Rising Strong.

I just finished reading Rising Strong by Brené Brown. I’d seen Brené on Oprah a few times, but I was especially drawn to her Super Soul Sunday episode where she talked about her book, and specifically about shame.

There are things that bugged me about Rising Strong. Mainly the language she uses to list steps to dealing with your emotional processes. I find it too cutesy and it irritates me. Overall her work on emotional intelligence and effective communication is great, I just think it’s done a disservice by over simplification in order for it to be approachable. I feel like the book needs more meat.

Her work is interesting though, as are some of the points she brings up. 

The following quote had me add Alias Grace to my goodreads list:

When you are in the middle of a story it isn’t a story at all, but only a confusion; a dark roaring, a blindness, a wreckage of shattered glass and splintered wood; like a house whirlwind, or else a boat crushed by the icebergs or swept over the rapids, and all aboard powerless to stop it. It’s only afterwards that it becomes anything like a story at all. When you are telling it, to yourself or to someone else.

- Margaret Atwood, Alias Grace

There's something about narration these days. I find myself narrating section of my life, or internally describing myself and situations in lyrical language. It's odd. I have found though, that the blog has helped me a lot. It's been successful for what it was initially meant for, as a record of sorts. As a way of externalizing my frustrations and fears. But it's also been more than that. It's been a little part of me. I've written from memory, I've chronicled, essayed, some of what I do is part book review and lit review from what crosses my path, but it's also had creative pieces. It's had free thought word associations. It's had dreams cast out onto paper - where I can get them out of my head. Stories and patterns help.

Robert Burton, a neurologist and novelist, explains that our brains reward us with dopamine when we recognize and complete patterns. Stories and patterns. The brain recognizes the familiar beginning-middle-end structure of a story and rewards us for clearing up the ambiguity. Unfortunately, we don’t need to be accurate, just certain. (79)

It's the satisfaction of a film like Momento. It's the satisfaction of a job well done. A period. milestone. A benchmark. A check-list. Boy do I love a check-list.

Jonathan Gottschall examines the human need for story in his book The Storytelling Animal. He explains that there’s growing evidence that “ordinary, mentally healthy people are strikingly prone to confabulate in everyday situations.” Social workers always use the term confabulate when talking about how dementia or a brain injury sometimes causes people to replace missing information with something false that they believe to be true. (81)

Gottschall argues that conspiratorial thinking “is not limited to the stupid, the ignorant, or the crazy. It is a reflex of the storytelling mind’s compulsive need for meaningful experience.” (83)

One of the many ways we can dip out of the norm and into too much. What is it about narrative? What is it about wanting an explanation to everything, wanting to understand it all? We stand guilty of it as an entire race! 

What part does the ego play in understanding, or thinking we understand something to our satisfaction? What kind of entitlement comes with that? Why does it comfort us so much? Does getting lost in trying to explain and understand help?

James Pennebaker, a researcher at the University of Texas at Austin and author of Writing to Heal, has done some of the most important and fascinating research I’ve seen on the power of expressive writing in the healing process. In an interview posted on the University of Texas’ website, Pennebaker explains, “Emotional upheavals touch every part of our lives. You don't just lose a job, you don’t just get divorced. These things affect all aspects of who we are - our financial situation, our relationships with others, our views of ourselves, our issues of life and death. Writing helps us focus and organize the experience.” Pennebaker believes that because our minds are designed to try and understand things that happen to us, translating messy, difficult experience into language essentially makes them “graspable.” (87)

Language is indeed a mold in-which to smush the complex ingredients of our ego, our id, our dreams, our context, and ultimately our intangible experiences. So much happens to us in a moment, in a day, in a lifetime. If what any of us want is to minimize discomfort and pain while we're here, it makes sense that we'd want to understand what it is that causes us pain and discomfort, in order to possibly avoid it in the future.

If there is one thing that failure has taught me, it is the value of regret. Regret is one of the most powerful emotional reminders that change and growth are necessary. In fact, I’ve come to believe that regret is a kind of package deal: a function of empathy, it’s a call to courage and a path toward wisdom. Like all emotions, regret can be used constructively or destructively, but the wholesale dismissal of regret is wrongheaded and dangerous. “No regrets” doesn’t mean living with courage, it means living without reflection. To live without regret is to believe you have nothing to learn, no amends to make, and no opportunity to be braver with your life. (210)

This section of Brown's work I appreciated significantly. For a while in the 90's there was a lot of "no regrets"- t-shirts and pop culture paraphernalia. As I got older, I got increasingly irritated by them. I've always felt regrets weren't necessarily negative, as long as you understood them. Brown expresses what I feel well here, since reflection is a large part of the last few years of my life. I do regret situations where I was shitty, or blind, or disconnected, but I am also able to look at those times and understand why I did what I did or said what I said. She quotes George Saunders, in a 2013 commencement address at Syracuse University:

What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness. Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded. . . sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly.” (211)

Brown goes on:

I believe that what we regret most are our failures of courage, whether it’s the courage to be kinder, to show up, to say how we feel, to set boundaries, to be good to ourselves. For that reason, regret can be the birthplace of empathy. (212)

I think regret can indeed lead to empathy. As can most difficult, painful emotions. Courage can be hard. Even little pieces of courage. It seems some days all I can do is just minimize my interaction with the world in order to hold on to what little energy I have. For some, just getting out of bed is courage. I've had those days. I've had years of my life, lost to a cloud of disinterest and introversion. 

Brown also has a few paragraphs on nostalgia I found interesting. For a while, during the worst parts of my depression, nostalgia was a big part of my shame triggers. It was a lie though. It seemed glossy and young, happy and energetic, but there was also frantic bits, bits I feel in my guts when I sit with too long. 

It's so easy to romanticize youth. Perky tits. Hormones. The energy. I had so much god damn energy. So much naive hope about - everything.  

I can understand why nostalgia has become such a cultural cliché - the prom king and queen, the "good old days" - because it's an easy place to go to - a memory. And if we aren't careful, of course we could re-visit that place with rose-tinted glasses, but if you do have the propensity to look a little longer than is comfortable or to dig a little deeper than is (seemingly) necessary you revisit those memories and you notice the little things. The discomfort here and there. The limitations. The assumptions we made. How we didn't know any better. How dumb we maybe were. How much hormones made him seem greater than he actually was. How location and context made friendships happen. How much you had to learn. How naive you all were. But we now know better, don't we? 

Brown quotes The Great Beauty, a film by Paolo Sorrentino:

"What’s wrong with feeling nostalgic? It’s the only distraction left for those who have no faith in the future.” Nostalgia can be a dangerous distraction, and it can underpin a feeling of resignation and hopelessness after a fall. (243)

I think this actually further compliments what I was saying about my own experiences. I was deeply depressed, and a nostalgia trap made sense. I had no hope for myself or the future, and if what I was feeling was shame and frustration, it makes sense to then explain that shame and pain through blaming myself for how much I fucked up what was.

I think Brown's work could be helpful to a lot of people, and in a lot of different situations. She discusses her work with corporate spaces and teams. Implementing effective communication strategies can really revolutionize a corporate culture. It's an ongoing issue in nearly every place I've worked. To varying degrees of shittyness. 

She talks about the stories we tell ourselves, and how we interpret situations in ways that are often skewed in just an infinite amount of ways. How our interpretations of any given situation can be totally different than that of our partner in that situation. 

Throughout her examples, honesty and a conversation work wonders. This isn't news to me, but I can understand how her research can be considered revolutionary to those less feely, especially in a corporate culture. 

It's a lot of work, to be aware of how you're feeling, your reactions (both verbal and non-verbal) and your interpretations. I guess it's through practice that these things become habit. And I hope more comes of this kind of research because I'd like the terminology of emotional intelligence to become part of our everyday vernacular. Effective communication changes everything. It can diffuse so much.

I walk away from Brown's book with something she uses often throughout Rising Strong. She uses specific language to talk about interpretation: The story I am making up is ...

This acts as a took to facilitate conversation with a friend or loved one, openly. It's not accusatory, it's a peak into someone's brain. She uses personal examples, as well as professional ones.

In my experience, being direct about these things, in a loving way, has totally diffused situations that were uncomfortable or potentially unpleasant. Especially when it comes to my mother, who tends to be passive-aggressive and huff loudly instead of using words. I've yet to use it with friends, since we see each other so little these days it's not been an issue. Overall my friends are pretty supportive and great anyway, we're like, pretty emotionally intelligent (ie: depressed). lol. 

It becomes difficult when processes are so different. Someone needs to cool off where someone else needs to think about things where someone else wants to mind-vomit all over you. Being a person is weird. It's hard you guys! Why are we so neurotic! 

Anyway, check out Brene's Brown interview with Oprah on Super Soul Sunday if you can (OWN shows are hard to get online), if you're into it, check out her book. 

Re-occurring nightmares.

Nightmares are always unpleasant, but there’s something especially unsettling about reoccurring nightmares. These are ideas and sensations so horrific to your psyche that they’re replayed; a reminder to you of this gnawing fear. This is a soft spot of yours, a tender, weakness, an exposed artery, and your own id, your own mind likes poking it, aggravating that fear. How odd.

I don’t know if dream theory is much of a discipline. I know Freud posited dreams were unconscious desires and wish fulfilment, and no doubt I’m sure parts of them can be, but it seems like there’s almost too much going on to be covered by one theory. Also, not everyone has the same experience of dreaming. Some swear they don’t. Some say they don’t remember theirs. I dream vividly and often feel I’m dream-aware.

According to the Wikipedia entry on Dream Interpretation:

People appear to use motivated reasoning when interpreting their dreams. They are more likely to view dreams confirming their waking beliefs and desires to be more meaningful than dreams that contradict their waking beliefs and desires.[1]

Isn't that the case in our waking life as well? 

The same article page describes Primitive instinct rehearsal theory, which describes the evolutionary use of dreaming and nightmares as “practice” for real-life scenarios and threats. This makes sense. What I find unsettling is to what degree my dreams are detailed and specific.

There are times when someone insults me in a dream, and or tells a joke. I'll wake up, remembering it, and then think to myself how since the joke or comment is of my mind, I technically came up with it. 

How odd is that?

There is so little known about the human brain, much less known about dreams, and I would venture to guess little to no research on how mental illness affects dreaming. 

There are times when in my dream-life, I feel like I could stay there. That it is a real place. There are times I'm conscious of me being in the dream-world, and that I take advantage of that fact. 

What odd absurdities. What free-form creativity, equally inventive and unnerving. Such exposure. 

I often have dreams of finding something and trying to bring it to safety, and usually failing. Last night, I found a small tree frog in an underground movie-theatre and I was trying to keep it in my hands so I could bring it outside. It hopped out whenever it could. I was lost in the movement of people and the whims of my companions. 

Once I dreamed my nephews were small babies made of paper. 

I use to have dark dreams about my father. I would see him and he wouldn't speak to me. This would upset me terribly. Eventually these dreams transitioned to me finding him and wondering where he'd been all this time (he died in 1997 when I was 13). Sometimes he has a second family. Sometimes he's an amnesiac and has no idea who I am. Sometimes I try and talk to him and he's a fucking asshole. 

These types of dreams have deep roots. I don't need a doctorate to see where they come from.

And other times dreams are so psychically unpleasant. The sensation of having a mouth packed-full of chewing gum, and being unable to remove it. You're grabbing at wads of gum at your mouth, pulling it out, winding the tacky, stretchy substance around your fingers and hands, desperate to get a proper hold of it. But you can't. It's infinite. You worry about choking. You worry about this being you life now, about it impeding you in every way. 

Is that a metaphor for my own mouth and what I put in it? About what it keeps away?

I pay attention to my dreams. I'm not beholden to them, but I listen. 

Are All Mental Illnesses Related?

Are All Mental Illnesses Related?

For some reason I can't embed the video myself, I had to use embdely.

It's not showing up when I do it.

Here's a direct link to The Atlantic's video.

* Update - 2016-04-28 *

The Atlantic posted some criticism of the video. Check that out here.

Blame the amygdala.

Huffington Post has a piece on how people with anxiety have mappable brain differences.

The cited study found that: "people diagnosed with anxiety are less likely to be able to differentiate neutral or "safe" stimuli from threatening ones." Which, I mean, like, duh. A bit more:

The scientists found that those with anxiety experienced lasting plasticity long after an emotional experience (aka a "stimulus") ended. This means the brain was unable to distinguish new, irrelevant situations from something that's familiar or non-threatening, resulting in anxiety. In other words, anxious individuals tend to over-generalize emotional experiences, whether they are threatening or not. 

Most importantly, researchers noted, this reaction is not something that an anxious individual can control, because it's a fundamental brain difference.

Apparently they found that the participants with anxiety has differences in the amygdala, which is associated with fear.

         * Pop-culture aside: amygdala makes me think of medulla-oblongata. *

Anyway, the piece goes on to say that an emotional event can induce brain changes that can then lead to "full-blown anxiety." It seems like something becomes unable to distinguish a given stimulation from something dangerous.

The new research is a sound reminder that a person is hardly responsible for having a mental illness; surmounting evidence shows mental health conditions have genetic and physiological underpinnings. A 2015 study found that anxiety may be hereditary, while other research suggests depression may be an inflammatory disease.

I hope research gets more funding, because something tells me we're so close to a breakthrough in treating depression and anxiety. There's a major missing link, in this "modern plague."

On disrupting patterns and déjà-vu.

I had a session with Ranjana yesterday. It was hard. Not because of something necessarily difficult to discuss or move through, but because I'm really tired these days, and yesterday I was a little despondent. She even called me on it. I tried to explain that it was difficult for me to engage her, and that sometimes I get stuck in myself, and that she might need to pull me out. She said she felt she needed to lead the conversations. I agreed.

Oooooof. I just ha a déjà-vu and now I'm nauseous and confused.

That was a nice little pause. I checked out Wikipedia, and it basically goes over a lot of the assumed reasons behind déjà-vu but there doesn't seem to be any real data about it.

For me, I think they're things I've dreamed that I remember / overlap with something as it's happening. Sometimes I'll remember the dream as the déjà-vu is happening, and it's overwhelming and I get nauseous.

All of this, the ways in which we don't understand something that two-thirds of people experience, something routine yet almost metaphysical and magical, is extremely interesting to me. We just know so little about the brain, and it just seems like there is so much left to unlock. Déjà-vu feels like something else. Like something outside of the conscious, left-brain/right-brain experience.

A déjà-vu is such an odd, out of body experience, it's no wonder that in the past it was attributed to be prophetic. Left alone in the woods - I would have accepted it as being something bordering superstition and instinct.

Off-topic!

Yesterday's session was good. Ranjana talked to me about patterns of thinking, and ways of talking to myself. For this week, she'd like me to make a point of doing things for myself, out of pleasure and self-care, and not as acts seen through a lens of negativity.

For example, I explained to her how I often self-isolate when I'm feeling overwhelmed. I describe this as a type of quarantine. A quarantine, to me, because during this time I'm despondent, detached, and so internally distraught that I might not be particularly open or pleasant for those around me.

Ranjana re-framed that as maybe just needing some alone time, and just telling yourself, "I'm going to go read for an hour," and it ending there. It being something you're doing for yourself, because in that instance it's what you want for yourself.

We talked about cognitive behavioural therapy, and what I've read on the subject. I said that I read a few books, some being too clinical and difficult for me to really relate to and absorb. That conversation lead to a funny exchange:

R: You're very conscious. You're very bright. You're not like other depressed people. 

K: Well those things and depression aren't mutually exclusive.

R: I know, but with you, it's different.

What does that mean!? Ranjana sometimes says things bluntly, and then when I challenge her on it she explains it. But this was at the end of the session, while she was filling out my receipt. I told her there is a seemingly high depression rate with authors, artists, comedians and creatives of all types. That maybe my being highly sensitive mutated into something darker through trauma. . . . But we didn't talk about it much. Time was up.

She then gave me a piece of writing. Why Habits Are Hard to Change by Dr. Kelly McGonigal, written sometime in 2010. The article discuses a research study that showed participants a tennis match, and gave them a computer program that made default in or out calls. They were to then accept the default call (is the ball in or out) or actively disengage from he default call.

These brain analyses suggest that going against the default in difficult decisions requires some kind of extra motivation or confidence. Otherwise, the decider in our mind is puzzled, and the doer in our mind is paralyzed. 

Knowing this can help explain why changing habits can be so difficult. If you aren't sure why you're changing, don't fully believe you're making the right choice, or question whether what you're doing will work, you're likely to settle back on your automatic behaviors. That's why self-efficacy-the belief that you can make a change and overcome obstacles-is one of the best predictors of successful change. The decider and the doer need a boost of confidence.

All of this makes sense, being depressed comes with an automatic assumption that things will not get better, and that you're doomed and hexed. Ranjana was trying to get me to see how making active choices can lead to changes. She referred to it as "making a dent" which I appreciated. One dent at a time. Let some light in.

So next time you're trying to make a change, figure out what your current default is, and remind yourself exactly why it isn't working. Then look for ways to change your default (clean out your fridge, set up direct deposit) so you don't have to fight the old default as often. And feel free to be your own cheerleader when the going gets rough. Look for the first evidence (a pound lost here, a dwindling credit card statement there) that what you're doing is paying off. The status quo is seductive, and we all need a little encouragement to lift our fingers off the keyboard.

I mean, the concept of "being your own cheerleader" when you're already down or in the midst of a depressive episode is laughable. But I can understand the value in re-setting habits and trying to re-route patterns that are disruptive or painful. But it's so very difficult. If you're in a painful space, the default also represents a tried and true way to self-sooth. Maybe it isn't ideal, but it's known and there's comfort in that.

I don't know where to begin with all this. I can try to make dents, and I have been, but it's a big ask. It's so much work. I'm so tired.