Tag: psychology

Posted in advocacy, Community, psychology, science

Mental Health Month: Anxiety Disorders

Posted on by alidware

Today we start our Mental Health Month series. As a short recap: every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday this month we will be covering different DSM-5 diagnoses, recent research, and featuring personal stories from YOU. This week we’re covering Anxiety disorders, OCD and Related Disorders, and Trauma and Stressor Related Disorders. If you want the FULL LINE UP, click HERE. If you want to submit your story, CONTACT ME, or find my social media handles below.

Now that that’s over, let’s get into today’s topic: ANXIETY DISORDERS.

What Is Anxiety?

We all know feeling anxious isn’t uncommon. It’s simply our body’s natural response to stress. If you look at the state of the world right now, it’s not surprising pharmacies were running out of anxiety medications.

So far, we believe this stress response prompts waves of catecholamines (neurotransmitters like dopamine and epinephrine) which give rise to our flight-or-fight response. From an evolutionary standpoint, this may come in handy if you’re scrounging for food in tiger territory. From a modern standpoint, our sympathetic nervous system is constantly bombarded with new information and new things to worry about. From an epigenetic standpoint, your resulting anxiety from this overstimulation influences the on-off switch in the genes of your child, creating a world of ever-more-anxious, alert, frightened children.

There’s no definitive proof for any of these hypotheses. There is evidence suggesting all sides, and more, but studying humans is hard and concluding one idea over the other might not be practical. Please do not take this ambiguity lightly. Most people want to agree with one of the three hypotheses listed above because it just makes sense to them. This is a trap of confirmation bias.

I find that anxiety becomes a fear of the future, a fear that the present could not possibly (or will exactly) lead to the future, and a fear that the past has ruined the future; anxiety, today, is a summation of fears.

Let’s talk about what happens when this becomes debilitating.

What Is An Anxiety Disorder?

Let’s first consult the DSM-5:

It states, “Anxiety disorders include disorders that share features of excessive fear and anxiety and related behavioral disturbances.”

Not vague at all, right? You’ll learn much of the DSM is vague and simple in a convoluted way that makes diagnosis tricky: much of it is based on the subjective interpretation of the clinician.

There are 11 total anxiety diagnoses in the DSM-5:

1. Separation Anxiety Disorder

2. Selective Mutism

3. Specific Phobia

4. Social Anxiety Disorder

5. Panic Disorder (with panic attack specifier)

6. Agoraphobia

7. Generalized Anxiety Disorder

8. Substance/medication-induced anxiety disorder

9. Anxiety disorder due to another medical condition.

10. Other specified anxiety disorder

11. Unspecified Anxiety disorder

For the sake of the attention span of the average person (including me), we’re going to list the criteria of two of these diagnoses in depth so that you may see how they are broken down.

Let’s run through criteria, and then we’ll talk “causes” and treatment.

Selective Mutism

For this diagnosis, you must have the following (criteria summarized for all of our sake):

A) Consistent failure to speak in situations where there is expectation to do so, like at school.

B) Interferes with education, occupational, social achievement and communication

C) Lasts at least one month.

D) Not attributed to a lack of knowledge or comfort with the spoken language.

E) Not better explained by a communication disorder and does not occur during the course of autism, Schizophrenia, or another psychotic disorder.

These kids will speak in their homes with their immediate family but not with close friends or second-degree relatives—like grandparents. They “refuse” to speak at school, so says the DSM, although I’d argue it’s much more like an anxious reflex, this coming from someone who had this diagnosis; the anxiety is so severe the only option is for the child to shut down.

This also can include “excessive shyness, fear of social embarrassment, social isolation, and withdrawal, clinging, compulsive traits, negativism, temper tantrums, or mild oppositional behavior.” It is a “relatively rare disorder”, usually appears before 5 years old, but it may not be obvious until the child enters school. The long-term of this disorder is unknown, and “clinical reports suggest that individuals may ‘outgrow’ selective mutism.”

This next line is what happened to me: “In some cases, particularly in individuals with social anxiety disorder, selective mutism may disappear, but symptoms of social anxiety disorder remain.”

Temperamental factors are not well identified. Environmental factors, such as parents modeling social reticence, can contribute to the development of selective mutism. This may include controlling parents or overprotective parents.

Genetic factors: nothing identified.

Social Anxiety Disorder

For this diagnosis, it’s exactly what you think and some of what you may not have thought of. These criteria have a longer list, so I will summarize in a paragraph:

There must be obvious anxiety about social situations when the person is exposed to possible scrutiny of others, like meeting with unfamiliar people. In children this must be observed with peers and not just adults. The person fears showing anxiety symptoms which could be judged negatively. Social situations always provoke fear. In children, this maybe seen as crying, freezing, tantrums. These situations are avoided or endured terribly—very terribly.

Of course the fear must be deemed out of proportion to the actual threat of the social situation. This lasts for six months or more (like my entire life) and influences impairment in social, occupational, and other areas of life. It’s not attributed to substance use or other medical conditions, and can’t be explained with another disorder.

Apparently, “the duration of the disturbance is typically 6 months” and so I would like a refund please—24 years and counting.

It’s seen that individuals with this disorder might be poorly assertive or excessively submissive or even highly controlling of the conversation. They might not use a lot of eye contact—so parents, don’t worry, your anxious child probably does NOT have autism. They may be withdrawn, and disclose very little about themselves, or speak with an overly soft voice.

They may live at home longer.

Self-medication is common.

The median age of onset is 13 years old. If that average were taken with kids also diagnosed with Selective Mutism, the median age, I’m speculating, would be much lower.

Temperament: The trait of behavioral inhibition (shrinking away from unfamiliar situations) has been linked to the development of this disorder.

Environmental: No increased rates of childhood maltreatment in the development of this disorder, BUT maltreatment is a risk factor.

Genetic: Traits, like behavioral inhibition, are genetically influenced. Social anxiety is heritable (NOT inherited). No specific genetic factors have been identified.

So What Causes Anxiety Disorders?

What’s the first thing that comes to your mind? Trauma? For those of us who have been ingrained in the mental health system for a while, you might think “chemical imbalance”. Not even the DSM endorses that as absolute. You will find that genetic factors are no where near being identified, much less a chemical imbalance.

When tackling this, we must remember that your genes, your body, your cells, your thoughts, are incredibly malleable. When we talk about “predisposition” in relation to genes, we’re talking about the propensity for them to switch on and off. For example, it seems that some genes are more likely to, in response to a traumatic event, turn on.

Every cell in your body is influenced by your environment. This makes it extremely difficult to confirm what is solid at birth—were you doomed to live with anxiety?—and what is developed after birth. In fact, we may never know.

If you Google “what causes anxiety”, you will be lead to proper links citing similar things as the DSM: personality traits with an unknown genetic basis has a large influence.

If you Google “what causes anxiety disorders”, you will be fed a mix of “chemical imbalance like diabetes” and “stress”.

If Anxiety, or any mental health condition, was a chemical imbalance like diabetes, we’d have a psychotropic equivalent to insulin.

If you search for a similar phrase in psychology databases, you won’t find what you’re looking for.

I managed to find an article entitled “Biological markers for anxiety disorders, OCD, and PTSD: a consensus statement. Part 2: Neurochemistry, Neurophysiolgy,, and neurocognition”. If you are interested in it, I only have access through a database, so I can email you the full text.

This paper from the World Journal of Biological Psychiatry summarizes all the current biomarkers (as of 2017) for anxiety disorders, OCD, and PTSD. They state “none of the putative biomarkers is sufficient and specific as a diagnostic tool, [but] an abundance of high quality research has accumulated that should improve our understanding of the neurobiological causes of anxiety disorders, OCD, and PTSD.” It cites Serotonin precursors, GABA, Dopamine, Neuropeptides, and even Oxytocin the love neurotransmitter.

My criticism for this starts with their PTSD makers. It states: “Compared with control subjects, PTSD patients showed significantly elevated platelet-poor plasma NE (norepinephrine) levels and significantly higher mean 24 hour urinary excretion of all three catecholamines (NE, Dopamine, HVA).” It cites another study as the source for this, which I can’t find yet. What could other factors be for this rise in stress neurotransmitters? My point: you couldn’t possibly pinpoint this particular rise in catecholamines to PTSD alone because we can’t isolate the PTSD from the rest of the body/brain. Take everything with a grain of salt.

Biomarkers are real. We ARE biological beings, and to ignore that would be, well, ignorant. However, the lack of understanding for how our biology transforms through life means attributing brain states to only chemical differences without connecting the body’s experience of physical life is just as ignorant.

So, we ask, are anxiety disorders a chemical imbalance? The answers is: we don’t know. And we may never know.

Anxiety Disorder Treatments

Medication has been a go-to for years. Benzodiazepines, dangerously addictive and physiologically dependent in a short amount of time (2-4 weeks) do well at cutting panic attacks down for size. Valium, Ativan, and Klonopin have saved me more than once. SSRI’s and SNRI’s, researched for depression and sold for everything else without care, can sometimes help calm anxiety. Lexapro, Effexor, Zoloft, and Trintellix—honestly I couldn’t tell if they did anything at all to my anxiety. But for some people, they work.

Some antipsychotics like Abilify (some, again, sold against the label) are added on to antidepressants with the purpose of easing depression, but can also inadvertently help anxiety and there’s no rhyme or reason for it. It can probably be dedicated to the sedating effect.

Certain therapies, however, have been proven time and time again to be more potent than medication for SOME disorders, and many experiments show a combination of therapy and medication is better than mediation alone or therapy alone. These studies must be scrutinized with care however: some of them have no control group or comparison treatment.

For example, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy has been shown to significantly reduce distress in Panic Disorder and PTSD when compared to medication and no treatment. What will work depends on your willingness to throw yourself into the process. I’ve done much CBT and found that it only started working after I stopped putting off the homework. There are also personalities and onset of the condition that affect this, which you can read about here.

Other treatments are being studied too. We talked about Freespira here, the medication free treatment that is entirely invalid.

There is study going into Chamomile treatment for Generalized Anxiety Disorder. This study concludes there was non-significant reduction in GAD relapse but significantly better GAD symptoms and improved psychological well-being. Part of their funding came from the Nations institutes of health and a cancer center, and the authors have no conflicts of interest. It was a randomized clinical trial. Read it here.

Naturopathic care, including certain vitamins, need more research, but has some success in this article. My criticism is that if the participants were aware that anxiety was being studied, the placebo effect could be huge. I didn’t read through the entire study, admittedly, but if YOU find whether participants were aware or if they were deceived as they should have been, let us know.

Where Can I Get Help?

If you feel you are struggling with anxiety, please reach out. If you don’t have close friends or family, message me.

If you want to speak with someone anonymously, I recommend Peer Support warmlines. These are not hotlines for crisis, but for meaningful conversation with someone who has been there. There is a list at this link. Those are for California, but anyone can call from anywhere. I’ve spoken to people from England before. You can search for some in your own state or region as well.

If you don’t trust any of those, give us a call at 831-688-0967. We are also a peer warm line service where I work, and have gotten calls from people throughout the country. We are open right now, 24/7. We try and keep conversations to twenty minutes, but I’ve been known to stay on longer if nothing else is going on in the house and the person is really needing support. *I will say I won’t necessarily be the person to pick up. We have other staff members.* If something comes up in the house, our current guests are a priority and we may need to get off the phone.

If you choose Therapy, online or otherwise, is another option. I recommend Psychology Today to find a therapist near you, or your health insurance website.

Your general practitioner may also have suggestions. If you choose the medication route, I suggest researching a good psychiatrist, reading your OWN research, and not allowing your general practitioner to run your psychotropic medication case. They are not trained for that.

Our Mental Health Month Featured story is at THIS LINK: Read about Caz and her journey through anxiety and into a mental health nurse career.

For updates, support, or to submit your story, follow me:

Instagram: @written_in_the_photo

Twitter: @philopsychotic

If you enjoyed this post, please share, like, and follow ThePhilosophicalpsychotic. I appreciate every reader and commentator. You give me more reason to continue reporting poorly executed science.

Posted in advocacy, Community, Peer Support, Supporting Friends/Family, Voices

The Line Up for Sharing Your Story this Mental Health Month.

Posted on by alidware

Hello friends!

I have some time before work to put out the writing schedule of this months posts, all dedicated to learning more about DSM diagnoses and the research that backs them up (or doesn’t). I’m also asking for people’s experiences so that we may add a personal aspect to all of the clinical madness.

If you want to submit your story (200 words or more), you can find my contact information on my HOME page (click here) or you can reach me on my social media handles (below).

Each post will go live on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday each week of May. The Line Up is as follows:

Week of May 4th: Anxiety Disorders, Obsessive/compulsive and related disorders, and Trauma and Stressor related disorders.

Week of May 11th: Schizophrenia, Bipolar, and Dissociative disorders.

Week of May 18th: Somatic disorders, Eating disorders, and Depressive disorders.

Week of May 25: Gender Dysphoria, Neurodevelopmental disorders, and Personality Disorders.

On Monday, May 31st, we will give a quick summary, explore feelings that may come up, and find ways we can celebrate and inform people about mental health every day, not just one month out of the year.

For submitting your story:

If you would like to present something 200 words or more, your story will be posted separately from the main article, but on the SAME DAY as your topic. For example, if you want to submit your story about anxiety, it will be posted within an hour of the main post this Thursday.

If you would like to provide a quote or small paragraph (less than 200 words) it will be included in the main post at relevant points.

For both types of submissions, I can link your blog, social media, name, or anything else that you’d like. For longer stories, if you want to write a bio, I will put it at the end of your post.

Please share this information with friends, family, and anyone you feel would want to participate. If you yourself wants to participate, please contact me.

Social Media:

Instagram: @written_in_the_photo

Twitter: @philopsychotic

Let’s empower each other and remind the world why we matter.

Posted in advocacy, Community, Peer Support, Voices

Share Your Story

Posted on by alidware

In honor of May being Mental Heath Month, I’ve decided to do something consistent, informative, and fun on this blog.

During the course of May, starting this week, every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday I will be doing one or two posts dedicated to a diagnostic category. This means we will be covering stuff like anxiety disorders, schizophrenia spectrum disorders, ADHD, Autism, and more.

I notice when people give information about disorders, they limit what they share to symptoms, medications, and the everlasting advice of self-care. This will be covered as well, my sources being my DSM-5 copy. But we will expand on this, address the most recent research articles I can find (and gain access to), and talk about supportive options that vary beyond just medication and doctors. We will address mental health as whole-person health.

I would also like to include personal experiences or quotes from those of you willing to share. This could be a direct quote or small paragraph from YOU that expresses what it feels like to experience living with mental health conditions, or it could be as simple as a list of words describing your experience.

If you would like to do a longer piece (anything above 200 words), I will post that separately, the same day as the other article, and link the two to each other. For example, if your story is about your experience with anxiety, I will link that up with the article talking about anxiety disorders.

You can reach me from my contact page (listed on the home screen of my blog) or you can reach me at my social media accounts listed below. I will also be including some of my own experiences if there aren’t enough people who feel comfortable sharing.

Please share this with someone who you feel might want to participate, or with someone who you feel would like to follow this series throughout this month. We will be learning a lot and challenging the current perspective of mental health.

The goal of this little project is to show the world that we are capable, determined, literate, and worthy human beings, just as everyone else. This is also a way to empower each other and remind ourselves that we are so much more than we give ourselves credit for sometimes. Especially during these times, its important to remember the good about ourselves, about others, and sharing our stories can support us in that.

If you’d like to participate, you can reach me at my social media handles here:

Instagram: @written_in_the_photo

Twitter: @thephilopsychotic

Or click at this link to be taken to my contact page.

Give me an idea of what you’d like to contribute and we can work together in getting your voice out there. Feel free to also contact me if you have a particular category you’d like this series to focus on this coming Thursday, Friday, Or Saturday.

I will also include your blog, social media handle, and/or name (if you’d like) at the end of each article. All articles will be promoted on my twitter handle and Instagram handle.

Thank you everyone. Please share this so we can have multiple voices. Mental Health month is about togetherness, erasing stigma, and uniting as a positive force in the word. Stay healthy, be well, and I’ll see you all on Thursday.

Posted in advocacy, Late Night Thoughts

Psychoanalysis, The Locked Ward, and Entropy

Posted on by alidware

Some more thoughts to share, friends. Let’s talk psychoanalysis, the locked ward, and entropy.

No, we will not spend countless paragraphs discrediting psychodynamics and psychoanalysis. The facts are there: Freud’s systematic hypotheses were circular, full of confirmation bias, and untestable. This makes his ideas of Psychoanalysis quite useless, inherently flawed, and simply unscientific. However, modern psychodynamics has come a long way, and if you’ve ever read The Center Cannot Hold, by Elyn Saks (if you haven’t, READ IT!) you know that one of therapists which helped her through her cognitive dysfunction pre-hospitalization was indeed a psychoanalyst. Her therapist often took Elyn’s discombobulated words and reflected them, unbiased, nonjudgmental, back to Elyn. This doesn’t happen often anymore, especially not in hospitals, and we lose this understanding that psychosis is not necessarily meaningless. This idea that it may have meaning is derived from psychoanalysis itself, which is rooted in Psychic Determinism: every thought, action, personality quirk, is there for a reason; nothing is ever accidental.

Anyone who says it’s impossible to communicate with someone in psychosis hasn’t really tried. There was a time I did a regular outreach group at the local psychiatric hospital, in which i’d been as a patient before, and there were often people in my group who were by clinical definition incomprehensible. Sometimes people would wander from the group or I’d end early and someone would want to keep talking. To the average person, and I’m sure many of the workers there, the babble was pointless, but there was one particular man who sought me out every time he saw me. And when he said something like “There isn’t anyway to know the ticking and I don’t know where my home is but I know there’s some fact in that”, I’d say something like “it’s hard when we feel lost and can’t find home” or “there’s a lot we can know in the world, and not know”.

This wasn’t easy. I stumbled a lot over my words, trying to keep up with his thoughts, and maybe nothing I said ever resonated as clearly as these words are registering to you as a reader. I wouldn’t know, I’ve never had someone approach me in this way during my worst moments. But it did something. Sometimes the group was just us, and we’d talk like that, back and forth, for fifty minutes. He’d always shake my hand before I left, and this was one of the people the staff “warned” me about, said he could get unruly, loud, disruptive, and although I can never confirm the way I spoke with him as a clear reason why he never appeared aggressive with me, I can say that our conversations were always even tempered, relaxed, human.

I do not advocate for this as the ONLY form of treatment. Acute episodes are terrifying, traumatic, confusing, they require many things. But staff shouting, tackling people, and being argumentative doesn’t reduce the terror, the trauma, or the confusion. I CAN say that.

So, there are positive things to come out of the idea and possibly the practice of modern psychoanalysis and psychodynamics. Let’s be clear though: Freud was wildly inept as a scientist. All of his hypotheses were derived from case studies and never tested with experiments or even standardized self-report data.

Scrolling along some text in my personality book, some reading for classes during COVID, this author caught my attention when he compared the natural course of entropy in the universe to the entropy of our thoughts. Essentially, entropy focuses on how ordered systems, over long periods of time and inevitably, tend toward disorder. Freud had a similar sense about the mind, says this author, and insisted that we attempt to order our thoughts and lives for the sake of our own creativity and growth. Entropy dooms these efforts.

Freud describes his philosophical understanding of his own hypotheses in terms of libido (NOT just sex drive, but a life energy) and thanatos, (not Thanos as I had read, but a drive toward “death”). Libido described one part of the brain designating energy for a process, and in that time such energy could not be used anywhere else in the brain. We know this not to the be the entire story now. Thanatos was not a wish for death, or a fear of it, but was this very recognizable, a very EASTERN idea that everything contains its opposite.

This is essentially a less developed, disorganized form of YinYang. It’s presented in the textbook as quite a novel idea. But Eastern cultures and indigenous cultures across the globe, have held this collective understanding for centuries. Reading philosophy on the duality of life is what helped me come to terms with my psychosis. Freud didn’t do it first, I promise. If anything, he was super late to the party.

He called his version of YinYang the “doctrine of opposites”. While I refrained from rolling my eyes at this, his “doctrine” maintains that everything requires and implies its opposite. That is, life needs death, sadness needs happiness, and one cannot exist without the other. If you’re curious how this really lines up with YinYang, I’d recommend getting in touch with someone who knows this philosophy well, or reading the basics in this post here.

Why is any of this relevant?

I think what I learned, and am still learning, is that pain is not as simple as we want it to be. There cannot be pain without no pain, and there cannot be no pain without pain. You can’t fix your thoughts with medication, therapy, electric shocks, substance abuse. You can’t be broken without also being together. Unifying the good and the bad, not separating them, not fighting with one over the other, has been the key to many of our successes.

You cannot be ill without also being well. That is the message here. If you identify with mental illness, then you identify, also, with mental wellness; there is harmony in the illness, and disharmony in the wellness. We see this often: there are advantages to being anxious sometimes. For me, I know my anxiety makes me more prepared during stressful events. Because i’m panicking all the time, I don’t panic when others do. I’m often a voice of reason. There are disadvantages to being happy: for me, I get wary of this gentle contentment I’ve come to over the years, because of the imminent threat of not being happy again.

A lot of people view that latter statement as a struggle particularly of clinical depression or bipolar. I don’t see it that way anymore. I recognize that is the duality of things: there is inherent unhappiness in happiness. That’s the nature of things.

Labeling the thoughts as defective is the result of the depression, and part of the struggle. Accepting the truth in pain and the dissatisfaction in wellness is recovery.

What do you think?

Curious about research, news, and a community dedicated to “Eliminating Barriers to the Treatment of Mental Illness”? Check out TreatmentAdvocacyCenter.org for more information, as well as support for COVID-19. This post isn’t sponsored by them, I just stumbled across their site and found it highly useful.

For updates on posts, research, and conversations, follow me:

Instagram: @written_in_the_photo

Twitter: @philopsychotic

If you enjoyed this post, please share, like, and follow ThePhilosophicalPsychotic. I appreciate every reader and commentator. You give me more reason to continue this joyous hobby.

Posted in Community, psychology, science, travel

The Do’s and Don’ts of COVID-19

Posted on by alidware

My social media break has officially broken, and I am back amid panic, turmoil, and pandemic simply because being quarantined means there is nothing better to do than browse social media, panic more, and then realize that fear is more constrictive than any virus outbreak could be.

If this pandemic has been affecting your Mental Health, you’re not alone. Even if you understand the numbers are not as bad as the media portrays, even if you understand that over 90% of the people who may come in infectious contact with the virus recovery well, with mild to moderate symptoms, the tension in the air, the way people drive, the mad scramble for food, toiletries, and essentials can twist a lot of stress in your body.

So, what should we do and what shouldn’t we do during this time?

DO:

Maintain as regular as a routine as you can. Enjoy healthy meals, and try to avoid stress eating sweets and other things that not only compromise your mental health but your immune health. Exercise in nature if applicable to you: there are forests, state parks, beaches, where you can get a healthy bout of endorphins running and kick your immune system up. The gym isn’t the only place in the world to get exercise.

DONT:

Eat a pot full of garlic and think that will protect you. Chances are, you may come in contact with this virus. This chance, depending on where you live, is either very low or very high. Don’t pretend like staying in your house and sleeping all day is healthy; in fact, it could compromise you more. Fit in exercise and health where you can and however you can.

DO:

Listen to science. For the sake of your neighbors, your friends, your family, LISTEN TO SCIENCE. The facts are there. Yes, COVID-19 is indeed SARS-cov-2, according to the CDC. Yes, there are many cases. But the numbers show a different story than the media. It’s important to help curb the spread, just as it would be for any new infectious virus no matter how severe, but the fact is there are so many people in the United States who haven’t been tested, who have probably come in contact with the virus, been sick, stayed home, recovered, and are now not being counted as a COVID-19 case. This means the survival rate and infection rate is higher than being reported. This means, most likely, you’ll be okay.

Dont:

Act only in SELF-PRESERVATION. Stores are sold out of all cold, flu, and cough medicine, toilet paper, meat, and cleaning essentials. This is NOT the end of the world. By hoarding items, you are SELFISH. By hoarding masks, you are CARELESS. Most likely, especially if you are in the U.S right now, you will NOT get sick. Buying three bottles of Tylenol ISN’T NECESSARY. Masks are for the MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS taking care of the SEVERELY ILL. If you are standing in Safeway with a cart full of items right now reading this, chances are you AREN’T SEVERELY ILL. Chances are, you won’t ever be.

It was advised people get enough items for 2 weeks of self-quarantine, IF NECESSARY.

Six bottles of bleach? That’s going to last you two months, if not more.

Seven boxes of Tylenol? You’ll kill yourself. Even if you did get sick, you couldn’t continuously use it at the rate you would need to to finish seven boxes in fourteen days.

This selfishness is why people are panicking. It’s how the virus will continue to spread. It’s why young people aren’t taking anything seriously, it’s why many people aren’t social-distancing–the hysteria is off-putting, it makes it seem unimportant. So, by hoarding food, house items, and cough medicine, you’re single-handedly increasing the chances of this infection spreading quicker and harder. Those of us who are young are the ones MOST LIKELY to SPREAD this infection without knowing it. Instead of facing this scientifically, intelligently, which would make most of us young folks pay better attention, everyone is facing this hysterically, with misinformation.

Thank you, apocalypse shoppers, for ruining our chances of a speedy, national recovery.

DO:

Wash your hands for at least 20-30 seconds. If you weren’t doing that before, I’m worried. Disinfect surfaces frequently, and personal items like keys, your phone, and the inside of your car, if you want to be extra cautious.

DONT:

Touch your face or put strange objects in your mouth. If you’re anything like me, and a writer, this can be tough if you are, well, writing with a pen. I used to bite on my pens in mid-thought. Can’t be doing that right now.

DO:

Understand that if you get sick, you have a very high chance of being okay. People are dying, and that can’t be overlooked. There are some young people who lose the battle, and many older folks, most of which (from both categories) have some type of underlying cardiac or other health condition. If you smoke, your lungs will have a harder time to push back against this illness. And even still, there are some people in their 80’s and 90’s who are surviving, and some people with underlying conditions who are surviving. This is not endgame.

DONT:

Pretend like you can’t get sick just because you’re young. You can, and if it doesn’t become severe, that’s wonderful. Problem is, you will spread your germs and get the vulnerable population sick. Again, stop acting in SELF-PRESERVATION. Everything isn’t always about YOU. Sorry if that hurts your feelings. Start acting like a community. Start showing some compassion and intelligence. Keep yourself healthy, keep your neighbors healthy. It doesn’t take six bottles of bleach and all the food in Trader Joe’s to keep you healthy. Stop being stupid.

DO:

If you have mental health issues, don’t forget about self-care. Focus on activities you like. Read, write. Play video games, watch television, have a laugh. Engage in news and stories and conversation that isn’t just about COVID-19. Stay updated on current local information, but do not become consumed by it. Unlike COVID-19, panic can spread through the internet and radio.

DON’T:

Spend all your time listening to White House addresses if you’re in the U.S. For the love of God.

DO:

Recognize that people are hurting. The stories coming out of Italy are heartbreaking. Take this seriously without losing yourself.

DON’T:

Become a doomsdayer or conspiracy theoriest. Wait until the global emergency is over for all that.

The world is in so much pain right now, and is so confused. China has made great efforts and cases of COVID-19 have been drastically reduced. Recovery surpassed 80% there, days ago. This will pass.

Every once in a while, humans need to be reminded that we aren’t impenetrable. We aren’t immortal. We aren’t invincible. We’ve gotten so cocky on Earth, we think we know everything, think we can have a sustainable life with the way we purge natural resources. This pain on a global scale isn’t necessarily what we deserve, but it is a reminder that we are only organisms. There is so much more to life than money, jobs, school, Apple T.V, Trump, drugs, sex. And when our life gets disrupted, look how we crumble. Look how fast we are to only save ourselves. Life always, always has a way of curbing arrogance. Always.

We’re not curbing this virus. It’s curbing us.

For updates on posts, research, and conversation, follow me:

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Twitter: @philopsychotic

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Posted in Late Night Thoughts, psychology, Therapy, travel

What Does Stability Look Like For You?

Posted on by alidware

For some of us this simply means having three meals a day, our medication, an income (social security included) and a permanent roof over our head. For others that means a more than comfortable income, a full-time job, a family, and spare time to travel. Some of us haven’t asked ourselves about stability because it feels elusive.

Feeling Lost

This happens. Stability isn’t born out of stability, it’s born out of troubles and pain and the murky mist of a labyrinth; we are lost before we are found. Understanding that this pain exists because it must, because even pain needs space to breathe, is the first step to accepting the present.

It’s true some people are perpetually lost. There are those of us without shelter, without family, wandering the streets at the mercy of our madness. With poor resources and a poor outlook on mental health recovery, not enough people receive the services they deserve. Chances are, because you’re reading this now, you aren’t that person.

This does not mean compare your life. This does not mean you should feel guilty for having food, shelter, and family while still being in tremendous agony–it’s illogical to compare pains. We all struggle, we all suffer, and that’s that. What it means is that you are not perpetually lost. It means you have a greater chance at recovery. That’s a fact.

Because you have a greater chance at recovery, you also have a chance to help those without your advantage. You can give back. You can have purpose and be fulfilled while fulfilling.

In this we see that being lost is not a time to mourn. It is not a sign of predestined suffering or eternal pain. Being lost is an experience to be grateful for. It’s an experience that teaches us to teach others.

A Change of Perspective

Such a change of perspective isn’t a simple jump from “negative” to “positive”, but a deeper understanding of the beauty of pain and the expectations of happiness.

We often have a vain idea of what happiness means. This can turn into us holding ourselves to unrealistic standards, and when that standard isn’t met, we crumble, our self-worth tied up in our expectations.

We can also have a clear but misguided understanding of pain: we disregard it, try to ignore it, hate it, cry over it, damn it to hell. Therefore we glaze over areas of pain that help us grow, that show us what we really want for ourselves. When we break out of the darkness and into the light, we get wary of the brightness in anticipation of pain, completely discounting the contribution pain had made–if it were not for that darkness, we may not have had the opportunity to experience the light.

Rather than try and predict our pain, rather than set unrealistic expectations of happiness, a balanced absorbance of both experiences, no matter how rough or how euphoric, can present a new way of living, one in which we experience the rawness of ourselves.

Where will you go?

And so my question for you all is where will life take you? Where will pain take you? Where will happiness take you? What journeys can you start and end?

Dramatic change can yield dramatic results.

Stability for me is a comfortable income, a travel plan, proper meals, exercise, and a compassion toward my inner demons, without which I would be heavily medicated, deeply depressed, and unrealistically expecting a miracle.

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Posted in Emotions, psychology, Supporting Friends/Family, Therapy

Distractions: For Better, or For Worse?

Posted on by alidware

One of the popular coping mechanisms most often quoted by self-help websites, short articles, or purported “ways to help your anxiety” is distractions.

Distractions range from averting your attention to a video or a game to focusing on a particular object in the room. It can be reading, running, homework, or even social media. All of these tactics can be considered a way to remove your thought from dark, confusing, or anxiety riddled thoughts.

If you use distractions, I’d love to hear your experience with them. I will base this analysis on my experiences and the trainings I’ve participated in.

Distractions are often used in all states of frustration, but are commonly suggested for anxiety and depression. In anxiety, these are used as grounding techniques. Some distractions, like averting your attention to something in the room, is just that; you become more aware of the present, more aware of your body in the present, and less aware of the circular thoughts or racing heart rate (depending on your level of anxiety).

I have found this can be quite effective in myself, particularly when it comes down to the pre-panic state: you know, when you feel that warm, familiar wave of dread pass from your head to your toes, when your heart rate starts pumping hard, and your first thought is: here it comes. I had that moment in my old car one day. Terrified, I defaulted to what my therapist at the time suggested—look around and describe an object out loud. And so I did. By the time the light turned green, my panic had reduced over 50%.

None of the other techniques worked well for my anxiety. I found when watching a video, the voices in the videos became background noise to my own anxious circular reasonings. I couldn’t gain enough focus for reading, and any quiet activity (including meditation) only made me more aware of my racing heart. Often these distractions served to increase my anxiety.

Years ago I had taken a psychology course and learned more in depth about the executive functioning of the frontal lobe. I learned about the analytical and reasoning skills which often reside there. I also happened to be taking integral calculus at the time, and noticed a stark reduction in my anxiety while immersed in math.

You could hypothesize this was because the activity of math is very distracting; your focus is not on your thoughts or the world around you, your focus is on using the extremely helpful acronym ILATE (Integer, Logarithmic, Algebraic, Trig, Exponent) to decide how to tackle an integration by parts problem.

I tend to hypothesize that the brain activity that requires math can ease a flight/fight response. I tested my hypothesis a few times only on myself (that means, don’t take this THAT seriously, it’s an IDEA, not a FACT, and I had no control to PROVE that the brain activity required makes a difference). In my pre-panic mode, I did some calculus. Twenty minutes later I had finished my homework and forgot what I’d been so anxious about.

I didn’t just test it with calculus. I tried puzzles too, like Sudoku. It had a calming effect, but not with the same intensity. I used Algebra and easier, grade-school level math. The effect seemed equal to that of calculus. I hypothesized that something about the structure of formula, organization, and arithmetic calmed that flight/fight/panic sense more so than just the logical part of the activity (as we’d see in the solving of puzzles like Sudoku). If you’d like to read a little more about arithmetic, brain development, and implications, you can check out this study here, and browse the references too. I’d like to study this for real one day.

But for depression, this didn’t seem to be the case. I couldn’t muster the energy or the cognitive functioning required for math when depressed. In fact, I couldn’t muster either for any task and found myself lazing away, not bathing, not working, not seeing hope in a future.

Distractions for depression seemed illogical to me, even when I sat contemplating suicide. I didn’t want to put a bandaid on a broken leg, I wanted a way to fix the leg, I wanted something to snap the bone back in place so I could recover properly. Distractions never seemed to do this. Even when a distraction, like zoning out on YouTube, kept me from thinking about dying, I had to watch the videos constantly to get rid of the thoughts. And even then they’d sneak in.

Distractions for depression come from this ideal, I think, that thoughts of suicide and other painful things are inherently wrong. We shouldn’t be having them, so until we can get rid of them indefinitely, or as a way to stop you from acting of them, we put you in front of a screen or a book or the internet. Rather than encourage an exploration of the pain, we must remind you how wrong your pain is by suggesting you do everything possible to stray from it.

But if your pain is a Cougar, the last thing you want to do is turn your back and run.

And so we come to this conclusion similar to many things in psychology: both are right. Distractions can be useful until they become a life-line, until they become the only coping mechanism.

We could also safely say that there isn’t some finite list of coping mechanisms. I didn’t learn how precious math was to me until I experimented with my own inferences; a therapist would have never said, “hey, try math!”. This highlights something important about our mental health journeys, I think, and that something is: explore. There is no limit on what will or won’t help; try everything until there’s nothing else to try. And then try something else, because there’s always something else to try.

We get trapped under this idea that because something works for one person, it should work for us too. Problem is life doesn’t work like that. Distractions may save you pain. Distractions may cause you more pain. Medication may work, medication may not work. There is no perfect treatment because we understand maybe 1/6886th of the brain and its complexities. That should put you at ease, right?

If you have a particularly unique coping mechanism you’d like to share, pop it down below or find me on social media (also below).

I send updates on posts on Twitter and Instagram. I’ve also started a Writing Schedule: new posts will be on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. If an idea can’t wait, I will post on a Sunday or a Monday (follow my Social Media accounts for that).

And as always, thank you for reading.

For updates on posts, research, and conversation, follow me:

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Posted in Community, science, Therapy

A Broken System: What We Can Do.

Posted on by alidware

I cited an alarming statistic in my post Is Psychology A Science Part 1 (which you can read at the given link) that one of my research professors cited: there are about 40,000 psychological research papers published each year, and, on average, clinical psychologists read about 1 a month. That’s .03% of all research papers. I unfortunately don’t have a statistic for psychiatrists. I’ll work on getting one.

If our doctors are not keeping up with current successful treatments, it means they are also not keeping up with current unsuccessful treatments, which get weeded out in research as well. Remember, the whole point of science is to prove ourselves wrong so we may find what is right. But if we go around thinking we know what’s right (i.e, relying solely on intuition and clinical arrogance), we’ll never investigate what’s wrong. And that’s so backward.

And so the question becomes what can we do to make up for this deficit?

Possible Options:

Educate Ourselves:

This requires us to think differently. Many of us are deep in our pain, and that’s okay. It’s okay to hurt, it’s okay to lack the ability (right now) to do everything you need for yourself. Your goal, at this very moment, is to be kind and compassion to your needs.

Part of being compassionate to your needs is caring for your health. And in order to do that, we often rely on the knowledge of our doctors. This can be more unhealthy behavior however, because it’s giving up our sense of independence and ability to navigate our mind by ourselves.

Some of us don’t have any other option at the moment and I recognize this. When I got released from the hospital, I needed my doctors to listen and manage my medication. They at least managed my medication. This was productive for a crisis. But not sustainable as long-term treatment. It’s not studied for long-term treatment.

Educating ourselves and participating in our treatment can enhance our wellness. If you have access to a college student, or are a college student, primary sources are the best form of knowledge. If this is unfamiliar territory to you, take a quick glance at one of my other posts How To Read A Psychological Research Paper.

If you are not a student and don’t know a student or professional with access to journals, contact me if you want articles on a specific topic. I can provide some.

Secondary sources like textbooks and articles online (including mine) can be okay as long as you take careful note of their references and click on the primary sources they’ve cited. If they haven’t cited primary sources or don’t include references, there’s a good chance the information isn’t reliable.

Any researched information you can present to your doctors and psychologists as ways to participate in your treatment.

Social Media:

This is a strange option because there’s a lot of unreal, invalid information on Social Media. But there’s quite a large mental health community on social media, particularly Twitter and Instagram. Facebook, I’m sure, has one as well. There are researchers who post relevant articles and information which you can investigate.

I don’t suggest spending a lot of time on social media if you are prone to depression. There has been lively debate on whether people spend more time online because they are depressed or if being online too much makes people depressed. Studies are showing more and more that feelings of isolation are increased by online use, not the other way around. Here’s one study. I’m sure there are many more.

If you can balance your health and internet usage, I’d suggest finding people online who model wellness. Not only can you find people who have experienced what you experience, but you can find people who have tried different avenues of treatment and have other perspectives. One of the worst things we can do for ourselves is allow our mindset to be fixed on one perspective.

On social media, there are advocacy groups and pages. You can find programs near you, conventions near you (if that’s something you’re into you), and you can get involved. Giving back can restore a sense of purpose for us, and that is a step in renewing self-esteem.

Think Outside of The Box:

Investigate different perspectives. Build the courage to try new things, not only in treatment but in your everyday experience. For example, my hair was always long, curly, frizzy, and a nice shield between me and the world. I hid behind it in grade school, along with bundling in thick sweaters and baggy jeans, even in the summer. I needed to protect myself because I felt unsafe everywhere and around everyone. When I started shedding sweaters for T-Shirts, I gained a sliver of confidence from it; I was more open and people could sense that. Because people sensed that, they were more likely to smile and/or talk to me.

This month, I chopped off all my hair. The sides are shaved, and the top is a cute, curl-hawk. For me, it symbolized my need to stop hiding. I have to put myself out there, experience new things, make rash decisions, make planned decisions, and enjoy my life. It took 8 solid years of mental health work, psychosis, depression, and deep pain to reach a point in life where I had enough confidence to do this.

And so I encourage all of us to remember if something isn’t working, don’t keep doing. If you are someone who wants to stay on medication and your current medication isn’t working, the next logical step is to try a new one, correct? Treat other therapeutic options the same way. If one type of therapy or therapist or psychiatrist isn’t working, try a different one. If no medication has ever worked, try another option. If you’re tired of living one way, live another.

There is nothing that says we must stay stagnant. There is nothing that says we must endure the same pain over and over again. The only people placing limitations on us is us.

These are only a few things we can do as consumers to promote our own wellness while navigating a system filled with cracks. Feel free to post your own ideas in the comments bellow, or contact me on social media/email. People seem to like DMs on Instagram the best.

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Posted in advocacy, Peer Support, Supporting Friends/Family

About Mental Illness

Posted on by alidware

I recently learned in a personality psychology course that the effect size in regard to how much words make a difference to people is very small. I’m currently trying to find studies which either argue for or against this, but in the meantime I decided I’d write a short blurb about it.

I’ve found nothing becoming about the term “mental illness”. It feels defaming and self-deprecating. I don’t really consider myself disordered and I’ve been ambivalent about the term schizophrenia and schizoaffective. And if I find these studies accurate, verifiable, and reliable, than I suppose none of this really matters.

I’ve been hung up on it since I was 14. In the CCMD, one of volumes, I remember reading schizophrenia was labeled as “Integration disorder” or something similar. I read a lot of books describing mental struggles as strengths, describing medication as poison, describing this idea of “illness” as bad. I agreed, and to some degree I still do.

But I’m learning to drop the words, really. It’s not about what you want to call it. Call it Schizophrenia, call it Integration disorder, call it Mental Illness, Disorder, Disease (even though there’s not enough actual scientific evidence to prove the disease part), call it whatever you want to call it because regardless we’re all talking about the same experiences. We’re all talking about the same pain, the same beauty, the same horror, the same frustration. The issue comes when people internalize the concept of illness.

The issue comes when someone loses sight of the rest of their future because they’re being told they need to take medication for the rest of their life and they can’t work, they won’t be normal, and everything has to change now–for the worst.

This is a problem because us humans are infamous for letting go of alternative possibilities when we’re provided an answer. This happens to be scientifically proven.

What I mean is, if our answer is: “take meds for the rest of your life”, our brains don’t automatically respond with “I need to find some stable ground, heal myself, and maybe find a way to not take so much medication/taper off. Or maybe I won’t. I need to explore all my options”.

When the answer is: “you’ll have this for the rest of your life”, our brains don’t automatically respond with “I may have this for the rest of my life, I also may not. What are other options?”

No, we say, shit, I have to take these meds. If I don’t, I’ll be unwell again. This is my life line.

We say, shit, I’m doomed. This has ruined my life. There’s nothing I can do.

Sometimes life experiences and therapy and friends and support forces help us see that our life isn’t ruined. Sometimes we can get off medication, and sometimes we can’t. What’s hard for me to swallow is that a lot of us don’t ever get to the point where we can consider either point of view. What’s hard for me to swallow is that when we try and advocate for each other, we do so from the perspective of “illness” instead of “wellness”.

We glamorize this idea that “I live with a mental illness and I’m doing well.” We have that weird AA group mentality of powerlessness. Studies show AA is actually quite ineffective and having been in both AA groups and Al-anon, I find them very cult-ish. I’ve also met countless people who have been saved by AA, NA, and other support groups based in “higher-power” thinking.

But essentially, if all our power comes from us being powerless, then we’re not actually powerful. We’re not anything really, but a pawn. A puppet, maybe. We let ourselves be pulled by the strings of our “disease” or disorder and we find no other avenues of compromise because we are powerless. Sometimes we feel because we made a choice to be powerless, we are empowered. Other times we argue against this adamantly, that we “manage” our illness, and “we don’t let it control us”. But the thing that all these black and white views have in common is fear. The fear, and knowledge, that we can’t control anything.

Why do we need to? That’s the question I ask everyone who presents me with this argument. Why is control even an aspect here? When you are in a healthy relationship or friendship with someone, and you have a disagreement, do you let them decide everything for you, your thoughts and feelings, because you’re powerless against them? Do you shout back and yell and scream and punch them? Hopefully not! Hopefully you don’t engage in either activity. Hopefully you engage in compromise.

When you’re in an unhealthy relationship, if someone is abusive, the partner often submits, terrified, hopeless in an uncontrollable situation. I am guilty of trying to force my thoughts and my mind into submission: I abused myself. My mind is guilty of trying to trap me in madness; my mind abused me.

But if we can engage with compromise with others, if we can strive for balance, if each person can have equal say and equal pull, if I can influence my mind and feel safe allowing my mind to influence me, then the issue of power and control is eliminated. We are free.

Is the healthy opposite of not being able to control anything absolute submission? Is the healthy opposite of powerlessness absolute power?

And so I don’t subscribe to the concept of being mentally ill. I accept that I experience moods and delusions and hallucinations indicative of what we’ve categorized as schizoaffective. But I am not a pawn. To be submissive, to feel I either need all of the control or I shouldn’t have any control, is ill to me. And so I don’t consider myself ill.

I’ve tried very hard to avoid the term “mentally ill” because of this. But hearing about these studies and their small effect size has got me wondering if any of it really matters. It’s got me wondering if the actual concept of mental illness can be looked at differently now.

It’s got me wondering if we will ever get away from this “sick not weak” hashtag.

It’s got me wondering if we will ever see ourselves as having potential for balance, for real vitality again, for health and wealth, without also having to mention the name of our disorder.

I honestly don’t care if you’re a writer with schizophrenia. I just care that you’re a writer, and a damn good one. I care about what you write. I care that you’re living well and are happy. If you have schizophrenia, great! If you don’t, great!

Let’s empower each other’s wellness, not our illness.

PS: I never said this was a site of popular opinions, or popular science.

I stray from popular for a reason. Popularity usually invalidates authenticity.

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Posted in science, Therapy, Voices

Where Research In Re-Framing Our Thoughts Could Take Us

Posted on by alidware

We get consistent word from our therapists that if we re-frame our thoughts, we can change the way we think, the way we perceive things, and that will ultimately help us cope with life. This is often done with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, which is a very proven (as in scientifically) therapeutic method.

There are people who praise this method for saving their lives and others who don’t, and CBT takes a lot of work–a hell of a lot of work. You won’t see results if you don’t take it seriously, and if you’re anything like me, it’s hard to take it seriously when you’re heavily depressed or so anxious you want to jump from your skin. Let me give some background on why this topic is so interesting today.

Amidst all the anxiety this morning, I spiraled down with thoughts of failure, pain of where I am in my life right now versus where I could be, and felt out of place in the classroom; other students whispered about me, and thought very loudly about me. I lost focus in the lecture and I felt bad about that.

The professor popped a meme up on the screen of some woman with a stack of papers at work scribbling maddeningly and saying “this is a two-cupcake Friday”.

I don’t remember what this portion of lecture was about, or if the meme was even relevant, but through all my cloudy thoughts and thoughts of the students around me, one of my voices said calmly “you’re having a bad day.”

And I was. But the significance of this is far greater than just that realization.

Another thing therapy shoves down our throat is that our problems which feel permanent and hopeless are often temporary and malleable. In the moment, I felt miserable. I thought I was falling into another depression, that I’d spent the last year and a half off meds and this day, today, was going to be the day I decided to go back on them because I just couldn’t take the pain anymore.

It’s been a hard three weeks, and to ignore all of those factors and conclude “it’s just my brain making me mental again” would be foolish. I’ve been stressed, and today has been particularly difficult: I had a bad day. There’s nothing else to look at.

Multiple things came to mind as a result of this voice presenting his softer side. The first was–I tell myself the very same thing all the time. I’ll say to myself, “Ugh, today is a bad day.” And I’ll recognize it, but the reality doesn’t always sink in. And so I thought, as I sat through my second course more invigorated and positive, are we more likely to believe others about our true state of self, of being, than we are to believe ourselves?

Let’s look at this through two lenses:

The Theory Behind It All:

  1. Personality Research Shows that friends/family are more accurate in describing things we may be good at, like school/work. (Look up INFORMANT JUDGEMENTS and studies by Connolly (2010).)
  2. Research in this area also shows friends/family are better than us at predicting our personality traits like contentiousness and openness.
  3. Some personality researchers focus only on showing how much we DON’T know about ourselves (like WHY we think the way we do, or WHY we did something/feel something).
  4. Researcher Carol Dweck studied growth/fixed mindset and the influence on intelligence. In her study, children were influenced with praise on their intelligence versus praise on their effort. The study didn’t have anything to do with the effect of the words, but the outcome. Still, the words had a great effect on the thoughts of the children.

The Questions That Now Arise:

1.We are our largest critics, so they say. Why does it seem we doubt the POSITIVE things we tell ourselves, but are convinced of the NEGATIVE things about ourselves?

2. Can we use this possibility to our advantage?

3. For those of us who hear voices, can we train our voices to re-frame their approach, or do they naturally mature as emotional stability improves and coping mechanisms enhance state of living/being?

4. What makes us more likely to believe NEGATIVE things about ourselves versus POSITIVE things?

5. What makes us put more weight on OTHERS words versus our own?

6. How could research in this area of behavior and cognition help further treatment and therapies for psychosis?

These are passing thoughts I had during my second and last lecture. I wondered about it because I had been soothing myself all morning, giving myself reminders that my anxiety is bad, I’m not having a heart attack, that I’m just having a bad day. The moment my voice reiterated that, relief washed over my body. Suddenly, my heart rate slowed and I could focus in class. My head wasn’t as clouded and I went to my second lecture in a great mood–partly because I was fascinated at the effect he had on me.

And so the wonder continues: there is no argument that when a voice tells you you’re worthless, or stupid, or that you’re going to die, you feel immediate dread, sadness, anger. Therefore, were one to tell you something positive, it seems reasonable the same intensity, but positive (happiness, comfort, contentment) has the potential to flow through you. The problem is there isn’t a lot of research in helping people unite with their voices, nor with themselves, regardless of whether they hear voices or not.

When I attended a Hearing Voices Workshop in San Francisco, the man in the couple leading the discussion heard voices and had just been diagnosed with dementia. They’d been spending time training his voices to remember things for him. According to his self-report, and his wife’s informant judgement, it had been working.

This would be regarded as a case study and we can’t put a lot of weight on those scientifically. But it can be a catalyst for real research and potentially a new therapeutic avenue for soothing psychosis.

It seems that we need affirmation when it comes to positive things about ourselves. It seems we need someone to agree with us, or remind us, that yes, we are safe. Yes, we are okay. Yes, this too shall pass. Yes, you are strong, yes you are this, yes you are that. It’s as if we have the inability to create that foundation for ourselves and truly believe it.

But when it comes to the negative things, our failures or short comings, we take them at face value. We don’t need someone telling us “yeah dude, you failed”, for us to think of ourselves as a failure. In fact, someone affirming our negative beliefs about ourselves seems to make it more likely we’ll believe that in the future, whereas someone affirming our positive traits/beliefs doesn’t.

What could this mean? How could we study it?

Many of us may internalize what trauma we’ve experienced as children or adults and so the automatic sense of “everything is horrible” may influence our natural thought. But even among memories of trauma and experiences of trauma, we had moments of great fun. I grew up with my dad being violent and using drugs, terrorizing my house. But I have equally intense, positive memories of being out in the garden with him, planting tomatoes and helping him work on his cars.

Why is it that the negative becomes the basis of my emotional foundation? And can we use what we know (and can still learn ) about this very automatic bias to creative equally positive, habitual thoughts?

I suppose it’s worth mentioning that since one of my False Angels reminded me I’m “just having a bad day”, I haven’t heard anyone else talking, my anxiety is at a steady, manageable level, and I’m more motivated than ever to finish this degree and research.

And to think: I’ve ignored them for SO long.

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