to experience. This means the brain can
change itself physically and functionally at any age to compensate for injury and disease and to
adapt to new situations or changes in the environment."
"Traditionally, the adult brain was considered relatively hard-wired and fixed, a prognosis
that lowered expectations about the possibility of curing the alleged brain problems that
underlie psychiatric disorders. Thus, in the medical world, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder
have been conceptualized as life-long, incurable brain pathologies that a person can learn to
manage, but never completely resolve. However, these hypotheses have always been
problematic, for longitudinal studies have demonstrated again and again that a significant
amount of people diagnosed with schizophrenia completely emerge from psychiatric symptoms
and no longer use medications.
4
These individuals pose this challenge to neurobiology: if their
previous symptoms were in fact due to a broken brain, are their brains now fixed?"
March 19, 2011
To solve a complex maze, start at the end... Life is a complex maze
A simple maze can be solved from the beginning. You move through a few simple turns and find yourself at the exit. If the maze is more complex, it makes more sense to start at the end and track your way back to the beginning. Life is much the same.
When a problem is easy to solve, we can easily move forwards without having to have a clear idea of what the exit looks like. We make a few moves, a couple of turns in the maze of life, and we easily find the exit to our problem.We have solved it.
When life is more complex, sometimes we don't really know where we are heading, what our exit looks like, what it is we hope to achieve. At this point, we don't know anymore which turns are good, which decisions are beneficial and what to do. So, stop trying to make your way from the beginning and cheat. Look at the end you want and work backwards.
Math proofs do this too. You progress the left hand side of the equation to look more like the right, you progress the right to look more like the left. If you manage to get them meeting in the middle, you win.
Some mazes are so complex, much like life, that you need to set goal points in between the start and end. These are great steps to help you get to the end.
If you do not look at what where you want your life to go, then you may find that you are running away instead of heading towards. This can sometimes look similar. The difference is that running away means all of your present decisions are made in fear, while heading towards means your present decisions are made in hope. This can significantly shape the feel and end result of your life. Thus I recommend you consider your destination.
March 11, 2011
Shopping for Therapists
There are many good therapists out there in the wide world, the tricky thing is how to identify them.
First, let's get you into the right mind frame. If you take your car to a mechanic and you don't like the way they treat you or your car, you don't go back to that mechanic, you find a new one. If you don't like the way the shop feels, the language of the mechanic, the attitude, you don't even leave your car there, you leave. Finding a therapist is a similar process. If you don't like what they do to your mind and body, find a new one. If you don't like the feel of their shop, find a new one.
There are circumstances where you have little choice, such as locked ward, community treatment order and other government sanctioned loss of freedom. Even still, you can go through the following questions to help you determine if the person you are working with is receptive to your benefit.
These questions have mostly been developed by Thomas Proud, a Peer worker.
1) What are your qualifications for helping me?
2) What experience have you got for helping me?
3) How many of your patients/clients have recovered their lives back?
4) Do you believe I can thrive?
5) What methods are you likely to employ in supporting my recovery?
6) Are you happy? If not, what are you doing about it? If nothing, what makes you qualified to help me?
If you like the sound of the answers you get, then this therapist may be able to help you. If you don't, it is time to move on. If you can't, perhaps you may have triggered the therapist to think about what they can and will do more so than usual.
If everyone begins to ask their therapists these questions, perhaps therapy will return to the old ways - that of a midwife of health.
First, let's get you into the right mind frame. If you take your car to a mechanic and you don't like the way they treat you or your car, you don't go back to that mechanic, you find a new one. If you don't like the way the shop feels, the language of the mechanic, the attitude, you don't even leave your car there, you leave. Finding a therapist is a similar process. If you don't like what they do to your mind and body, find a new one. If you don't like the feel of their shop, find a new one.
There are circumstances where you have little choice, such as locked ward, community treatment order and other government sanctioned loss of freedom. Even still, you can go through the following questions to help you determine if the person you are working with is receptive to your benefit.
These questions have mostly been developed by Thomas Proud, a Peer worker.
1) What are your qualifications for helping me?
2) What experience have you got for helping me?
3) How many of your patients/clients have recovered their lives back?
4) Do you believe I can thrive?
5) What methods are you likely to employ in supporting my recovery?
6) Are you happy? If not, what are you doing about it? If nothing, what makes you qualified to help me?
If you like the sound of the answers you get, then this therapist may be able to help you. If you don't, it is time to move on. If you can't, perhaps you may have triggered the therapist to think about what they can and will do more so than usual.
If everyone begins to ask their therapists these questions, perhaps therapy will return to the old ways - that of a midwife of health.
January 23, 2011
Moving through anger
Emotions can exist in three states. Basic, secondary and complex.
When anger is basic, it simply states that your boundaries have been crossed. When it is secondary, it usually means you don't know how to respond to other emotions, so you feel out of control. Anger is then used to regain your perceived loss of power such that you can feel in control again.
When anger is complex, it's source is hard to grasp, often leaving you guilty/shamed that you feel angry or you find yourself trapped in your anger. For example, you may be angry that a loved one has passed on, leaving you in a mess. You feel guilty that you are angry at the deceased, which complicates your ability to do anything about your situation. In this scenario, what you are really angry about is that you feel trapped in your situation, not that your loved one escaped, or created the situation you are in. In effect, you are transferring your anger at something intangible to something tangible. You can't affect the state of life/death of your loved one - thus you feel powerless and your anger emotion you raised to rebalance your power is misdirected and thus can't help.
Complex anger is often mixed up with other complex emotions, such as complex guilt, leaving quite a maze of emotions and perceived causation of events for you to navigate before you can find a path to happiness.
When anger is basic, it simply states that your boundaries have been crossed. When it is secondary, it usually means you don't know how to respond to other emotions, so you feel out of control. Anger is then used to regain your perceived loss of power such that you can feel in control again.
When anger is complex, it's source is hard to grasp, often leaving you guilty/shamed that you feel angry or you find yourself trapped in your anger. For example, you may be angry that a loved one has passed on, leaving you in a mess. You feel guilty that you are angry at the deceased, which complicates your ability to do anything about your situation. In this scenario, what you are really angry about is that you feel trapped in your situation, not that your loved one escaped, or created the situation you are in. In effect, you are transferring your anger at something intangible to something tangible. You can't affect the state of life/death of your loved one - thus you feel powerless and your anger emotion you raised to rebalance your power is misdirected and thus can't help.
Complex anger is often mixed up with other complex emotions, such as complex guilt, leaving quite a maze of emotions and perceived causation of events for you to navigate before you can find a path to happiness.
January 17, 2011
Ceasing stagnation
Stagnation is not a country filled with male reindeer. It is where there is a lack of movement, such as your life going nowhere. This can be due to not doing anything, or doing the same things in a closed circle repeating loop.
It is all well and good finding that you have stagnated, but how do you break it? How do you start moving when you have stopped, and how to you find a direction so that you no longer travel in small circles?
The answer to this is to find a goal you want to achieve.
Let us pause to understand the goal. The point of the goal is to head you somewhere other than where you are. To achieve this goal, you will have to change those habits that have lead to stagnation, those aspects of your life that have lead to immobility, and probably some or all of your friends, who enable this lack of movement.
So this goal must be pretty impressive to make you want to put all this work in.
To find an impressive goal, an inspirational destination, it is important to include emotional elements in the goal. Each of us has a key emotion that we are trying to find - love, comfort, joy, safety, self importance and so on. The goal must be a physical means of attaining this emotion in abundance. Often when we talk about goals, it is things like "get a job" or "move out" or "be around more people". These are often given to get people off our backs and look like we are doing something. Sometimes these are goals we actually want, but we don't know why we want them.
To examine the goal "get a job". What is it about the job that you want? Is it going to a work place? Is it the money? Is it the structure? Is it... and what about those aspects contains the feeling you are hoping to get? If it is the going to a work place, is it because you don't want to be home? This may mean aspects of safety or discomfort. If it is the money, does money represent freedom, status, power...?
Understanding the emotion behind the stated goals can help us understand why these goals are important to us.
For some, there is no clear indication of what we might want. That is fine. Instead of working backwards from the goal to the emotion, we can start with the emotion and work forwards to the goal.
To begin this process, consider what you have now and it will tell you what you want. Part of this assessment includes physical things, such as shelter, availability of food, physical health and other very basic needs. There is little point talking to a dying person about there relationship with their mother when you should be putting pressure on a gaping wound! So addressing these basic needs is fundamental, but should not be the only focus.
The next focus in understanding where you are is to look at the people you rely on and those who rely on you. This can give you a good idea about balance, give and take, and if you actually like this part of your situation.
Once the shape of your current physical and social being is known, the next things to focus on is your current emotional being. I don't mean current as in right this second, I mean as a trend over time. Consider the basic questions of "are you happy"? If you are happy and content, why change?
The odds are though, especially if you are reading this, you aren't happy and content. You itch to change, and something is up that prompts you to do this. So look at yourself and work out what emotion is the dominant one. Do you feel safe? Do you feel loved? Do you feel worthy of receiving good things? Can you accept compliments? There are a whole stack of questions that can help elicit the fundamental emotions behind your current state of being. There is a fair chance that a negative emotions is dominant. It may even be hiding behind depression or some other confounding state. It is important to figure it out.
Once you have established the dominant emotion, this gives an indication of your goal. For example, if your dominant emotion is fear, then your goal is safety. If it is grief, then your goal is securing joy in what is here. If it is anger, then it is to change the status of power. If it is sadness, then your goal is to re-discover joy.
Sometimes it is hard to find a dominant emotion as there are no emotions. That is okay. Your goal is quite likely to be to find your emotions.
Once you have a basic idea of what your goal needs to feel like, you can start to create physical representations of those goals. That is, when I am safe, my world looks like... When I feel joy in what I have, I am ... etc. This gives the basis for something to aim for, something to gauge the changes you are going to make. After all, if you want to change your life, you need to make changes in your life.
It is all well and good finding that you have stagnated, but how do you break it? How do you start moving when you have stopped, and how to you find a direction so that you no longer travel in small circles?
The answer to this is to find a goal you want to achieve.
Let us pause to understand the goal. The point of the goal is to head you somewhere other than where you are. To achieve this goal, you will have to change those habits that have lead to stagnation, those aspects of your life that have lead to immobility, and probably some or all of your friends, who enable this lack of movement.
So this goal must be pretty impressive to make you want to put all this work in.
To find an impressive goal, an inspirational destination, it is important to include emotional elements in the goal. Each of us has a key emotion that we are trying to find - love, comfort, joy, safety, self importance and so on. The goal must be a physical means of attaining this emotion in abundance. Often when we talk about goals, it is things like "get a job" or "move out" or "be around more people". These are often given to get people off our backs and look like we are doing something. Sometimes these are goals we actually want, but we don't know why we want them.
To examine the goal "get a job". What is it about the job that you want? Is it going to a work place? Is it the money? Is it the structure? Is it... and what about those aspects contains the feeling you are hoping to get? If it is the going to a work place, is it because you don't want to be home? This may mean aspects of safety or discomfort. If it is the money, does money represent freedom, status, power...?
Understanding the emotion behind the stated goals can help us understand why these goals are important to us.
For some, there is no clear indication of what we might want. That is fine. Instead of working backwards from the goal to the emotion, we can start with the emotion and work forwards to the goal.
To begin this process, consider what you have now and it will tell you what you want. Part of this assessment includes physical things, such as shelter, availability of food, physical health and other very basic needs. There is little point talking to a dying person about there relationship with their mother when you should be putting pressure on a gaping wound! So addressing these basic needs is fundamental, but should not be the only focus.
The next focus in understanding where you are is to look at the people you rely on and those who rely on you. This can give you a good idea about balance, give and take, and if you actually like this part of your situation.
Once the shape of your current physical and social being is known, the next things to focus on is your current emotional being. I don't mean current as in right this second, I mean as a trend over time. Consider the basic questions of "are you happy"? If you are happy and content, why change?
The odds are though, especially if you are reading this, you aren't happy and content. You itch to change, and something is up that prompts you to do this. So look at yourself and work out what emotion is the dominant one. Do you feel safe? Do you feel loved? Do you feel worthy of receiving good things? Can you accept compliments? There are a whole stack of questions that can help elicit the fundamental emotions behind your current state of being. There is a fair chance that a negative emotions is dominant. It may even be hiding behind depression or some other confounding state. It is important to figure it out.
Once you have established the dominant emotion, this gives an indication of your goal. For example, if your dominant emotion is fear, then your goal is safety. If it is grief, then your goal is securing joy in what is here. If it is anger, then it is to change the status of power. If it is sadness, then your goal is to re-discover joy.
Sometimes it is hard to find a dominant emotion as there are no emotions. That is okay. Your goal is quite likely to be to find your emotions.
Once you have a basic idea of what your goal needs to feel like, you can start to create physical representations of those goals. That is, when I am safe, my world looks like... When I feel joy in what I have, I am ... etc. This gives the basis for something to aim for, something to gauge the changes you are going to make. After all, if you want to change your life, you need to make changes in your life.
January 14, 2011
Complacency and Opportunity
My last post ran away from where I had intended it to go. Oh well, these things happen.
What I wanted to talk about was complacency and opportunity.
When life seems comfortable, we don't often work to improve our lives. We become complacent. That is, we do not see the need to work on changing our lives because our lives seem to be in a good place. Why rock the boat? Why begin walking a path that will lead to discomfort?
Yet it is at these times that we are often the most resourced and capable of managing change.
On the flip side, when things are not going well, we are the most likely to change. This is reflected in crisis theory, which I have covered before (find it here). In short, we are most ready to change when we discover that all our usual methods have failed.
By it's very nature, when things are not going well, we are usually under resourced for change and highly stressed and agitated. We tend to see the world as out to get us, that we are useless, incapable and not worthy of a good life. We become our own worst enemy.
In the book "Global Brain" by Howard Bloom, he points out that people can be seen as cells in the body made up of the network of humanity. Much like cells in our own personal bodies, if we deem ourselves as 'surplus population' we begin apoptosis, that is programmed cell death. We see ourselves as 'surplus population' when we feel unneeded, unwanted, unworthy and unlovable.
The most common method of apoptosis for humans is isolation (not seeing people), abusing our own resource use (not eating /over eating, not sleeping / over sleeping etc) and damaging relationship with other cells that can help us. This will then lead to illness and/or risk taking activities. These can then lead to death.
[I have noticed that this blog has got away from me again. Time to bring it back to where I wanted it to go.]
To change course from apoptosis, one must begin to over rule the temptation to minimise ourselves. We must look embrace our importance in the world. I will cover ontological security in the future. We must learn to love ourselves again.
To avoid going down this path at all, we must change the way we see adversity. Life not going well for us is not an indication of our worthlessness, nor a sign that we only deserve bad things. Instead see adversity as evidence that we have opportunities to become greater than we ever dreamed we could be. Adversity is a challenge to live and to grow.
Complacency, then, is the enemy of recovery. It prompts us to feel that we have reached the peek of what we can be.
By all means, when you feel complacent, enjoy life. You deserve it, you deserve the break. Just don't mistake this life as the best, and don't be afraid to expand and extend your life at the risk of ending this streak of comfort.
What I wanted to talk about was complacency and opportunity.
When life seems comfortable, we don't often work to improve our lives. We become complacent. That is, we do not see the need to work on changing our lives because our lives seem to be in a good place. Why rock the boat? Why begin walking a path that will lead to discomfort?
Yet it is at these times that we are often the most resourced and capable of managing change.
On the flip side, when things are not going well, we are the most likely to change. This is reflected in crisis theory, which I have covered before (find it here). In short, we are most ready to change when we discover that all our usual methods have failed.
By it's very nature, when things are not going well, we are usually under resourced for change and highly stressed and agitated. We tend to see the world as out to get us, that we are useless, incapable and not worthy of a good life. We become our own worst enemy.
In the book "Global Brain" by Howard Bloom, he points out that people can be seen as cells in the body made up of the network of humanity. Much like cells in our own personal bodies, if we deem ourselves as 'surplus population' we begin apoptosis, that is programmed cell death. We see ourselves as 'surplus population' when we feel unneeded, unwanted, unworthy and unlovable.
The most common method of apoptosis for humans is isolation (not seeing people), abusing our own resource use (not eating /over eating, not sleeping / over sleeping etc) and damaging relationship with other cells that can help us. This will then lead to illness and/or risk taking activities. These can then lead to death.
[I have noticed that this blog has got away from me again. Time to bring it back to where I wanted it to go.]
To change course from apoptosis, one must begin to over rule the temptation to minimise ourselves. We must look embrace our importance in the world. I will cover ontological security in the future. We must learn to love ourselves again.
To avoid going down this path at all, we must change the way we see adversity. Life not going well for us is not an indication of our worthlessness, nor a sign that we only deserve bad things. Instead see adversity as evidence that we have opportunities to become greater than we ever dreamed we could be. Adversity is a challenge to live and to grow.
Complacency, then, is the enemy of recovery. It prompts us to feel that we have reached the peek of what we can be.
By all means, when you feel complacent, enjoy life. You deserve it, you deserve the break. Just don't mistake this life as the best, and don't be afraid to expand and extend your life at the risk of ending this streak of comfort.
January 13, 2011
The rules of the game
In times of peace and prosperity, most humans relax and enjoy themselves. It is only those who were born in conflict that find it hard to sit still. It isn't because we don't like peace, it is because we don't really feel comfortable with the rules. Often we will choose the rules we know over the peaceful situation with rules we don't know.
As we humans grow up, we learn rules that allow us to survive. In effect, life is a game and those who learn the rules the best survive the best. We don't all play the same game though. Some of us are playing tic-tac-toe, others are playing chess and others are playing real life mine sweeper. The game we grow up in has a large say in the rules we learn and how well we can do whilst still playing the same game.
The game is not fixed and we can hop from one game to another. Sometimes that is not necessarily our choice, and sometimes it is our choice. The hardest shift isn't the change of game, but learning the new rules. Frequently we will prefer to hop back to the old game, even if that game is unpleasant, rather than learn new rules.
You may have noticed in your travels in your life repeats of the same pattern, or avoidance of things that are new. When you do something new, you feel uncomfortable and look for ways to use your old rule set to make the new system easier to comprehend, or look like the game you are use to. When that can't be done, you feel very uncomfortable and try to escape.
It is learning how to adapt to new games, learn new rules and feel comfortable with those rules for that game that denotes good recovery practice.
As we humans grow up, we learn rules that allow us to survive. In effect, life is a game and those who learn the rules the best survive the best. We don't all play the same game though. Some of us are playing tic-tac-toe, others are playing chess and others are playing real life mine sweeper. The game we grow up in has a large say in the rules we learn and how well we can do whilst still playing the same game.
The game is not fixed and we can hop from one game to another. Sometimes that is not necessarily our choice, and sometimes it is our choice. The hardest shift isn't the change of game, but learning the new rules. Frequently we will prefer to hop back to the old game, even if that game is unpleasant, rather than learn new rules.
You may have noticed in your travels in your life repeats of the same pattern, or avoidance of things that are new. When you do something new, you feel uncomfortable and look for ways to use your old rule set to make the new system easier to comprehend, or look like the game you are use to. When that can't be done, you feel very uncomfortable and try to escape.
It is learning how to adapt to new games, learn new rules and feel comfortable with those rules for that game that denotes good recovery practice.
January 09, 2011
Just cause
Events happen. They are the things that are perceivable, detectable and observable. Events are physical changes in the world around us.
The fact of an event happening is not related to why it happened. Why is a story we create to help us predict what will come next. We create the idea of causation, suggesting that one event leads to another, and that the second event was "caused" by the first.
Even if this is true, it does not tell us why. It just dictates a string of events.
Why is a far harder concept to grapple with. If "why" is a story, then the story can change. We humans often pick a story that tells us we are bad. Sometimes we tell stories that tell us we are good. Events do not define us as good or bad, only our actions based on our intentions.
The fact of an event happening is not related to why it happened. Why is a story we create to help us predict what will come next. We create the idea of causation, suggesting that one event leads to another, and that the second event was "caused" by the first.
Even if this is true, it does not tell us why. It just dictates a string of events.
Why is a far harder concept to grapple with. If "why" is a story, then the story can change. We humans often pick a story that tells us we are bad. Sometimes we tell stories that tell us we are good. Events do not define us as good or bad, only our actions based on our intentions.
January 08, 2011
The Miracle of Insanity
When sudden irrevocable change happens to an individuals personality, we call this insanity. Unless friends and society deems it a good change, then we call it a miracle.
Why is this?
If we like a change, we often attribute the change to something beyond the person who changed, robbing them of the credit of the effort to be true to themselves, or the them they wish they were. Perhaps because it is a sudden change, we outsiders do not see the effort it has taken to continue the new trend.
If we don't like the change, we blame the person for it. Why can't you be nicer? Why are you being mean? Why are you talking to people who aren't there? Why aren't you getting out of bed and doing something? Why are you...
What we often want is a miracle to occur to those who we deem insane. Often those who are troubled are also looking for that miracle, whether it be in the shape of a pill, divine intervention or some guru/white knight who can fix it.
Why is this?
If we like a change, we often attribute the change to something beyond the person who changed, robbing them of the credit of the effort to be true to themselves, or the them they wish they were. Perhaps because it is a sudden change, we outsiders do not see the effort it has taken to continue the new trend.
If we don't like the change, we blame the person for it. Why can't you be nicer? Why are you being mean? Why are you talking to people who aren't there? Why aren't you getting out of bed and doing something? Why are you...
What we often want is a miracle to occur to those who we deem insane. Often those who are troubled are also looking for that miracle, whether it be in the shape of a pill, divine intervention or some guru/white knight who can fix it.
We done't often see the "bad" radical change as a miracle, or the "good" radical change as insanity.
Sudden change is rare and should not be relied upon, any more than winning the lottery to save pay off the mortgage. Instead make a dramatic shift you can maintain, like getting a job re: the mortgage, then slowly improve upon this until it looks like the life you want to have.
Sudden change is rare and should not be relied upon, any more than winning the lottery to save pay off the mortgage. Instead make a dramatic shift you can maintain, like getting a job re: the mortgage, then slowly improve upon this until it looks like the life you want to have.
January 05, 2011
Despair, dreams and opportunity
Despair is knowing that nothing you can do can move you to another, better, place, and the place you are in now is not good. At this point you stop trying to improve your situation and just coast, collapse, or stop trying. One the one hand, this is deadly to recovery and on the other, it is an important opportunity.
The deadliness lies in the stopping of trying and the death of the hope that your dreams can be achieved, in part or in full. The loss of motivation is also the loss of momentum in moving anywhere you choose to move. To escape/defeat this, revisit your dreams and stop worrying if they are achievable or not, or how it can be achieved. Just discover your dream. A quick and dirty way to do this is to imagine what the world would be like if there was nothing wrong with anything. Now consider the defining difference/differences in this world. Why does this difference make the world better and what about this difference makes the world better? This abstraction is your dream. I'll cover this in more depth another time.
The important opportunity is recognising that all of the things you have done are not working. This opens you up to trying new things. This is akin to Crisis Theory. When all the things you have done fail, then you are open to trying new things to actually fix the problem instead of just compensating for it.
New ways of solving problems often come from talking to other people - people you don't normally talk to - or reading books you don't normally read, or thinking about things you don't normally think about. Keep in mind safety, but don't be frozen by fear. Accept reasonable risks and discard the dangerous. More on this another time.
The deadliness lies in the stopping of trying and the death of the hope that your dreams can be achieved, in part or in full. The loss of motivation is also the loss of momentum in moving anywhere you choose to move. To escape/defeat this, revisit your dreams and stop worrying if they are achievable or not, or how it can be achieved. Just discover your dream. A quick and dirty way to do this is to imagine what the world would be like if there was nothing wrong with anything. Now consider the defining difference/differences in this world. Why does this difference make the world better and what about this difference makes the world better? This abstraction is your dream. I'll cover this in more depth another time.
The important opportunity is recognising that all of the things you have done are not working. This opens you up to trying new things. This is akin to Crisis Theory. When all the things you have done fail, then you are open to trying new things to actually fix the problem instead of just compensating for it.
New ways of solving problems often come from talking to other people - people you don't normally talk to - or reading books you don't normally read, or thinking about things you don't normally think about. Keep in mind safety, but don't be frozen by fear. Accept reasonable risks and discard the dangerous. More on this another time.
January 02, 2011
Metamind - Self examination
Another step to knowing the self is to use your meta mind to watch what you are trying to say to others. This is not exclusive to the words you use, but when you say them, what you say, how you say, how you stand, how you dress, who you talk to and who you are trying to influence.
Metamind - Social relationships
To begin to know who you are, begin looking at your social contacts. Use a meta mind - what would an outside observer see, are these people actually good for you, how balanced is the relationship (give vs take), are these the people you wish to be like and so on. This will tell you a bit about yourself. Don't ask their opinion of you - it doesn't really inform you of who you are.
Depression
Depression is often brought on by suppression. Discovery what you are suppressing and do something about it. Often this will lead to anger, and we will instinctively do 1 of 2 things.
1) Become aggressive to reclaim our perceived loss of power
2) Suppress our anger because it is uncivilised
Instead, recognise what is suppressing your power and dispassionately plan how to affect it such that your power is rebalanced.
Sometimes dispassion is not possible
Suppression can also be pulling back from some stimuli other than anger that is seemingly too powerful or complicated to deal with. This too must be understood and a dispassionate plan to deal with this must be created and acted upon.
There is always a way.
1) Become aggressive to reclaim our perceived loss of power
2) Suppress our anger because it is uncivilised
Instead, recognise what is suppressing your power and dispassionately plan how to affect it such that your power is rebalanced.
Sometimes dispassion is not possible
Suppression can also be pulling back from some stimuli other than anger that is seemingly too powerful or complicated to deal with. This too must be understood and a dispassionate plan to deal with this must be created and acted upon.
There is always a way.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)