WillSpirit

Where Will meets Spirit
∞ A Blog Devoted to Balance, Peace, and Clarity ∞

A formerly depressed physician tells stories of trauma, grief and recovery, and offers suggestions for emerging from darkness, living with mood swings, and awakening to life.








  • Red_Exclamation_DotDisclaimer
    • Dear Visitors:
      Although I trained and practiced as a physician, my background does not include formal instruction in psychiatry beyond basic medical education. This journal presents ideas about treatment philosophy, but must not be considered therapeutic advice. Abrupt changes in one's psychiatric medications can trigger profound cognitive, emotional, and physical symptoms, including suicidal thoughts and actions. Consequently, pharmaceutical agents should not be increased or decreased without supervision by a mental health clinician.

    • ON THE OTHER HAND, your brain belongs to you, and your opinion counts. If you decide that changing your medication regimen will serve your best interest, then I believe your providers have an obligation to help you try to achieve your goals. I want everyone to be educated about their options, and do what will be most helpful for themselves. No one should feel pushed around by dogmatic and/or limited viewpoints, whether those of psychiatrists, anti-psychiatry advocates, or myself.




Tilling for the Soul

PlowingGround

In my upcoming talk this Saturday, I hope to establish three central points: 1) People have the capacity for elevated, selfless modes of consciousness that go a long way toward easing psychic distress. Higher mind states do not lead to perfect happiness that never ebbs; rather, they make life enjoyable despite inevitable trials and jagged emotion. 2) Contrary to the standard model of mental health care, which expects emotional growth to be slow and arduous, people can abruptly transcend despair. 3) There are steps we can take to make such decisive transformations more likely.

My last blog entry touched on what’s been learned about elevated consciousness, and later I will come back to the issue of gradual versus sudden change. For today, let’s skip ahead to consider how we can promote ‘awakening’ experiences. To cover this territory in depth would require an entire book, and many texts and even bibles have been written to help people attain transcendence. Fortunately, my intended audience limits the scope of my endeavor. My goal is to provide suggestions that people can incorporate into ongoing programs of recovery from depression and anxiety. Even at my best, I don’t believe my elevated consciousness rivals that of a true spiritual leader. All I can claim is that regret, worry and despair no longer plague me. It would make my entire stormy life worthwhile if I could help one or two people transcend their labyrinths of remorse and terror, and ascend to a new state of mind.

Probably, those most prone to benefit will be those with long histories of misery, who feel like they can’t take much more pain. It was only because my desolation had become nearly unbearable that I finally saw the light. It seems probable to me that less wretched anguish would be less likely to push one to the precipice of decisive change. Certainly, most people who have described abrupt, transformative experiences had first descended to abject despair. By this reasoning, my audience will be people with severe dysphoria, who will likely have already explored a number of different pathways to relief. Many will have undergone therapy, many will have been prescribed medication, and many will have turned to spiritual programs. Prior work is important, because I believe one needs to build a foundation before one can fashion a spire into the heights of understanding.

Coming as I did from a catastrophic childhood, one necessity was time spent sorting through the conflicts and confusion bequeathed me by the dead past. My guess is that the greater the turmoil in one’s history, the greater the need to expend effort coming to grips with it. Probably most people with life-ruining depression will have had the benefit of at least a little therapy aimed at exploring the circumstances that predisposed them to such problems. This is a bit elitist of me, I realize, since it takes financial resources to get psychotherapy in our unjust society. I am not saying that one needs to spend many years and thousands of dollars hashing over one’s upbringing, but a bit of assistance from someone knowledgeable about the lingering effects of childhood trauma seems vital.

These days, the trend in psychotherapy is toward focusing on thought and behavior in the present rather than getting bogged down by the past. Although this is a positive and empirically supported development, I suspect that those with really difficult pasts may yet need to examine what happened. Running from the past is not the same as escaping it. On the other hand, in addition to therapy that addresses childhood trauma, recovery from depression and anxiety requires major changes in how we think and act. For this reason, it is helpful to learn the techniques of cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) and its many spinoffs. Whether these skills are learned from books, or from therapists, it is important to recognize the fundamental role of thought in despondence. When the mind does little but cycle through hidebound regrets, worries and obsessions, mental anguish will persist, impeding the journey to higher consciousness.

Today’s post begins a discussion of how psychotherapy, self-examination and thought management provide a foundation for steps toward transcendent awareness. I’ve tried to emphasize that my comments are directed to those with severe depression and anxiety, most of whom probably have histories of both childhood trauma and negative obsessional thinking. In one way or another, the childhood needs to be looked at; if therapy is out of reach, then journaling and reading might well suffice. In addition, one must learn to discipline thoughts, and cut down on negative rumination. The next post will continue this discussion of the groundwork that facilitates a journey to an elevated frame of mind. We are fortunate to live in an age when much has been learned about the roots of misery, and about how we can prepare the field for a blossoming future.

Self Love and the Biology of Self

Heart&Lungs

In recent months, a plan has formed to wean myself away from the comforting bosom of therapy. A post I wrote six months ago detailed the huge amount of psychotherapy and group work I’ve completed. Some of it enlightened me, some of it led me astray, and much if it had little effect at all.

Just as I prepare to swear off therapy forever, fate has brought me a counselor who truly helps me. Partly it’s a good personality match; partly the ACT philosophy he adheres to works well for me (as discussed on this site many times); and partly I’m finally ready for a fundamental change.

Not that I’m close to ‘cured’, or even ’stable’, but something inside seems to be shifting. One good example came in my most recent session. It was the first in almost two months, and had been arranged as an urgent appointment because of severe depression.

The biggest reason for my suffering, being perfectly blunt, has always been self-hatred. My upbringing beat it into me. My earliest memories are of my parents’ bitter divorce, during which it became obvious that my dad despised the role of father. In most of my memories of my mother, she lies in bed nearly catatonic with depression. She couldn’t offer much love. After that came her death, a probable suicide; a six-year-old takes a mother’s dying as a personal rejection. Within weeks I began living with my bitter father and sadistic stepmother. The woman humiliated and tormented me with cold, calculated efficiency. (Those interested can read about her in a memoir fragment .) My dad, narcissistic and obsessed by his work, was also an alcoholic. In short, my childhood taught me to feel unwanted, unworthy, despised, tormented, and abandoned.

Sadly, I still feel all those things, only now the hatred comes from my own heart. This is probably the most sensitive secret I’ve revealed on a site riddled with self-disclosure. It is the root of the worst of my problems. It keeps me at arms length from life and loved ones, because I never believe I deserve either.

My counselor and I have talked about this self-loathing many times. On this last visit, he instructed me to hold out my hand. “Can you love your hand?” he asked.

To my surprise, the answer was, “yes”; loving a body part seemed easy. The full significance did not sink in right away.

My adoration of biology, which goes back to my earliest days gardening and fishing with my grandfather, makes admiration of anything alive no problem at all. People, redwood trees, mice, and all other living things enthrall me. I’m even fascinated by mosquitoes. I have an inborn reverence for everything that lives. But until recently, I had never honored myself for my own biology.

For some time, I’ve practiced a meditation where I simultaneously feel and visualize my internal physiology. I sit on my meditation cushion and breathe, all the time imagining the air seeping into the tiniest passages and pockets of my lung. I think of the oxygen turning my blood corpuscles bright red. While concentrating on the sensation of my heartbeat, I form a mental picture of my heart pumping this freshened blood to the rest of my body.

Even though I regularly settle into my biological nature, it had never occurred to me to love myself as a living organism. I was too busy hating my personality, my decisions, and my sins. All my hatred has been directed at me. Which raises the question, “what am I?” Am I a disembodied mind? Can I really separate what goes on in my brain from the body that holds it? The obvious answer is “no”.

After my appointment with the therapist, I did my usual ‘biological’ meditation, only this time I honored the miracle of my animal form, and allowed reverence to surface. At the same time, I held the thought that I am my body. After all, the sensation of a mind separate from the physical self is an illusion, or even a delusion. It’s the ego’s way of isolating and empowering itself. The truth is that body and self are one. In accessing my respect for my own life processes, I discovered a bit of love for myself. It feels wonderful.

Not long ago, I thought my recent spiritual growth had banished inner darkness. Soon after, I found myself fueling a depression with my habitual self-contempt. The old obsessions, regrets, and fears returned with full force. Having learned from that relapse, and despite this insight about my value as a living animal, I will be shocked if the horrible despair does not soon resurface. On the other hand, perhaps I will remember to feel reverence toward my body, and the biological mind it supports. Perhaps I will feel a trickle of love for myself.

A memoir fragment.

mustang-adThis time away from blogging provides opportunity for some other writing projects, one being work on an online memoir-writing class. I’ve put off most of the assignments until now, and have only a month left to complete the course. Today I finished revision on an earlier assignment. I’m posting it on the memoir section of my site. If anyone is just dying for some of my writing (lol), they can check it out. Cheers to all.

Why does a flower bloom?

daffodiltrail

Feeling rather discouraged.

This day should be filled with joy and light. Mandy and I have been married 14 years as of today (we’ve lived together for 18 years). In many ways, our relationship possesses more strength, intimacy, and passion than ever before. We have been through many trials, and have weathered them well. The decade after losing my career made life difficult for us both. Much uncertainty, regret, and fear. Most of that has passed. I no longer have physical spasms from anxiety, a face permanently frowning from depression, or nonstop obsessions about suicide. And Mandy no longer has to carry the entire emotional burden of our life together. We’ve survived. Adversity has tempered our relationship, and we step into the arms of the future knowing we will be there for each other “as long as we both shall live” (quoting our vows). Even the recent uproar around lingering effects of sexual abuse, and the medication-induced anatomical damage that triggered it, have improved our connection. We approach each other with more gentleness, but also more fire. More vulnerability, but also more confidence. After all the trials, recent as well as remote, my marriage today provides me strength, pride, and love. I should feel great. But I feel distress.

Another reason I might be joyful is that we have undertaken a delightful project. We may be moving to Mendocino, a very nice village on the Pacific coast several hours north of San Francisco. Rugged and unparalleled terrain treats the eye at every turn. Artists and writers in residence comprise a community of interesting and forward thinkers. Sedate rivers winding through primeval redwood forests almost beg us to launch our canoe. The relocation forms an exciting prospect. We await to hear if an offer we have placed on a lovely house and nice patch of land will be accepted. Exciting.

And yet, my mood struggles with angst and fatigue. Yes, the expectation of selling this home, buying another, moving, and living in a new environment cannot help but create stress. Yet that is not the problem. Yes, the anniversary stirs mixed memories from the past, troubling reminders of mortality, and unanswerable questions about the future. But that is not the problem.

The problem is this blog. I’ve been writing in recent posts about two of the topics that prompted me to start this project: the lingering effects of childhood abuse, and the side effects of a certain combination of psychiatric drugs. Both these subjects mean more to me than I can express in words. My conviction remains strong that writing about this material is necessary for me and for the world. But I am realizing that a delusion has crept into my plans. I thought that opening up on this blog would spread the word about a dreadful potential side effect of psychiatric medications. I hoped that my story of attaining peace after so much trauma would help many others. In my typical grandiose way, I believed this undertaking would make a big difference. I expected a sense of accomplishment. Instead, I just feel impotent.

That’s a loaded word in the context of sexuality. As it happens, the side effects I keep alluding to did not cause functional impotence. They marked me with more insidious and far less common changes. But impotence can also mean ‘ineffectual’. More than anything else, the side effects make me feel inadequate. In an echo of the way my stepmother robbed me of my power, the drugs have left me feeling like I am insufficient. I chose the ‘bull fighter’ analogy in yesterday’s post because the worry I have, that many men have, is that I am not ‘macho’. If any occupation epitomizes the machismo mentality, it is that of the matador. What my stepmother did to me, and the damage the medications have inflicted, strike at the heart of my sense of being a forceful man. A ‘bull among men’. I will gradually work into more specifics about the side effects, but for now I want to focus on how this sense of not being effective, or powerful, or worth taking seriously, interacts with my experience of journaling on line.

Endlessly competitive, I cannot help but notice other blogs in this genera that get dozens of comments for posts about day-to-day things like landscaping, or coffee shops. Yet I write about the most intimate feelings and experiences, and get only a smattering of feedback. This response (or lack of it) makes me think of a few possibilities: 1) no one is reading, or 2) people read, but don’t relate to what I’m writing, or 3) people relate, but are too uncomfortable to go on record with a comment, or 4) people feel disgusted that I disclose so much. My guess is the problem is mostly with (1), but my fears are mostly with (4). The end result is a mixture of impotence (from 1) and shame (from 4).

The feeling of shame I expected. I even started this whole line of discussion in order to address how the pain of humiliation drives so much of our behavior. But I did not foresee that opening up about these delicate and personal matters would leave me feeling disempowered. In fact, I had hoped for the opposite: that expressing myself would make me feel stronger. But having revealed so much, and received so little response (even after I went fishing for comments yesterday), gives me a strange sense of weakness. Like I have this momentous story to tell, but no one is listening. Anyone who wanted to damage me could devote just a little time on line and connect my name with these intimate stories I’ve told. But that does not scare me. I don’t mind being public, if it serves a purpose. But to put all this out into cyberspace, and have it just blink out like a wavering match in a gale, makes me realize that what I went through is not likely to help others after all. I can write the whole shameful story of how I’ve been abused, first by my stepmother and then by the Goliath pharmaceutical industry, but I am not going to be like David. I am not going to slay any giant.

I am launched in this. I have disclosed enough so that the necessity to finish the tale weighs heavily on me. There is nothing more for me to fear, as I have already expressed my deepest self-doubts. I have yet to spell out the damage wreaked by the medications, but the truth will not exceed whatever people imagine on the basis of what I’ve written so far. And even that assumes, of course, that more than a handful are reading. I have revealed my scars, gone public with my shame. There is no reason not to continue. But I cannot say this is working like I planned.

The act of writing about these intimate issues touches me to the quick, to the heart of the fears that the abuse and the side effects have provoked. I am handling the emotional third rail I’ve shied away from for many years, even my whole life, until now. What I am finding is that the fire and raging emotional currents from that live wire are different in character, more intense, and also less injurious than I expected. Different, because the fear of being exposed is being replaced by a fear of being ignored. More intense, because instead of feeling shame from having people know ‘the real me’, which I was prepared to deal with, I feel an unexpected and abysmal terror that no one gives a damn. And less injurious, because I also realize nothing substantial is changing in my world as I write this story. My little narrative goes on as before. I make my plans, plot my moves, and live my life as if nothing unprecedented was going on. As if I wasn’t unhusking the delicate creature that lives buried in shame, and fear, and loneliness. As if I wasn’t shucking off the chrysalis, and flying on unstudied wings into an unknown world.

I feel like a blossom opening to the broad sun of day. Only instead of a sunny public park, I find myself in a shadowy glen, far from the path, where no one sees or cares. That distresses me until I recognize, and this comes to me just now, that daffodils don’t bloom to attract the attention of people walking the garden trails. They bloom to draw butterflies and honeybees. Gentle critters that don’t traffic with human society, but live for the nectar and the joy of life itself. Nor do the daffodils intend to heal the bees, or gather their applause. They flower because they follow their innate rhythms and unfold in due time. They serve the purpose of genetic diversity, but they blossom because they must. I am opening because of my own inner cadence, because it is my time. All along I thought there was a ‘reason’. I would free myself, or help others, or expose the pharmaceutical industry. All wrong.

This blog, this story, is what I do because I must. If others find the journal helpful as they wander the labyrinthine trails of the internet, so much the better. But I have to let go of the expectation that there is anything being accomplished. I’ve written poetry most of my life, and not one piece has ever ‘accomplished’ anything. I write because I must.

nettleEMpicture

The easy thing might be to stay tightly folded and covered with bristles, like a nettle, and not open up. It would be safe. I could hide what happened to me from everyone but my wife. I could pretend I was OK. But I was raised in enforced secrecy, never able to reveal the truth. Now, as an adult, I find telling the ‘whole story’ gives me strength and purpose. Now, I feel the words drawn from me by the same natural forces that draw water to rush downhill. And what I realize in scribing this post, is that I have no choice but to spell everything out. Despite my belief at the start, this blog is not fashioned so others can read it and be healed. That would fulfill me if it happened, but does not account for my hours spent writing. Nor does the journal get produced in order to garner attention, though it appears becoming noticed matters more to me than I thought. This site of mine comes from an inner program that says I must speak.

I need to tell the truth for the same reason the redwood grows, the moon orbits the earth, and the sun never ceases exploding. I tell my story because I must.