Celebrating and Cultivating Our Better Angels

We have a lot to celebrate as we enter the New Year. The Iraq war is over for the United States; our troops have come home. I’m looking forward to a peaceful 2012.

Indeed, there’s now evidence that the world is getting more peaceful all the time. Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker has researched the past from 8000 BCE to the 1970’s and concludes that society has become less violent over the centuries. He’s written an 802-page book, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, to prove his point. 

For starters, statistics released by the FBI show that violent crime in the United States has decreased by 13.4 percent over the last decade. To use a more visual example, today’s ads for gyms and exercise paraphernalia don’t “feature the use of fisticuffs,” as they did in the 1940’s “to restore manly honor.” Today, “bulging pectorals and rippling abdominals are shown in arty close-up for both sexes to admire. The advantage they promise is in beauty, not might.”

I skim the book; I don’t have to read every word to know I like it. His thesis of our evolving brains induces warm, fuzzy feelings of optimism in me.

Speaking of optimism, here’s a formula which elucidates one conundrum of our Human Condition and converts the Impossible to Possible, and even beyond to Joyous.

Negative Attachments, such as feeling like an outsider in society and/or within our own psyches, are best sublimated into artistic endeavors (activities like listening to music, writing poems, drawing and sketching, etc.). This will allow us to vent our negative feelings and externalize them in a healthy way.

If hostility and aggression are not acknowledged or sublimated, our dark or shadow side can create dissension and we have the tendency to externalize negativity on to others. In some cases this results in acts of violence.

(Extreme examples of this kind of projection include Hitler and other serial killers. Hitler’s own failure as a painter proves the importance of sublimating negative impulses through art. Because he failed to gain instantaneous fame through his painting, Hitler lashed out and externalized his anger by writing Mein Kampf.  His detachment from the positive within himself and humanity resulted in the devastating violence of the Holocaust  and WWII.)

 By contrast, we create Positive Attachments when we care and love ourselves – and when we care for others - as we do when we work toward positive thinking as mentioned in last week’s blog. (I cope with my shadow side/demons with exercise for the body and for the mind, I write a daily journal.)

Positive attachments increase optimism and energy. As we extend our care and love for people, places and things in our environment, we increase the possibilities of slouching toward and bringing about world peace. Amen.

Dear Reader: I welcome your comments. (jsimon145@gmail.com)

Energy: We Are What We Think

The genius Albert Einstein not only discovered the relationship of energy and matter in the physical realm, he also raised questions about the mind’s ventures into realms beyond the visible. I like to think he intuited the connection between mind and body. He certainly did not become derailed by negative thoughts and focused his abundant brain energy on problem solving.

 We know energy comes from calories in food and that calories from fruits, vegetables, lean protein, are better than those from fatty meats and rich pastries. But what about the energy from our thoughts?  I propose that Positive Thoughts are like good nutrition while negative thinking can harm us like junk food.

Paying attention to the quality of our thoughts is as vital as providing a well-balanced diet for our bodies.

Negative thinking discourages, leads to feelings of hopelessness, saps energy.  Negative thoughts clog our brain circuits similar to fatty foods blocking our coronary arteries.

Watching the news late at night, which abounds in negative happenings around the world, won’t lead to the highway of sweet dreams and can have a detrimental impact on the next day too.  Many of my patients don’t immediately recognize the connection between watching the 11 o’clock news, a poor night of sleep,  and their pessimistic mood the next morning.

If negative thinking is capable of pulling us down, positive thinking can lift our spirits and, quite often, enable us to successfully change our situation.

Many years ago, I suffered from depression and couldn’t budge my mind out of the doldrums to move forward in my life.  I discovered  the role of exercise:  putting my body in motion transferred  to my mind and I  let go of negative thoughts.

For me, exercise is as vital to my mind as to my body. When I don’t exercise, my thoughts dive into negative territory.

Studies show that daily exercise can be as effective as antidepressant medication!  (Medication may be necessary when a person is too depressed to motivate himself to go to the gym.)

I’ve noticed that dwelling on past failures saps my energy. When I forgive myself for mistakes, view them as learning experiences, part of the process of living, my energy  increases.

Negative and ambivalent feelings are part of the process of problem solving, but we need to be aware of them. The state of limbo (Should I? Shouldn’t I?) can lead to disequilibrium.  

A few years ago when I slipped on a patch of ice in the street, I realized I had been thinking negatively about my future just before I fell.  My mind was not focused on navigating the slippery surface.

Now I purposefully whistle a happy tune (the melody from the King and I) when I climb a ladder to change a light bulb. Positive thinking, like a protein drink, injects energy and the ballast of balance.

 Conclusion: We take good care of ourselves when we use energy to expand  awareness of how negative and positive thinking and feeling affects our bodies and minds.

Dear Reader: I welcome your comments. (jsimon145@gmail.com)

Giving and Gratitude

 Giving extends beyond material gifts. 

Helping a blind person across the street or catching a stranger’s attention to tell her she dropped her glove is a way of giving.

When we give a gift which meets the recipients’ needs, their delight lifts our spirits. The acts of giving and receiving nurture, sustain and enrich everyone.

Sometimes we don’t have the choice but have to give (at Christmas time, to the building superintendent, out of obligation). This kind of giving doesn’t nurture the heart and soul and may cause resentment. We’d do well to alter our lives to include as few of these situations as possible; however, this kind of obligated giving is often necessary. In many human societies, the act of mutually exchanging money, goods, etc. may contribute to social cohesion.

Gift giving has an extensive history, stretching back to before recorded time, when it was common for ancient cultures to give each other food or animal pelts to signify an event like a wedding. During the early days of the Roman Republic, citizens exchanged evergreen branches and sweet cakes on the Winter Solstice to symbolize a wish for prosperity in the coming year. In the Christian religion, the story of the three wise men who brought gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh to the baby Jesus has set the example for people to bestow presents on each other.

Though originally not a traditional part of the Jewish celebration of Chanukkah, the practice of gift giving has been added to prevent children from envying the presents their Christian friends receive.

According to Judaic principles and practice, anonymous giving is the highest form of contributing. The giver doesn’t ask for recognition or appreciation.

My own life has been marked by a complex relationship with giving and receiving. In my early 30s, I suffered from depression. My psychoanalyst, Dr. Van Bark, helped me unearth feelings of deprivation I’d kept buried since childhood.  I was raised by an intelligent single parent mother, overwhelmed with raising five children, who didn’t have the time or luxury to respond to my complex emotional needs.

I envied my colleagues who seemed to have more supportive parents and I envied them for having intact families. Envy fed my feelings of deprivation. To feel abundance required therapy and time for me to acknowledge what my parents gave and couldn’t give.

My emotions registered what I’d missed - the subtleties of understanding and empathy. Feelings of deprivation interfered with an appreciation of the gifts I’d received: food, clothing, shelter, medical care, education.

A person in the throes of a manic episode may not have a realistic sense of what he can afford to give. If he depletes himself of basic necessities, money to pay rent and buy food, he’ll need charity himself. In the long run, this kind of imbalance doesn’t help anyone.

In Charles Dickens’s classic story A Christmas Carol, Scrooge hates Christmas because he can’t give. Rich in material goods, he’s impoverished emotionally because he was traumatized by a difficult childhood. He’s transformed by nightmares of the terrible fate awaiting him in the future (the royal road to the unconscious once again) that will come to pass if he doesn’t change. Ultimately the nightmares have an effect on Scrooge, who awakens and becomes a generous man.

I will never forget a very sad patient who couldn’t reveal her entire story because she said it was too tragic. She insisted she was searching for a KEY to help her resolve her distress.

I tried to assure her that the issue is not a key, but the step by step process of therapy which leads to understanding. My explanation failed to impress her and she left therapy. By the time she returned for a follow-up session a few years later, I’d discovered the Key of Gratitude.

 “You know, you were right. There is a key. The key of gratitude opens many doors,” I said, thrilled to share my discovery with her.

   

Her lips turned up in a slow smile, as if to say she knew it all along.  “I’m so glad to hear you say that!” she said. Serenity, like the scent of a lovely perfume, wafted through the room.

I wondered if she was another human angel blessing my life, arriving at a moment to complete a cycle, resonating through the invisible layers of  connectedness among us.

Conclusion: As bleak as matters may be, finding something for which we are grateful opens doors to abundance.

Real giving comes from the heart, from a feeling of abundance and gratitude. In these situations the giver is also the recipient. 

Dear Reader: I welcome your comments. (jsimon145@gmail.com)

Routing Out Royal Roads of Gold

In my last blog I referred to the shadow side of ourselves, the complex web of thoughts and feelings we keep hidden from our conscious life. As Francis Bacon is alleged to have said, “We are the last to know ourselves.


Not everyone has time and money to invest in years of psychotherapy/psychoanalysis to discover the hidden self(ves). Even so, we don’t need to despair. If we allow ourselves time, space, honesty and courage, dreams, daydreams and meditation are tools within our grasp.


We try to keep our contradictory feelings out of awareness because we assume we’re crazy to have them. But often they make good sense.


When I was ten years old I began to write a journal because I both loved and hated my newborn brother. Where to put these feelings except on paper?  To my surprise, owning my feelings relieved me. I don’t think I understood the whys until recently. (I loved my brother because he was adorable and I could indulge my maternal feelings and help take care of him. And I hated him because he diluted the attention I received from my overwhelmed mother.)  To experience mutually contradictory  emotions makes sense!


A dear friend of mine, a mathematician, familiar and comfortable dealing with the world of numbers, didn’t understand my writing compulsion until recently when she wrote down her thoughts and identified feelings she hadn’t been able to voice in a conversation.
“Now I see why you are always writing,” she said. 


Her sudden insight is what is known as an “aha” experience.


The concept of the “life-altering moment” (or “aha experience”) has become a popular and well-recognized state of mind, due in large part to Oprah Winfrey’s emphasis of the notion on her TV program. Originally known as the ‘eureka’ experience, the definition is based on the insight of Archimedes  (287-212 BC).  When he was taking a bath, he realized the amount of water he displaced related to his weight. He could apply the same phenomenon (of water displacement) to determine if the king’s crown was pure gold.  In his state of excitement, he leapt from the bathtub and ran naked through the streets of Syracuse, Sicily yelling “Eureka, Eureka!” (“I found it; I found it.”)

Committing ourselves to daily or almost daily practice to rout out  ‘the royal road to the unconscious’  (as Freud referred to dreams) is not easy. Our minds construct endless arguments of resistance to defeat our constructive goals. Voices of judges censor, condemn, criticize.  Each of us harbors within our minds an enemy as cunning and clever as the Trojan horse.


We’re afraid to discover our opposing thoughts and feelings because we may realize we have to change. And change is very frightening.


 “I think I’m accustomed to my misery, “ a woman once told me after she’d spent a few years thinking about possible ways to improve her situation.


And that’s okay too. To choose to remain in a situation may be the best solution. What is important is that we recognize the possibility of choice.

Conclusion: To allow ourselves to become aware of our contradictory thoughts can be calming and diminish stress, even if we don’t act on them to change our lives. Acceptance is key.

Dear Reader: I welcome your comments. (jsimon145@gmail.com)

Acknowledging the 'Impossible', renders it 'Possible'.

This blog follows the last one in which I discuss some aspects of the human condition which render it impossible.

You may rightfully ask: what purpose does it serve to reveal the impossible, which seems like exposing a bare backside? (We know it’s there, but hide it under wraps.)

Because to acknowledge the impossible, paradoxically renders it possible. The awareness that we’re all racked by conflict lessens the pain; we’re less likely to flagellate ourselves with self-hate (which serves no purpose and saps our energy).

The Psyche as Battlefield

Our Father of Psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), proposed that our psyches are governed by the warring forces of Libido  (life force or energy), and Thanatos (the destructive, Death drive).

The Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung (1875- 1961) viewed our behavior as an embodiment of the battle between the anima  (feminine) and the animus (masculine) sides of the psyche. He identified our shadow side as the hidden or repressed parts of the mind, roughly equivalent to the Freudian unconscious. Jung wrote, “Everyone carries a shadow and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is.”

Both theorists agree that creativity lies in the buried portion (unconscious or shadow) of the mind. Their methods changed our view of the human psyche, showing that much of who we are and how we behave lies beyond our conscious control. They agreed that the goal is to elucidate, to render the unconscious conscious, and to become aware of the “shadow side” through free association and talk therapy.

(Dare I say all methods of psychotherapy aim to increase self-awareness of body, mind and feelings?)

In the recent film A Dangerous Method, the story develops as Carl Jung applies Freud’s method of talk therapy in his treatment of Sabina Spielrein, an eighteen-year-old woman who suffers from hysteria. Through speaking, through verbal (and ultimately physical) acknowledgment of Spielrein’s anxieties and neuroses, Jung eventually manages to cure his patient, endowing her with the tools to lead a mentally healthy existence. A remarkably accurate portrait of Jung and Freud, who figure prominently in the film, A Dangerous Method makes a great case for the importance – indeed, the necessity – of talk therapy.

I suggest that something in the Zeitgeist, the sentiment of our times, asks us to take another look at this period (the early 1900s) just before the outbreak of World War I. A society that had long been forced to separate rational science and unpredictable emotion was learning, through psychology and talk therapy in particular, to cope with and express its feelings in an entirely new way. In speaking frankly about one’s fears, dreams, attractions one could grasp the previously intangible and begin to reevaluate one’s lifestyle. The impossible could become possible.

Today talk therapy is as relevant as ever to reveal the hidden aspects of ourselves and explain our mysterious behavior.

Jung said,  “If you imagine a person brave enough to withdraw all his projections, then you get an individual who is conscious of a thick shadow. Such a man knows that whatever is wrong in the world is in himself, and if he only learns to deal with his own shadow he has done something real for the world. He has succeeded in shouldering at least an infinitesimal part of the gigantic, unsolved social problems of our day.”

With awareness comes acceptance of the various, often conflicting, aspects of ourselves which results in relief , greater comfort in our existence,  and even  beyond, to  moments of bemusement, pleasure and joy.

The goal is to own and integrate the positive and negative forces within our human psyches, to heal our broken selves and express our creativity, and work together to heal  our broken world.

Dear Reader: I welcome your comments. (jsimon145@gmail.com)

The Impossible Human Condition

The following examples come to mind today about the impossibility of the human condition:

1. Most of us despise change, we long for stability and predictability, yet human life involves constant and continuous adaptation to change on all levels:  body, mind, spirit (feelings).

2. We have mixed feelings toward almost everything, including those we profess to love, even, or especially, our parents, who have given us the great gift of life.  However to express our ambivalence, our hate entwined with love, is highly inappropriate.

3. Life isn’t fair. Often there is injustice and/or lack of resolution. A woman I know suffered extreme abuse in the care of her mother and a teacher yet these people died  highly regarded by the community. They escaped unscathed, never forced to face or acknowledge their abuses.

4. Life doesn’t get easier  as we age (as I’d assumed). At least in a physical sense, time can be viewed as an insult.  Our bodies deteriorate, causing  pain and  requiring increasing amounts of maintenance , and ultimately, we suffer  the greatest narcissistic injury, the loss of life itself.

5. A long marriage, filled with  love and passion, does not guarantee a happy ending. A couple may split up in their later years, regarding each other as their worst enemy. Witness the case of Leo Tolstoy (great Russian writer (1828-1910)  and his wife,  Sonya, who because of political differences, died painfully estranged from each other (depicted in the recent, powerful movie The Last Station).

Dear Reader: I welcome your comments. (jsimon145@gmail.com)

Are We Born Broken?

The Pulitzer prize winning playwright Eugene O’Neill (1888-1953) said, “Man is born broken. He lives by mending. The grace of God is glue.”

(The Great God Brown)

Years of experience and psychological/psychiatric study since O’Neill’s time, show that the theme of broken-ness and whole-ness in human existence is a huge and complex topic.

We enter the world as newborns with a  unique combination and assortment of genes on our forty six chromosomes. No one else in the world shares our precise genetic makeup. Even identical twins show variations.

Are we born broken? Do we heal/mend by the Grace of God? Luck has something to do with mending but we’re not born broken. We’re born with vast potential to develop along avenues to some extent, but not entirely, dependent on our environment.

 Freud thought a newborn enters the world with a tabula rasa, a blank slate.  Genetic studies, with the possibility of gene mapping, show us that much of our future is determined in this genetic blueprint.

For all intents and purposes it doesn’t appear that it will ever be possible to decipher the degree to which each, our genetic constitution and our environment, determine the course of lives because  no two humans have precisely the same genetic constitution and no two humans experience the exact same environment.

We  know our genetic constitution  predicts a great deal; we know environmental factors can interfere with development,  cause fears, phobias, anxieties, etc., and we  know that ‘mending’ is both a matter of luck as well as an  active process in which the individual  plays a huge role.

Do we take responsibility for who we are and who we become or do we see ourselves as victims?

In Man’s Search for Meaning (1963 ) Victor Frankl writes,

“We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms…to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way. “

He continues to list the ways in which we find meaning   and direction in life: 1.By doing a deed; 2. By experiencing a value; and 3.By suffering

As Frankl observed in the worst of life’s circumstances, ultimately a person has will and choice.  What matters more than our genetic constitution, is our values, the meaning we find for ourselves in our lives.

Dear Reader: I welcome your comments. (jsimon145@gmail.com)

Inside the Mind of The Outsider

Feeling like an outsider is a common experience, an unavoidable reality because each of us is an outsider in certain circles. Being an insider at all times in all situations is impossible.  For example, I’m either an alumna of a college or I’m not.

The problem arises when we think we’re an outsider when we want to be, or actually fall, in the category of ‘insider.’

For example, a woman  moves to a fancy little town where she feels like an outsider because she tells herself, “Everyone has more money than I do.”  She defines herself as an outsider based on economics.  The problem arises when she imagines everyone  thinks of her the way she thinks of herself, as a ‘poor’ outsider.

In actuality, she is an insider because she pays rent and taxes in this town and has every civil right any ‘rich’ resident has.

I was raised by parents who held radical political beliefs and shut me out of weekend discussions held in our living room with their comrades. Then they condemned  my alternate plan to attend  Sunday school with a friend. I had many years and experiences which contributed to my feelings as an outsider and finally began to feel like an insider when I committed myself to my personal writing.

It is difficult to imagine a more unique outsider than William Blake (1757- 1827). The mystic artist was an outsider who contested much of what his culture offered.  He was misunderstood and unrecognized as a great painter and poet.  His art didn’t sell and he experienced extreme poverty. But he was content because he wasn’t an outsider in his own mind; he was a mystic high on his creativity and relationship with the Universe.

In the final analysis, the goal is to be an insider in our own mind. Poet Robert Bly following in the footsteps of mythologist, Joseph Campbell, advised,  “Follow your bliss.”  We feel like an insider when we are comfortable in our own skin which may involve discovering and following our bliss.

Dear Reader: I welcome your comments. (jsimon145@gmail.com)

Taking Risks

I had little choice but to drive myself through the unpredictable snow storm on October 29, 2011. I’d always remarked, “I don’t do snow,” meaning I certainly don’t drive in the falling white stuff, and whenever possible I don’t leave the house on foot or on skis. (I follow the example of the squirrels who hole up in the tree tops and assume-“This too shall pass.”) But unpredictable weather falls upon us more often than we like to think. Especially in our country where the science of weather forecasting has not been  perfected. (One advantage of traveling this past June: I learned the Germans can forecast the weather!). In any case the choice was to pull into the crowded dismal parking lot off Rt. 95 in Jersey and wait an indefinite time, until either 1. The snow stopped falling or 2. I mustered up courage to continue.

I chose what felt like the foolhardy approach: to persist through the blinding white stuff while attempting  to quell my near panic.“Follow the tail lights,” became my mantra and guided me  within the white lines of  the lane. So grateful to the other stalwart drivers with good vision who kept their cool, I developed a new respect for humanity, and an awareness that I am more capable than I thought.

The question is: When do we take the Risk? Certainly I could have crashed, and then the risk would have been regarded as foolhardy. Instead I recognized courage in myself.

Decision making is tricky, another peril of the human condition which can only be avoided if we decide to stay in bed for the rest of our lives. Actually, even this can be dangerous, because we depend on someone else to take care of us, and they could botch up the job; witness Andy Warhol’s death in the care of a special duty nurse after his surgery who administered too much intravenous fluid,  over-hydrating  and killing her famous patient! (The surgery was a success but the patient died!)

In brief, we can not avoid risk taking. Nor can we always collect others’ opinions to help us reach a decision. Ultimately we’re on our own (and also at someone else’s mercy) and can only do our best and hope the other person (s) will too).

(In a situation of Chance, I’m comforted by prayer, but that too is an individual matter.)

Dear Reader: I welcome your comments. (jsimon145@gmail.com)

The Art Of Appreciation

Why is it so difficult to appreciate and so easy to deprecate, to knock down another person with negative comments? In other words, why is the Demon within our psyches, easier to access than the Angel?

This seems to be the way we’re constructed.

(G…d, please forgive me but I have observed this phenomenon rather consistently in my six to seven decades of  life on this planet. )

To deprecate or put down another person gives us a sense of superiority, although it is often false, and serves no practical purpose except for the few minutes in which we feel better than the other person.

I chalk it up to another Paradox of Human Existence. We tend to feel superior when we knock down another person, especially those close to us which works against our best interest.

When we are treated like  inferiors, we naturally defend ourselves against negative comments, rarely hear them, and certainly don’t develop positive feelings toward those who put us down.

We would have more friends and be better liked if we  frame comments and criticism in a constructive manner. I heard the well-known poetry critic Helen Vendler once say, “No one benefits from anything less than praise.”

Dear Reader: I welcome your comments. (jsimon145@gmail.com)

Hearing The Worst May Be The Best

Often people share the worst, the downside of their lives and psyches with their psychotherapist.  And this makes sense because there is no place more appropriate, where complaints and woes can be heard, accepted, understood and processed.

At times some good news sneaks out at the end of a session.

It is actually worse when patients don’t talk about the extent of the downside. A person may be deceiving self and therapist, following an out- of- control course, like a car which has lost its brakes, as in drug addiction or alcoholism.

An example is a patient that came week after week, saying everything was alright but he was simply too depressed to work. I did not understand why he wasn’t getting better. Sadly, after an accidental overdose, we discovered he was abusing over the counter medication.

The goal is to form an honest collaborative relationship, and to integrate life’s negatives and positives, its downs and ups.

Off Kilter?

Why are some days better than others?

Sometimes we have no idea. We wake up already off kilter. Perhaps the cause is a dream we can’t remember.  Other days we wake up cheerily and raring to go. If only we could bottle the good stuff!

The goal: to remind ourselves that even if the day starts off badly, it doesn’t have to remain in this negative space. A shift can occur at any moment, if we’re open to it. 

Why I Love My Work

I had an amazing session with a man who had excellent parents, including a father who served several congregations during his career as an Episcopalian minister, but in no way insisted his son follow his beliefs. 


The fortuitous hour with my patient proved a major point to me:  Being a good parent is not about religion or race or political party; it’s about having an open mind and a caring heart; if the brain doesn’t know about caring, and how to show it, all the knowledge in the world can’t make up for the void, which echoes with the emptiness  of an unfurnished room.  

Germany in June 2011

I was fortunate to be able to visit Germany, June 2011.

Here is a photo of the old, largest apothecary museum housed in the Heidelberg Castle (Schloss) with 20,000  pharmacy related objects in a collection dating back over 2000 years, which inspired gratitude in me that I didn’t live in the middle ages!

I was very impressed with the magnificent countryside, the small well organized farms, acres dedicated to the wind farms (a cluster of wind turbines) impressively tall power generators, their propellers twirling in the breeze with grace like ballerinas’ arms. (In 2010, Germany became the first place in Europe in terms of installed capacity with a total of 27,215 MW though windpower accounts for 9% of its electricity).

Also the Germans predict the weather with amazing accuracy. “No the horses can’t go out because there will be thunder storms at 4pm,” the managers of the stable in the Black  Forest said, and  they were right.

And a few days later, the waiter refused to take an order for out of doors restaurant service because rain was predicted in thirty minutes, and indeed the drops fell from the overcast sky within  a few minutes of  the stated time.

The delicious ice cream, streudel and black forest cake are also major accomplishments of this colorful country.