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.


The Highly Sensitive Soul

There is much psychological literature on sensitivity, which is no doubt familiar to many readers (see this Wikipedia article for a good summary); what follows is my poetic and non-scientific take on the subject.

Some people seem to feel life more deeply than others. Culturally determined preferences may judge high sensitivity as better or worse than its alternative, but in my opinion the trait requires no such valuation. On the other hand, those of us with systems wide open to pain and pleasure must comprehend our true nature so we can learn to function comfortably in a world that seems designed to challenge the heart.

Did you spot the lie in the last paragraph? The truly sensitive soul will never find lasting comfort save by rejecting the very quality that defines it. To feel life in the abyss of the self is inherently agitating; moments of peace will ever alternate with moments of distress. This is why exquisite sensitivity is commonly viewed as a deficiency.

Imagine for the moment a sentient God who watches our lives from on high. My position on whether such a deity exists is nuanced, complex, and changeable, but right now I don’t want to get into that tangle. Instead, just try to picture how humans would appear through the sagacious eyes of an all-knowing God. From that vantage, does the sensitive person look like he or she is lacking? Doesn’t it rather look more like the sensitive soul is the one who is paying the most attention?

Let’s face facts. Death hurts. Even birth hurts. Romance is seldom forever sweet, as most married couples can attest. Children bring joy to families, but not infrequently they also bring grief. Illness strikes us all, sooner or later. And these are just the ordinary, inevitable trials of life.

Add in earthquakes, hurricanes, famine, wildfires, and tsunamis, and you begin to feel the true impact of our dilemma. Then include the human-generated miseries of war, torture, exploitation, environmental destruction, child-abuse, racism/sexism, and so on. By this point we have before us a panorama sufficient to demoralize anyone who opens to its import. No wonder a responsive heart is often considered an infirmity.

Fortunately, there is more to life than heartache. We can appreciate the intricacy of a spider’s web, the majesty of the moon on a cloudless night, the joyous warmth of a rising sun. We can feel the heart’s faithful beating, the innocence of a child’s smiling face, the palpable waves of love in a family. We enjoy the delicate aroma of a field of wildflowers as we take a morning stroll in springtime, and we feel invigorated by the blustery swirl of leaves as we walk through a park on a windy autumn afternoon. We can meditate among granitic monoliths in the high mountains or feel lulled by waves lapping along the shore of a broad, clear lake.

The trick to embracing this infinite universe of splendor and terror is to remain, yes, sensitive to its charms.

There are two basic strategies for surviving life’s ordeals. One is to harden the outer walls and live protected from fate’s sting. The other is to open the windows wide and let the full blast enter, keeping faith that bereavement and dismay will be more than balanced by blessings and delight.

Sealing the mental house tightly shut keeps out the cold, biting winds, but also the butterflies and sunshine. Opening wide invites life’s full complement of chaos, but also its magnanimous smile.

The sensitive soul faces this choice early in life. In my own case, my upbringing felt overwhelming, so in response my young adult years became a study in progressive cynicism. By my age of twenty-five anger was the only emotion that remained easily accessible. Training as a physician completed the tempering begun years earlier; through medical education I became skilled at participating in the most affecting dramas without feeling affected.

That transformation led me to many of my most disastrous decisions and lasting regrets. I became cut off from my ethical foundations and acted on the basis of superficial logic fueled by deep-seated angst.

How much better it would have been to leave my gentle heart on my sleeve, where it naturally wanted to perch. How much happier I’d have been following my quirky inner leadings rather than society’s call to ambition.

No matter. In the end I found my way back to my true nature. And indeed, as I mentioned in the last post it may be that this current epoch will be my ending turn on life’s wheel. Yes, I feel terribly pained by how much I may be losing before long. I feel even more sorrow about how much was lost through mistaken efforts to protect my heart from breaking. But better to return to feeling at last than never return at all.

Poets, artists, reformers, healers, and saints all rely on sensitivity. The majority probably were born into this world with giant, vulnerable hearts. Many may have lost their way for awhile. But in the end, the sensitive person can neither be happy nor effective except by allowing his or her insistent affection and exquisite tenderness free reign.

The best way to achieve this freedom is to keep the eyes open as wide as possible. Don’t close off to the pain you see, but don’t ignore the beauty of life’s spectacle either. Watch how the winds blow from all directions. Sometimes bitter Northers strafe us with ice, and sometimes balmy desert breezes blow in the darkest night. Sometimes death, sometimes birth. Sometimes cruelty, sometimes compassion. Sometimes illness, sometimes health.

Life is a circle. Live in the middle of the largest circumference you can imagine. From such an axis, no matter how much distress you feel, you will discover a greater measure of Bliss.

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The Highly Sensitive Soul was published on January 23rd, 2012 . 10 comments






The Body Didactic

Too many of us grew up in families wracked with pain. Emotional wounds accumulate in settings of neglect, abuse, bereavement, molestation, violence, and misery. As adults, these ancient injuries undermine our happiness. We often choose poorly in relationships, careers, and pastimes. Even if we don’t make gross mistakes, we lack the confidence to endorse our own choices. We feel uneasy in good times and overwhelmed in bad. This is the legacy of childhood trauma.

At times we shut down emotionally, closing ourselves off from the affection we crave. Other times we act out and hurt the ones we love or destroy our own reputations.

Still, healing can happen after even the worst of upbringings. It takes time, and backslides are unavoidable, but eventually we stabilize in greater maturity and emotional openness than we ever imagined.

In the last post we highlighted the body’s gentle wisdom and how often we ignore it. As I move further along the path to peace of mind, the importance of befriending physical nature becomes ever more obvious. The injuries of the past are stored in our biology, where they affect every aspect of our lives.

For instance, upon remembering painful events from our past, our minds recoil in shame, anger, or sorrow. In equal measure, our bodies respond with corresponding feelings of hollowness, tension, or exhaustion. Just as emotional surges reflect the state of mind that accompanied past trauma, somatic symptoms recreate the physical feelings recorded at the time of the original hardship. Often, such emotional and somatic reactions arise without any conscious memory of the childhood injury that caused them. For example, when a spouse criticizes us, we may feel ashamed and small, or furious and explosive, without overtly connecting these responses to the parental harshness that first established the pattern.

Before we learn healthier strategies, our habitual response to distressing sensations is avoidance. We turn our mental spotlight away from our body’s messages. We may lose ourselves in thought and analysis, ignoring the cramp in our gut, the ache in our shoulders, or the shallowness of our breath. We may evade direct, felt experience by focusing on the actions and misdeeds of others. We may use the distraction of intoxicants, food, sex, or television as shields against painful emotional and sensual turmoil. We become skilled escape artists.

The solution can be found in the body. In fact, we cannot fully transcend our pain until we face its somatic legacy. At first, this feels excruciating. When we begin to tune into our bodily responses, we become aware of a sensory universe populated by knots, soreness, burning, blockage, agitation, and numbness. These discomforts are the physical counterpart to the emotional uproar that also arises. We discover how underneath our superficial and obsessional thought, our core system buzzes with anxiety, grief, anger, and fear. It all seems so noisy and confusing that we may find ourselves pouring a bowl of cereal with little memory of rising from meditation and heading to the kitchen.

The good news is that as we reacquaint ourselves with our bodies, the sensations become less intense. We relax into nonjudgmental awareness, which lessens the stimulation of tension and pain. It can seem like our systems shout less loudly when they have our attention.

Furthermore, we can learn to enter even the most unpleasant symptoms with an attitude of openness, acceptance, and love. In my own case, I experience deep, burning pain in my neck and upper back that worsens during times of stress. It is easy to hate this discomfort and resist it, but doing so only increases the misery. A better strategy is to move toward the soreness with focused attention and gentle affection. I apologize to my neck for all the times my activities harmed it. I feel compassion for its burden of muscle spasm, arthritis, poor posture, and neglect. I honor the hard work it performs in service of supporting my head every day.

By treating my body with the same care I would treat any beloved animal, I send a message of acceptance and affection to my entire being. The self-compassion resonates on the somatic, psychological, and spiritual levels. It feels profoundly healing. Often, the pain seems to abate with this practice, but the goal isn’t to alter my experience in any way. I seek only to honor my body and whatever it communicates.

All painful experiences can be approached in similar fashion. Crushing sorrow, vertiginous loneliness, shattering fear, and even livid rage can all be embraced with this attitude of loving, wise embrace. One finds that life is full of pain, but that this does not mean it is going badly. For as we open to our discomfort and terror, as we accept uncertainty and loss, we automatically increase our ability to feel joy, love, and spacious bliss.

The body will teach us the inexhaustible majesty of life when we surrender to both its wounds and its strengths.

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The Body Didactic was published on January 10th, 2012 .






My Sister, R.I.P.

Janice, 4/28/1953 -- 10/1/2011

My sister died last night at age fifty-eight. She was an alcoholic who could not stop drinking, and in the end the addiction took her life.

Naturally, like me Janice was the product of a terribly dysfunctional and punishing family. At age twelve she lost her mother to suicide. Before that there is good reason to suspect sexual molestation. She suffered many traumas during her life, including terrifying car crashes, rapes, robberies, and death threats. When young she was drawn to violent and cruel men. She was fortunate in her last twenty years to have found a gentle and caring man who loved her despite her frequent outbursts and attacks of rage. Although Jan could say the most hurtful things when drunk or angry, she also had a tender and childlike side that was deeply touching to behold. Unlike me, she could muster optimism and good cheer despite her problems. In the final months of her life she adopted a chihuahua puppy, Lucy, who brought her delight. I enjoyed hearing my sister talk about the dog’s antics; I was reminded of my sister at her best, during her happiest and most life-loving times.

The sad thing about traumatizing upbringings is that they make relationships difficult. It becomes hard to trust, and Jan had great difficulty believing that she was loved. She could idealize you one minute, then demonize you the next. Having come from the same cauldron of violence and loss, I responded intensely to her shifts, and this led to many conflicts between us. I understood her reasons for acting as she did, but the knowledge did little to lessen my own reactions and hurtful retaliations. It was sad to see our relationship deteriorate, because when I was little Jan acted as a surrogate mom. During our mother’s depressions and psychiatric hospitalizations, Jan would make me lunch, play with me, and attempt to make me laugh. She was wonderful back then, which made the tension between us all the more tragic as we got older.

Fortunately, in the past six months we were able to enjoy some brief but tender phone conversations. I finally learned to quit pushing her to go to Alcoholics Anonymous. I learned to let her ventilate when she felt frustrated. By accepting her as she was, she showed me again the joyful soul I remembered from long before. She wouldn’t let me visit, since she felt embarrassed by her declining health and appearance. But we did speak regularly, and without rancor. I am so very glad. I will miss her.

The awful thing about childhood mistreatment is that it casts a shadow over an entire life. Jan never really had a chance after the trauma of her upbringing. She never learned to fight for her self or her health. For a long time this angered me, and I regret my inability to simply love her unconditionally since the last thing she needed was more negative appraisals. But at least during one of the last times I saw her we had a reconciliation, and I told her what a difference her love had made during my own childhood. To a large extent, I owe my continued ability to try to find happiness to Jan, who was the one constant in my life during my early years. I told her that, and it seemed to touch her.

Life is tragic, and all-too-often we hurt the ones we love. Sometimes all we can do to heal the past is to act better in the present. I think my sister and I both tried hard to love one another these past few months. I am grateful for that, even as I feel so much sorrow.

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My Sister, R.I.P. was published on October 2nd, 2011 . 10 comments






The Necessary Pain of Love

Despite my warning to readers in the opening paragraph of the last post, that essay’s thesis wasn’t truly challenging. Desires can lead to trouble? I hear my readers thinking: “Tell us something we don’t already know.” Consider how many novels have been written about the mayhem that surrounds those who act without restraint. A major task of growing up is learning to steady behavior rather than pursue whims. Granted, the Buddha took that basic knowledge to the next level, and showed how even subtle craving can cause suffering, but the message still sounds like common sense: unbridled wants lead to angst.

In the millennia since the Buddha imparted his teachings, these concepts have been elaborated into sophisticated recommendations for achieving equanimity. During the past fifty years, many Westerners have adopted Buddhist practices and precepts. For instance, the doctrine of non-attachment has entered common parlance.

As I have done with a number of spiritual systems, I devoted myself to Buddhist study and practice for a time. I learned the deep peacefulness that comes with following the breath during meditation. I even managed to experience my egoic personality as a mirage, as a biological process within this body’s neural structure, suspended midway between the subatomic and galactic realms.

For all the insight I gleamed from Buddhist practice, however, the idea of non-attachment always remained a bit troubling. Sure, it works fine if applied to material or fleeting pleasures like cars, chocolate, or love affairs. The transient pleasures of life cannot be sustained, and chasing thrills is a doomed strategy for happiness. But what about genuine, deep-seated, love? How can non-attachment make sense when we speak of those closest to us?

For once, I don’t have an answer here. In theory, we could love with all our depth while a person is with us, then calmly let go when he or she departs to the next plane. But even Buddhists grieve, right? And isn’t grief the necessary and worthy price of love?

Denial is a powerful tool of the mind. Even when we know better, we block out awareness of the inevitable death of those we hold dear. To dwell on mortality seems to serve little purpose, so we avoid looking at it. My father was hospitalized with ominous medical problems a year before he died, but when I got the dreadful phone notification of his passing, it still came as a shock. I should have known better, but I didn’t want to. My bond to him, despite our many conflicts, was too important for me to permit thought of sunder. In his case I was strongly attached, and I don’t regret it. But I do regret not taking better advantage of my dad’s final year. My fear of loss fueled a denial that tricked me into squandering time with my father.

Keeping a loose grip is fine, and not that hard, when pleasures are only of the senses. But when they have deeper roots, and touch the heart and soul, holding lightly becomes far more challenging. And is it even desirable?

Do we really want to remain non-attached to those around us? Are not the joy and pain of love and loss vital experiences in life? Where do we draw the line between the pleasures we should release, and the ones that sustain our humanity?

Guess what? We’re back in the realm of hardship. We so quickly slip from joy into pain. The hardship of losing those we love is one of those ordeals that can expand and teach us. But getting to that enlarged and wise state requires that we embrace the pain of grief, and at the same time release our grip on the departed. Only then can we experience the timeless alchemy of tragedy and grace.

So how to sum up non-attachment in matters of the deeper heart? It comes down to cherishing every moment with those we love. We recognize the fleeting nature of all our relationships, and the inevitable breaking of all attachments. As painful as loss is to contemplate, we accept that we our bonds of affection will be disrupted at the end of every life. We guide our hearts by this truth of transience, while keeping our minds in the present, focused on those dear to us. Attachment to the ones alive, sweet letting go of those deceased.

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The Necessary Pain of Love was published on April 22nd, 2011 .






The Value of Sorrow

SpanishAmericanWarDead

My previous essay promoted acceptance as a sure path to inner peace, and as a route to transcend the concept of mental illness. By fully embracing our lives, and ourselves, we are freed from the misery that comes from wishing things to be different.

For instance, depression is uncomfortable, but one can live perfectly well while feeling quite low. Only when we fight against the sadness, and judge ourselves because of it, do we find ourselves hating life. If we can accept the darkest depths of our mood swings, and move through them with grace, we can find satisfaction, fascination, and even inspiration in our experience.

Unfortunately, our culture does not endorse this view. Everywhere we look we see the message that a successful life is a happy one. Electronic screens of all sizes show us smiling, beautiful people loving life. How could one ever believe that a person who often gets flooded by tears and sadness is succeeding in modern society? Can we imagine those lovely models crippled by anxious worries? In real life, of course, the models probably suffer just like the rest of us, but on the screen all is happiness and light.

From the earliest ages we are led to discount the texture and wisdom that come with disappointment, injury, and bereavement. Sadness, we are told, is for losers. Yet some of the greatest artists and innovators have been burdened with depression and other so-called psychiatric symptoms. If these feelings are so awful and destructive, how come they occur so regularly in the greatest minds?

Acceptance does not mean acquiescence to injustice or destruction. It simply means living with full understanding, and without hating any part of our experience. If we can act to prevent future harm, we should do so. But whatever injury has already occurred is now part of the universe. Resisting it only creates tension and dissatisfaction; it does not change established reality. Whatever is here in this moment can be embraced, even if our intention is to prevent anyone else from suffering a similar fate. By accepting our current lives and minds, we can grow and learn and teach. Despite the pain, loss, and sorrow, we can enjoy this brief time we have to live as humans.

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The Value of Sorrow was published on April 30th, 2010 . 2 comments






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