WillSpirit!

Where Will meets Spirit
∞ Love, Clarity, Balance, Peace, & Bliss ∞

A science, mental health and spirituality blog written by a physician.








  • 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.


My Beginner’s Mind

This entry is my twenty-fourth in November. With its publication, there will be precisely three hundred essays on the blog queue. With that many posts available, I feel comfortable planning a break in my blogging. For the month of December, if anything gets published at all, it will be poetry. My plan is to start penning essays again next year. I wish all my WillSpirit friends a Happy Holiday Season.

My final essay for 2011 offers concrete suggestions for quelling emotional distress. Many readers know more about mental healing than I do, so what follows may sound elementary. But some visitors are just starting out, and these suggestions can guide their initial steps. Besides, even advanced meditators don’t consider themselves experts, but strive to maintain the Beginner’s Mind. So one is never too experienced to practice the basics. What follows maps not just what I did when first embarking on recovery; it sketches how I continue to approach my life.

My most uplifted posts have sung the praises of meditation and right attitude. With the aid of such skills, my mental life has improved so dramatically that I now question the many diagnoses that were tossed my direction by doctors. Decisive recovery from longstanding problems shows the capacity of the mind to rework itself; resolution of symptoms also seriously challenges the “brain disease” hypothesis of mood disorders. There was plenty of cognitive detritus obstructing my path, but I doubt there was ever any organic problem in my synapses. By clearing out misconceptions and misperceptions, I found clarity and readiness to accept whatever happens in life. I am not immune to grief and disappointment, but I believe myself resistant to despair. Meditation succeeded where medication failed.

To see how dramatically I’ve improved, consider that my mother committed suicide when I was in the first grade. By late adolescence it seemed obvious to me that my own life would end the same way. It was merely a question of timing. How long would I put up with my awful heartache before deciding, in the words of Hamlet, “to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing, end them?”

Despite years of thinking along those lines, my mind no longer attacks itself. By studying the errors in my perceptions and beliefs, by learning to not mistake feelings for reality or thoughts for truth, I have found freedom from such negativity. It now seems inconceivable that any emotion or circumstance could drive me to end my life.

This all sounds promising, I hope. It should offer reassurance to those who wonder if they could ever wake up from the nightmare of chronic severe depression. It can be done, I promise.

But how? If one is stuck in the depths of misery, the idea of meditating out of it probably sounds like an impossible dream. And early on observing the mind may actually increase awareness of emotional pain and cognitive obsession, which can seem like exactly the wrong result. The trick, in my opinion, is to start out with very small goals.

Don’t begin by signing up for a ten-day meditation retreat. Don’t even plan on sitting on a cushion for an hour. Rather, the next time you’re stuck in a waiting room or standing in line, pay attention to how you feel. Explore your sensations. Can you detect your heartbeat? Where do you find pain? Are you breathing or holding your breath? Get in the habit of checking in for a minute or two whenever there’s a lull in the action.

When you feel ready for more, adopt the same practice as you fall asleep. Take a brief break from reviewing and planning to feel your bodily sensations. Indulge in some slow, deep breaths. See how long you can focus on your body before your thoughts start churning again. Early on, you’ll be doing well if you can remain attentive for fifteen seconds. Be proud if you can achieve that.

Over time, you will extend your range. Maybe you will gaze inwardly a bit longer. Maybe you will catch an obsession and halt it. Every time you succeed, recognize your ability to steer your mental state, even if only briefly. The goal is to gain mastery over your mind, but this process takes years and is never completed, except by Buddhas. At first, consider yourself a champion if you can subdue a destructive thought long enough to choose a healthier one. As you gain skill, you’ll begin to desire more time for meditation. That’s when you should consider a retreat.

But don’t expect too much too soon. If at first you find it too painful to watch and feel, steer your mind toward pleasant memories or daydreams. This isn’t meditation as we usually define it, but it does involve guiding thoughts, so it can be very helpful. Such practice provides welcome breaks from inner misery. If you feel ambitious, you can use it to build up empowering visualizations. Paint a mental picture of yourself mastering a valued skill, or being generous to others, or feeling well and happy.

From just these brief suggestions, you can see there exist many ways to train the mind, and it can be fun experimenting with different methods. Check books out of the library, search for videos on the internet, or go to local gatherings (which often ask only for voluntary donations). If you have a religious faith, and if you feel comfortable in it, then it is a good idea to get more involved with whatever meditative or prayerful activities it offers.

I like to divide mental training into two explorations, though more knowledgeable students recognize many more categories. But for simplicity’s sake, just consider these two paths:

  1. A person can meditate to explore the ocean of consciousness by being mindful of the body, by observing thoughts, by focusing on feelings, by quieting mental activity, and so on.
  2. Alternatively, one can meditate to connect with cosmic love by centering on the warmth that emanates from the heart, by repeating sacred mantras, through visualizations, by attending spiritual rituals, etc.

I believe it is important for people who feel depressed to do both. Exploring the mind helps one learn to steer thoughts and not act on feelings. Nurturing love in the heart warms the inner child who feels lonely and unwanted. One does not need to believe in a Divine Being to find such comfort; just awakening to the affection that arises when holding beloved pets or watching children can accomplish the same end. But, of course, belief in a loving cosmic presence is a great way to find support if your philosophical prejudices will allow it.

Keep in mind as you work on meditating that other healthful activities remain vital. Exercise, good nutrition, socialization, creative arts, and compassionate acts all help improve mood and outlook. These days we can choose from a wide array of therapies and somatic practices that aid mental healing. Pursue as many avenues as you can to help yourself improve. Applaud yourself for every victory, but also treat yourself with tenderness. When you feel too depleted to do much of anything, accept your need for contraction and isolation. Compliment yourself for sitting up in bed, if that’s all you can manage. Eventually, when your energy improves, you can do more.

At all times, be aware that the aim is incremental improvement, not sudden sainthood. As they say in Alcoholics Anonymous, “seek progress, not perfection.”

Good luck on your journey. My prayers are with you.

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My Beginner’s Mind was published on November 28th, 2011 .






Picking Up the Pieces

puzzle

When younger, I never worried about success. If I applied myself, my grades stayed high. Scholastic achievements translated into acceptance to the next stage of training. Through a series of steps, education led to good jobs. Nothing to it.

Times have changed. A decade of unemployment and mental illness has stripped me of possibilities and confidence. How can someone with a medical degree from a top university worry about work? Easily. It boils down to the stock Hollywood question, “what have you done, lately?” I’ve been out of work for most of ten years. And how many ophthalmic plastic surgery skills can be used in other jobs? Not many.

Better than before, I understand the plight of the poor. Childhood abuse convinced me I’m nothing special, so it’s not like I was an arrogant surgeon who thought lowly of those ‘beneath’ me. But it’s one thing to understand that underachievement is not a reflection on worth when you look at it from the outside, and another when you have to face it in yourself. I find it impossible to separate my unemployment from my self-esteem.

Neck problems ended my surgical career at age forty-two. As I’ve said elsewhere, losing my job, status, and pay landed me in psychiatric wards. Afterwards, an incompetent psychiatrist pushed me to accept ‘retirement.’ There are few things worse for a middle-aged man than to be told he is too mentally ill to work. That message undermined the attempts I made at employment. I now see that my doctor was wrong, but it is hard to reconstruct a working life after years of inactivity.

I’ve been driving myself (even more) crazy with this problem. How will I support my wife? What can I possibly do to earn an income? How will we survive? Creative writing will not feed us. Maybe technical writing? But can get into that field at this age, without experience? Do I even want to? Should I teach biology in high school instead? Could I stand it? Would I be any good? Where do I begin? What should I do? There are hundreds of demoralizing questions.

The confusion tires me so much I can hardly imagine doing anything productive. I feel fury at myself for wasting youthful time and energy learning medicine, when I knew it wasn’t right for me. Trying to build a career in my fifties, after ten years of failure and sickness, feels overwhelming and impossible.

It must be worse for those who’ve never achieved at a high level. Success must look like a pipe dream. For those burdened with depression, failure snowballs into despair all-too-easily. How many people out there feel hopeless and uncertain about what to do?

The solution must be to do a little at a time. For me, it meant starting this blog. I know my writing is too wordy, my topics inconsistent. I know my promotion skills are poor, and the product amateurish. But it keeps me writing. I remain busy while I work things out. It’s a small step, but it’s a step. If I can write 150,000 words in six months, then I should be able to make an income as a writer. Maybe not with a memoir or spiritual text, but perhaps writing science articles or even medical editing. Who knows? At least I’ve proven that I like to sit at the computer, and fashion language.

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Picking Up the Pieces was published on December 27th, 2009 . 2 comments






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