Panic is easy. Calm, not so much.

That’s my personal experience, which may or may not hold for others. My recent belief that my email account had been hacked is a minor but definite example of my tendency to over-react. A message touting a pharmaceutical product came into my mailbox, with one of my own return addresses on it. It happens that I currently have a number of email accounts, and I didn’t see right away that the account receiving the message was the same that apparently sent it. I dove into action. Sent out my apology to my subscribers, contacted the web hosting company, changed all my passwords, etc. I almost closed down my FeedBurner subscription service, thinking that my subscriber list and address were being used to pump out spam.

It would have been so easy to slow down, and wait to act until I was sure about the situation. There was no need to take drastic steps right away. Change the passwords, see what happened. Instead, I acted immediately.

No doubt this reactivity relates to the chaos in my household of origin. But I also think it comes from our culture, with its endemic anxiety and demands for speed. Instant results are expected in every sphere. Long term and collateral effects are seldom seriously considered in either government or business circles. Corporations choose policy based on quarterly income reports, with little regard for the far future. People get fired and policies radically altered in response to financial fluctuations that may or may not have been preventable.

It’s a cauldron of stress, and those of us with reactive natures must take extra care to avoid getting sucked into the rolling boil of chaos. There is seldom a need for instant action. Short of an impending car crash or like catastrophe, it is almost always better to wait before making big decisions. Or even small ones. Have you ever sent an email that you later wished you had delayed and pondered?

Calm is an essential nutrient in human life. It is an ingredient in very short supply in this modern world. We have an obligation to ourselves and those who will follow us on this earth to slow down and make decisions that aren’t rushed or expedient. Slow, deep breaths. Relaxed, supple muscles. Smiles. Peace. Calm.

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Mea culpa. My last post on WillSpirit ended up serving as a first draft for an essay on my PsychCentral blog, Guideposts to Happiness. My plan has been to avoid doing that, but while traveling I found it expedient to post more or less the same text in both places. I’ll try to refrain from such laziness, because the two sites are supposed to have different foci.

Guideposts grew out of an experiment here, wherein I posted suggestions or tips for living every day or so for a while. The formula struck me as an approach that might be of specific usefulness to others. The fact that I helped myself by spelling out the various steps I take to maintain within the bounds of sanity increased my enthusiasm. John Grohol, the force behind PsychCentral, was kind enough to give me a venue there on the strength of this idea.

WillSpirit, in contrast, has always been my forum for sorting out ideas, not giving advice. It has helped me figure out my attitudes toward mental illness, spirituality, and acceptance, which it turns out are all closely related in my case. At times this site has hosted some interesting conversations. It is surprisingly the case that even a sparsely read blog can bring people together. I was glad to relocate the tips for living idea onto a site where it would both reach more people and leave me free to ramble with my usual purposeful randomness here.

‘Make new friends but keep the old.‘ In summer camp, long, long ago, we used to sing those words around a campfire, while battling swarms of ravenous mosquitoes. Looking at the poor job I’ve done of maintaining friendships through my various crises, it appears the well-worn saying had little effect on me, even put to music. But I do look at WillSpirit, and especially its audience, as dear old friends. In the future I’ll try not to short-shrift it, or you. I will do my best to keep on track with my original intent: to voice my evolving positions on life in general, as I see things from the perspective of my particular circumstances.

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Wow. I just noticed it has been nine days since my last post. Sometimes I overdo it and entries come several times a week, or every day. Other times, like now, time sweeps by and I neglect to write anything. Part of the issue is that I have acquired the new blog on PsychCentral, which takes time of its own. Also, I’ve been traveling. Right now I’m near Washington, DC, at the second of three acupuncture training seminars. So I’ve been concentrating on studying and not on writing. Good excuses, but I don’t want to neglect WillSpirit, which has helped me heal even if it didn’t exactly take off in the way I’d hoped upon its launch.

Today’s short entry should perhaps be about unexpected consequences. Would I have found the courage to enter acupuncture training if I hadn’t had this site as a sounding board? Would I have been granted the newer and more noticeable blog without WillSpirit? Would I have discovered the (seemingly) profound spiritual insights of the past year? I wonder. So even if the blog never became a ‘platform’ for a larger writing project, which was my secret mission upon starting, it has been immensely valuable. Less food for the ego, I suppose, and more food for the soul.

I can accept that. I can accept a lot of things that used to be hard for me. I can accept the damage to my body that psychiatric medications caused. I can accept my tightened financial circumstances. I can accept the loss of my career and the giving up of my beautiful San Francisco house (a peace with my fate that has taken ten years). Acceptance is something first taught me, largely, by an Acceptance and Commitment Therapy practitioner. (Who, if he is reading this, should know how much difference he made.) It has been furthered by my foray into Buddhism. It seems to be the key to happiness, a key that we are simply not given to value in this culture.

One way to accept is to look for the benefits in every occurrence. As the saying goes, “it is an ill wind that blows no good.” Some of my most devastating losses have taught me my most essential lessons. By recognizing that, I realize that they are not actually losses at all, but exchanges. The currency of ego and materialism is exchanged for that of soul and wisdom. A fair bargain, in this case; the bargain is less than fair in others. Either way, we almost always gain something even if we lose everything.

We often hear of unexpected consequences in a negative context: “we drilled for oil and unexpectedly ruined the Gulf of Mexico coastline,” but they go the other way, too. For instance: “I thought all my losses sucked, but now I see they helped me find delight in life where there was once only sorrow.”

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Ernest Hemingway once said that intelligent people are rarely happy.

Having always been more of a Faulkner than a Hemingway fan, I’m going to disagree with Ernest. I know many intelligent, happy people. Of course, often they are Buddhist meditators, or in AA, or involved in some other framework that helps them address the challenges of life. It takes work to be happy, and intelligent people may need to work harder because they can see more problems than those with simpler outlooks. But intelligence is not a major obstacle to happiness, in my opinion.

It is well-recognized that many creative people have mood issues. Poets suffer notoriously high suicide rates, and Hemingway obviously falls into this category of moody artist. In many cases, the artist uses his or her medium to give voice to emotional turmoil. The biographies of mentally distressed artists and authors often reveal upbringings light on love, or heavy on cruelty and loss, or both. I suspect that artistry and moodiness spring from the same sources, and doubt that creativity by itself causes depression and other affective difficulties. (Some authorities, including Kay Redfield Jamison, might disagree.) The movie Amadeus comes to mind; it depicts Mozart’s genius and instability in counterpoint to his father’s domineering and critical attitude.

Childhood hardship, especially if severe, radically diminishes the chances for spontaneous adult happiness. Modern research suggests that emotionally or physically threatening experiences alter the brain’s fine structure, and these changes linger. Because my stepmother often crept into my childhood bedroom to wake me up and vent her anger, sometimes by strangulation, I occasionally jump up screaming in the dead of night. This happens less and less often as I work through my emotional wounds, but whatever she did to my nervous system has persisted into my fifties. The brain remembers, even if consciousness doesn’t (in my case I believe my recollections of childhood trauma are pretty complete, but many people have blank spaces in memory that keep traumatic histories more or less beneath awareness.)

We hear a lot of talk about the biological underpinnings of mental illness. In my family there are stark examples where people of roughly the same genetic stock have very different levels of mental well being. Without exception, the ones who have the biggest personality and emotional problems are those who suffered trauma in childhood. My relatives who were fortunate to have been raised in loving, stable environments have escaped mood and personality disorders. This dovetails with what I’ve observed in my professional and volunteer work among the mentally ill, and with much (thought not all) of what I’ve read in technical literature.

Biology establishes a predisposition, but major mental illness is most likely to occur when people with genetic tendencies also suffer childhood mistreatment. This is definitely true in mood and personality disorders; schizophrenia might be different, though even here some people believe trauma plays a decisive role. Without mistreatment, there may be moodiness or quirkiness, but it does not as frequently become crippling.

Childhood trauma makes joy in life difficult, but not impossible. Sensitive, intelligent people feel and see more of the pain in the world. This makes it more challenging to remain upbeat, but unhappiness is not fated. Painful upbringings, intelligence, creativity, and genetic predisposition all play roles in mood disorders. I’m arguing that the first is by far the largest contributor to unhappiness, but no combination of circumstances is absolutely insurmountable.

Still, happiness takes work. It demands attention to thought and behavior, and is promoted by searching for meaning in life. Meditation, exercise, study, and social activities all contribute. Many people make progress with therapy and/or medication.

Always remember that neither the past, nor one’s abilities, nor one’s genes, completely determine the future. As someone who long despaired of ever feeling good about life, I can now attest that even dreadful childhood trauma and loss (plus whatever measure of intelligence and creativity I possess) do not necessarily prevent happiness. There is hope. Always, there is hope.

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The heart of a bumblebee buzzes with nectar-lust.
A connoisseur of fine floral lines, she draws sweetness.

My heart thrums among trees that remember Jesus.
They stand broader than my pick up truck, and much
Higher than an apartment I once had on the tenth floor.

The snail’s heart has neither chambers nor valves.
It pumps the way a worm moves, stroking the blood,
Coaxing life forward.

The bacterium has no heart,
And could not care less.
It lives its short moment with the gusto of a pirate,
Before splitting in two and starting over.

I would love to start over.
I have already split in two.

There is the part that screamed into a pillow at midnight
On the psychiatric ward,
And left the hospital to find a carefully written life
Story in ruins.

And there is the part that sees a person rebuilt in every mirror,
Damaged, dented, and held together with telephone cable.

I am stronger than before.
I am communication, and stumbling flight, and peristalsis.
I am solid and tall with gallons of gusto.

Alive, I see my heart everywhere.
It is chambered and ready to fire!

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Can you orgasm just by thinking? I can’t, and not for lack of trying! Not many people have the ability to climax without physical stimulation. So why do they say the brain is the most important erogenous zone?

It could be because the mind needs to be lured into letting go of thought. So many interesting things to contemplate! So many anxieties to nurture, so many regrets to keep alive. Why would the rational mind let go of its complicated problems to do something as simple, as mindless, as engage in sex?

Thus we need erotica. Juicy pictures, scandalous stories, and flimsy nightgowns all help hook the mind into setting aside its day-to-day concerns, and concentrate on life’s imperative to promote more life. Cows and bulls, mares and stallions, hens and roosters all get it on just fine without Victoria’s Secret.

Yes, some animals have mating rituals. The male bower bird constructs intricate sculptures, and if his artistry is exceptional, the female mates. The peacock spreads his tail and struts, hoping to woo the peahen to let him in. So clearly, even in animals that don’t worry about deadlines and bank statements, the brain (or at least the female brain) needs to be teased into sexual interest. But in these cases biology has a hidden agenda; the female can detect particularly fit males by comparing their courtships.

Humans are more complicated, so it’s no surprise our sexual antics have become Byzantine. At heart, however, sex is simple. Which is why the thinking brain needs coaxing. Slippery body contact is not enough to keep the rational mind interested.

“Wait a minute,” I hear you saying, “show me one teenager who would rather do homework than spend time in an isolated glen with his or her sweetheart!” My point exactly. When we’re young and hormones are raging, sex dominates the mind and there is no need to trick the brain into getting on board with it. Sure, the kids dress up for each other, and spend hours preening or working out in hopes of attracting a mate. But sex is running the brain, not the other way around.

Especially if you are a man, you might be asking, “if my brain is disinterested, why is it so easily distracted by sexy pictures and thoughts?” But erotic pictures and thoughts are the point. The brain is indeed intrigued by thoughts about intimacy, but at its best sex isn’t primarily a thinking activity. Can your brain let go of thinking and allow you to fully enter the being state of sensuality?

By the time we’re middle aged, our hormonal flow is depleted, our relationships feel routine, and sex loses some allure. It becomes tempting, often, to read a book or watch a movie instead of doing the messy, sticky work of coupling. People who get entangled in pornography often graduate to ever more hardcore imagery, because it takes more and more to keep the mind interested.

Yet sex still feels good, and it still helps cement our romantic attachments. We are well advised to keep it alive, but that means coaxing the mind away from its countless distractions. This includes sexual fantasies; although they have their value, it is ironically the case that they are counterproductive to truly engaged sex. They drain awareness away from the body, where sex happens, and into the mind, where there is only thought.

Rather than seeking ways to stimulate the brain to want sex, it is actually most enriching to set thinking aside. So here’s an incentive: look at sex as meditation. No matter what the context, and whether you’re alone, with your spouse of many decades, or in bed with a new partner, try to be fully in your body. Just for the few moments you devote to erotic activity, aim to completely shelve your schemes and worries. Pay attention to the thrumming energy in the muscles, the warm moisture on the skin, the subtle aromas and the soft moans. You might find that the body’s sensations are more textured and interesting than you suspected. You might find that your thinking brain doesn’t need to be part of the equation at all.

With this attitude, the body becomes an alluring haven. The mind, with its endlessly repetitive concerns, seems less attractive. This exercise is available to anyone. Physical touch is vital, but overt sexual acts are not required, nor is Viagra. Despite my titillating opening sentence, the experience need not end in orgasm. Just pay attention to pleasurable sensations, quit worrying about the laundry basket and the stock market, and let the body come alive.

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Probably because of my new blog at PsychCentral, traffic here has picked up dramatically. So everything I complained about not long ago has been resolved: I have a new project and more traffic and everything is going along swimmingly. Given the amount of emotional turmoil I put myself through around developing the new site, you’d think it was going to make a big difference in my life. Lots of money; fame; the Nobel Prize; world peace; something dramatic should have been at stake to justify such concern. But of course blogging is just that: blogging. For 99.9% of bloggers, there is neither money nor fame. It is simply a way of disseminating one’s ideas to a small audience. The occasional voice catches on, but I realize that without writing more contentious material, or in some way juicing up the product, my blogging will never attract more than a trickle of readers. But right now at least, that’s working for me.

What do I get out of it? It’s a question I often ask, but usually only write about when the answer is ‘nothing’. Since at present I feel better about blogging, I might as well state what good it has done me. Since I started in May 2009, I’ve evolved greatly. My writing has gotten better, in that it’s less wordy and more focused. My ideas about mental health have clarified; nothing helps resolve confusion better than trying to explain what you think. My grief has lessened, as I’ve poured out my anguish in many posts, and received support from readers. I’ve grown spiritually; at one point I tried to rationally justify faith, and the result was that I found faith (though not through rational means.) And now I’ve made at least a little material, tangible progress, in that I’ve attained a much more visible venue.

I’ve made mistakes. I’ve revealed things about myself that I should have kept private. I’ve taken the process personally, as if there is some reason why my writing should be noticed without me doing all that much to publicize it, in the context of thousands of similar blogs. In the course of various crises of purpose, I’ve allowed the process of writing to adversely affect my process of living.

But overall, I’ve gotten a great deal out of blogging. And judging from the comments I occasionally receive, a few others also benefit from what I’m saying.

So what’s my message today? It could be, ‘take the long view’ or, ‘have faith’ or, ‘trust yourself’. I already wrote recently about the long view. But faith and self-trust are worth highlighting.

What is faith? It is an emotional and cognitive conviction that the universe is more or less on track, and that I don’t need to be regretful or afraid. ‘Everything happens for a reason‘ is the way some people phrase it, but I’m not sure there are reasons behind what occurs. On the other hand, I am sure that almost every happening has both positive and negative consequences. In particular, there is no catastrophe so total that at least a particle of wisdom or growth can’t be pulled out of the wreckage.

On a deeper level, faith means letting go, and drifting effortlessly through the shifting currents of time, space, and society. Whether we like it or not we are adrift, but we are also buoyant. I’ve spent much time and energy thrashing about, trying not to sink. But what I’ve found is that if I relax, I float without effort. And I say this in the face of some truly painful losses and scary prospects. Victor Frankl survived the holocaust and wrote uplifting works about his experiences. I used to think people like him must have had solid, loving upbringings that allowed them special resilience in the face of trauma. But now that I find myself feeling actually grateful for the pain and disasters that once threatened to crush me, I see that the key is not found in the mists of childhood (where I find mostly darkness), but in the clarity of present faith.

And this is where self-trust comes in. Sometimes faith means something profound and mystical for me. Other times the conviction that the universe has a deep, beneficent spirit eludes me. But what I always can bank on is that my (and everyone’s) human spirit is almost infinitely adaptable. If I release my rational grip on events, and allow the deeper parts of my psyche work things out, I eventually find peace. When I let go, I find that what I’ve released isn’t a lifeboat, but an anchor. I float free.

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Several recent interactions have pointed out to me that I am way too sensitive. A good friend and I passed emails back and forth, each of us angry about the behavior of the other, and all of it traceable to overreaction on both our parts. Then there was the confusion around my new blog at PsychCentral. I applied for the chance to write for them, and when after a week they had not yet responded, I assumed (incorrectly) that they’d turned me down. Not only that, but I took it personally. There have been some other emotional missteps, but I’ll concentrate on these two.

In both cases, my emotional reactions were too strong and too swift. In both situations, I’d have been better off slowing down, asking for clarification, and maintaining a thicker skin. With my friend, I ended up hurting his feelings and stirring up needless stress. With the blog, I indulged in some online whining and almost abandoned blogging altogether. In each case if I had asked for information, and waited for things to work themselves out, considerable inner and outer turmoil would have been avoided.

There’s a hidden ingredient here. Several months ago I quit my final psychiatric medication. In the bad old days with the psychiatrist who treated my moods between 2000 and 2006, I was overmedicated. At several points I was taking six different medications for my mental health. The side effects were dreadful and humiliating, and my depression hardly improved at all. The only benefit was a generalized emotional numbing. I was free of intense anguish, because I had no strong feelings at all. This seemed like a good idea at first, but I soon recognized that life was passing by while I lingered in a medicated haze. My wife hated the zombie-like affect I presented, and it was impossible to accomplish anything under such sedation.

Since 2006, I’ve been tapering off the medications. I feel more sadness, but also more happiness. I can laugh and cry and think once again. My former passion and creativity have been restored. Unfortunately, many of the damaging side effects appear to be permanent, so I will always be scarred by my foray into the world of psychopharmacology. But if I don’t dwell on the injuries, I feel pretty contented. Or at least I do today. Coming off the drugs has been very good for me, although I am by no means suggesting it would be right for everyone.

And in fact it wasn’t completely right for me. One of the reasons I became so hypersensitive was that, like I said, I had quit the final antidepressant back in March. It had been challenging reducing the medications at every step, but when I discontinued the final drug, I slowly spiraled into a very unpleasant space. To my great relief, I did not contemplate suicide. However, joy and interest drained from my psyche. I continued all my normal activities, but I enjoyed few of them. Worse, I began to overreact to perceived rejections.

Since I restarted that final drug, things have gotten dramatically better. The lesson, I suppose, is that extreme positions are always suspect. I had decided that since six drugs were disastrous, the answer was to take none at all. That turns out to have been too drastic. It looks like I am better off taking a modest dose of one antidepressant, rather than trying to live with no psychiatric medication at all.

It’s been an enlightening experience. My anger at the psychiatrist who treated me so aggressively, and the side effects that resulted, had pushed me to decide that everything about psychiatric medications, at least in mood conditions, is suspect. Now, I’m not so sure. Although I wonder if the antidepressant would be as necessary if my system had never been exposed to any such drugs, the fact is that life is much easier on one medication than it was on none. It’s a good reminder to watch myself, and question my motives at every step. It is very easy to get swept away by strong emotions. As much as I believe feelings are necessary to live fully and happily, it is also the case that when they get too intense they cloud judgment.

It is also vital to keep an eye on what works. If a single antidepressant can make such a big difference, and if it also happens to be one of the few medications that causes me no side effects, why not take it? Is philosophical purity more important than pragmatically doing something to make life more livable? One of the biggest problems in the world today is the very human tendency to get locked into behaviors and attitudes that are rigid and extreme. Inflexible and dogmatic attitudes are damaging. This is as true in an individual life as it is in the case of religious fanaticism and political extremism. As the Buddha said, it’s best to follow the middle way. In most circumstances, the middle position is the most accurate and the most effective.

Patience. Moderation. Trust. Communication. Flexibility. Pragmatism. You’d think by this age I would have mastered these basics. Better late than never…

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If you read the post, Another Hiatus, you know that I almost gave up. After applying to run a blog on PsychCentral‘s busy site, and after not hearing a response for a week, I assumed failure. In my characteristic way I believed my ideas had been rejected, which felt like a personal rejection, and I became discouraged. Well, I threw in the towel prematurely. In fact, my blog proposal was accepted, and I just posted my first entry on my spanking new blog, Guideposts to Happiness. There’s a lesson to be learned, and written about, but for now I’ll just bask in the pleasure of success and new venture.

Please make the trip over to my new blog and check it out. In the future, I’ll probably post many of the entries in both places. But for today, I’ll encourage you to leave my old, familiar blog and travel to my new one.

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