• Connecting to every aspect of your life is difficult but is at the core of allowing your body to heal.
• “Being” with your past may be challenging but is necessary in order to learn and grow.
•  It is the opposite of pursuing self-esteem, which separates you from you.
• The “C” quence is connection, confidence, and creativity. Creativity is where deep healing happensthrough neuroplasticity.

Connecting to your past provides “neuroshment”¹ for healing.

Safety vs. threat

Feeling safe is a basic need and core driving force of life. We’ll resort to whatever means required in order to achieve it. A state of safety allows growth, regeneration, optimum function, good health, and a deep sense of contentment. Feeling threatened causes your body to go into a “flight or fight” reaction, which consists of stress hormones, increased fuel consumption, excitatory neurotransmitters, inflammation, and anxiety. A term for this reaction is, “threat physiology”.

Life is sustainable because the body regenerates and heals, but it must be in a safe state for enough time to refuel, strengthen, and build up reserves to fight another day. Even severe stress can be dealt with when there is enough time in safety to regenerate. So, healing happens by decreasing time in threat and increasing time in safety. These are separate, but linked sets of skills. One is using methods to lower the levels of stress chemicals and the other is learning to nurture joy.

This journey is reflected in a metaphor of a tree that I call, the “C”quence of healing allowing you go from reactive to creative.

• Connection
• Confidence
• Creativity

CONNECTION – the soil

The ground represents every second of your entire past and is the source for learning and future growth. There is one major root in any tree, called the taproot, which grows straight down in search of water and nutrients. The trees with deepest ones are found in harsh dry environments. A tree may initially show little growth for a few years until the taproot is more mature. Roots grow relentlessly and will even grow through rock. The more developed and complex the root system, the better the chances for survival and growth.

All humans have experienced some degree of trauma. Our needs are not always immediately met even in the best of circumstances, and adversity never stops. Many people have suffered severe, even extreme childhood trauma, and there is plenty more to be had in adulthood. We don’t feel good about it and might even feel ashamed.

As a result, considerable time and energy is spent on analyzing, fixing, covering up, whitewashing, or suppressing the past. Somehow, we feel that by spending a lot of time dealing with past, we’ll have a better life. The problem is that your attention is focused on the problems and not the solutions. Since your incredibly adaptable brain develops where you place your attention, you are magnifying the unpleasant aspects of your life. Focusing on fixing the past also requires a lot of energy that could be used in dealing with the present, and thriving.

“Neuroshment”

Specific skills are required to allow you to be with your past, as much of it may be unpleasant, painful, and difficult to be with. Digging in and being with your past is the opposite of seeking self-esteem. One patient who successfully broke free from 55 years of pain coined a term for using the past for future growth,“neuroshment.” Your brain physically changes its structure as it adapts to ongoing sensory input. This property is called neuroplasticity, and you can create the brain of your choice.

TRUNK—SKILLS

The trunk represents the confidence that emanates from being able to deal with every aspect of your life and not run from it. Since, there are many ways to effectively process the past, you are grounded and can deal with even severe adversity.

The term for this set of skills is “dynamic healing.” It acknowledges the interactions between you and your circumstances that create flight-or-fight body chemistry. There are many tools in each portal, none of them are difficult, but require learning and repetition to master them.

Anytime you are anxious or frustrated, you are reacting to something unpleasant from the past. You are in flight or fight, the blood flow to your neocortex (thinking brain). It is impossible to think clearly. You have also lost awareness of the present moment. These survival reactions are powerful, automatic, and you have no control over them. It is the reason that being with the past is difficult and specific tools are required to regulate your body back into safety. Deeply connecting with who you are provides “neuroshment” for future growth and confidence to deal with life’s challenges. This is a sharp contrast to seeking self-esteem to “feel better” about yourself. You are not grounded.

THE BRANCHES—CREATIVITY

Connection and confidence represent the skills needed to regulate your threat physiology, but healing occurs with creativity. Brain circuits are stimulated reflecting the life you want as you “rebuild” the brain (life) that you choose. You cannot “fix” yourself. Your attention is on the problem and where your brain will develop (neuroplasticity).

But you can’t pursue pleasure in order counteract the survival circuits. They are too powerful and relentless, and your creative brain doesn’t work well while in threat physiology. Pursuing pleasure to outrun your unpleasant survival sensations has been shown to increase inflammation.²

The concept of healing through creativity is possibly the most important and difficult to comprehend and put into action. We are programmed to react and fix and are uncomfortable letting go. But you must let to in order to move forward. If you take the letter “C” out from “reactive”, it becomes “Creative.” You must become aware, create some “space” to see first in order to be able to make rational choices.

Deep healing

Sustained stress keeps your body activated, breaks it down, and increases the odds of developing a chronic mental or physical disease. The relevant issues are the intensity, duration, and your coping skills. Consider how long it would take for your car to break down if you were driving down the freeway at 70 mph in second gear. What if the car (your body) wasn’t tuned up, hadn’t had regular service, or was a cheap model? Compare this scenario to cruising in a well-maintained luxury car in 5^th gear at the same speed. You could drive for a long time. Your body isn’t so different. What model of car are you and how are you caring for you?

Recap

“Neuroshment” from a complex root system and solid trunk, allows a tree to grow branches of all sizes. You willconnect into your creativity and train your brain to evolve in any direction. This is where the deepest healing occurs. You are moving towards joy and away from pain.

Nurturing joy requires skills that few of us are taught. Creativity requires awareness, and you must see “C” first in order to know where you are at and then make ongoing proactive choices.

In order to reach higher, you must first dig deeper. Consider a tree as a metaphor for your healing journey. Become a professional at living life and watch your life change from ReaCtive to Creative.

Questions and considerations

1. Many, if not most of us have a less than ideal past. The human experience is messy. What you perceived as dangerous as a child is probably not threatening as an adult. But your brain doesn’t know that and will continue to react similar cues.
2. How do you feel when your attention lands on emotionally difficult situations from the past or is triggered by an event today? Reassuring yourself that you are OK actually places your attention on the problem and reinforces it.
3. Connecting with every aspect of your past and allowing yourself to be with a wide range of unpleasant emotions causes them to lessen. However, the discomfort you feel may be intolerable. There are ways to train yourself to be with these feelings and move forward.
4. Consider how much effort we spend trying to “fix” ourselves. It can’t and doesn’t work. Remember when you felt that life had endless possibilities. How did it feel? That is where you want to return.
5. The most important shift in thinking about having a better life is that it happens by nurturing creativity and joy. But you have to let go in order to move forward. It is a daily ongoing process that allows you to “rebuild” your brain and live the life of your choice. Quit fighting darkness; turn on the lights.

References

1. Term coined by Rita Salvador who learned to thrive after being in chronic mental and physical pain for over 55 years.
2. Cole SW, et al. Social Regulation of gene expression in human leukocytes. Genome Biology (2007); 8:R189. doi: 10.1186/gb-2007-8-9-r189

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My first year in training

I will never forget my first holiday season as an internal medicine resident in Spokane, WA. I learned that the holidays are a nightmare for the medicine service, especially the GI service. Diabetics don’t take their insulin and their sugars go out of control. Cardiac patients don’t take their meds and are admitted for chest pain and abnormal rhythms. The GI service is the worst in that patients with liver disease drink more and develop major bleeding in their gut. People are depressed and the stress of the holidays puts them over the edge.

He died?

We had a resident’s clinic once a week. One of my favorite patients was an 80 year-old gentleman, who was as nice of a person as you could meet. He had some moderate lung disease but otherwise was fairly healthy. He was admitted to the hospital on Christmas Eve with respiratory failure. It didn’t make sense to any of us, as his lung disease wasn’t that severe. We had a whole team working intensely to solve the puzzle. It didn’t matter. He died two days later. During the course of the hospitalization I found out that his son who lived in Seattle had not invited him over for Christmas and he had become despondent. I have since learned that the will to die is as strong as the will to live.

My descent into loneliness

I could not figure  this increase in illness and depression over the holidays for many years – until I descended into my own anxiety-driven depression and chronic pain. There were many unpleasant (terrible) aspects of being in the abyss, but maybe the worst one was feeling alone. I am an extremely social person. As I became progressively more anxious and reactive I began to feel isolated. In retrospect I realize that a lot of this was occurring in my own head. My friends were not avoiding me. I was not interacting with them. While I was trying to survive the terror of raw anxiety I was not able to reach out to others. I became more withdrawn and felt uncomfortable even talking to people. Discovering I had NPD

Obsessive thought patterns

What began to happen is that I developed what I now recognize as an obsessive thought pattern (classic symptom of the Neurophysiologic Disorder) that everyone else had a better life than I did. It did not matter what the evidence was to the contrary. I could not shake that thought. The holiday season made it much worse. First, it reminded me of times that were much better and I felt even more sorry for myself. Secondly, people really seemed like they were having a better time than I was. (jealous/angry). Finally it seemed like the merriment around me was almost mocking my plight. For over 10 years I would become dark around the holidays.

I became socially isolated. I imagined that people just didn’t want to be around me and the story in my head became strong and convincing. Fortunately, I had a few people that I connected with that could see through the storm of my thoughts. It was that human connection that kept me going. But the feeling of loneliness was one of the worst aspects of my descent into chronic pain.

Social exclusion and the ACC

A study published in 2003 (1) looked at the brains of volunteers who were hooked up to a functional MRI scanner (fMRI) which highlights metabolic activity of the brain in response to different stimuli. The volunteers were visually involved in a computer game of “three way catch”. They were not told that the other two “players” were just the computer. At a certain point they were suddenly excluded from the game while the other two “players” threw the ball back and forth another 45 times. The volunteer would consistently feel excluded and experience emotional distress. Interestingly, a part of the frontal lobe, the ACC, would light up. This part of the brain is “the neural alarm system.” It lights up when something in the environment is not right or threatening. Not surprisingly pain is a basic signal that also lights up this area. This study documented that emotional pain lights up the same area.

So chronic pain creates yet another vicious loop. Pain lights up the ACC (anterior cingulate cortex). While in pain you feel much less inclined to be social, which then reinforces the stimulation of the ACC. You now have added emotional pain to the physical pain.

Where does chronic pain begin?

People need people. People need to connect first with themselves and then with others. There are many societal factors, in addition to chronic pain, that create social isolation. It is unclear whether the social isolation that stimulates this “neuro warning center” could be the starting point of chronic pain.

Omega

My wife, Dr. Fred Luskin, and I put on a five-day seminar at the Omega Institute last summer. There were 11 participants who experienced a significant shift in their mood and pain during the week. As they went back to their home environment some had their pain return and many remained relatively pain free. The essence of the week was that we were able to relax and connect with one another. My impression was that the environment allowed us to open up and share. The capacity of people to heal each other was powerful. (The workshop was July 19-24, 2015.) “The Cup Song??”

The holiday season during my burnout was the equivalent of being excluded from the computer game. I’m sure that if I was placed into a fMRI during that period my ACC would have lit up like a small nuclear reactor. The sense of social exclusion was crushing. My Battle With NPD

I was very fortunate to not only escape from the abyss, but thrive. I wish the same for you in 2016.

1. Eisenberger, Naomi, et al. “Does Rejection Hurt? An fMRI Study of Social Exclusion”. Science, 2003, pp. 290 – 292.

The post Happy Holidays – Not first appeared on Back in Control.

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• The “C”quence of healing is connection, confidence, and creativity.
• You must first become aware of and connect with all aspects of your past in order to move forward.
• Confidence originates from being deeply connected to it.
• It is the antithesis of pursuing self-esteem where your efforts are spent trying to outrun your past.
• Ironically, as you allow yourself to be with your unpleasant aspects of your past, self-esteem will grow.

In our efforts to feel better about the intentionally unpleasant feelings generated by our flight or fight physiology, we pursue self-esteem. It is mismatch of the powerful unconscious brain and your conscious part of it. You can’t win and the harder you try, the deeper you’ll sink into despair. It is also a universal problem. The opposite energy emanates from being with every aspect of your past instead of trying to outrun or mask it.

Going Deep

Consider a tree as a metaphor for your life. The soil represents your entire past and is the source for learning and future growth. There is one major root in any tree that is called the taproot. It grows straight down in search of water and nutrients. The trees with deepest ones are found in harsh dry environments. A tree may initially show little growth for a few years until the taproot is more mature. Roots grow relentlessly and will even grow through rock. The more developed and complex the root system, the better the chances for survival and growth.

All humans have some level of trauma. Our needs are not always immediately met even in the best of circumstance and adversity never stops coming at us. Many people have suffered severe, even extreme childhood trauma and there is plenty more to be had in adulthood. We don’t feel good about it and might feel ashamed of it. So, a lot of time and energy is spent on analyzing, fixing, covering up, whitewashing, or suppressing the past. Why wouldn’t we? Somehow, we feel that by spending a lot of time dealing with past, we’ll have a better life. The problem is that your attention is focused on the problems and not the solutions. It is where your brain will develop. It also requires a lot of energy that could be used in dealing with the present and thriving.

 Awareness – “C’ing”

The first step in problem solving is seeing ALL aspects of a given problem AND then having choices how to respond. To be creative, the “C/see” needs to be first. All of us know that certain phrases, behaviors, situations, people, etc. will elicit a fairly predictable and rapid reaction. You are reacting before you have even absorbed or comprehended the full scope of the problem. Consequently, you may make a flawed decision. Unfortunately, these learned reactions strengthen with age and repetition. The phrase, “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks” is an accurate phrase. It is not that the dog cannot be taught. Embedded reactive patterns of thinking must be broken up first.

Unawareness

The first step in cultivating deeper awareness is recognizing when you are unaware. Awareness is the opposite of projecting your perception of the world onto others and situations.

Clues include feeling anxious or angry, being critical or judgmental, holding onto rigid belief systems in any domain, gossiping, complaining, “being right”, not fully listening to other’s opinions, intolerance, labeling others, and creating an identity based on ideals. All of us engage in some of these actions every day. It is inherent in being human and having language. Suppressing these traits is even worse, in that you’ll have no hope for change if you don’t know where you are starting from. The key is nurturing awareness of these actions, observing them, and then deciding what to do next.

Without knowing you are unaware, you’ll continue to reinforce your current life outlook (self-image/esteem) with “input” that supports it. What is more problematic is that if you receive conflicting data, you’ll reject it. This is an even more powerful force in strengthening your outlook and “life filter.” How can you really learn and change? Continually projecting your views eventually becomes tedious and you’ll become more “set in your ways.” It is the way your brain works. The marketing world calls this phenomenon, “reactance”, and they use it to their advantage.¹

What are you connecting to?

The basic awareness that must be cultivated is understanding what are you connecting to? By default, you are connected to your past programming. Much of it is unpleasant and  you may be reinforcing the same trajectory deeper into the abyss. Or you may be trying to outrun it by pursuing pleasure. But since you cannot outrun your subconscious mind, it can’t and doesn’t work. A common approach is to achieve, acquire, and accomplish and create a life that appears wonderful to others but is not based on solid ground. The same adrenalized  energy that takes you up the mountain of “success” may cause you to fall down the other side. For example, consider the problem of “imposter syndrome.”

The connection that is necessary for growth is allowing yourself to feel regardless of how uncomfortable it may be. “You have to feel to heal,” has been said in almost every domain of mental health. Being OK with uncomfortable emotions is at the core of healing. This has been around well before modern neuroscience. As you resist unpleasant thoughts and emotions, you are inadvertently placing more attention to them, and they will flourish. That is not what you want.

Are you connecting to you or your ideals? It is common to pursue better self-esteem, which consists of the “stories” in our minds that we create in order to understand our place in the world. Unfortunately, most of these arise from who everyone else thinks we should be and by the time we are old enough to make our own way, our life lens is embedded in our nervous system. Many of these stories are cognitive distortions and have little to do with the reality right in front of us. As they become more repetitive thought patterns, they occupy a lot of our consciousness and push out our capacity for enjoyment.

There are many ways to train yourself to tolerate difficult and intrusive thoughts and emotions. Learning these skills to process stress is much different than trying to avoid it, suppress it, or remaining a victim.

“Neuroshment”

Anytime you are anxious or frustrated, you are reacting to something in the past that you perceived as dangerous or was dangerous. It can be a mental or physical threat. Digging in and being with your past is the opposite of seeking self-esteem.

The “soil” of your past is the source of “neuroshment” (2) for future growth. The ongoing question is, “what can I learn?” Be with the past, increase your awareness of your history, reactions, and be present with it all. Watch your self-esteem flourish.

References

1. Berger, Jonah. The Catalyst. Simon and Schuster, New York, NY, 2020.
2. Word invented and conceptualised by Rita Salvador who broke free after suffering for over 50 years.

Recap

Confidence emerges from being solidly anchored in every aspect of your past. Much of it is uncomfortable, but it is what is there. Suppressing or running from your past can’t work and consumes a tremendous amount of life energy. You also cannot make good decisions without knowing where you are starting from. You may require professional help to assimilate your past. Also understand that the “stories” you create can anchor you in it. Immerse yourself and use tools to break free. BTW, if you can connect and be with the “bottom” there is nowhere to go but up.

Questions and considerations

1. Your ego consists of the “stories” you create to present a confident front to the world. Why wouldn’t you? Being vulnerable is often punished.
2. Consider that when you are upset, it is often about defending your ego.
3. Are you able to tolerate unpleasant feelings? Do you avoid them?
4. Emotional pain shares similar brain circuits as physical pain. Why would you want to hurt? But where is the escape from these thoughts?
5. First learn to be with the pain and learn the strategies to move forward.

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 This blog is written in conjunction with Dr. Les Aria, who is an experienced pain psychologist working in Northern California. He brings a wide range of approaches into successfully treating and solving chronic mental and physical pain.

Being triggered and stressed is so common during the holidays that it is somewhat normalized. Yet hope springs eternal and we keep gravitating back to the same historically chaotic situations. Why do some levels of crises keep happening at Holiday family gatherings? This article is written with all due respect to those of you who are socially isolated, which is devastating and magnified during the Holiday season.

There are many ways to enjoy your family and close friends during this time of year regardless of their behaviors and your stresses. It is supposed to be a season of peace and joy. Understanding the nature of the problem allows solutions.

We acknowledge the many additional stresses around the holidays that have been discussed in many venues and numerous excellent suggestions have been made. However, once you have navigated the obstacles to actually being with your friends or family, it would be reasonable to expect to relax and enjoy them.

Defining a trigger

The basic problem arises from people in close relationships triggering each other. What does being “triggered” mean? We survive by learning from prior experiences what is safe or threatening. This includes your emotional states and consciousness, which are processed in a similar manner as physical threats. Many, if not most, of these mental threats are perceived and are based on cognitive distortions. It is the reason many of us have a baseline state of being “fired up.”

So, anytime you feel anxious or angry, something in the present has been connected to a situation in the past that was perceived as threatening or was dangerous. Your adult brain will still process it in the same manner. You have been triggered. The problem arises from the fact that you are now in the past and not the present. You have lost awareness of the present moment, which is at the core of functional human relationships.

As your earliest and most powerful programming happens with your immediate family, they are the strongest and most consistent triggers. Close relationships are not far behind. The deeper problem is that when you are in this state of threat physiology, the activity of your brain shifts from the neocortex (thinking centers) of your brain to the lower regions (survival) of your brain and you cannot think clearly. It is not possible. So, then your behaviors or those of others may be less than ideal. What can you do? Here are some suggestions.

Dealing with triggers

The first and necessary step is to understand the problem and there are many resources that will help you understand the nature of chronic mental and physical pain. The essence of chronic disease is sustained exposure to your body’s threat chemistry or in other words, being constantly triggered. Here are a few practical suggestions.

Triggers are a whole-body response to a real or perceived threat. Here are 3 behavioral/ physical cues to help you identify that you are being triggered before becoming fully activated by past family triggers.

1. Mood Shifts: Notice when you experience a mood shift. Do not suppress those emotions. Burying emotions alive will lead you to step on them at some point during the holidays–KABOOM!
2. Tension Shifts: Notice when you experience sudden muscle tension in your body. Check your shoulders right now! Left = Anxiety and Right = Anger/suppression of emotions/complaining all day long!
3. Breath Shifts: Notice how often you hold your breath when around certain family members. You know who they are! Are you holding your breath? Are you breathing shallowly? Are you breathing rapidly?

What are the triggers when you are around your family?

1. Criticism is one of the most common triggers.
2. Financial worries from food to travel plans.
3. Feeling pressured to be happy or positive

These are just a few of many triggers–know yours.

*Note: Your physiological states determine your psychological states; vice-versa.

 If you are already feeling stressed or wired, be careful. Your nervous system is “trigger happy” and you’ll not only ruin your experience but create chaos for others.

Practical tips to process triggers

1. Manage expectations. Holidays have a way of making wanting to feel like what Hollywood puts out – this amazing, beautiful scene where we all get along. Not everyone experiences such stuff. Dashed hopes make things worse. Once you understand how to remain calm during any level of chaos, no one can take away your capacity to enjoy yourself.
2. Utilize your Mindbody practices. They are learned skills and include breathwork, meditation, exercising, expressive writing, restful sleep, humming, relaxing music, and mindfulness. Each person has their own set of tools that works best for them. If you haven’t learned to regulate your stress response, please make the effort to do so. They eventually become automatic with practice, and the Holidays are a great opportunity to practice.
3. Avoid all negative conversation–period. No complaining, gossiping, criticism, giving unasked for advice, or discussing your pain or medical care. This is something that is basic to healing and you’ll do the rest of your life. Consider how much time you are spending in this type of activity.
4. “5–3–2” is a strategy to create some “space” in your brain before you take any actions. The numbers represent the words describing each step.
   1. No action in a reaction
   2. Flip the switch
   3. Move on

The details are discussed in this article.

 5. Take time for yourself. This is something we practice and preach about. Set time aside from everyone. Go for a walk before the hoopla starts if you are staying over with your family. Break away from the family during the day or when you need some space to “come back online.”

Summary

Keep your perspective! Remember that you always have choices–once your brain is back “online.” Keep focused on who or what is important to you. How do you wish to show up for the holidays?  Practicing the skills we discussed, especially noticing when you are triggered and doing something about it will help you keep your love, peace, and joy during the holidays.

As always –be kind to yourself. Let the Holidays begin!

The post No One Can Take Away Your Holiday Joy – But You first appeared on Back in Control.

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• Our view of the world and our place in it is programmed in from the moment we are born.
• It becomes reinforced with age. Our relationship with food is a core example.
• Like many aspects of our life, we mentally punish ourselves if we don’t stick to our ideal of a healthy diet.
• Use your relationship to food as a way of looking at how you relate to life. Choose joy!

Our view of the world and of ourselves is programmed by our entire life experience from the time of birth until this present moment. Most of it originates from the messaging that society, parents, relatives, friends, and colleagues feed to us about who we should or not be or doing. We end up being the product of everyone else’s perceptions. “Should thinking”  is a cognitive distortion. We are our programming and not particularly connected to the core of who we are.

Your “life lens”

Neuroscience research on consciousness has also shown that thoughts and concepts become as concretely embedded in our brains as any object such as a car or a house.¹ The summation of all this input becomes our unique “life lens” that is continually being reinforced. If your new data agrees with your views, they are reinforced. If it contradicts your life concepts, you’ll reject it, and it has been shown to strengthen the position even more. The marketing term for this phenomenon is, “reactance.”² You may have noticed that facts rarely change anyone’s mind. The only option is if you choose to be become aware of your life lens and change it. Unfortunately, change creates anxiety, and we resist it.

The mental construct of who we are and our place in the world is projected onto others in the form of judgements, with a good share of them being negative. We call this “self-esteem.”

Rigidity around food (and life)

We all must eat and each of us has our personal relationship with food. We develop belief systems based on our best summation of a lot of information. Then with time and repetition it often becomes an entrenched belief system. Here is where the trouble lies. If you have a certain fixed belief system in any domain of life, your brain spends a lot of energy correlating ongoing input with it. Our need to eat arises from our powerful unconscious brain and the drive is unending and powerful. Your rational brain is weak (a million times so) in comparison, and you’ll quickly experience “cognitive fatigue”³ trying to stick with a rigid diet. Why?

So, you have an “ideal” of what you should be eating every time you are exposed to food. If you act in accordance with your internal standards, you have control, and you are happy. What about when you “fail.” Consistent with many other aspects of our lives, we become self-critical. “I should be eating this way”, or “I shouldn’t have eaten this. You now feel badly. The more rigid and higher your “standards”, the more of your energy you’ll be expending, and you’ll fatigue. The brain consumes 20-25% of all of your body’s fuel.⁴ This ongoing sense of “failing” and mental self-criticism is a significant factor why many of us experience a “yo-yo” diet and it is challenging to maintain weight loss.

Then look at the other areas of your life that you are self-critical and remorseful. Your job, parenting, missed opportunities, skill level, accomplishments, and this list is infinite. We are generally programmed by “not being good enough.”

Food as an opportunity to choose joy

Your relationship to food is a wonderful opportunity to flip this paradigm. There are two parts. The first is to be kind to yourself regardless of your “performance.” Each of us can only do the best we can based on our skill sets and levels of stress. So, anytime you “fail” in meeting your standards of eating, always give yourself a break. Then the key to healing is awareness. It doesn’t matter whether you are being judgmental or trying not to be. Either energy reinforces judgment. Awareness allows you to create some distance between you and this reaction and eventually it will lower in intensity and maybe even almost disappear (it can’t ever completely resolve).

Then as you watch your relationship to food, you can choose to enjoy your meal regardless of what it consists of. It is somewhat perverse that the unhealthiest food is the most satisfying. What will happen, as you train your brain to stop reacting, is that you will have more energy to live your life in a more proactive enjoyable manner and actually eat better.

Eating and cognitive distortions

Consider why the alternative of negative reinforcement around eating beliefs detracts from your capacity to enjoy life. Many of the resultant thoughts around not eating right are cognitive distortions as described in David Burn’s book, Feeling Good.⁵ Since we have to deal with food daily, there is no end to them, and it is one of the ways your body’s physiology remains in a threat state. What are some of the distortions?

• “Should” thinking
• Labeling – “I am failure because I had a donut.
• Catastrophizing – viewing an event as having a major effect when in reality it has little effect on your life. For example, you may have chosen to have a vegan diet, but having an occasional hamburger is not going to affect your overall health.
• All or nothing thinking – seeing things in terms of absolutes.

These are distortions that exist in all aspects of our lives. The opportunity lies using food to highlight them and observe how they play out in other arenas. It is much different observing our judgmental nature than fighting it or trying to fix it. There is also no endpoint or logical conclusion to endless self-criticism. When do you get to truly live the life you want?

So, what is the alternative? Choose joy. Regardless of what you are eating or how much, choose joy. That also means making the choice to remain aware and watch the negative thought patterns march through. Eventually, as your focus continues to remain on nurturing joy, it will also work in nurturing you. Paradoxically, you may simply notice how much better you feel when you eat more healthfully, and it becomes easier to make better choices.

“Love yourself”

Here is one small story in how this can work. I have a close friend who has wanted to lose some weight for a while. He engaged in the usual dieting approaches such as counting calories, trying to eat more healthfully, avoiding junk food, and exercising more frequently. These are great things to do, but when he failed, he would mentally beat himself up. The outcome was the usual yo-yo weight loss with the end result being frustrated in addition to not losing weight. He made the decision to “love himself” regardless of his dietary patterns. He lost 15 pounds in 6 months and maintained it. This is just one story but consider how our general approach to food can detract from our capacity to enjoy life.

I am not saying that a healthy diet isn’t desirable. In fact, a healthy anti-inflammatory diet can dramatically improve your health and sense of well-being. It is a significant factor in decreasing mental and physical pain. What I am saying is that focusing on nurturing yourself as opposed to mentally punishing yourself when you fail to meet your dietary standards (or any other ones) allows you have higher chance of eating better. Additionally feeling content with who you today are is anti-inflammatory.

Recap

Rigidity around food is a powerful metaphor for rigidity in other aspects of your life. Food is an opportunity to learn strategies to lower anxiety in order to not need to me in so much control. The stress generated from “failing to meet your internal standards” not only detracts from your capacity to enjoy life but is inflammatory and damaging to your health.

The essence of healing is minimizing your time in inflammatory threat physiology and increasing your exposure to safety. An anti-inflammatory diet contributes to healing, but ongoing self-criticism is a form of anger, which is highly inflammatory. Why not love yourself first, regardless of your behaviors? Many of them are not ideal, but how does it help you to mentally beat yourself up? You don’t have to like many of them. However, we all are doing the best we can with what we have been given.

Choosing to enjoy the experience of eating creates an energy that carries into other arenas of your life. You get to practice daily (sometimes all day). Enjoying your life also changes your body’s chemistry to safety, you’ll react less, think more clearly, and make better choices about food. Then there is the added benefit of your diet being less inflammatory and you’ll feel even better.

Questions and considerations

1. You might feel that this article is not relevant to you. You may not care about eating a healthy diet. Consider that maybe you don’t care about your health. You are used to feeling badly, don’t see any hope, and have given up. This is “The Abyss.” Being aware that you are in this spot is the first step in healing. Don’t give up, and please start your healing journey.
2. Have you considered that being more focused on your beliefs about diet might detract from enjoying your meal? Having rigid belief systems about life is also tedious and eventually wears you down. There is not much room to nurture joy.
3. Food is a basic defined need and your relationship to it becomes deeply embedded in your unconscious mind with repetition. It is easy to see and becoming aware of its impact will allow you to address other aspects of your life.
4. Remember, a healthy diet is better, but self-criticism is a bigger issue. Why not address both?

References

1. Feldman-Barrett, Lisa. How Emotions are Made. Mariner Books, Harper Collins, New York, NY, 2017.
2. Berger, Jonah. The Catalyst: How to Change Anyone’s Mind. Simon and Schuster, New York, NY, 2020.
3. Kahneman, Daniel. Thinking Fast and Slow. Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, New York, NY, 2011.
4. Xu J, and S Xu. Possible reason for the high metabolic rate in neurons of a brain. Austin Jrn of Women’s Health (2018); 5:1031.
5. Burns, David. Feeling Good. Harper Collins, New York, NY, 1980, 1999.

The post Your Relationship to Food and Life first appeared on Back in Control.

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• Social isolation is both a contributing factor to anxiety and also a result of it.
• When you are suffering, it is challenging to reach out to others in a meaningful way.
• The physiological effects are devastating, with significant mental and physical consequences.
• It even affects the expression of your genome (DNA) in forming aggressive inflammatory cells that destroy your own tissues.
• The loneliness and isolation that many people experience is one of the worst aspects of the whole experience of dealing with chronic illness.
• Conversely, reconnecting with your family, friends, and colleagues is a powerful force for healing.
• The catch-22 is feeling good enough to begin reaching out. It is one of the reasons that there is a sequence to the healing journey. Each person is ready at a different point along the way.

Loneliness and social isolation may some of the worst aspects of suffering from any chronic illness. Over 50% of Americans are socially isolated regardless of where they live or the size of the town or city. It is ironic in that social isolation is such a significant contributing factor to poor health in this modern era. It is also dangerous. It is estimated that the effects on one’s health is equivalent to smoking about 15 cigarettes/ day.¹ Sadly, the age group that is the most affected are those in college and in their 20’s. This stage of your life has the potential to be the best of times.

 Consumed by suffering

When suffering from crippling anxiety and other physical symptoms, you spend a lot of your conscious hours looking on the Internet, seeking medical care, trying different treatments, and discussing your problems with anyone who will listen. Why wouldn’t you? Your life has been consumed and you want it back. Unfortunately, in spite of your best efforts to move forward, from a brain development and physiological perspective, you are moving the wrong direction. Here are some of the effects:

• Unpleasant circuits in your brain are reinforced.
• Pleasant one become less active with disuse.
• You drive people away that you used to have fun with and bond with others who are in a similar condition.
• Eventually, many people are so drained from the endless battle with their suffering, they become isolated, even in the midst of their own family.
• Oxytocin is a hormone that causes social bonding and is also powerfully anti-inflammatory. Lack of connection drops it down and your inflammatory state becomes even higher.

Some data

The effects of social isolation are deep. They go right down to the expression of your DNA directing the production of proteins that are the essence of life. There are about 20-30 genes that effect the production of certain white blood cells called monocytes. White blood cells are at the core of fighting foreign material in your body, including cancer cells, viruses, and bacteria. There is an over-active form of them called, “warrior monocytes” that are too aggressive and also attack your body’s own tissues creating many diseases states and symptoms. Anxiety is one of these inflammatory states. The most powerful factor causing the creation of these cells is social isolation. The second factor was chronic stress (anxiety).²

Dr Dantzer wrote an extensive review paper³ looking at the social influences on inflammation. There are many factors that affect inflammatory markers, and he presented the top four factors that lowered inflammation.

• A sense of control
• Hope/ optimism
• Positive affect/ attitude
• Social connection

Humans evolved by having language and being able to cooperate through social connection. It is the reason we are so tribal, and unfortunately, we haven’t evolved enough as a species to view every person as part of the human tribe. There is an evolutionary basis for excluding groups of people, as we compete for resources. That being said, social connection is a deep need, and it is expressed in your physiological state.

Another paper out of UCLA reported on a study where a volunteer was placed in a special MRI scanner called a functional MRI (fMRI). It highlights area of increased brain activity. The volunteer then played a computer-based video game where he or she was in a game of three-way catch. The computer was programmed at a certain point to exclude the volunteer and the ball was “tossed” between the remaining two players. The volunteer did not know the other two players were just the computer. Guess what? Even though it was just a computer game, and the volunteer could not physically see the other players, the centers of the brain that are active in chronic physical pain lit up. In other words, emotional pain is processed in a similar manner. ⁴

The catch-22 of social isolation

I will only say that becoming socially isolated and feeling lonely was one of the worst aspects of my 15 years of suffering. The only word that slightly described the feeling was, “crushing.” I began to experience deep self-deprecating thoughts that revolved around, “why would anyone want to hang around with me?”, and “I don’t have anything interesting to say.” These thought patterns were endless. This occurred despite me generally being very social person. Just the feeling of being lonely felt like an Abyss and was paralyzing with regards to re-engaging. I really could not see an end to it.

Healing

I noticed very early on that my patients would check off, “re-engaging with family and friends” as part of their healing. Social interactions are tricky in that you be rejected sometimes and hence one of the reasons people have social anxiety. It is greatly magnified when you are already experiencing chronic mental and/or physical pain. So not only do you not have the energy to reach out to others, feeling inadequate may also contribute. Here are some suggestions.

• Be kind to yourself. You are doing the best you can.
• People who you used to be friends with may not have as much in common with you and you may be rejected.
• Others you have bonded with through your pain may also reject you as you heal. You are no longer validating their suffering, and as you heal, they are confronted with their own inability or unwillingness to pursue the same journey.
• So, the first step in returning to a normal life, is to be prepared for these kinds of interactions.

Then just move forward in any way that you can.

• Call old friends or family members. Many of them are in the same condition you are. It is remarkable how common it is to be trapped by anxiety and pain. However, as mentioned many times, conversations around these topics are counterproductive for all parties.
• Re-engage with old skills such as art, music, and hobbies.
• Read interesting books or watch inspiring movies. They are great topics for conversation.
• Join a club. You don’t need to be an expert. There are numerous choices such as birdwatching, Scrabble, ping pong, book, movie, and history clubs, walking with friends, and music.
• Find ways to give back and there are endless options. One of my successful patients was “trapped” in a nursing home and spiraling back down into the Abyss. She decided to become an advocate for other patients who had dementia. Within a few weeks, her whole mood and outlook dramatically improved.

Recap

Loneliness is crushing and both a contributing factor to chronic illness and also a result of it. A significant aspect of healing is reengaging with those around you. What makes this all the more difficult is that while you are suffering, you may not have the interest or energy to reach out to others. Then if you are still in the mode of discussing your troubles, you will push people away who can nurture you, or attract others who are also frustrated with their suffering, and they will pull you deeper into The Abyss. This cycle is deadly.

That is why you must empirically make decisions to keep reaching out and connecting regardless of how you feel. You will feel awkward, especially when you have taken medical conversations and complaining off of the table as topics. The connections can be as simple as a phone call, reaching out to old friends, or joining a book club. The key is doing something – anything to reach out and break out of your patterns.

Humans and language evolved through language and social connection. It is one of the most basic of needs. Actively reaching out and giving back is a powerful move to stimulate your brain to rewire and heal. To have a good life, you must live a good life. It requires practice.

 Questions and considerations

1. You might be sitting here and feeling overwhelmed by the thought of even trying to reach out. That is OK and understandable. You can’t just flip this one around on a dime.
2. Just do something. Anything. You have heard the term, “baby steps” many times.
3. The problem is that when your brain has been barraged with negative thought patterns, you may feel people may not want to be around you. That is a classic common cognitive distortion of, “mind reading.” Maybe they don’t and you also have to be OK with that. Maybe they are in the same situation as you are and don’t have the energy to engage.
4. I can personally vouch for how distorted thinking patterns become from my own experience. For a long time, even after I was much better, I was still quite self-conscious.
5. Humans evolved by interacting with other humans. Somehow, re-engaging with life has to be part of your healing journey.

References

1. Cigna US Loneliness Index 2018. Report published by Cigna Insurance Company.
2. Cole SW, et al. Social Regulation of gene expression in human leukocytes. Genome Biology (2007); 8:R189. doi: 10.1186/gb-2007-8-9-r189

3. Dantzer R, et al. Resilience and immunity. Brain, Behavior, and Immunity (2018); 74:28-42. https://doi.orgl/10/1016/j.bbi.2018.08.010
4. Eisenberger N. “The neural bases of social pain: Evidence for shared representations with physical pain.” Psychosom Med (2012); 74: 126-135.

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“Don’t turn the ball over!”

Which brings us to the Golden State Warriors, who have become an NBA basketball dynasty. There are many facets to winning a game, involving strategies and skills that are well beyond my comprehension. However, one aspect of winning is minimizing the number of times you turn the ball over. Each time you turn the ball over, you open the door to making a bad pass or having the ball stolen by the opposing team. But it also involves a different energy than free throws, shooting, conditioning, and ball handling. There are many factors causing ball turnover; it always means less control.

The Warriors are legendary for their ability to move the ball around quickly, and you would expect a higher number of turnovers. It was a topic prompting discussion in multiple public forums, and decreasing turnovers must have been a focus of the team. However, something I read in the newspaper one day caught my attention: The Warriors had decided to quit worrying about turnovers and just play.

It was inspiring to watch their performance improve. Not long after, they went on to win the NBA championship.

Their experience is a classic example of “the ironic effect.” Trying not to think of something not only causes you to think about it more, but it also sets off a documented trampoline effect, you’ll think about it a lot more. Focusing on the highest level of performance is much different than “not trying to make mistakes.”

Skiing “not to lose”

My son is a world-class mogul skier and won the Junior Nationals championship in dual moguls two years in a row. He then hit many rough spots, including multiple significant injuries. One of them was a high-speed fall than caused his left shoulder to dislocate. He was moving so fast that he thought he was going to die as he hit the snow and narrowly missed a tree. He lost some of his edge of being infallible. He didn’t quit; he began skiing, “not to lose.” Of course, at that level, you also can’t win. His efforts to improve kept getting sabotaged in spite of an incredible commitment to conditioning and practice. In the midst of a few more injuries, including nine concussions, he really struggled.

He engaged the expertise of an athletic performance coach, David Elaimy, with an emphasis on connecting with one moment at time and visualizing what he wanted to accomplish. He also understood the powerful effects of expressive writing, writing down thoughts then destroying the paper they’re written on. It is the one exercise that breaks up the need for mental control, which is the driving force behind the ironic effect and repetitive thought patterns.¹

As he stood at the starting gate for his last attempt at qualifying for the U.S. ski team, my son carved in the snow  the word, “fail” with his ski pole, then trusted himself to execute what he already knew how to do—ski at the highest level. He went on to ski the best run of his life and qualified for a shot at the Olympic Freestyle team. For other reasons, a skier who finished below him was chosen for the team. But he did it. He broke through and performed to his potential under extreme pressure.

What does this have to do with pain?

There are two separate but tightly linked areas of expertise involved in resolving mental and physical pain.

One is learning how to process stress by developing a “working relationship” with your powerful survival fight-or-flight response. By learning the tools to stop fighting it, you can place your attention on what you want to accomplish.

The other is learning to nurture yourself and actively create the life you want. Few of us have been taught these skills.Your nervous system and body’s physiology will shift from an activated defensive state to that of safety, with profound benefits to your mental and physical health.

Winning is not the same as “not losing”

By trying “not to turn the ball over,” your powerful unconscious brain is trying to help with that effort, but it is also taking attention and energy away from what you desire. Focusing on what you want to accomplish is a more effective way of enjoying your life.

I have no idea whether the Warrior’s coaching staff was aware the ironic effect. I am even not sure whether turnovers dropped much. But the switch likely allowed them to focus more attention on execution.

Successfully dealing with ironic effect has a major influence on people’s quality of life. I have witnessed hundreds of people heal. that way. Deep healing cannot occur while you are in a sustained defensive mode, in fight or flight. Life is meant to be more than just surviving. Becoming a “professional” at living your life allows you spend less time feeling stressed, and decreases your exposure to fight or flight physiology. To win, you must practice winning.

References

1. Wegener DM. The Seed of Our Undoing. Psychological Science Agenda (1999)/ 10-11.
2. Wegener, D.M., et al. Paradoxical effects of thought suppression. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (1987); 53: 5-13.

The post The Golden State Warriors and the “Ironic Effect” first appeared on Back in Control.

The post The Golden State Warriors and the “Ironic Effect” appeared first on Back in Control.

• Your brain is incredibly neuroplastic and can change quickly in whatever direction you choose.
• We automatically know how to feel pain. What about feeling pleasure? It gets buried in the stresses of life.
• Play and social connection are inherent in all of us and using feel and visualization to connect with it will create a rapid shift.
• Enjoying life in so many dimensions is a unique human trait, and we can thrive if it is nurtured.

When you are experiencing relentless pain, life becomes heavy. You are just trying to keep your head above water from dealing with stress. Your life devolves into surviving in addition to carrying a pain burden. You may have forgotten what it’s like to live your life with deep joy and excitement. We have suggested that creating a positive vision for your life and pursuing it  shifts your brain onto more pleasant circuits. Another dimension of process is connecting to feelings of freedom and pleasure from your past. It may initially take some effort to find them, but they are there. I would suggest an ongoing process that I have personally found helpful.

Connecting

Find a quiet time and place where you can just think and possibly go into a meditative state. Think back to an event in your life when you felt carefree and joyous. It could any number of situations at any point in time. Visually take yourself back there, remembering as many details as you can. Possibilities include:

• Dreams/ goals
• The weather/ temperature
• The conversations
• Attitudes
• Friends/ who you were with
• The activities
• Specific feelings and emotions
• What music, movies, sports, and art did you enjoy during this period?
• Are there songs and artists that you were particularly connected to?

Face and connect with your current reality

Spend as much time as you can with this exercise and repeat it often. Once you have really internalized some of these joyous experiences then sit down and fully experience your present life – pain and all. What happened to your sense of play and excitement?

• Compare it visually and emotionally to one of the times mentioned above.
• Note the gap.
• Make a commitment to get joy back and hold onto it. It requires repetition to change your brain.
• When you fall back into The Abyss (it happens frequently), again note the difference compared to your great moments.
• Don’t worry about making a “plan.” This is an exercise of feeling and waking up parts of your nervous system that have been dormant.

Pain or pleasure?

Believe it or not, you have a choice. You remember that one of the cardinal rules of healing is not sharing your mental or physical pain with others, especially with your family. It is completely understandable why you would want to, but where is your brain developing? I just talked to a gentleman who stated that over 90% of his waking hours are spent in either complaining about his pain and medical care or searching for a solution. Almost everyone in chronic pain does this, including me – for 15 years. I definitely had forgotten what feeling good felt like.

This exercise represents the opposite experience. As you connect with the best part of your brain, your body chemistry is dramatically altered into a safety profile where your body can rest, regenerate, and heal. We also know that optimism and a positive attitude directly lower inflammation in your body, and therefore the pain.¹This is not a light psychological game. It is a powerful way to alter your body’s chemistry.

A movie?

Watching a movie connected with a past pleasurable experience is also effective in waking up your brain. It is slightly different than just watching a funny movie to distract yourself. One movie that caught me off guard many years ago was “Happy Gilmore.” I had just flown in from Seattle to Sun Valley and I was exhausted. I was laying on the floor next to my son, who was about 15 at the time. Somehow, it seemed like one of the most entertaining movies I had ever seen. I don’t recall ever laughing so hard for so long. It connected me to a moment in time that I won’t forget. I have watched it at least 20 more times over the years, and it still lightens my mood. For each person, it will be a unique movie, song, or event.

Interestingly, for those of you who have seen it, there is a section where Adam Sandler goes to his “happy place” when he is stressed. The movie is simply silly, but this part happens to be right on with regards to using visualization to pull yourself out of a hole.

Visualization

It is well-known that performers do repeated visualizations before individual events, whether it is in music, sports, performing arts, or even surgery. Circuits are being burned into your brain that allow you to perform without overthinking. How else could an ice skater, concert pianist, or mogul skier perform such feats so quickly. In a book that I have recommended to my patients for years, The Talent Code,² the author points out that some teams have their tennis players swing a racket without a ball for three months. Why not apply these same tools to making pleasure your default mode?

Stories from the Mountains: Connecting to the Intelligence of the Heart 

Recap

The goal of this exercise to wake up dormant parts of your brain. Play and pleasure become buried by pain and survival. It is different than creating a vision or a business plan. You are reconnecting to the powerful emotional part of your brain. You can nurture it and watch it “wake up.” Feeling these sensations and experiencing these memories is key. Remember, reconnect, and “wake the fun up.”

Questions and considerations

1. Consider how the quality of your life has been taken away by being in chronic pain. No one warned you about this possibility when you were in high school.
2. Take a moment to remember a time when you were excited about the future and what you might experience and accomplish.
3. This exercise is a process to refuel feelings of enjoyment that have been buried, but not gone. Remember, pain circuits are permanent, but so are pleasurable ones.
4. As you nurture the more enjoyable aspects of your brain, you’ll use the pain areas less and they will atrophy. By trying to “fix” your pain, you’ll reinforce them.
5. Healing occurs as you become proficient at processing stress/ pain, but you also have to move into the part of your brain that involves play.
6. Anxiety is a threat physiological state of flight or fight, and play is a safety physiological state of rest and regenerate. Where would you like to spend your time?

References

1. Dantzer R, et al. Resilience and immunity. Brain, Behavior, and Immunity (2018); 74:28-42. doi.org/10.1016.j.bbi.2018.08.010
2. Coyle Dan. The Talent Code. Random House, New York, NY, 2009.

The post Feel the Life You Want  first appeared on Back in Control.

The post Feel the Life You Want  appeared first on Back in Control.

• It is easy to become focused on problems to the point where you forget what you really want out of life.
• Most of us complain about problems – our own, other’s, society’s,, and the those of the world.
• But what do you want? What is the vision of your life? How do you want to achieve it? What is your time frame?
• Or are you so used to complaining, that you have lost sight of all of this?
• Unfortunately, this mind set fires up your immune system, sensitizes your nervous system, and physically increases your mental and physical pain.

One of the most important aspects of healing is our life outlook. Realistic and positive goal-setting is a core aspect of stimulating constructive neuroplasticity. Your brain will develop wherever you place your attention. It is up to you to decide what you want your life to look like, what you want in it, and then pursue those dreams. Otherwise, you are still focused on the problem, not the solution.

I asked each patient exactly why they were seeing me and what they wanted. Of course, the answer was usually, “I want to get rid of my pain.” It is an understandable request, but it doesn’t work. One of the paradoxes of healing is that you can’t fix yourself. The solution lies in moving away from neurological pain circuits and into the life you desire.

It is critical to connect with your personal life vision, regardless of the level of your pain and suffering. How else will you be able to move forward?

“It’s always something”

There are always significant obstacles to achieving what you would like. When you are young, it is lack of knowledge and resources. Then you are deeply enmeshed in your education and training. You may have started a new family. Finances frequently require “giving up your dreams” in order to just make ends meet. Life keeps coming at us and our hopes become ever more buried. The added burden of physical and mental pain further compounds the suffering.

If you think about the big picture, we all have a lot of dreams, but we seldom execute to attain even a fraction of them. What happened?

It is not true that people stop pursuing dreams because they grow old.                                        

They grow old because they stop pursuing their dreams.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

I agree with this quote except I have a different take on it. People grow old because their dreams are crushed by anxiety.

A vision?

We are so programmed to survive that we don’t understand the importance of creating a vision and then following through on it. And where would most of us have learned this skill? It would have been helpful to have been taught this early in our educational experience. Since we are not able to effectively process our stresses, we are trapped, anxious, and angry. It might even seem normal – except that we eventually may get crushed by it all. Positive thinking won’t break you out of this powerful cycle.

It is important to first free yourself from anxiety by developing a “working relationship” with it. It is necessary for survival and a gift. It is learned set of skills. Then you can move forward, and your creativity can emerge. But this is still not enough. What is your vision? What brings you joy? What do you really want out of your life?

Assume that your life is a “business” and that there are certain short and long-term goals you would like to achieve.  As with any business start-up, the chances of success are low without a written plan – the more detailed the better.  Outside input and discussions with involved parties adds important dimensions. Creating a personal business plan is a step that will help you achieve your goals.

Some starting questions

Where am I now?

Where do I want to go?

How am I going to get there?

Dare yourself to dream again and be realistic about what is possible. Then do it.

Where am I now?

Don’t pull any punches with this one. If you are engaged with this course, chances are that your quality of life has been crushed. Get every aspect of your misery out on paper, then organize it into categories, and don’t tear this up. Then redo it and get more focused. You have to understand the magnitude of the problem as well as the specifics before you can solve it. Also remember that the healing journey is rooted in connecting to you and your body’s capacity to heal. What is inside of you, being trapped in pain, is a lot of negativity. You must connect with it and stay connected with it. Hope comes from learning to tools to navigate out of this mess and not from positive thinking. Embracing your skepticism is the starting point.

People often respond with the idea that they can’t move forward because they are in pain. That is true, and why the early part of the healing journey is focused on ways to break loose to move forward with or without the pain. You cannot “fix” your pain. The solution lies in moving away from it and into more functional and pleasurable neurological circuits.

Break your misery into its components. There is the mental and physical pain. What are activities that you can no longer do? How is the medical system not meeting your needs? What is the effect of your pain on your relationships and work? How much are you enjoying sitting around the house and being at the mercy of disability system? Is this the way you want to live the rest of your life?

Where do I want to go?

This step is more difficult than the first one. You may be so consumed by your pain, that all possibilities seem to be gone. But go big! This is just an exercise that you’ll eventually bring to life. It isn’t possible to jump from chronic pain to the life that you want. But on the other hand, there is no chance of attaining the life you desire without having an idea what that looks like.

Take pain out of the picture. Getting rid of your pain cannot be one of the goals. Life is unpredictable. Pain comes at you in many unpredictable ways. You’ll develop skills to process adversity more effectively, but it will always be a part of your life. If you choose to remain upset by life’s challenges, your body will remain inflamed, and you’ll continue to suffer. Look at obstacles as opportunities to practice your skills and move forward. This is not positive thinking; it is a positive vision.

Be specific and apply your vision to all aspects of your life.

How am I going to get there?

No vision will be accomplished without a plan. Again, look at the various parts of your life and what would you like to achieve in each arena regardless of the pain? Every plan needs to be executed and there are always obstacles. Part of the “how” is surmounting them.

You now have to pull mental and physical pain back into the picture as one of the obstacles. It is there, your life is being adversely affected, and what steps are you going to take to break free from it? Each person is unique and will find their own way. Even though you must move forward in spite of your pain, maximizing your treatment is a necessary part of your plan.

This is the place where you look at pain and decide on your relationship to it? If you choose to remain a victim of it (and you are), you are stuck. If it just another obstacle to be dealt with, you are on a strong healing path.

Recap

As you stimulate your brain to change (neuroplasticity), you can direct your brain to create and move into enjoyable circuits. Similar to learning a new language, this just doesn’t happen by continually trying to fix your problems. You have to practice living a more enjoyable life in order to have a more enjoyable life.

We all know how to complain. Who doesn’t? Unfortunately, the biggest obstacle to healing is that many people do not want to give up the power of pain, in spite of their misery. It took me many years to see this, and it is sad.

What do you actually want? Do you want to hold on or move forward? You can’t do both. Once you attain clarity and create a plan, you have a high chance of achieving it and thriving. A suggested template to create your personal business plan is part of this leg of The DOC Journey.

Questions and considerations

1. Have you considered that you have been suffering for so long that it seems normal to you? This is especially true if you were raised in an abusive home situation.
2. Surviving and fixing is our default mode. It is instinctual and powerful. Why would we even consider other options?
3. Anxiety and anger are powerful and dealing with these emotions dictates much of our behavior. It is why you must simultaneously learn tools to process and neutralize them in order to move into your vision.
4. We all know what we don’t like and have no trouble sharing our complaints. But what do you want?

The post Connect with the Life You Want first appeared on Back in Control.

The post Connect with the Life You Want appeared first on Back in Control.

• When stresses overwhelm the coping capacity of your nervous system, your body will go into flight or fight physiology.
• You have choices regarding what you input into your nervous system.
• If your attention dwells on disturbing topics, you’ll remain agitated, which fires up the physiology of your whole body.
• You may not be aware of the many ways you’re continually keeping your physiology fired up.

Anger and anxiety are words that describe agitated physiological states and are sensations generated by your body’s response to threats. When states of agitation are sustained, your body’s physiology causes physical damage to your tissues, sensitizes your perception of sensory input, and detracts from your capacity to enjoy life. Mental and physical pain will also increase. To some degree, you are in charge of the information going into your nervous system, and what you choose to input into your nervous system will affect your body’s chemistry (output).

What are you choosing to input?

Living creatures stay alive by scanning their environment and interpreting the resulting sensory input to determine whether a situation is safe or dangerous. Your nervous system coordinates your body’s internal and external responses to adapt and move on. Much of this process of adaptation involves your autonomic nervous system, which regulates your internal organs and the makeup of your body’s chemistry. When you feel threatened, your body reacts by upping its rate of energy consumption (preparing to fight or flee) and kindling inflammation (putting the immune system on guard against wounds). When this physiological state is sustained, you have a significant chance of becoming ill, as you are consuming resources to surivive.¹

Humans have the additional input of consciousness. Any threatening thoughts or concepts will cause your body to go into fight or flight. Consider the various ways we upset ourselves that we have conscious choices about. Simply recognizing the effects and choosing different calming input can significantly change your body’s physiology to a healing state of safety.

UNSOLVABLE PROBLEMS

A common means of becoming and remaining upset is focusing on situations that we have no control over. It is an effective way of maintaining an unpleasant physiological threat state. Dr. Fred Luskin, director of the Stanford Forgiveness Project and author of Forgive for Good,² has a term called, “the unenforceable rules.” His point is that it is fine to wish people would behave in a better manner, but you can’t control other’s behavior; especially at a societal level. It is easy to complain about politics, abuses in almost every arena of life, the unequal distribution of wealth, human trafficking, blatant misuse of power, the educational system, and bullying.  There are endless societal problems to be upset about, and it is a deeply justified reaction.

When these unpleasant thoughts rise to the level that you are reacting to them, you are consuming energy that you could otherwise use to actually make a difference in your own sphere of influence. Unfortunately, when you are agitated, your inflammatory markers are elevated,³ which increases the speed of nerve conduction;⁴ the brain is sensitized, and any pain will be magnified.

Here is a letter from a person who has been suffering from chronic pain for many years.

…… violence in nature is difficult for me, but human cruelty to others is incredibly upsetting. I have been this way since childhood. I am very sensitive, and I almost do not feel at home on this planet. I feel wired and tired at the same time.

Her outlook is understandable, and I think most people feel this way. However, she is “wired and tired” from being in a sustained flight or fight state.

Healing occurs only by stimulating your physiology to move into a state of safety. and It is almost impossible to accomplish while remaining agitated about situations you have no control over.

COMPLAINING

Another way we  remain agitated is by complaining, engaging in malicious gossiping, being judgmental, and giving unasked-for advice. How can this input bring your body’s physiology into that of feeling safe? When you are suffering from chronic pain, your overall life outlook may be clouded, and these behaviors may become more frequent. Although you have legitimate issues to be upset about, you are also reinforcing unpleasant neurological circuits in your brain. A better alternative is choosing to place your attention on more functional or more positive neurological circuits.

WHAT ARE YOU WATCHING?

What about what we choose to watch? Violent movies and video games fire up your nervous system and consequently your whole body. You have to ask yourself why would you choose to do this to yourself? It is a surefire way of being in a heightened state of flight or fight. Unfortunately, with repetition, it may become normalized, and you may not appreciate your body being in this state, although it has detrimental effects on your mental and physical health.

THE NEWS

Another behavior to consider is how much time do you spend watching the news? It goes without saying that most newsis upsetting. Although it is fine and important to have a feel for current events that affect our daily lives, watching the news for hours is counterproductive. You are sedentary (exercise is anti-inflammatory)⁵ and you are not viewing material that is creating a sense of relaxation and peace.

Moving forward

Understanding the effects of what you are inputting into your nervous system is important in calming it down. Initially, they may be so ingrained that you can’t see them or the effects they are having on the quality of your life. It takes practice to notice and is also challenging to change. How much of your life has been consumed by them. Are they productive?

You may notice that as you back away from these activities, you may feel more anxious, as you are less distracted. Anxiety is unpleasant and it takes practice to learn to tolerate it. Eventually, as you quit fighting this sensation, it will be less powerful and integrated into your daily life. It is a stepwise process and a learned skill.

Quit upsetting yourself

Here are some suggestions regarding changing your input in order to quiet down your threat physiology.

• Create a list of societal issues that are deeply upsetting to you. Feel how enormous and terrible these problems are. Express your feelings on paper – and tear it up. This can be done repeatedly. Paradoxically, you have more energy to take action in some domain you have a say in.
• Stop engaging in the following activities:
  • Watching violent movies or playing intense video games
  • Complaining about the states of various world affairs that are particularly upsetting to you.
  • Complaining about anything. If you can’t do something constructive, don’t spend time with it.
  • Giving unasked-for-advice or being verbally critical. Consider how you feel when someone does this to you. Both parties are on the defensive, social connection is compromised, and your nervous systems are fired up.
  • Malicious gossiping. Consider why are you engaging in it? You are in a small or big way, robbing a person of his or her reputation. You certainly are not creating a sense of peace and safety.
  •  Spending long periods of time watching the news. Limit yourself to maybe 30 minutes a day or just skim the daily headlines.

Become a light

Your individual contribution to the human experience lies in creating positive changes in yourself and being available to others you care about.  However, you can’t reach out if you are consumed by pain and frustration. You may be so deeply involved in dealing with the negatives of the human condition that it may not seem possible to be any other way. But you have a choice.

Not only is a constructive mindset —not to be confused with mindless positive thinking—attainable, it is possible in the worst of circumstances.

Exhibit A is Man’s Search for Meaning , written by Viktor Frankl,⁶ an Austrian psychiatrist who survived the WWII concentration camps. He bore witness to the worst horrors of the human experience, lost much of his family, and still found meaning and purpose in the midst of extreme suffering. The question he kept asking was, “What is life asking of me now?” Few of us could pull this off, but he demonstrated it could be done. Keeping perspective on a given day when the challenges seem unsurmountable is in sharp contrast to feeling like a victim.

The Swerve  by Stephen Greenblatt⁷ tells the story set in the mid-15^th century of the discovery of an ancient Greek manuscript. Greenblatt defined “The Swerve” as an event that is so significant that it altered the course of human history. The manuscript written in 60 BC contained the poem, The Nature of Things by Lucretius. Somehow, Lucretius figured out that matter was made up of particles called, “atoms.” The Church realized that if this was widely known, that there was a more powerful force than their authority, they would lose their hold on the population. Indeed, after this poem was discovered, it seemed to be a factor in ushering humanity out of the Dark Ages.

The most remarkable aspect of Lucretius’ poem is that he concluded, even while living in the midst of the misery and brutality of ancient times, that all each person can and should do is to live a full, rich, and meaningful life.

Both of these books drive home that the world—then and now—is full of extreme suffering. It is easy to become focused on what is wrong or we can step up and do what we can to alleviate it. Living life with sense of purpose improves your quality of life and contributes to happiness.⁸ It also pulls you out of threat physiology and allows you to refuel and regenerate.

Recap

Healing from chronic illness requires your body to be in a state of safety. You can’t heal while consuming your body’s resources while in threat. In a way, accomplishing this by carefully avoiding upsetting input is the easiest aspect of solving your chronic mental and physical pain.

Awareness of the effects of various inputs is the starting point. Then becoming more aware of the numerous ways you engage in these activities is important. As you use your brain’s survival circuits less and nurture more pleasurable ones, you will be able to experience a more gratifying life. To have a good life, you must live a good life.

 References

1. Smyth J, et al. Stress and disease: A structural and functional analysis. Social and Personality Psychology Compass (2013); 7/4217-227. 10.1111/spc3.12020
2. Luskin, Fred. Forgive for Good. Harper Collins, New York, NY, 2003.
3. Shields GS, et al. Psychosocial interventions, and immune system function. JAMA Psychiatry (2020); doi: 10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2020.0431
4. Chen X, et al. Stress enhances muscle nociceptor activity in the rat. Neuroscience (2011); 185: 166-173. Evans, Patricia. Verbal Abuse: Survivors Speak Out. Avon Media Corporation, Avon, MA, 1993.
5. Sallis R, et al. Physical inactivity is associated with a higher risk for severe COVID-19 outcomes: a study in 48440 adult patients. Br J Sports Med (2021); 0:1-8. doi: 10.1136/bjsports-2021-104080
6. Frankl, Viktor. Man’s Search for Meaning. Beacon Press, Boston, MA, 1959.
7. Greenblatt, Stephen. The Swerve. Norton and Co., New York, NY, 2011.
8. Cole SW, et al. Social regulation of gene expression in human leukocytes. Genome Biology (2007); 8:R189. doi: 10.1186/gb-2007/8/9/R189

The post Tune Your Nervous System and Lower Anxiety – You have the controls first appeared on Back in Control.

The post Tune Your Nervous System and Lower Anxiety – You have the controls appeared first on Back in Control.