Stepping into Joy

This morning I was feeling quite oppressed by stress and the fear of stress and wondering when I was going to get to a place in my life where I could relax.  But then I thought that stress is all in the mind and how I feel about what happens in my life makes all the difference. So if I interpret the challenges of life as stress and bad, then that's what they become. The fact that I'm predisposed chemically to fear all new experiences makes it harder for me to see them as positive.

Fear locks down the mind, forcing it to make fight or flight decisions.  But if there is no reason to make fight-or-flight decisions, then the mind is free to wonder, to explore, to investigate, to discover, to delight in what life brings.

Getting rid of, allaying, or ignoring fear can be a way to step into exploration and ultimately joy.

Good Reasons to Feel Bad: What to Do When They Fade

Question for today: what happens to people with bad brain chemistry when they have a good reason to feel bad?

When people with balanced brain chemistry have that problem, they may feel bad for a while, then they feel better. A loved one dies, for instance, and the non-BBC-plagued person responds in a rational manner, feeling bad for the length of time needed to heal from the loss.

Someone with bad brain chemistry, though, may experience something different. Because this is a good reason to feel bad, that person clings to the reason, and when after a time of mourning the day-to-day bad feelings return, he or she continues to ascribe them to this reason.  Now all the bad feelings that naturally cycle in and out in the suffering person's brain are blamed on this reason: bereavement.  If this goes on long enough, people around the suffering person begin to wonder why their friend/family member is still mourning after so much time has passed.

"You need to get on with your life," the well meaning friends may say, thinking the person is fixated on the loss of the loved one.  But though the BBC person feels the loss, he is at this point trying to cope with his day-to-day BBC, and not the loss. He just doesn't realize that is what he is doing.

As I pointed out in my last post, people with BBC who go to war want to cling to that life-or-death experience because it made them feel better in a strange sort of way. Mourning the death of a loved one is that kind of experience that explains bad feelings in a socially acceptable way. Coping with a serious illness also provides that kind of paradoxical relief because the BBC person can now solicit sympathy and support legitimately.

But if something changes (the person recovers from the illness or returns from the war), or a reasonable amount of time passes, the "good" reason to feel bad loses legitimacy, and if the BBC person clings to that reason, he or she is in danger of deteriorating into a dysfunctional or debilitated state.

So what's the answer? The same as ever: recognize that your brain is making you feel that way by sounding a false alarm; then, find a way to turn off the alarm.

The Problem with Summer in Sacramento

A student I know who is studying the brain with respect to post traumatic stress tells me that the latest research indicates that the brain is physically changed somehow by traumatic experiences such as war. It's an intriguing idea and one which seems to offer a solution to the problem that so many suffer, especially the last decade or so when we've sent military (and some civilian) members to war zones repeatedly.

The latest shooting at Fort Hood underscores the problem of post traumatic stress, although it's hard to predict how people will react to combat experiences, as those who were helping the shooter will, to their dismay, attest.

It goes back to my theory that the brain chemistry a person inherits predisposes that person to painful feelings that come from the brain, whether randomly or in a predictable pattern or cycle.  In an effort to explain those feelings, the mind fixes on a reasonable-seeming source of the pain and then sets about doing something to eliminate that source or mitigate its effects.  The problem then is not the brain, but whatever the suffering person decides is the source of that pain.

Of course, as I've often said, it's pretty easy to find something to be upset about. No one has a perfect life and many things can be the source of discomfort or trouble. The problem arises when the identified source does not really match the level of suffering the person is experiencing. But the sufferer carries on nevertheless, making the external event into something bigger than it really is, working to eradicate the falsely identified source of pain no matter how illogical.

For instance, a woman who has this kind of brain chemistry suddenly feels bad when there's really no reason to feel bad. In an effort to explain why she feels bad, she comes up with something: why did her husband not call her at lunchtime? Every day he calls her and today he did not. It must be because he is seeing another woman and was with that woman during lunch. Now she has a reason to feel bad: her husband is cheating on her. Of course, this kind of thought process, because it's fictional to start with, has no bounds. In an effort to "explain" her bad feelings, she's prepared to go all the way. He's seeing another woman and has been seeing her for months, maybe years. She looks back at all the times he didn't call her or even those times he did call her and she scrutinizes them for signs of cheating.  She remembers all the times he was absent or seemed distant and decides they indicate his preoccupation with that "other woman." She continues to accumulate "evidence" until she's convinced herself this is happening to her and now she has a reason to feel bad. When her husband gets home, she confronts him with this evidence and cries hysterically. If he is innocent he will be completely puzzled by her behavior. He denies the accusation, which only causes her to suspect him more and now she is really upset, crying hysterically and planning her future without him.

Paradoxically, it is this outburst that finally causes her to feel better. She has identified the source of the pain and has done something about it--confronted her husband. She has lanced the boil, so to speak, and now feels purged of the infection that was causing her pain. She may calm down while she contemplates her next move. The storm is over. For now, anyway. The husband's reaction may change the details of how she responds, but the end result is the same. Whether he denies it or not, whether he gets angry or offers comfort, she feels better afterward.

Moreover, even if she is right and he admits it, the same quiescence occurs. Whether or not the source of the pain is real, the outcome is the same: she feels better. In fact, the more real trouble she has, the better she feels.

Have you ever known someone who is always complaining about minor disturbances but when a real tragedy occurs, rises to the occasion beautifully, even heroically? I believe the reason is that the person is prepared to deal with disaster. His fight/flight apparatus is constantly honed and ready for action so that when real emergencies call on him to act, he can do whatever is necessary without thinking. That he seems overjoyed to get into the action is no coincidence. His brain chemistry gives him the tools he needs to respond to dire situations. Unfortunately, when there are no emergencies to respond to, he doesn't fare so well. The decorated soldier who redeploys home to his Army post only to find himself sinking into alcoholism or depression is an example of this phenomenon. His brain chemistry is still making him feel he is in a fight or flight situation when he no longer is. So he creates one to make himself feel better, not even realizing that that is what he is doing.

It's the kind of the situation Sacramento Valley weather forecasters find themselves in: there's not much to report on any given day, especially in the summer or during a drought--sunshine and heat, unremittingly. But because they make their money reporting on change, especially when that change is big or dangerous, they will try to find reasons to be troubled. When something does finally happen that causes trouble, they jump on it, barely containing their glee, it seems, at their "good" fortune. Thus "Rain Storm '98" or "Winter Storm Vesuvius" rules headlines for days or (if they can manage it) weeks.

Normal life for many Americans is like summer in Sacramento, California--every day is pretty much the same with safe, non-troublesome weather and the occasional short-lived, not-too-threatening storm of one kind or another. No tornadoes, no blizzards, no hurricanes, no floods. But if your brain chemistry erroneously sets off sirens in your head on a daily basis, you think your life is not normal and start believing there must be a storm around somewhere and go off looking for it before it wreaks havoc in your life.

The task for such people is not to find the reason for the siren, it's simply to find a way to turn the siren off. Simple, yes. Easy? Not so much.

The Choice

Once again, I'm convinced my brain's chemistry delivers fear which my mind then must find a rationale for. Not hard to do. My sister's problems qualify quite nicely for a reason to be afraid. In fact, all her life she's given me a reason to worry, something she herself needs.

Right now she's quite upset over being so helpless, but if she didn't have the brain chemistry she has, she wouldn't embrace her misery so completely.  Having a reason to be miserable is making her happy, in a strange sort of way, because it allows her to explain why she is feeling so bad.

It's terribly hard to let go of that particular coping mechanism--believe me, I know. Feeling terrible is a way to feel better, paradoxically. It works, though, so people keep using it. Not only does it work, but it's hard to see it for what it is--something the person is actually doing deliberately. It's so automatic, so knee-jerk, it seems to be out of the depressed person's control. But we are doing it ourselves.

Just look at any depression-related website, especially blogs. There is a desire to have company in one's misery, to be self-righteous about feeling depressed. People should understand, we say, and not expect so much from us. They tell us to snap out of it, but we can't, so they should let us be the way we are. We want to cling to our misery, our suffering selves.

Medication is frequently tried these days but sometimes does not work, or doesn't work for long enough, or works in a detrimental way. If medication can't work, people must use their minds to help themselves to feel better. Unfortunately, many of the ways people choose to help themselves are ultimately destructive to them and people around them, such as abusing drugs or engaging in other behaviors that tend to increase adrenalin, such as cutting oneself, driving fast, compulsively having illicit sex.

It's rational to try to make a bad feeling go away. But it doesn't have to be a destructive method. It can be something innocuous like playing Solitaire or one of the other games people like to play on their hand-held devices. As long as it works, who cares how simple it is? There is, however, a danger that the behavior designed to solve the problem becomes a problem itself by becoming addictive. So you see people who can't stop playing with their phones even when it's a very bad idea to do so (during driving, for instance).

People don't have to miserable. They can choose not to.  They really can. They just don't believe that the way they feel is physical and that it can be dealt with in a rational way, like any other physical ailment.

So There We Are

Feeling sad when there's no reason to feel sad--that's one version of bad brain chemistry. That's how I feel today. One could say I have a good reason to feel sad because of my sister's dilemma. And I do feel sad because of that. But other than that, I have no reason to feel as bad as I do, and if my sister wasn't hurting, there'd be some other reason to feel bad, at least according to my brain, that wants to have a rationale for feeling bad.

But my life is good, really, and for that matter, so is my sister's, if she would only acknowledge that and get on with the business of trying to fix what's wrong. She needs to work harder at losing weight and getting strong, but she chooses instead to be the victim, which gives her a reason to be angry and depressed. And that is truly sad because it just doesn't have to be that way. All that needs to change is her attitude, but she doesn't believe that. And she doesn't believe she can change her attitude even. So there we are. And there's not much I can do. I'm no leader, as I've often stated. But maybe I'm giving up too easily too. Maybe.

Experiencing Peace and Happiness

I was thinking about my sister whose main method for dealing with her brain chemistry seems these days to be rage. She used to be depressed often and only angry sometimes, but now she's angry all the time. This is not real anger, of course. As I've said in earlier posts, real rage has a cause. A legitimate cause. Her rage is coming from inside her, but she won't acknowledge that, of course. I don't know if I'll ever get through to her; she completely rejects my theories and remedies. I don't know what I'm thinking, trying to come up with a solution for people that involves sacrifice of their favorite methods of dealing with their brain chemistry.

Yesterday I was feeling depressed right after I talked to my sister. While that is certainly understandable, since she was singing her same tune about "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore," I've used that excuse for many years, and I don't think I want to anymore. And really I've been trying to examine it whenever I feel myself slipping into that mode. Here's how that works:

Instead of telling myself that I'm depressed about my sister's fate and leaving it at that, I tell myself that while I have every reason to be depressed about that, the magnitude of pain I feel is not commensurate with the reason for the pain.  This particular time, the bad feeling came over me around that same time, but I recognized the bad feeling as the same bad feeling I have when nothing is going wrong in my life. The bad feeling is actually independent of what's going on in my life. Or maybe there's something more subtle going on--an interaction between my finely tuned, sensitive-to-trouble psyche and the external environment. I'll have to think on that more later.

Meanwhile, instead of focusing on the usual "what's going to happen to my sister?" worry, I focused on "what can I do to get rid of this bad feeling?"  But when I say that it sounds selfish. I can hear my mother (and probably countless other people who have the same notion) saying: Don't you care what happens to your sister? That is the refrain my mother (and sister) sang my whole life--if you're not worried, you don't care. But worry is so useless.  Do something, yes, if you can, but worry about what you can't control? That might actually cause more harm than good. Why do you think alcoholics in AA embrace the serenity prayer: Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

In a Wikipedia article that delves into the origin of this prayer, there is a long history of people expressing the basic tenets of this prayer. I found it to be enlightening, especially the parts about ancient writers who promoted the philosophy it contains: Serenity Prayer.

I especially liked Epictetus' advice:  

Make the best use of what is in your power, and take the rest as it happens. Some things are up to us [eph' hêmin] and some things are not up to us. Our opinions are up to us, and our impulses, desires, aversions-in short, whatever is our own doing. Our bodies are not up to us, nor are our possessions, our reputations, or our public offices, or, that is, whatever is not our own doing.

It's as if this fellow from first century Greece (55-135) had the same idea I have, except I put a modern spin on it. Here is what the Wikipedia article says about Epictetus:

Philosophy, Epictetus taught, is a way of life and not just a theoretical discipline. To Epictetus, all external events are determined by fate, and are thus beyond our control; we should accept whatever happens calmly and dispassionately. However, individuals are responsible for their own actions, which they can examine and control through rigorous self-discipline.

Suffering occurs from trying to control what is uncontrollable, or from neglecting what is within our power. As part of the universal city that is the universe, it is our duty to care for all our fellow men. Those who follow these precepts will achieve happiness and peace of mind. 

Epictetus is considered to be a stoic philosopher, but my understanding of stoicism was more or less negative until I read that passage. The sentence that seems to echo my vision is the one that says we are responsible for our own actions. Now, the stoics were big on control, but that sounds a lot like our notion of self-control: be Vulcan-like in denying your emotions.

But I'm not talking about denying your emotions, only understanding where they come from, especially if they're coming from your brain [read: body] and are not prompted by outside events. Understanding emotions leads to happiness much more efficiently than merely trying to hold them in or pretend they don't exist, the way Spock seems to. In the Spock vs Kirk debate, Kirk always wins, it seems, because we (and TV show writers) tend to favor the passionate person over the stoical person. But uncontolled passion is just as inappropriate as rigid stoicism, and just as likely to cause suffering.

So, what did I do about my bad feeling yesterday? I did some Solitaire, followed by a bit of walking while listening to a mystery novel, which helped, then when the bad feeling came back, I ate a bit of chocolate (remedy of last resort). Finally I started to feel better and could get on with what I was doing. Later I was able to receive information about my sister's decisions with more calm, which is good for me. But perhaps as important is that it is also good for her.

The more I respond to my sister's irrational behavior with calm and compassion, the more I will help her in the only way she will let me--by not rejecting her when everyone else does. If I don't let her behavior upset me, I can see the suffering she is inflicting on herself. I do not suffer from her bad behavior. I feel bad that she can't see her way clear to stop suffering, but that's not the same as her making me suffer. I can't control how she behaves; I can only try to do what I can do. And since I can't control her, I can accept her and still love her and try to help her as much as she will let me.

And I can only do that if I understand that my bad feelings (and hers, too) come from the brain we were given. A good brain but one that doesn't always work in a way that's helpful for experiencing peace and happiness. 

The Pain Is In Your Brain

My brain chemistry has been oppressing me quite a bit this past week or so. I've been struggling to ride the waves of bad feelings I've been experiencing. I hesitate to label the feelings depression because of what comes with the term--a ready-made definition that causes people to shut off their minds and not see the condition for what I believe it is--a debilitating physical condition that can take many forms.

Oh, sure, thanks to pharmaceutical marketing, most people are now aware that depression can be helped with antidepressant medications--and that's a good thing. Lately, though, those medicines seem to be working less well than expected--at least if you believe the drug company ads which encourage you to "ask your doctor" about taking an additional medication for your depression (a medication that is in most cases an antipsychotic and not an anti-depressant).

Other than increasing awareness of the problem of depression (only one type of psychic pain), I don't think pharmaceutical companies are doing us any favors coming up with more and more (and stronger and stronger) medicines to treat depression because such marketing is causing the average lay person and even some psychiatrists to believe that taking antidepressants or other psychotropic drugs are all that's needed to fix the problem.

My own experience has taught me that medicine is not enough. Long term psychic pain brings with it so many behavioral problems that I am convinced one cannot get better by taking drugs alone, even if those drugs are well tolerated and effective (not always a given).

The behavioral problems result from the person's response to the pain: seek out the source of the pain and try to eliminate it. Of course, most of the time the person doesn't realize that the source is his own brain, and not the world around him. Identifying what turns out to be the wrong cause and then trying to eliminate that  mistaken cause is what creates the problems.

If people didn't respond in trouble-causing ways to psychic pain then there would be no need for remedies. Yes, the pain is in and of itself a problem, but if one can tolerate the pain without responding in a way that complicates one's life, then at least the problem is smaller, more localized, and less debilitating. 

I'm advocating that people should respond to psychic pain in the same way they respond to physical pain. Even though psychic pain is physical pain, people don't experience it that way; moreover, they are not conditioned to think of it that way because of the mind-body split concept that people have believed in for millennia.  So thinking of your mind's pain as different from your body's pain, or that mental pain is not real and is somehow even shameful is part of what people must struggle against in trying to treat their depression and other brain-chemistry induced ailments.

Think about how we respond to physical pain: use medications if any are available, then just put up with it, work around it, or distract yourself from it. What we don't typically do is to blame ourselves for it, to feel ashamed because we have it, or look for causes outside ourselves.

For instance, if a person suffers from phantom pain from a severed limb, he doesn't blame his spouse or his boss or his job or his place of residence for the phantom pain. He doesn't believe getting a new wife will take away his pain.  Changing any of his life circumstances might make his pain easier to bear or more convenient to deal with, perhaps, but it won't eliminate the pain. And he would never imagine that such a thing could happen (if he is rational).

So why do people who suffer psychic pain believe that changing something will make them happy (i.e. take away their psychic pain)?  If a woman's brain is making her unhappy, what makes her think changing her job will make her happy? She still has the same brain, after all. She takes her malfunctioning brain with her to the next job, the next town, the next relationship where it will once again cause her pain that she will once again misconstrue as caused by something outside herself and start the cycle all over again.

The behavior that the psychic pain elicits is the problem that needs fixing--behavior that is sometimes dangerous, life-threatening, life-destroying. Sure, get rid of the pain if you can, but how do you get rid of the behavior that is now entrenched and habitual? By recognizing that the source of the pain is not outside yourself, that it is your brain. Think of it as physical pain, then deal with it the way you would a physical ailment. It's that simple. It's just not easy.

The Power of Ruby Slippers

Yesterday I was thinking about people who are self-righteous about their suffering. This is especially true of those who suffer mentally. Because they take some degree of pride in their ability to endure pain, they find it hard to give it up, I think, when they no longer need to feel it.

My theory that people with bad brain chemistry need to find things to feel bad about to make their bad feelings seem rational coincides with this phenomenon of being self-righteous about suffering.  They don't want to stop being in psychic pain because to do so would mean that they always had the power to change and stop suffering and that they are not tragic figures after all.

It's like Dorothy's ruby slippers.  As soon as she got them from the bad witch, she had the power to go home, but she didn't know it so she went on staying in Oz and suffering from homesickness.  I think Dorothy was pretty ticked that she wasn't told.  Sure, Glinda the Good Witch told her that if she had told Dorothy the trick the girl wouldn't have believed her.  I can understand how Dorothy felt, but I also think Glinda was right because I've noticed that when I tell people that the solution to their sadness is something as simple as scanning, they don't believe me either.  What would it take for the people I try to help to conclude, like Dorothy, that they can stop suffering by doing something simple?  Would they still go through all the suffering that Dorothy went through to get to that point?

I kind of like this analogy.  How can I go further with it? Well, if you really look you can find allegories in The Wizard of Oz.  Glinda asked Dorothy what she learned on her adventure and she said basically that she learned she didn't need to go looking for happiness because it had been right in her back yard all along. That's what people with brain chemistry need to learn--that they have the power within them to be happy, that they don't need to buy a lot of gear or food or pills or books or personal trainers or gurus.  They can simply decide to make their pain go away and believe that it's possible.

I think Glinda was right about Dorothy. She wouldn't have believed it could be so simple.  She liked the idea of a quest, suffering through the dark night of the soul until she vanquished evil and rescued her comrades who proved worthy warriors.  Sounds good until you remember that the quest was contrived by the Wizard who wasn't really a wizard (in the movie anyway) and couldn't bestow any of the things he claimed to be able to bestow.  He was a con artist, like the one who came to Dorothy's farm in the beginning of the film. Dorothy learned she was strong, and that was valuable, I suppose.  And she gained friendships she didn't have before. (Or, if you believe the "dream" ending, they were friends she had all along but didn't recognize how valuable they were.)

I think about these unnecessary quests when I read books by people who supposedly went through terrible trials to get to where they are today--someplace happier, healthier and on the other side of some treacherous divide where they look back in awe at how far they've come.  People love those kind of stories, probably because they conform to the structure of the classic good story, complete with the typical story arc: complications, rising action, crisis, turning point, denouement.  In order to please those readers, then, the writer has to contrive his or her story, make what might have been a much slower, more convoluted, more complex and much more subtle process into a straight-line quest--a journey to hell and back.

It makes me wonder--if the suffering person had learned the secret earlier--maybe learned that there was no need for the quest, that the answer was simple and easily obtained--would he or she have believed it? Would the suffering person have gone on suffering so as to come out with a great story later?  Would the person have figured it out early but written a fictional account just to satisfy the desire of readers to believe in the power of suffering to redeem us? That's what Oprah's pal did before he got caught.  That's what a lot of people did and do in order to sell a "true" account of adventure to the unsuspecting (but fervently believing) public.  Even in Shakespeare's time people yearned for the truth that was stranger than fiction.  So it's no wonder that the Wizard of Oz, old con man that he was, gave that story to Dorothy.  And Glinda let him because she knew Dorothy would never go for the plain, simple, unvarnished and decidedly less glamorous truth that to be happy all she had to do was click her heels together three times, saying "There's no place like home."

The Inheritance

So, if a person grows up in an abusive household, how does he or she avoid such situations in the future?

Well, becoming aware is essential.  Chances are the person who was a child of abuse has inherited the bad brain chemistry that caused the parent or parents to behave in the way they did (that and the behavior they learned from their bad brain chemistry suffering parents).  And so the child has also learned the ineffective behavior as well.  Knowing about both the brain chemistry and the learned behavior will help.  Part of the learned behavior is that method of survival that used to bring about a feeling of triumph or at least relief.  One needs an abusive situation in order to deploy such methods though.  That means that if one wants to avoid repeating an abusive home life one needs to find other ways of feeling triumph or relief.

Many people who weren't brought up in an abusive household achieve a feeling of triumph from accomplishing something other than survival or the avoidance of conflict.  Imagine that! Feeling triumphant over a personal achievement such as winning a debate or acquitting oneself well in a baseball game or getting an A on a particularly difficult test in school or even something as simple as figuring out how to fix a broken toaster.

Often people who are abused or grow up with an abuser are not praised or even noticed for their achievements.  They might think they don't have any, except what they've learned to stay out of Dad's way or avoid Mom's withering critique by being invisible.  Or perhaps they show their disdain for praise by being troublesome or being even more difficult than their abusive parents.

I need to think more about this topic.  Next time . . .

Flee and Flee Again

Today I had a thought about people who stay in an abusive relationship.  There is something in the relationship that the abused person craves.  She does not crave the violence, necessarily, just the brain-effects that the violence provides her with. She accepts the violence as concomitant with the other.

And what is the other?  Perhaps it is the thrill of victory.  Living with an abusive person is like always being on the hunt, always having to read the environment for potential danger, as well as for potential sustenance.  The abuser provides the danger, but not always. Sometimes he provides the sustenance: peace and calm and even affectionate attention. Either outcome is unpredictable, however, so she must always be on the lookout for both.

Living in such a relationship is like constantly being in a fight or flight situation--never being able to relax. But the person who is hyperalert is a person who thrives in such a situation. She feels good about having survived, of having gotten the goods, even when she occasionally pays with physical or emotional pain. Unfortunately, she gets addicted to the thrill of victory and tries to make it happen, to reproduce the circumstances of triumph in other relationships, even the abusive one she wants to escape. 

And she does want to escape. Who wouldn't want to escape frequent near-death experiences in one's own home?  But fleeing (and occasionally fighting) is the goal of the agon and is therefore what causes her to feel good when she reaches it. Once she escapes, however, she will eventually crave that situation of fight-or-flight that resulted in her triumphing over death and feeling that exhilaration.  It's a kind of adrenalin addiction, I think, similar to that experienced by a dare-devil pilot or extreme athlete or combat soldier.

It's interesting, I think, that people heap scorn upon anyone these days who wants to suggest that an abused person (especially a woman) might play a role in her captivity, however small.  Don't blame the victim, they say.  "It's not her fault; it's the man's fault. He's the only culprit." But it's not that cut and dried, though we would like it to be.  Despite all the help people currently have to avoid establishing relationships with abusers or to escape those situations, including shelters and mental health professionals, educational materials and even more stringent laws to punish the abusers, they are still ending up victims. Why is that? Why do people still let themselves in for that?

I think that it's simply much more complicated than it first appears to be. How do people end up in abusive relationships? Well, there may be a variety of reasons for that. But once there, some stay. Those are the ones who puzzle the people who want to help.  Why do they stay? There are a lot of theories out there, but one I'd like to offer is that the abused and the abuser are co-dependent. Each is getting something out of the relationship. Both are suffering from brain chemistry that causes them to behave in a way that is not only counterproductive but may sometimes be downright toxic or even lethal.  That they don't change may be because what they are getting from the survival-mode existence is something they need and don't know how to get in a way that is more constructive.

But those directly involved in the abusive relationship are not the only ones affected by it.  If there are children, they suffer, too.  Even if they themselves are not being abused, they experience the same struggle for survival watching their parents go at it in their presence, except for them it can be much worse because they didn't create the situation and have very little control over it.  They might attempt to exert control by trying to intervene during a fight, by escaping temporarily, by running away, by acting out in school, by getting in trouble or getting hurt--all ways that work for a while, either to bring their parents together or break them apart or at least distract them for a time.

But all the while this is happening, the children are living with the daily struggle for survival, learning to deal with the dilemma of loved ones fighting--having to take sides but not wanting to. And those who succeed in figuring it out, who survive the situation, get something out of their success.  They experience the thrill of victory, too, and later, when they grow up and do finally escape for good, they crave that same intense, ultimately life-affirming experience they had when they were children.  And that's what it is--life-affirming.  The adrenalin junkie might be addicted to that high he gets from courting and then jilting death--the neurochemicals that pour into his brain during and after a struggle to survive--but he is also affirming life, and that is exhilarating.  And in this modern, safe, comfortable world where the true struggle for survival is almost non-existent, there are few opportunities for such exhilaration.

This, then, may be one of the reasons abused (or abusing) people stay in such painful relationships--they grew up in an abusive household, which means they not only inherited the brain chemistry of people who crave the agon, but they learned how to create it and play their parts in it.  That there are other, better methods does not occur to them, of if it does, then they are afraid to try them for fear they will not work.

Uncovering Happiness

The pursuit of happiness is something we like to think of as constitutionally guaranteed in this country. We have the right to pursue happiness, whatever that might be for us, as long as we don't run afoul of the law. Like many people, I used to think happiness was some elusive state, difficult if not impossible to achieve. One who is unhappy must do something, go somewhere, change somehow in order to be happy. If only I could figure out what that something was, I could be happy.

Lately, however, I've been thinking that happiness is not something "out there," in the future or in another place, a state that I have to get to. Rather, I've come to believe that happiness is a quality I already possess, something that exists within me and need only be uncovered, drawn out, revealed.

My brain chemistry works to muffle happiness, to hide its existence, to prevent me from experiencing it. Why is it doing this? I suppose it's trying to protect me from what it mistakenly believes are mortal threats to my physical body. Happiness is, after all, a state of relaxation. To feel happy is to experience a time away from vigilance, to dwell in a place where peace and cooperation, creativity and curiosity hold sway.  If one is afraid for one's life, one cannot afford to relax, to be curious, friendly, open, joyous, inventive--that is, happy. One must concentrate on surviving.

Hyperalert people whose brains make them believe they are in danger cannot afford to relax vigilance.  They must stay alert to attacks from the outside world where predators lurk, where hunger and hurt await. Unfortunately, the source of the threat they feel is the brain itself, causing pain in the name of survival.

The hyperalert brain is creating a kind of autoimmune disorder, you might say. Autoimmune disorders occur when the body mistakenly believes its own tissues are a threat; it treats its internal tissues like external invaders. In much the same way, when the brain produces fear-inducing chemicals, the mind does not recognize the threat as internal and therefore harmless; instead it immediately looks outside the body for the cause of the fear, for the invader; and when it finds something, it responds by fighting the perceived threat or fleeing from it. The mind's response is like the body's response: it acts to protect the organism.

What does the mind do? It prompts the body to attack, perhaps, through yelling or hitting. Or it prompts the body to flee through literal or figurative running: taking to one's bed and refusing to get up and go to work, for instance, or escaping via a tried-and-true route, such as changing jobs or drinking alcohol or gambling.

Though it may seem such actions are intended to remove obstacles to happiness ("If I could only find a job I like"; "If I can just get enough money to pay my bills"), they are in effect creating those obstacles by perpetuating readiness for a threat that doesn't exist.  It's as if the person is patrolling through a war zone, anxiously alert for the hidden mine that will take his legs or even his life. "Be alert or be inert," as soldiers say. But that kind of vigilance takes its toll, even when the threat is real. At least a real war will end at some point and if he survives, the soldier will be safe. When the war is brain-created, there's no actual reason for vigilance and thus no hope of safety--no hope for a future happiness.

So, what to do? Look for the happiness that is hiding behind the artificial cloud the brain creates. Dispel the cloud, and reveal the sunshine behind it. Simple--but, of course, not easy.

The Half-Empty Glass

Today I had a revelation about the "glass-half-empty" folks (like me).  Seeing the glass as half-empty is looking for a reason to be unhappy, according to our critics.  But as I have tried to explain in this blog, looking for a reason to be unhappy is a result of a brain chemistry glitch.  Our neurotransmitters make us feel bad (erroneously) and in order to make sense of that bad feeling, we go looking for what could be causing it.  Why do I feel bad?  What is wrong in my world?  And since people can always find something wrong in their world if they look closely enough, the "cause" of the bad feeling can always be found.

This discovery, of course, is seen as a good thing by the sufferer, because once a problem's cause is determined, a solution can be sought and possibly found.  Half-full (HF) folks often criticize half-empty (HE) folks for their negative outlook: "You like to be unhappy," they say.  But though it seems that we like being unhappy, what we like, in fact, is finding the reason we're unhappy so we can do something to fix it.

My mother used to have an ingenious explanation for her bad brain chemistry attacks.  She called them her "feelings," and when she would experience one, she'd interpret it as a kind of telepathic message: someone she loved was in distress.  She would then call each of us and ask how we were. "I've had one of my feelings," she'd say. "Are you alright?" If nothing was wrong, she would try to find something, however minor, that would serve as distress so her bad feeling could be explained.  At times, I would find myself coming up with something so that she'd be appeased and stop worrying.  It wasn't until recently that I realized what her "feelings" were.  The other day, for the first time in a long time, she mentioned she'd had one of her "feelings." I tried to tell her it was just brain chemistry, but she didn't seem to like that explanation very much, preferring to see herself as special, I suppose, as endowed with extraordinary psychic abilities.  I can't say I blame her there.  Bad brain chemistry is viewed as a flaw, after all--a disability, an illness.  Having a poorly functioning brain marks you as defective.  It's not something people want to accept.

And therein lies the dilemma: convincing the "half-empty" people that they can feel better is difficult when they don't even want to accept that they have a problem, when they want to believe the way they see the world is realistic and the only right way to see things.

But I continue to work on changing that, one day at a time.