Intrusive thoughts

Just watched a woman's description of shocking thoughts she had about her baby, such as smothering him, as a result of her post partum depression.

The proper term for this is "intrusive thoughts," which is well described in many Internet articles including in Wikipedia. It is a severe problem and is associated with many mental disorders such as depression, anxiety, OCD, PPD and bipolar.

The reason I am mentioning this today is that here is another example of where society as a whole has gone in a totally wrong direction, which harms rather than helps those with intrusive thoughts.

I agree that cognitive behavior therapy is a great help, but CBT is a matter of closing the barn door after the horse is gone. In other words CBT is used to wrestle with and hopefully subdue the intrusive thoughts, yet people remains saturated in intrusive thought stimulation without even realizing it. There are two main weaknesses in society that result in assailing people with intrusive thoughts:

1. Electronic media is a passive means of providing the viewer or listener with thoughts they would never otherwise have had. That's the whole idea of creativity and exposure to new and exciting stimuli, but the problem is that most people have not formed, particularly in childhood, the boundaries of thoughts that people used to have. In other words the past few generations are "thoughts wide open" due to their early addiction and exposure to electronic media. A huge part of normal human development is self awareness and self imposing of not only behavior but also thought boundaries, strong boundaries. The "let it all hang out" generations have damaged this necessary part of normal development. So people who grew up in electronic media times are programmed to have "all channels open to all thoughts, good or evil, wise or foolish, useful or bullshit" and thus are vulnerable to intrusive thoughts.

2. Excessive "spiritual" practices run the same risk, cultivating an undiscipled mind. In fact what passes for "spiritual discipline" in many cults and so forth (and even dabblers in mainstream religion) is actually not discipline in terms of discerning good thoughts and bad thoughts, but being, "open to the universe" and other such bullcrap. Listen, when normal people pray they know who they are and who they are praying to, that being the Almighty God. People who develop excess so called "spirituality" are like lint collectors, opening their minds to whatever crap is floating around out there. Mental crap that floats out there to be collected may be the undisciplined baloney of one's own unconscious mind, the crap thoughts of others via ESP, miasma from the gates of hell, and the urgings of one's own ego to be "special" and to "hear" things that "enlighten" you, but really don't exist. Folks, there is plenty of legit meditation and other spiritual practices, but beware, beware, beware because human ego like a magnet takes you places you should not go for your own good and for that of others.

When I was studying undercover people involved in so called "New Age" and other cult beliefs, I was in horror at the pride many of them had at working on broadcasting their sex thoughts via kundalini and other methods. And you wonder why so many children are beset by victimization. This is just one example of how you should not emit that kind of garbage (it hits more than you intended) plus it prevents you from having natural levees against intrusive thoughts later when YOU need protection.

I hope this helps. Too late, but what the hell.

message to young people

Hi again. Even if you don't hear from me for a while you are never far from my thoughts.

I want to share with you a worry that I have. This is particularly for those of you who are adolescents, teenagers, and young adults (in other words, the younger half of my "young people who are thirty and under" definition ;-)

I am worried that you have been exposed to far too much of the problems that adults must really be tasked with resolving. I am worried that far too many of you have been burdened by adult problems and concerns since you were very young children, and that this trend continues to worsen each day.

Let me assure you that I am not being condescending at all; I am actually being very practical and protective, both at the same time!

Those who know me well know that I feel that a reversal in priorities has taken place. Those adult things that I DO feel you should be involved in, young people, I feel you have been denied participation in and in fact have been placed in enforced infantalization. However, those things that I DO NOT feel you should be burdened with, you have had it forced upon you, while adults should be handling those matters.

I've written before about adult areas that I think you should have more participation in, and I probably will share more about those again sometime, so let's put them aside now so we can focus on the areas I think you should not be burdened with, and more important, WHY I feel that way.

There are several reasons why I wish that you, young people, were not burdened with things that adults, older adults, should deal with on their own. Let me list some of those reasons for you so you can see where I am coming from.

1) Childhood is the only time that you have for genuine, joyous, innocent play, agenda free learning/exploring and other activities. You will never have those chances again once you are either an adult or exposed to adult world and pressures. You can buy toys when you are an adult and you can goof off, but you can never have what you should have had as a genuine child.

2) If you have not experienced childhood the way that you are supposed to, as I describe above, you cannot really be an advocate and protector of the right of your own children or other people's children to have that ideal pattern of childhood in return. For one, you don't miss what you never really had (you miss something, there is a void, but you are not sure what). Secondly you are sucked into the "what was normal for me is probably normal for everyone else" assumption. So you will not really be a defender of other children's right to hassle free and agenda free joy and innocence, without stress, if you have not had that yourself.

3) When the brain is formed, with both its intellect and its emotions, if you do not lay down tracks, so to speak, that are based on childhood joy, freedom from stress (as much as possible), and certainly free of adult concerns and problems, then you do not have access to the strength and serenity that comes from those brain pathways as an adult. As far as the brain is concerned (both intellectually and emotionally), a childhood that is rooted as much as possible in joyous and innocent pursuits and environments is a treasure that sustains you during adulthood, one that can be referenced if not relived. Having a joyous and innocent childhood free of adult pressures leaves a person with more serenity, fortitude, perspective and positive aspirations. A boot camp type of childhood oddly enough does the opposite of what many think because rather than increasing resilience, fortitude and ambition, it erodes at the fundamental spirit that is the basis for all of those desirable attributes.

4) A joyous and innocent childhood based on freedom from adult agenda actually stimulates the economy and lifestyle in the home, schools and community in additional directions than simply where adults focus their attention. The problem with children being younger and younger consumers of adult priorities and products is that the economy and the spiritual priorities become narrowed as emotional and financial investment is made more and more in adult priorities.

Let me give a simple example. This may not be an actually factual example since only God knows what "could have been." But let us speculate together so you can best understand it. Years ago the neighborhood playground was "the" place for children. It was fun, safe and a regular routine for visiting. One could safely assume that as the years go on and more and more children are born that more and more playgrounds would be built (maybe even one every few street blocks throughout the land!) and enjoyed. But we see that has not happened for several reasons. Put aside for the moment the obvious problems of many children not being born due to abortion and broken families/less marriages and so forth, and of crime and blight, including child predators making playgrounds unsafe and thus unused. Focus just on the economics and the community landscape. If more and more children are in the home exposed to and participating only in adult activities, limitations, worries and concerns, fewer and fewer children need and desire playgrounds and so fewer are provided as they are a low priority. That is simple supply and demand economics.

Do you see what I mean? There is both a mindset and a practical penalty for children being hemmed in by adult priorities. Children forget or are never exposed to the joy of a genuine, safe, regular playground (mindset) and as a result, that experience is given to fewer and fewer (the practical penalty). Instead of more and more playgrounds being built, USED, and kept safe, we have adult activities (video games, for example) pushed further and further down the age groups. There is less variety in both a child's experience and also in the resulting environment and economy as a whole.

5) Burnout. Quite simply if you are having to clad yourself in armor to fight adult problems, you will get burned out, depressed, bummed out and plain old tired, way, way, WAY too soon.

6) Anxiety. There are few things more frustrating than worrying about things that you genuinely cannot change as of yet, if ever. This is one of the things that irates and inflames me the most, especially when you look at bogus concerns thrust on children such as "climate change." What the hell are kids supposed to do about that (bogus as it is) but worry and be sad and anxious? Trust me, adults don't even know what to do, but they point children in one false direction after the other and cause them great anxiety, while they sit on their fat asses and do nothing about genuine environmental problems, such as sanitation and pollution, and also the wise provision of natural spaces for species to adapt to any climate change or whatever that might genuinely come along.

7) Ego trips and inflation. When adults feed you the constant line that "you are special" and that "you can make a difference" and you "can change the world," that is simply a lie and it gives you a fat head for no reason. Children cannot change the world, "for the better" or for otherwise. I am not being pessimistic or denying your impact. Children, your impact is to become human beings, to grow up as loved and normal children, to discover your own likes and dislikes, and then, as adults, to start to learn "the ways of the world." When children are hocked to collect dimes for a cause so they can "make a difference," you are letting adults off the hook for solving the problem. Look at Haiti. Their situation has sucked big wind for decades and all adults do is leave a big fat mess and then when something like the earthquake hits, they put guilt trips and inflation of ego on children and make them collect dimes to buy someone poor a shirt in Haiti, rather than getting their fat or bony asses around a desk to actually solve the problems of that country. And meanwhile you children grow up with a false idea of how much you personally can change the world, while not being made known of how you can contribute in the right way and the right time when you have more knowledge, resources and control.

Sigh.....................................................

Let me leave this with you to think about. It's tough to become aware of a problem without an easy solution, as I'm not really giving you "action items" in this blogging, something you can do, except for one thing to start. I suggest you work on craving adult things far less, and nurturing the classic activities, play, joy and serenity of childhood as much as you can. Reject being drafted into adult concerns as much as you can.

I realize that is difficult to do as many of you are stuck in very tough adult situations. I'm extending a hand of comfort to you (both hands actually) with this blogging (and ranting a bit too, I admit, heh). Do not have "grown up" and "adult" agenda thrust upon you without you at least thinking about it in your mind, and resist the guilt trip as much as you can. If your caregivers and teachers try to raise your anxiety levels about world problems (or crap going on in your own house), try to counterbalance it by 1) realizing it has always been a tough world and those problems will still be there when you are older, so what is the hurry for you as yet a child and 2) deliberately increase your time and attention investment in classic play or other joyous/exploring/learning activities appropriate to your age.

I hope you have found this helpful and be assured of my constant affection and concern for you.

Post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)

Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

It has been a while since I blogged regarding PTSD and other mental or emotion distresses. By the way, I prefer the term “distress” instead of “disorder” or “mental illness.” Many mental conditions are perfectly natural responses by the body and the mind to terrible circumstances, and thus I prefer that people do not think of them as “wrong wiring” or “mental imbalance.” PTSD, for those victims of trauma who suffer from it, are the body and the mind’s efforts to deal with something so radical and scarring that a painful set of symptoms occur, but that is not the same as being mentally disordered or biologically or mentally flawed.

I want to address myself to all PTSD sufferers but most especially to those in the military or law enforcement. I am thinking most especially of the Vietnam War veterans who suffer to this day, and now the Afghanistan and Iraq War veterans who must also deal with PTSD in such great numbers. I want to give you two tools to help you when you read this. One is a way to explain PTSD in a way that I believe is much more accurate an analogy or images than you’ve probably heard before. Military people can relate that you must “know the enemy before you can defeat him.” I think this analogy will help you to better understand exactly what PTSD is and how I recommend one can alleviate much of the distress, while never being, of course, able to deny or erase what happened, nor should you. The second tool I want to give to you is a way to work on the PTSD dreams and nightmares that I have found very helpful when I have given sufferers direction in these matters.

The best way to think of PTSD is that you are in the jaws of an alligator or a crocodile. Let’s say crocodile since it’s a global animal that everyone is familiar with. When one has PTSD one can think of one’s self as being firmly in the mouth grip of a crocodile, and each of the croc’s teeth has a hold on you. The crocodile represents the source of the PTSD (such as trauma during war service). In other words, there was nothing wrong with you before you had the trauma. Then something very real happened, where you are bitten by the croc and held in its mouth so you cannot pull free, and the teeth represent the types and severity of the psychological and emotional wounds you have received and the ongoing symptoms.

Now, this is how you can understand the prescription medications that you receive that may or may not help you. The prescription medications do not free you from the croc’s jaws; they only dull the pain so that you can function more gracefully and comfortably as if you were not feeling the pain of the bite. But of course despite what doctors say, the medications cannot erase the cause of the trauma as if it never happened, nor can it restore you to what you were before. This is where the analogy is helpful because each tooth mark leaves a scar, even if one was, using our analogy, completely free of the jaw’s grip.

When one “self medicates” through addictive substances, such as alcohol and drugs, or other addictive behaviors such as risky behavior, compulsive behavior, or other means of “escapism,” one is trying to do the same thing the doctors who prescribe do, which is dull the pain of being bitten by the traumatic event or events. But like the prescribed medications, self medication only attempts to dull the pain of being continually bitten.

So how do I recommend that a PTSD sufferer deal with PTSD, using this analogy? First of all, yes, be sure, of course, to stay on any medication that the doctor prescribes because you cannot work on any sort of remedy or cure if you are in pain and engaging in risky behavior due to the PTSD. Everyone knows that it is harder to heal something like a broken arm if you are in continual pain. So yes, if you have one or more prescriptions that ease your pain and symptoms, be sure to continue to faithfully take what a reputable and conscientious doctor prescribes.

However, I invite you to think about how one actually tackles the PTSD itself. Think of your status as being in the grip of the croc’s jaws and all its teeth. You cannot pull yourself out of the grip, so you are stuck. But are you? What if you had a set of pliers and pulled out the teeth one at a time?

Suppose one of your symptoms is having recurrent traumatic dreams and nightmares. Those dreams represent one of the teeth of the croc. In other words, if you are able to work on alleviating the stress of the dreams, and even reducing their occurrences, that would be as if you pulled out that tooth from the croc. This also helps you to understand why some in distress of PTSD have the bad dreams while others do not. That particular symptom of “tooth” just is not biting down as hard on some folks as it is on others. That is part of how each individual is unique, as is each trauma. You might be someone who was bitten and held by a small croc, with a trauma that, while painful and real, has a smaller “bite mark,” a smaller less severe pattern of symptoms. On the other hand, those who served in the Vietnam War, for example, I have noticed have all been bitten by a huge croc with many deep biting teeth. This is because Vietnam was “not just another war.” It was a shattering experience on so many levels and had few mitigating circumstances of comfort and many simultaneous types of trauma.

Just for one example, the United States had previously fought only open conflicts, never a guerilla war. So while there were vets traumatized by World War II and Korea, Vietnam was a warfare tactic that neither the military institution nor the individuals serving had any experience or preparation for. So being in a guerilla war is, again using that analogy, one tooth of the bite and holding of PTSD that those in other wars did not so much experience (except, for example, those who fought on the ground against dug in Japanese in World War II).

So the individual teeth of the croc are made up of two ways of looking at it: the symptoms that you feel and the reasons that trauma was received. An example of a “symptom tooth” is the bad dreams. An example of the “cause tooth” is being totally unprepared for a guerilla style of warfare.

Military folks who suffer from PTSD tend to be able to list their symptoms, so the “symptom teeth” will probably not be too difficult for you to recognize (though often people do not see how much they have changed until they are home and have difficulties). You’ve probably all had to list the symptoms in the doctor appointments and endless paperwork. But here is what I am suggesting. I have had some very good success at turning it a bit on its head, where instead of the one block being “PTSD” and all the symptoms hanging off of it, to be treated as a whole, try breaking the symptoms down into individual components that you might address one or two at a time. PTSD, like most mental distresses, is not something that one can tend to treat as a whole and people in the profession have become a bit too charmed with that idea, and then are disappointed when they cannot “cure” or alleviate PTSD. It’s not like getting rid of a cold or the flu. But that is a useful comparison so let’s explore it for a minute.

If you have a cold or the flu you have one cause (bacteria or a virus) and many possible symptoms (sneezing, sore throat, fever, runny nose, coughing, sore chest, body aches, nausea, fatigue, etc.) In general when one is dealing with physical illnesses, when the illness passes or is “cured,” all the symptoms go away, obviously, since you are no longer sick with that illness. People for a variety of reasons think of mental and emotional distress the same way: if you treat the overall “type of distress,” such as PTSD, then the symptoms should all together gradually improve. It’s perfectly natural that everyone tends to think of mental illnesses as being just like physical illnesses, except of the mind and nervous system instead of the body. Medical schools, scholars and insurance and medical reimburerses all tend to think that way. We fill out your form with your “diagnosis,” PTSD, list your symptoms as “proof” that you are indeed suffering from PTSD so you can be treated and the provider is reimbursed, and then the “treatment plan” for PTSD is developed, which is usually prescription medications with some group therapy. That is fine and that is the way the system is established, but I believe that it leads to slower, and often nil, results. I believe that in addition to the overall treatment of the overall condition of PTSD that each symptom should be separately addressed using non-prescription drug techniques of counseling, therapy and self help.

The way the medical system is established there is little access, and none of it reimbursable, to what I am suggesting. When I was an intern I was able to treat a number of patients via counseling only because since I was a “free body” (student interns are not paid). Thus while I was there during my nearly nine month internship I was able to provide “talking” treatment to patients who would not have otherwise received it. This is one reason I have spent a fair amount of time thinking about ways that those in distress, such as those with PTSD, and their families and friends, and church groups and others who donate services, can listen to some of my suggestions and try them in addition to their regular treatment. This is why I blog on these types of subjects and would like to be able to help through some future venue.

Suppose that you are a PTSD sufferer with a number of symptoms and you were able to eliminate or control one of those symptoms? I think that would be a relief if, for example, you are troubled by the symptom of bad dreams and you were able to mitigate that one symptom, even if the others remain. It tends to have a mutually beneficial and cascading effect anyways; if you improve one thing you become more at ease and more comforted and when you feel better in that one area you can deal with the other symptoms better, and perhaps address them too, one at a time. So I’m suggesting that while you, of course, continue your medical course of treatment, you draw up an action plan for addressing one of the symptoms as a targeted effort on it and it alone.

So here’s what you do. Make a list of your croc’s teeth. These are both “symptom” teeth and “cause” teeth. The idea of the “cause teeth” may be new to you, but it’s easy to understand once you start thinking about it that way. What made Vietnam so particularly unique and scarring? I gave one example, which is that it was a guerilla war rather than conventional conflict, which the military command and training gave no preparation for, and which shocked the combatants mightily. So while your symptom teeth list what you are suffering from now, your cause teeth list each thing that contributed to the shock, damage and scarring, and many of them will be cultural. I can speak with some experience and authority because I am only a few years younger than many Vietnam veterans, since I was a teenager during the height of the war. Further, my family had extensive World War II experience, in all the theaters, so I observed the differences as they were happening. So let me give you some help in thinking about what some of the “cause teeth” might be in your particular list.

O Being drafted for a war whose purpose was difficult to understand, as the USA was not being invaded, nor was there a clear cut enemy such as Japan (who had bombed Pearl Harbor) or Germany (with Nazi global domination clearly an objective).
O Culture shock, where Vietnam seemed very alien and uncomfortable compared to your upbringing, whereas Europe or even Japan (shipboard) in World War II was less jarring a transition.
O Exposure to vices, such as drugs and prostitution.
O Lack of training and preparation for guerilla warfare, which included devices of terror as booby traps.
O Hostility toward the military, including service men and women, by fellow citizens at home.
O Having a close buddy killed, particularly in a brutal way.
O Witnessing atrocities from either side.
O Inexperienced commanders and chains of command that resulted in errors and losses.
O Tactics and strategies that resulted in battles for which there seemed no point or overall plan.
O Being captured.

I could list more but I think you see my point. So let’s look at two examples of Vietnam veterans with PTSD. I’m just making these two up as examples so you can see that while everyone “shares” the PTSD experience, it is indeed unique to each person and must be treated accordingly.

Example One: Symptom teeth: bad dreams, startles easily, distressed by loud and sudden noises, emotionally withdrawn from loved ones. Cause teeth: many “close calls” in the battlefield, witnessed bad orders causing unnecessary loss of life, close buddy captured, and “social scene” that one was too young to handle.

Example Two: Symptom teeth: bad dreams, addictions (list each one), drawn to conflict and violence, suicidal thoughts. Cause teeth: lack of support from home, found gun was only response to guerilla and cultural violence, forced to give bad orders.

See, these are just with a few words two people that while they share the “PTSD Vietnam vet” label are obviously two very different people with very different experiences. Medicine, like all aspects of our sad culture and society today, try to lump people together into cookie cutter categories and treat them accordingly. PTSD, however, is if anything the example of how individual PTSD distress really is and how customized and unique to the individual that treatment must be.

What I would do if I was counseling one or a group of Vietnam vets with PTSD to apply the technique I’ve introduced them to today is to (and remember, this is in addition to all conventional medical treatment):
1. Draw up your list of symptom and cause teeth. Help each other out in thinking of items to put on the list, but only put them on the list if they really affect you individually.
2. Select one symptom tooth and one cause tooth that you want to specifically gain treatment for.
3. For the symptom tooth, your approach is to work on that one symptom as if it were an illness. For example, when one has a cold one might sneeze or have sore throat. Select “sneeze” or “sore throat” and act as if that is an individual standalone illness. You are going to cure yourself of “sneeze,” to use that example, rather than wait for the sneeze to go away when the cold goes away. Therefore you might select to stop or at least ease the “bad dreams” as if it were a standalone illness, rather than wait for them to go away, if ever, if the PTSD “goes away,” which it rarely does.
4. For the cause tooth you use a different approach, but with the same objective of wanting to cure or at least ease the one “illness” represented by the cause tooth.

Before I explain how to approach 4 in specific detail, let me make a broad point. Vietnam vets, understandably, tend to do one of two things. They either withdraw from talking about their experience, for all the obvious reasons, or they tend to read material or have conversations that validate and revalidate their own experiences. For example, they tend to view movies, read books, or have conversations that parallel and validate their own experiences. That is understandable and seems intuitive to do (as part of “you are not alone” therapy), but it often, as logically as it seems, hinders a cure to one or more symptoms. It tends to reinforce the “what’s done is done” and “it happened to all of us” and it “can’t be changed” mindset. Catharsis and validation of one’s own experience have actually been proven to be among the least effective of techniques used in self or professional therapy. All patients, and the society as a whole, loves “let it all out” and “catharsis,” for example, feeling it is “healthy,” but the literature in group therapy shows that while it gives temporary emotional satisfaction to the client or patient, catharsis is the least helpful of the dozen or so techniques used in therapy. I’m not saying to bottle it up, but I am saying to be more skeptical of one’s own human nature tendency to want to hear one’s own story told time after time, either by one’s self or others, without there being a targeted, curative purpose and technique behind its telling.

So suppose that the “cause symptom” that you select to address is the “lack of support from home.” Suppose that your own family had mixed feelings about your service, that you had few friends or buddies back home who could write and support you (younger readers: remember there was no cheap phone calls and this was way before the Internet and email, so traditional letter writing and spotty delivery was one’s only real contact with home, just like in World War II and Korea). And suppose that you were one of those service people who was actually spit on and protested against when you returned home. What if that was a “cause tooth” that aches you still today and contributes to your symptom teeth? How would you address it?

Well, like I said, a lot of people think that is water over the dam and can’t be fixed or undone. And it is true that we cannot go back in time and pretend things went otherwise. But there is an amazing amount of resilience and desire to heal in the human heart and brain, and there is “reprogramming” that one can do to fill in that deficit that was originally created by the lack of support for your service. For example, rather than revisiting through your own memories or the media how bad it was during those times, avoid reinforcement of the feelings of betrayal and abandonment. So do not indulge in “walks down memory lane” of the pain of that “cause tooth.” Here is what you do instead.

You create a “new history” for your brain and your heart in the here and now. For example, you could get a recommendation from someone about a current service member, say in Afghanistan or Iraq, who may not have any family or friends and you become his or her pen pal. In other words, you give today to someone that which you were deprived of. While it does not change time or events, you’ll be surprised at how as far as your brain and heart impulses are concerned, what happens today starts to converge back in time with what had happened to you in the past. In a way it is like you are the new service person today that you start to correspond with. By giving him or her in their need what you did not have, you actually start to put in your heart and memory “bank” what was empty before. Your brain, your heart, and eventually your symptoms will lessen being fueled by what had happened to you, with the lack of support and even hostility that you have received, and instead, the email that you write and receive today with a current service member will be like the support you yourself lacked and that you are now receiving.

It does not have to be, nor can it be, an “exact match.” These are different times where, thankfully, our service people are not being protested against and spat on by anti-war demonstrators. But being lonely and lacking support is universal in all times, and those feelings are the same everywhere. If you find that you can locate a service person who had little or no family or friends, you can make the difference both for him and her and, more importantly for pulling that cause tooth, yourself.

Here’s another idea. Become a self taught “loneliness expert” by reading literature about that condition and studying ways to alleviate it in others, whether military or not. There are two benefits of this kind of approach. One is to learn more about your own condition as you read about it, not in the Vietnam context, but as a general social condition. Rather than reinforcing what you and others experienced in Vietnam, you learn more about why it hurt and scarred by studying the general condition in all aspects of life. That is a lead in to the second benefit which is that it un-bottles the inwardness of the existing PTSD condition and redirects it outward in a productive way. Instead of recycling what has happened to you in your mind, you are now gathering new material in new contexts and could even go so far as to shift from that cause tooth being a scar of Vietnam to a new proactive activity, such as writing articles and blogging about abandonment, loneliness, lack of support, betrayal and ways to cope with them in general. Again, it is not denying what happened to you, but it is a mighty ability to rechannel what was a painful memory into a potentially pleasurable and rewarding here and now activity.

I could give more examples of how to address that particular “cause tooth,” but want to keep this article as an introduction to a technique to get you thinking in these new directions. Now let us discuss my ideas regarding the specific symptom tooth, “bad dreams.”

Remember how I said that humans and societies tend to want to lump things together into one cookie cutter category? Well, people tend to do it to themselves without realizing it. Suppose a Vietnam vet with PTSD is plagued by a particular dream about a specific trauma that he or she endured. They have these dreams “over and over” or at least regularly or, if not too severe, an occasional eruption of that dream. The reaction is, of course, to think “not again” and “it’s that bad dream again.” It is discouraging and thought of as being a repeat of a repeat.

That is an example of the distressed dreamer, quite understandably, tending to lump all of the occurrences of the dream into the same category, which is a repeat of an unpleasant phenomenon, a bad repeating bad dream. But no dream is exactly the same, even if you think that it is; there is always a subtle difference. So the first thing to do is, even though it is painful to have the dream, as soon as you awake think about one thing different about the dream than the last time that you had it and write it down. Keep a pad of paper and pen by your bed if necessary and as soon as you wake, train yourself to think, before pushing the bad dream from your mind, is there something different about this dream? Look for even subtle differences: longer or shorter in duration? Are there any differences in the setting of the dream, the characters in the dream, and the action of the dream, no matter how small?

For example, suppose that your dream normally involves someone, a buddy for example, being killed. The dream tends to reenact the actual event plus some pattern that your dream takes over and over. But suppose in the actual event your buddy was wearing a helmet, and most dreams show him that way, but one night you dream the same dream except that one time he is not wearing a helmet. Or suppose that it was a daytime attack and you accordingly dream of a daytime attack time each time, but one night you dream that it was nighttime. Or you may even have a shorter or longer version of the dream, or a really subtle difference such as the number of people standing around. Don’t rewrite the whole dream on your pad of paper but make a note each time you have “that dream” to identify just one thing about it that was different from the last time, even if you dreamed it while napping instead of while during your overnight sleep. But trust me, once you get used to observing you will notice at least one subtle, or even large, difference in the dream from one time to the next, even if you’ve automatically thought of it as that “repeat dream.”

Again, it’s beyond the scope of this article to right now to do dream interpretation and explain why the dream changes in even that small way. But it is almost not important to know a full out dream interpretation of the “meaning” of that change as it is to train yourself just to notice it and just to write it down. Here is why.

Dreams are, among other things, a self healing mechanism. Just as when you have a scratch or a cut and the body naturally knits together the skin and heals the injury, dreams, even very bad dreams, are trying to “fix you where it hurts.” That memory hurts you and rather than punishing you, your body is trying to “fix it” and its doctor’s office is your dream. That is why I made the point earlier that bad dreams are not something ‘broken’ or ‘flawed.’ Bad dreams are your body trying to fix what is hurting it, in that case, a specific memory of an experience that you had. I know it seems illogical at first, where you think, how does it fix me to revisit it over and over? But your mind is not trying to revisit it over and over; it is repeating an invitation over and over to go into the doctor’s office about this event. That is why responsible dream interpretation by credible and conservative therapists is a hugely powerful therapeutic tool, because dream interpretation “accepts” the invitation offered by your mind to heal the event that caused the PTSD pattern of dreaming.

Lacking any other input your subconscious mind offers up the invitation, through another reoccurrence of the bad dream, and while the dream looks the same at first glance each time, your subconscious mind is trying a different “dab of medicine” through the subtle change I’ve explained to you to watch for. The subconscious mind is enormously powerful and attempts to be helpful, even when it seems otherwise. But it is limited in how helpful it can be unless you make what it does to be recognized and thought about by you and therefore no longer unconscious but conscious. This is why you can gain benefit even by not knowing, since you have no dream interpreter available perhaps, the meaning of a particular change. Just by noticing the change and thinking about it for a minute or two and writing it down you have moved that unconscious dream “dab of medicine” from the unconscious to the conscious.

You know what it is like? Have you ever gone a long time without having a glass of orange juice or a fruit and then you have a craving? You don’t need to know “why,” which is that your body is alerting you to a vitamin C deficit. You just have the fruit or the glass of orange juice. Likewise you don’t really need to know why your dream always involved the buddy having a helmet on, but one time the dream occurs without the helmet. You just have to notice and record on your notepad that you noticed that this dream differed from previous versions because instead of having his helmet on this time he did not.

Now, I could interpret why your unconscious might try that “dab of medicine,” but if I start writing about the specifics and examples of dream interpretation this will be a long diversion from the point of this article. If readers are interested I’ll of course write more and explain how a responsible and conservative dream interpreter would recognize the healing attempt and meaning of the helmet motif changing, for example. But there is a lot of new information to absorb here and I’d like to keep it manageable. I sincerely hope that you have found this article useful and that this and further work will bring some real relief to those with PTSD and other distresses.

Very extreme mental illness/addict case study

Violent mental illness and addiction is a complicated topic with much nuance and a myriad of complexities, and thus it is a difficult subject to productively talk about, say nothing about its actual treatment or legal adjudication. This is one reason why I keep repeating one universal formula, one tool that one must always keep in mind and that applies to all such situations.

When a person has a mental illness and you have a conversation with them, you are not speaking to that core person, but you are having a conversation with the mental illness. When a person is an addict and you have a conversation with them, you are not speaking to that core person, but you are having a conversation with the addictive substance. For example, if you are speaking to a crack addict, you are speaking "to the crack" not to the person "Mr or Ms Whoever."

This is true even for a long time after the addict has, hopefully, become clean and sober and kicked their addiction. This is because the substance has left its programming in the person's brain, nervous system and spirit, and it takes a long time and much acutely aware corrective reinforcement to revert away from the substance's remaining presence and toward the authentic person's core.

This is also true about mental illness, even mild forms of it. When you are speaking to your friend or loved one who has depression, for example, you are having a conversation with "depression." This is something that you, the sufferers of mental illness and strain, must become more aware of. When you have depression, in a way you have designated an ambassador to act on your behalf, and the name of that ambassador is "depression." When you are successfully treated for depression, you have taken back your own identity and no longer allow "depression" to be your ambassador in everyday speech and actions, but remember that the "ambassador" has left his rule book behind and it takes you a while to stop following the formulas.

One way to spot this is to be self aware of how often in a day you do the following: Are you assessing either consciously or unconsciously every event and conversation in your day as being something to give you an excuse to be depressed again, or something that helps you not to be depressed? I am not being unkind here, any more than if I helped someone to understand if when they are hungry if they need a snack or they need a full meal. This is non judgmental help in self diagnosis. So, if you are still looking at each event in your day in a help/hurt your depression viewpoint, you are still allowing depression to be your ambassador. If you get through the average day without having those thoughts of assessing your depression quotient, you are successfully banishing the depression ambassador from your "court."

I first explained this years ago to a friend with bipolar. As I got to know her I very quickly spotted what she did not see in herself, which is that her bipolar, even though successfully treated, was still her "ambassador." This is because she parsed every event and conversational sentence and facial expression, etc in her day according to what I explained to her is almost a "bank account" ledger mentality. She, or rather, the legacy of her active bipolar ambassador, was hyperattentive to every item of her day and slotted words, expressions, deeds and the moods of others as being "debits" and "credits" to that person's worth, to that experience's worth and to her own worth. Thus if you had a conversation with her and used a phrase she didn't like, her bipolar ambassador would issue an alert that you "might be an enemy."

I think that analogy had a great impression on her, and gave her a tool to be productively self examining and not unproductively hyperattentive. The road to sanity and joy does not travel through a country where you are obsessed with every brick in the road and the direction of every breeze.

So these are examples of how a mental disorder, even a relatively benign one, such as mild depression, has a serious and universal rule that one must remember, which is that the illness takes over control of much of one's interface with the world and one's own interior dialogue, much as if you have your authority seized by an ambassador who now operates on your behalf, both to your "liking" but also very much against what you would really want, in theory.

I wanted to remind people of this teaching of mine and introduce new readers to it before looking at our extreme case study. When one has a mental disorder, from mild to severe, one has ceded one's own authenticity over to that disorder who then proceeds to act as your ambassador. When one has an addiction one has not only ceded authority to the addictive ambassador, but the substance itself is now in control. I am only slightly exaggerating, for example, when I say that if you speak to a crack addict, you are actually having a conversation with the chemical compound "crack." That is MUCH worse than the ceding of your identity to your mental disorder ambassador. A mental disorder is still grounded in reality in the extent that it is an emotional situation (even if biologically caused) where one has normal desires even as they have been warped. An addiction is a substance that is a chemical, not a set of human emotions. Thus your addiction "ambassador" is not even human.

Suppose that you have depression. Well, whatever the cause of the depression, your ambassador is "Mr or Ms Depression." But suppose you are a crack addict. Your ambassador is "Mr or Ms Crack." Depression is a set of human qualities. Crack is a chemical.

Thus someone who speaks to your ambassador "depression" speaks to "sad, listless, tired, spiritually drained" etc. Someone who speaks to your ambassador crack speaks to "methylbenzoylecgonine."

Someone who speaks to your ambassador "schizophrenia" speaks to "hears voices, cannot see clearly, feels hunted, hurt, angry" etc. Someone who speaks to your ambassador heroin speaks to "diacetylmorphine hydrochloride."

Alright, now imagine the problem of treating someone with a severe mental illness, especially one that is violent, and also is addicted. At the very least imagine a crack addict schizophrenic. They have ceded their core selves to ambassador schizophrenia and ambassador crack. Imagine, worse, someone who suffers from childhood abuse, schizophrenia, multiple substance addictions, using both drugs and alcohol.

These ambassadors do not "work together." Rather, one has a multiple personality ambassador problem, and they war among themselves. Psychiatrists are only part way toward understanding this, according to my observation of them and their treatment methods. They do understand, profoundly, the problem of what they call "multiple diagnoses." However, psychiatry is far behind in understanding that they are not speaking with the person but speaking with the illness and/or the addictive substances. Thus they turn too quickly toward prescribing more 'benign' ambassadors, a psychiatric prescription drug without recognizing that this is what they are doing.

That is the heart of the problem of prescribing drugs to children with "behavioral" disorders. You have added a drug ambassador to a child who was struggling with only a behavioral ambassador, and now you have real trouble.

See, in a way the ancients who thought that all illness was "possession" by evil spirits were shrewd and accurate in one and only one aspect. They recognize that as we say nowadays "it was the liquor that was talking." The ancients recognized that those with mental illness no longer spoke for themselves. When Jesus cast out demons he was casting out the possession of the person by their illness. Not only was Jesus curing the mental disorder but he was also banishing the programming of the mental illness as ambassador on the human, thus cure was instantaneous and total.

But humans have to cure themselves now and Jesus can help in the spirit, but it is still a secular problem of how to avoid mental illness where possible (such as halting child abuse immediately and fully, the source of much mental illness) and to avoid addiction totally, as there is never "justifiable" addiction.

Now, when you have an extreme case such as in this incredibly sad news story, you have a hardening of heart on both sides (kill him or cure him) but both sides miss the point and everyone in between is baffled.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/6202701.html

OK, now that you've read the story I'll bet you would tell me that if we were conversing that you read this story with a greater understanding of the problem. This does not mean that we necessarily have the ideal solution, but at least we all share an understanding.

This guy obviously, despite what the judge ruled, had at least one severe mental disorder. He then commits an incredibly heinous crime, and now has another layer of trauma and mental disorder (once someone commits their first violent act a "violence ambassador" is empowered). So he has mental disorders, an extreme violence and depravity action, and attempts suicide (recognizing his own depth of loss of humanity). He also, according to the lawyer, had both alcohol and drug addiction.

Many who read about crimes and pleas of insanity say, "How do we know who is really crazy?" Well, I've just given you a tool to better understand. The cynic who says he is crazy but coldly plans a crime and covers it up is hardly actually insane. But an eye plucking psycho with untreated mental illness and ruled by substance abuse is obviously insane. He has demonstrated a multiple year record of being controlled by his untreated illnesses and his legacy addictions AND the guilt of the violence ambassador (who is still active as he tried to attack fellow inmates).

This man is about the most extreme case we can find and this is why he is such a valuable case study. I'm not being cold; actually, I'm trying to help all of you see with compassion what is going on inside the wreckage of such a person and the crimes he commits.

So the case study helps you to see the layers of conflicting ambassadors that are within those who have more than one problem of mental disorder or substance. So you see how easy it is to recognize that a person with simple depression has a painful problem, but one that can be recognized as being a singular ambassador problem. The same is true of someone who in theory has no problems but drinks too much.

But as soon as you have two conditions, two addictions, two mental disorders, a mental disorder and an addiction, it is much more than twice as hard. It is like ten times as hard to treat. Then when you have someone with a handful or more of mental disorders and addictions, it is essential that everyone recognize that the core person is lost, overlaid by possessive ambassadors that speak for him or her, and some of those ambassadors have no human feelings but are chemicals making decisions and having "human" speech.

All I've explained will only assist each side of the "kill him" or "cure him" debate. The "cure him" side has better understanding of the layers of the problems and how throughout the cure they will rarely IF EVER actually speak to him... they will only speak to the illnesses and the addictions. This then helps the "kill him" side to understand that he is really lost under all the layers of his humanity destroying conditions. The "kill him" side can legitimately argue that no one can cure such a total wreckage of a person, one who would kill babies and cut their hearts out.

My point is not to assist either the "cure him" or "kill him" sides. My point is to educate how to navigate through understanding of mental disorder and addiction by this one simple rule, which is that the authentic person cedes part or all of their self to the disorder or substance "ambassador," and no cure works without understanding that at some level and helping the client to understand that in turn.

The first step in self empowerment is to tell the client or patient the facts, which is that substance or disorder "takes over" even when they are clean, sober or not feeling symptoms of their mental disorder. True self empowerment is diminished by victim mentality (or "chemical imbalance so it's not your fault" mentality) because you are having that mentality conversation with the disorder or the substance, not the person you are trying to help. You must first tell the person that the disorder or the substance has too much authority on their behalf, and teach them how to recognize those occurrences and take back their power from the disorder or substance ambassadors. When psychiatrists dispense drugs, even when helpful and necessary, they should explain it in those terms, that the drugs are a "best that we have" way to regain control of a more benevolent and authentic personal interface and that their constant objective should be to work toward an authentic and reality based being.

Keeping faith out of the psychiatric and other counseling arenas has been an incredibly bad mistake. I've blogged about this before. Here I will just join that observation to this blogging post by explaining that cultivating the patient's own faith is a way to wrest control away from the disorder or addiction ambassador and back to the person's core being. Far from 'believing in a myth' as loud mouth atheists charge, helping a person to strengthen their own cultural faith, whether Christian or not, is a means by which humane and authentic perspective is restored in the person who has been troubled by controlling ambassadors of disorders or substance.

I also hope that you really think twice about needless medication to children for simple behavioral problems. Behavior is behavior; it is not a mental disorder that has resulted in a disorder ambassador yet. Before imposing a benevolent (supposedly) prescription drug ambassador on your child, try to be more realistic about the sources of the behavioral issues in the first place and address them with traditional means.

Most important, those of you who suffer from depression, anxiety, bipolar, borderline, post traumatic stress disorder, attention deficit and other of the common conditions that are so frustrating and painful, remember that it is not your fault but it is a fact that the condition is only enhanced as their ambassadors retains control of your core being. Try to be aware when you let the condition "speak" or "think" for you and stop it by redirecting it. For example, if something minor happens but you find yourself thinking that this event "adds" to your condition, halt that thought in its tracks and examine it. Take control back from that ambassador thinking and think for yourself. Did the event really matter? Can you visualize that thousands of others have had the same thing happen to themselves today and they do not assume that it is reinforcement of their own burdens, but just a "stuff happens" moment?

For example, attention deficit people can be so tiresome in thinking that every racing thought that they have is "an ADD moment." Um, guess what? Normal creative people also have racing thought moments! Stop feeding your ADD ambassador by instantly labeling every racing thought or going off on a tangent moment as "an ADD moment." Sheesh. That's part of that bank account problem mentality that I explained to my bipolar friend. Your disorder ambassador is constantly racking up credits and debits to your account and that's erroneous and unhealthy. Understand that the things that you are hyperattentive of are, for the large part, part of normal human character. For example, I spend a lot of my time thinking rather dull and singular thoughts, plodding along in my world of constancy. However, I have spurts of ideas that can be very intense and multitasking and that's cool and creative, and sometimes I have to jot the ideas down on paper to keep track of them all, or pick just one and go with it. That's normal. But if that happens to an ADD person he or she immediately trumpets it in a mixed pride/self flagellating "ADD moment." It's not an ADD moment; it's being normal. But if you let your ADD ambassador rule your life your ADD ambassador will keep you in a constant state of disordered hyperattention.

I hope a lot of people with different perspectives and personal situations have found this case study and general discussion helpful.

The link between mindset and your decorations

I’m going to write a bit about art, home decorating and mental health! As usual I have a special interest in addressing young people with fondness, hoping to advise them in ways that they just are not hearing enough of today.

I’ll start by making my overall pitch to you, rather than build gradually up to my point, and then I’ll explain it and give examples. Societal values have changed for the worse, where art and home design have been redefined from what they traditionally have been, and thus have had a very bad effect on mood and mental serenity. Now, I am not talking about being trashy and that being a problem per se. I’m explaining that even “good taste” and “edgy art” have been propagandized in a way that they have been cultivated to have negative responses on the human rather than positive benefits. So here is what I mean in greater detail and with examples.
The most dramatic change in the way that people have viewed art and home decoration is that it has gone from being “what pleases you” to “making a statement.” Societal propaganda and brainwashing have convinced several generations that “making a statement” is the same as feeling good, but it is not, most assuredly it is not. Here is the easiest example to understand. Children, teenagers and young people are encouraged to take what may be a momentary feeling of alienation, depression, anger or existential angst and to “express” that feeling through your room’s decoration. So a phase you may be going through is now codified into a negative poster that you buy or art that you make that now becomes your continual companion. It was not always that way. In fact, if someone, child or adult, had started exhibiting sad or negative art that would have been viewed as a cry for help for a declining mental condition and there would have been a prompt intervention. So if a teenager was going through a bad patch with turmoil at home or inner angst and anger, and he bought and exhibited a poster with skull on it, you better believe that parents would have put an end to that and gotten the child to the doctor or a school counselor, or a sympathetic and wise family member, like a grandfather. See, I’m not being an “authenticity” suppressor here; I’m being “a doctor.”
Generations of humans understood that their home surroundings should not be filled with materials that weaken them and make them feel bad or sad. That does not mean that people were not thoughtful or even edgy, but it was unheard of, and a view as a very serious cry for help, to put in an enduring decorative fashion something that is angry, depressive or negative. Art that one selects that matches one’s worst moods and imaginings is like having a bad cold and then deliberately spreading the cold germs all over your room so you never get over it. No one in their right mind ought to display anything in their room or their home that does not elicit an “Ah,” when you look at it, rather than remind you of the worst of your feelings. It is a fact that people cannot heal from what wounds them if they surround themselves with reinforcements of those feelings and anxieties. It is quite literally like continuing to spread those cold germs so that you never get over your cold, while with time (and maybe interventions) you would have. So I remember the days before the phrase “making a statement” even entered into the mentality of either young people or adults. No one decorated their room or their home to “make a statement,” and certainly not if the statement was of your unhappiness or turmoil of mind. People used to seek relief from the terrible things they have experienced. Let me give you some examples.

Men who came back from war often brought back a souvenir. For example, I have a German iron cross that my German grandfather took from the body of a dead comrade so that it would not be left on the battlefield. So here I am talking about the World War I generation, and believe me, they saw horrible things in the trench and gas warfare of the time. Yet if you looked around my grandfather’s home in Berlin, it’s not like you could spot even a single item reflective of war or sad times. He had pictures of Dutch windmills, of birds and rabbits, of angels, of “Hummel” children. It would never have occurred to my grandfather to plaster some poster of bloodshed or war to “make a statement about what he had seen and ‘gone through.’” Men who went through the worse wars came back with trauma (not him, he was happy go lucky by nature) but they wanted joy and normalcy; they certainly would not even dream of surrounding themselves with depressive objects or art. The iron cross was in a drawer somewhere, rarely even encountered or remembered, and then given to his daughter, my mom, along with other little things that a poor family collected from their history (old coins and bank bills, pretty wine labels, postcards, etc.) Not only would someone like my grandfather never even dream of making himself sad through decorations from the war, who would he be “making a statement” to, since everyone had gone through the same horrible thing? When a war is fought, blood soaking your land and your neighbor’s, no one is looking to “make a statement” about their angst, since it was a shared experience where everyone if probed would have a worse story than the one before. So they returned, even those strong men with traumas, with joy back to life with calendars of cute Hummel children and bunnies with Easter eggs.

This is, incidentally, something that a USA Civil War veteran, if they still lived, would also be able to explain to you. I love arts and crafts, both historic and modern, so I know much about the Civil War era’s decorative and crafting styles. Big strong men coming home with terrible wounds of war did not want their wives to hang skeletons and skulls as a “statement” of what they “went through.” They craved being out of the mud and the horror and seeing the gentle handicrafts of women decorating their home. Rich or poor men wanted to see colorful quilts, religious art, peaceful landscapes done with paint or needlework by their wives or daughters, and touches of “wealth” and being a good provider, such as lace curtains. No man in his right mind wanted morbid war-reminding “decorations.” Part of their healing (in those pre “post traumatic stress disorder” diagnosed times) was a peaceful haven of normal surroundings with “a woman’s touch.” Men craved that in the settling of the west too. They didn’t want bloody carcasses of animals hanging on hooks off of rafters as “a statement of their authentic experience,” they wanted women to bring colorful fabrics and the simple arts of crafts of the time, such as needlework samplers and personal portraits made with outlines of the loved one’s head or hands, or lockets with a lock of hair. Part of the fun was grumbling about women “domesticating” them but men craved goodness and sweetness of decoration provided by “a woman’s touch.”

As the USA, and the world in general, became more prosperous in the mid-1900’s, such as after World War II (after war time rationing was over), another generation o f men sought homes that were normal and decorated in family oriented and traditional ways, not to “make a statement” or to keep examining the navel of their “angst.” So the 1950’s became kind of the golden age of home decorations about sports (and not “memorabilia” but from home town teams), the positive sides of the popular culture, combined with women who began to “style” their homes in modern ways. But it was still a “feel good” way of styling. No one wanted to relax in their home at the end of a tough day in the factory, or taking care of a large family, and then gaze at “art” that memorialized the worst of their feelings. That wasn’t denial; that was being normal and balanced. People knew from generations of common sense experience that you wanted your place to “look nice” and “feel nice,” even if you have experienced some not very nice things in your life. “It looks nice” was very high praise from a man and was sincere and being “touchy feely” in the context of their times. Men, women, teenagers and children wanted their home or room “to be their castle” where it “looked nice.”

For example, I could describe for you in great detail my brother’s room and its “decorations” from the 1950’s. He had bookshelves filled with books, bracketed by model jet planes. He was a three sport “letter man” (basketball, baseball and football) so he displayed his letters. He had (and still does) a shoebox full of baseball cards. “Posters” did not exist back then. What one chose for one’s walls in one’s room came from the family’s collection of traditional things, so he would have landscapes that he liked in there. He had a little statue of a fawn that I now have and prize. His “edginess” was a very cool rare beer can (I forget the brand but I have it somewhere; it has like jaguar spots on it) that he used as his pencil cup. Now, my brother was born in Germany during World War II, his father was killed the week after he was born, and he was a war refugee, surviving being bombed while running to the bomb shelters. It would never occur to him or anyone else of that generation to “make a statement” about “what he had gone through” by creating or displaying depressive “art” that would remind him of those times (which he barely remembered anyway since kids have a healthy ability to move on and thrive if giving half a chance). Oh, and his prize possession: his transistor radio! He was not a phonograph record playing type; his generation loved the radio.

So I think you see what I am getting at. A really creepy cultural shift started in the later 1960’s and has become progressively worse through the 1970’s, 1980’s, 1990’s and now the 2000’s, which is to “adorn” your room, apartment or home with decorations that reinforce and remind you of the worst parts of your life and mindset. Eventually a near total flip has taken place where even children are expected to have “edgy” and “action oriented” surroundings, promoting “adventure” and “fantasy,” and those who stick with the pleasant real life homemaking types of decorations are viewed as being “inauthentic,” “suppressed,” “stuck in the past,” and corny. Isn’t it odd how those who were not stuck in the past, who left war in the battlefield and who looked forward with joy to a “nice house” are now called the ones “stuck in the past?” While any boy or girl who has angst or anger who reinforces it over and over through their surroundings and their music are viewed as “not being stuck in the past?” That shows you the “big lie.” Hitler is famous for that expression. The theory is that the bigger the lie, the better it will stick, and it is often true. Somehow the idea that depressive, gothic and violent art is “good for you” because it “expresses how you feel” has become “the truth” and mindlessly accepted by two generations in a row.

I went to college in the autumn of 1971. I went to an Ivy League university filled with rich kids but rich or poor we both shared a common set of values, which was being very low key and “nice” in our decorations. We were kind of the last bastion before the depressives really took over. Here’s how it worked. You shared a dorm room (and later an apartment) with a roommate. Space was small and everyone was poor (or thrifty) so each person would buy one poster to display in the room, and the poster had to be one that was pleasing also to the roommate. People selected posters and art that you could look up from studying and go “Ah” when you rested your eyes on it. People didn’t want “art” that commemorated your alcoholic parents, or the time you were molested, or heads being blown off in Vietnam (even though that was the era of the actual war). My roommate got one of those “hang in there baby” LOL cat posters, which were brand new and funny back then! I got a poster of the LA Rams quarterback Roman Gabriel cranking up about to make a pass and looking very fine. By fine I mean athletic with great lines, not sexy in the way that celebrity posters are now. We admired kids who could afford lava lamps. The most subversive thing you might see is a poster of Janis Joplin in feathers and pearls, or Jimi Hendrix. We listened to Black Sabbath but no one would ever dream of decorating their dorms in some goth depressive way. The boundaries were still clear; it had not gotten so blurry where the harshest and most depressive artistes were now “speaking for you” and thus you “put on their uniform” of decorations, behavior imitation and self reinforcing lowness. And remember, ours was the generation of Kent State and the ending years of the Vietnam conflict, so people had a lot to feel crappy about. However, the last thing that would occur to anyone would be to wallow in it.

So I’m not going to start bashing individual contemporary expressions because I’m not at all being judgmental, even though it may sound like it. What I am doing instead is trying to free you from the chains of the mindset that so many young people (but especially their slightly older peers) have, which is this whole violent, sad, occult, gothic and desperately “New Age” type of room or home adornment. Again, I’m not some old f*** who does not appreciate edgy art. For example, I loved two vases that I used to have that were shaped like angular volcanoes that flow gold paint lava. But I have to admit, even them I decided were “stylish” rather than positively oriented. I’d look at them and think, “What a cool design,” but they were disquieting to look at. Why have something as “art” or “decoration” that is disquieting? I’m a very firm weeder in that regard, where I will pull like weeds anything within my line of sight that is anything but “nice” feeling. As an artist I’m no ninny using only granny pastels, but I will only use those bright tones of colors to make positive and good feeling works of art. I want to go “Ah” when I look at anything that is decorating my abode (such as it is) and I strongly urge others to do the same. Again, you don’t have to be dull to do that; all I am saying is that your decorations should be uplifting, stabilizing and satisfactory to look at, even if it is edgy. For example, I made a painting/collage of a volcano about to erupt watching on CNN the progress of Hurricane Hugo. That is edgy but it also is in an interesting way fun AND soothing to look at, while still being stimulating in an edgy artistic sense. (It’s in storage; I don’t have it here in my apartment). But it’s one of the best examples I can provide to you out of my portfolio of how I am careful to craft only art that is stimulating in a good way to look at, not stimulating in a bad, anger making or depressive way.

Anyway, do resist the constant propaganda to surround yourself with “art” reminds of your weakest, saddest or most angry experiences because that is truly not “authentic.” Being authentic is surrounding yourself, like those Civil War veterans, with what feels like home and what you want to reach for, not be pulled away from through chains of negativity. I hope this is helpful and that you know what I mean. Take care and be good to yourselves in the ways that you and only you can. I don’t care how “fine” the art is, how expensive, how edgy, how “authentic,” or how “one of a kind,” if you feel angry or deflated whenever your eyes pass over it, get the heck rid of it. Sheesh. Don’t we all have enough to feel bad about without that kind of depressive agenda? Here is an example. I have (in storage) a pewter plate that was recovered from a wreck of a ship. I love the age and looks of the plate and that is all that I think of it when I used to have it on display in my home. But if I knew that some moron member of my family was gazing at it and thinking about “drowned souls” I would have gotten rid of it in a New York minute. You should not have a single thing in your home (except of course things from deceased loved ones) that prompts what I call “optional” thoughts of sadness, anger or depression. That’s REAL Feng Shui by the way. There’s no way that you can have “balance” and “personal power” if you have stuff that creeps or bums you out (or your family or friends when they visit). Get rid of it and don’t buy or make any more of it!!!

Depression nutrition advice

Dear friends, it has been a while since I last blogged advice for those suffering from depression, but you and your families are often in my thoughts. Here is some more advice on this topic. Remember, I am not advising any one step as a substitute for your regular regime of treatment, but I would not be surprised if you feel some relief from what I recommend.

This advice is for everyone with depression, but particularly for women. Women who are depressed should not be vegetarians. Vegetarianism, despite its other possible virtues, eliminates nutrition that is beneficial toward the prevent and curing of depression. Here I want to advise one food in particular, which is beef.

Women who are suffering from depression should have beef in the form of a steak or other whole meat cut several times a week. A fast food hamburger is not correct because of the other problems with its preparation (but if that's the only meat that you eat, don't quit). This is, by the way, one reason why burgers remain so satisfying to the public. It is not the calories or the fat, it is the benefit of beef toward mood balance and health that people instinctively feel. But as I said, there are other problems with the preparation, so unless that is your only form of beef intact, I recommend home cooking a steak or other substantial beef cut (such as chuck for stew).

I know that steak and other meat cuts are now priced so high. But if you are struggling with depression, view the money spent as a genuine investment in your body and mind's well being.

Prepare it simply in a way that you like. I fry mine in either butter or olive oil. After browning on all sides I add a sauce to simmer. Tonight I used three soy sauce packets left over from Chinese food! But you can add teriyaki sauce, barbecue, steak sauce (diluted with water) or whatever you like. I've blogged this before but as a reminder, the juice that canned goods contain is great for this purpose. For example, I had canned heart of palm as a side dish while preparing a steak several days ago. Instead of discarding the drained juice from the can, I added the palm flavored water to the frying steak and used that as its sauce. So you get the nutrition that is absorbed by the water or syrup that your canned goods contain.

I think many of you will see a remarkable change in how you feel if you reintroduced several nights a week of a good beef cut to your lunch or dinner (depending when you have your main meal). Dinner is best because evening and night is often a hard time for people with depression. Having a good beef based main dish at dinner is optimal if that is good for your schedule. There is a complexity of biological and nutrition reasons about why beef is so efficacious at the prevention and curing of depression. Just to summarize, beef organizes the body in a unique way in the process of digestion, in addition to the actual providing of beneficial nutrients. In other words, the body tunes itself with each food it digests, and thus for beef, the body tunes itself in a unique way just for digesting beef when you eat it that it does not do for any other food. Each food invokes a subtlety in variation in digestion and absorption of nutrients. So you are gaining benefit from not just the content of the beef but how your body goes about digesting it and breaking it down into useful components.

I really hope this helps! Do try it and you'll see.

When bipolar destroys

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/stcharles/story/5030156D01A4CE0E862573FB000DFC4B?OpenDocument

Bipolar disorder shatters family, ends in death

snip

For more than two years, his service record was clean; his superiors even wrote him several letters of commendation. Fink wanted a career in the Navy, but a conflict of highs and lows was escalating inside his head.

"Something happened to him in the Navy," Heather Gentles said. "He just was never going to be the same."

Fink's illness developed quickly and was brought on in part by stress and lack of sleep, said his psychiatrist in St. Charles, Dr. Greg Mattingly. Fink's condition emerged about the same age as most bipolar patients, Mattingly said, and was not spurred by any specific traumatic incident.

"With bipolar, you can go from pretty much normal one day, to the next day being very, very, very sick," Mattingly said.

Fink mouthed off to his commanders, stopped eating regularly and lost 20 pounds. He grew increasingly paranoid, and in September 2005, doctors at the Naval Medical Center in San Diego diagnosed his condition as bipolar disorder, which often results in episodes of severe depression and mania. It affects more than 5 million Americans.

Most people who develop the disorder are genetically predisposed to it, Mattingly said. Along with stress and sleep deprivation, he said, substance abuse is another common trigger. Fink had begun taking legal stimulants as part of a body-building regimen.

***
Notice themes I have warned about in my depression and other disorders articles. "Stress." "Sleep deprivation." "Substance abuse." "Irregular eating habits."

Notice also the substance abuse was legal stimulants. I'm telling you all again that "even" "occasional" dope use can trigger severe and one-way mental illness. Why do you think 5 million Americans suddenly have bipolar? Eating crap, living like crap, stressed like crap, getting no sleep, and using dope crap.

More depression and so forth advice

I just want to pass along two simple tips today, one very easy to do and one more complicated, especially in these economic times.

Here's the simple tip. Aromatherapy has received so much hype and buzz for many years, along with candle burning and so forth. I do not advocate lighting candles because I'm a safety freak, but I do enjoy having them around for their scent. However, in the attempt to be "mysterious" and so forth too many fragrances are not beneficial to people who are subject to depression. In contrast, it is proven scientifically that citrus fragrance has a positive and healthy effect on mood. So I would like to suggest that everyone (whether depressed or not) place a citrus based source of fragrance in the kitchen. It's great for both men and women. The kitchen is your laboratory for feeling better in the sense that as I've written before I believe people need to return to it as the place where meals are hand made and shared. People were less depressed when they ate good not-chemically changed home made food with family or friends at a regular dinner time and a sitdown table. So I recommend that you place a citrus fragrance at all times in your kitchen. Don't do the whole house because you want to create the effect of uplift whenever you walk into your kitchen. I've done it and it works great. I used to use orange peel years ago when I had my house. Now in my apartment I use a wonderful set of candles I bought at Walmart that is jasmine-tangerine! It is awesome. Whenever I walk into the kitchen I have the whiff of that very unique and uplifting combination. I'm the type of person who enjoys spending time in the kitchen doing simple things like preparing fruit and vegetables and who does not view it as a waste of time. So while dicing celery or tomatos I have that great citrus undercurrent too. And when not cooking it still is uplifting to smell that citrus whenever I walk into the kitchen. People used to live in homes that smelled more "alive," back before depression became epidemic. That's because they had windows open, often onto gardens, when it used to be safe, and they had fruits and vegetables or home grown flowers within the home. Real wood was used throughout so there was also the benefit of scent of wood (science studies have also shown that real wood floors are healthier to breathe than artificial materials). So take my advice and do some safe (not burning) aromotherapy of citrus in the kitchen.

My second piece of advice is to reconsider the size and complexity of the home that you own. This whole past two generations have grown up thinking you should buy the largest size and expense of home that you can afford. It didn't used to be that way. Now people think to get the best they can as a given assumption. But several generations ago people lived much more happily in a house that was smaller and simpler than the maximum that they could afford! Young couples started out in a "starter home," which was often cottage, bungalow or small ranch size. Now young couples dive straight into the top of the line house that they can afford. This is both the source of needless stress AND it deprives them of a bond-building process. When you start with a small simple house you, by default, have more time for each other. You also can learn how to do things together to improve the house. My brother and I still admire the small two bedroom ranch that our parents had, even though we have both in our days owned much "finer" and grander houses. When I first married our first house was a grand Tudor, but that was for a specific reason; I had very serious security concerns. I was attracted to other smaller and more "homelike" houses but I had security issues that had to come first and so we went for the larger and more private rugged tudor house. But the generation before us, including my brother's generation, did the "starter" through "retirement" house progression and it was excellent for them and their children. They had many house problems, as everyone does, but none of the problems were from having "too much house to handle" and "having the chain around one's neck" of the pressure of a large, high maintenance and expensive house.

Some of you may be facing loss of your home due to the mortgage crisis. If you do I encourage you to consider a positive, rather than a negative, downsizing. Don't think of the house as being a thermometer of your success. Think of it as a home rather than a house. Think of it as a home rather than a multimedia center on a foundation. Think of it as a home that encompasses you and your family rather than being a high maintenance (of time and money) investment. Many people are depressed because of the load of responsibility that they carry, and a too grand house that is not a real home is a large, often unrecognized, source of depression and anxiety.

I hope this helps.

Another quick comment on depression et al

Society has an obligation to have a positive view toward life, a positive belief in God and the "hereafter," and a positive view toward babies and children. When society has these three things there is a safety net that works as a powerful antidote to depression and other emotional imbalances. Society has totally failed the past two generations. What many have believed is "freedom" has been the dissolution of the healthy safety net that is not only the obligation of society to provide but also the abandonment of the truth in favor of "relativism" with a morbid twist.

Prior to the 1960's except in a few "avant guarde" families it was virtually unheard of for an American child to be born without belief and instruction regarding God at the earliest age. Nearly every child, rich or poor, was raised with knowing "Jesus" by sight, by name, by love and by trust from their earliest years. Even if that child grew away from the faith as an adult, that inner certainty of a personal God stayed with him or her and was a buffer from potential depression or other disorders. Likewise every child in the generations before these past two generations knew that babies were precious, again, whether the family was rich or poor. This is not to say that there weren't harsh treatments in disfunctional families, but the difference is that babies were rarely the subject of resentment and certainly not abuse as we see today. Dad may have ranted and raved in some households but the babies were never faulted and that same dad would work long hours in grunt jobs to provide a safe home for that baby. And the third point is that it was an exciting time of continual medical research because all life was sacred and people thought each age was golden years of breakthroughs: vaccines, insulin, antibiotics, geriatric medicine, prenatal care, prevention of heart disease and so on. Children born in every generation previous to these two generations grew up knowing God and feeling his love, knowing that "baby ruled the roost," and surrounded by optimistic and exciting pro-life medical, health, and nutrition developments. For example when I was young, one of the great scandals of the time was the outing of poverty in Appalachia. The war against hunger in America was a huge thing when I was young. But medicine, like society, took a dark twist and turn to have a morbid taint and away from the true progressive medicine that each generation until these past two generations enjoyed. Now medicine is a dogged and grim battle against cancer (while still refusing to understand the true causes), crisis reactive (HIV, various flu threats), how to grind out more and more abortions, and the massive drugging of the vast majority of Americans using powerful drugs that often do more harm than good. Oh, and plastic surgery.

Can you see the contrast? It is appalling to me. I literally do not recognize the world and it's not because I'm some sort of square unprogressive sour old prude. To the contrary, I see people have willfully beaten to death their own joy and thrown it away as a society. Everything that was stable and good about life has been demeaned, dirtied and discarded: love of God, love of babies and medicine in the service of the greater good. I'm telling you and I swear this is the truth, a dull normal day in mainstream America 50 years ago would seem like heaven compared to a day today. And you wonder why so many of you have depression, anxiety, mood swings, paranoia? I've not even gone into the usual physical sources that I've written about before because it's so important that I paint this accurate portrait for you of the philosophical and psyche damage and scarring that has taken place in America (and much of the Western world) because of the lack of the three foundations I described above. The damage is truly terrifying and the bottom has not yet been hit.

It's going to sound somewhat incongruous to now tell you that you have to be positive about life after just giving you such a jarring wake up call to how twisted and destructive our own society has become. We don't need sci-fi horror stories about mad robots taking over because worse has already happened. The LIVING have turned against life.

That is one reason that many of you suffer from the ailments I've described above. Your bodies, minds and emotions are crying out for what you don't even realize you've been cheated of, which is the affirmation of life. It's not like this generation is the smartest that ever lived and have "wised up" to "reality" and that is why it's so dark and depressed and anxious. To the contrary, this generation was raised by the most pig ignorant selfish self-medicating generation that ever lived on earth, and they have robbed this generation of the basic intelligence of the goodness of life and how to cope with the challenges that life can bring. Thousands of years of wisdom and familial development have been thrown into the garbage can and spat upon.

I have the counterintuitive hope that many of you who have suffered from depression, anxiety, ADHD, mood swings and other disorders will actually be the vanguard of recognizing how there is nothing "wrong with you" except that you've been cheated out of what your generations of ancestors worked so hard to cherish and pass on to you, which is the goodness and affirmation of life and how to live it even in the toughest of circumstances. I'm hoping that if it is not too late that many of you who have suffered from these problems will be the drivers of the turnaround so the next generation is not as polluted and cheated as this generation has been treated.

I hope this helps. I know this is not a cheery action list, huh? But it is so essential that you understand what has happened so we can stop the downward slide into total decay and darkness of thought and deed.

I hope people read my previous post and have started working on the getting more regular sleep even if you can't get to sleep yet problem! The more I read about what "sleep aids" are doing the more you must try to get back to the pure form of working with sleep like you would any other activity, which is organization, discipline, practice and experimentation. It's one of those "things we can easily start to try to do that can have huge beneficial effects."

More advice regarding depression, anxiety, BP etc.

While my continuing series of advice is directly mostly to depression and anxiety disorder sufferers much of what I explain applies also to people with mood disorders. Here is an example that everyone can learn from including people who are of good health and who wish to preserve their good health for as long as they can.

First, do understand that humans evolved into their current bodies and mental faculties over a period of millions of years. Think of the body as being sculpted for maximum success and health. Over millions of years the human body is like a sculpture that is being made better and better for health and vigor and the ability to successfully reproduce and raise children. For all of those millions of years humans slept when the sun went down and woke when the sun rose. Therefore the human body has been sculpted to require a full night's sleep every night in order to be at its maximum capability for health and normal operations.

Humans slept for 8-12 hours every single night for millions of years. The body has been created in a nursery, if you will think of it that way, where the sun required "lights out" in the early evening and all humans slept until "lights on" at the dawn. So when people say that humans need a good long night's sleep every night, it's not like prudes discovered that because they have a dull life. People who have been stating that people need a good night's sleep every night realized that it is a fundamental of successful biological life. The human body (and mind) have been sculpted by millions of years to be healthier and healthier and better and better, and all of this was done with the basic configuration (think of bodies like a computer now) of "down time" every night from sundown to sunrise. "Maintenance" takes place during that down time that is vital to healthy bodies.

A recent study shows that dieters lost more fat when they slept MORE. People think the opposite must be true, that is, they think the more active you are the more you "burn fat" and the more lethargic you are the more you gain fat. That's true of exercise and daily activity but that is not true of nighttime. Sleeptime is maintenance time for your body including correcting fat and other imbalances while you sleep. Your body is busy doing "maintenance" during your "downtime," and this is both bodily and mental optimizing and conditioning.

For two generations now adults have not gotten enough sleep and they have sleep deprived their babies and children. This has caused many of the physical (cancer, heart, blood sugar) and mental (depression, ADHD, anxiety, moods) disorders that people are scratching their heads (or their asses) over in puzzlement today. Sleep is not the "cure" but sleep is a requirement for good health, just as is food, water and air. If you are struggling with depression and other disorders one of the best things you can do it to get yourself on a schedule of at least eight hours of straight sleep a night. I know that's hard to do but trust me, it's got to be done.

It's a feedback loop within a society that is now set in concrete against full and good night's sleep so I understand that it will be hard to implement, but you have to do it for your own good, for our children's good and for society as a whole.

First start be redefining your idea of being a perfect person or, rather, a "high achiever." For millions of years the human body was evolved (sculpted) to be a "high achiever" if you got enough air, water, food, shelter, heat and sleep in a day. THAT was a successful day. It was a HIGHLY successful day if you could do that for yourself and for someone else, that is, your spouse and your family. Because obtaining air, water, food, shelter and heat all required physical work humans developed the perfect balance of the active body in the daytime and the receiver of a full sleep night every day with certainty. You are not a "high achiever" if some activity is keeping you from getting a regular full night of sleep every single night for yourself and your family.

You know how when you don't eat enough salt you crave chips or something, or if you've not had fruit for a while you crave some sort of citrus? People with depression unknowingly crave sleep, which is why they often do sleep. They get criticized, though, by "mental health professionals," who have all bought into the high achiever myths themselves and view people with depression who sleep as "showing symptoms" and "being escapists." Um, no, that's not quite it. People with depression are like the canaries in the mine who are the first to recognize, but at a subconscious level, that people are not getting enough sleep. Now the trick is to make yourself stick to a good healthy sleep schedule every night, rather than compensating via naps.

It's hard to get to sleep these days with so many stresses, pressures and worries on your mind every night AND the fact you lack a full day of physical activity to make you tired, which is the way human bodies were sculpted to be. So I understand that it is hard to sleep when mentally under siege and when you don't have enough tiredness in your physical body to crave the sleep. This is why sports at the end of the work day is such a great thing. Forget the stupid TV and computer and video games. If you work at a desk all day try to get involved in a sport after work. Trust me that will make a huge difference for both adults and children. It's hard because consumer society has conspired to rob people of good health and peace of mind. Everyone has to be an overachiever, so they pile on the job stress, the homework assignments, and the whole "perfect" lifestyle of coolness and this sucks away the basics around which the body was created to thrive, which is as I said, goals that are modest and life affirming each day, with physical activity and with a solid regular long block of sleep at night every night.

Sometimes when you make the change you just have to lay in bed whether you can sleep or not. Old studies (not talked about these days because they are anti high achiever propaganda) show that if you just lay in bed all night and don't actually sleep because you can't, you still get a high percentage of the physical and mental benefit of sleep. So don't take sleeping aids unless you absolutely must due to a medical condition! Stick with a schedule even if you feel like a dummy laying there awake. Eventually your body will adjust back to the way it should be, especially if you have, like I said, a sports activity to make up for the desk job all day. Also, obviously, don't have caffeine and energy drinks after 2 pm each day if you are working on regaining this good sleep schedule. The mid afternoon boost of soda or coffee break during the work day should be your last consumption of an energy or caffeine beverage, just to get you over the hump of the end of the work day, but not to carry into the evening. Once you get back in a good regular long night of sleep you can fine tune this and maybe have a soda at dinner or something like that, especially if you are having a sport activity. Drag your kids away from their homework and their Facebook and make them shoot hoops with you after dinner. That's what we used to do in the 1950's and early 1960's. Kids and adults had no trouble sleeping then and they got good grades.

I hope this helps and best wishes to all.