On Yoga: “Through sustained focus and meditation on our patterns, habits, and conditioning, we gain understanding of our past and how we can change the patterns that are not serving us more fully.” Daily Cup of Yoga.com.

I was introduced to yoga back in the 70’s when Eastern body and mind practices were first coming onto the scene of American culture. It was the time of hippies, tie-dyed tee shirts, musical artists like The Who and Janice Joplin, and Eastern spiritual Gurus spreading their philosophies and spiritual practices in America. My best friend’s older sister lived on an Ashram in Boulder, Colorado, at the time. When she would come back home to visit, she’d share stories of her life there. Her mesmerizing counter-culture tales of making candles, doing meditation and yoga daily, and making meals from her organic garden, alongside her cute boyfriend Jimmy, seemed magical to me. From that point forward, I was hooked–on Yoga! Little did I know back then how much yoga, that seemed at first to be just another form of gymnastics to me, would evolve me emotionally and spiritually through the years.

Yoga has come a long way since the 70′s. Today, a yoga studio is as common a town feature as a local Starbucks. Deep breathing, yoga, meditation, and body treatments like Reiki are now part of mainstream culture and are here to stay. So, don’t think just because they get lumped into a health and therapy category called alternative health practices that they are less important to your well being.

Yoga and Mental Health

There is a growing body of research to back up yoga’s mental health benefits. Yoga increases body awareness, relieves stress, reduces muscle tension, strain, and inflammation, sharpens attention and concentration, and calms and centers the nervous system. Yoga’s positive benefits on mental health have made it an important practice tool of psychotherapy (American Psychological Association). Yoga has been shown to enhance social well being through a sense of belonging to others, and improve the symptoms of depression, attention deficit and hyperactivity, and sleep disorders. Also, yoga can improve symptoms of schizophrenia when it is done alongside drug therapy (Yoga and Mental Health, Huffington Post 2013).

“Yoga has also been shown to increase the level of gamma-aminobutyric acid, or GABA, a chemical in the brain that helps to regulate nerve activity.” This is especially relevant to people who have anxiety disorders. GABA activity is reduced in people with anxiety disorders who take psychiatric drugs that increase GABA activity to improve mood and decrease anxiety (Yoga and Your Mood, the Ultimate Yogi).

Yoga also improves the mood and behavior of high school students. One study found that in contrast to regular physical education (PE) classes, yoga classes helped high school students to regulate mood and behavior better, cope more effectively, control anger, and behave more mindfully than students taking PE alone.

But, let’s not stop there. Yoga’s benefits extend to adult caregivers who experience lower life satisfaction, depression, and stress and high levels of biological markers for inflammation. One study found that practicing a 12-minute daily eight week program of yoga exercise resulted in reducing markers of inflammation in adults taking care of loved ones stricken with Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia (UCLA’s Late-Life Depress, Stress and Wellness Research Program).

It is clear that mind and body practices, like yoga, meditation, deep breathing and prayer reduce stress and improves stress-related nervous system imbalances (Psychological Benefits of Yoga). But, how do they do this? Is there one main mechanism at play here?

Researchers say it is the relaxation response that accompanies these mind and body practices that lead to the many improvements to physical and mental health. A new study from investigators at the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind/Body Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) finds that the deep, physiological state of rest induced by such practices produces immediate positive change in the expression of genes involved in immune function, energy metabolism and insulin secretion (Genes and Physiological Pathways Altered in the Relaxation Response, Science Daily, May 2013).

What is a deep state of physiological rest? It is a change in calm and relaxation that takes place on a neurobiological level. Even having a good time out with friends or family is not enough to relax your biology on a cellular level. It takes a certain amount of brain and body stimulation to laugh, animatedly move our faces and bodies, and to listen and respond effectively to social cues. We need enough adrenaline pumping to our brain, heart and muscles to do this. So, you see, even socializing, playing an enjoyable game of tennis or golf, or shopping with a friend is actually a state of biochemical tension.  For the body to relax at the nerve and cellular level, we need to alter body processes that shift us biochemically from a state of excitement and tension to a state of calm, deep rest and relaxation. Only deep breathing that accompanies mind-body practices like yoga can do this.

The Physiology of Yoga

Dolphin Yoga Pose

How could the holding of a physical pose, like dolphin pose, neurobiologically relax you and also strengthen the mind and body?

Yoga practice changes the firing patterns of the nerves and chemical makeup of the body’s fluids and blood gases that activates a relaxation response. By concentrating on carrying out the specific body posture and alignment of a pose and then holding it as you breathe deeply, the body starts to shift from a state of biochemical arousal and tension to calm and relaxation. Relaxing yourself deeply into a yoga pose through deep breathing lowers the brain’s response to threat. The body starts to turn off arousing nerve chemicals, like adrenaline and stops dumping fatty acids and sugar into the blood stream for brain, muscle and motor energy.  Also, sodium leaves the inside of the body’s cells. This slows down the rate of nerve firing and further relaxes your brain, heart and muscles. This state of biochemical relaxation oxygenates the blood, restores blood acidity and alkalinity balance, and reduces heart rate, blood pressure, and motor activity.

Yoga postures work on all systems of the body. Besides strengthening and elongating muscles, yoga postures tone up glands, internal organs, and spine nerves. Additionally, increased blood flow helps the digestive system to better extract nutrients from the foods you eat and the lymphatic system to eliminate toxins from the body.

Yoga: To Join and Unite

Undoubtedly, yoga practice improves quality of life. We learn to note differences between tense and calm body processes so that we can implement a change through yoga postures and deep breathing. But, the practice of yoga over time also has psychological and spiritual benefits.

In Sanskrit, yoga means to unite. As you grow in your ability to sense the relationship between your mind and body, you become more aware of dualities that exist in experience. The practice of yoga brings you to the awareness that there is a relationship between two ends of one phenomenon. You are body and mind. There is never a point in which you are just one or the other. Too, you are ego and spirit, tension and relaxation, pain and ease, balance and unsteadiness, love and hate, and separated and united.

What does this awareness do for you? When you realize that opposites are only different expressions of the same phenomenon, your treatment of them changes. At the simplest level, you see that when you treat the body you are also treating the mind. At a deeper level, you start to live in an integrated way.  You are not just a social identity, a personality ~ you are a public, relational, psychological and spiritual self. You begin to make choices that nurture and support your whole being. Is this food, relationship, lover or job good for me wholly? Do my choices positively affect and grow my whole being? These are the questions you begin to ask when you start growing in this overall awareness.

What is more, when you start taking responsibility for the whole of you, you stop locating problems as starting outside of yourself. You give meanings to experience that opens up choice, lets you problem solve, and allows you to keep growing.

Take A Yoga Stand, Today

Health is a state of complete harmony of body, mind, and spirit. When one is free of physical disabilities and mental distractions the soul opens. B.K.S. Iyengar. 

There’s no better time than right now to take a stand for Yoga. Yoga classes can vary from gentle and accommodating to strenuous and challenging. You want to choose your style of yoga by physical ability and personal preference. I’ve practiced yoga by guru B.K.S. Iyengar for 25+ years. It is a less common style of yoga done today. Hatha yoga is the most common type of yoga practiced in the United States. It combines three elements that include physical yoga poses called asanas, controlled breathing practiced in conjunction with the asanas, and a short period of deep relaxation.

But, not all yoga is relaxing. There are trendy forms of yoga today that emphasize nervous system activation rather than relaxation. Hot yoga (Bikram Yoga) is one of these yoga systems. Bikram Choudhury synthesized this system of yoga from traditional Hatha Yoga techniques. A Bikram Yoga class runs for 90 minutes, consists of the same series of 26 postures and 2 breathing exercises, and is ideally practiced in a room heated to 105°F (≈ 40.6°C) with a humidity of 40%. I know many people who swear by this form of yoga. But, as you can imagine, hot yoga is not meant for beginners or especially for people whose physical or mental conditions make them especially sensitive to changes of temperature. Hot yoga and intense power yoga classes actually activate the excitatory nervous system (sympathetic nervous system) and induce a stress response in you. However, this response is theoretically followed by a deeper state of relaxation than if the nervous system had not been activated to a high point of stress and arousal at the start. The idea here is that the higher arousal the deeper the relaxation at rest.

Yoga is most definitely a business today. The upsurge in the popularity of yoga has created a demand for competent, trained, and certified yoga instructors (Yoga Alliance). Thus, make sure the studio you visit offers you the best in trainer certification, safety, and respect for individual differences in physical and mental health.

Choose a yoga class that fits with your physical ability and mental health needs. There are yoga classes for beginners and the advanced. There are also classes designed specifically for pregnant women, people experiencing pain from chronic physical or mental health illnesses, and the overweight or physically disabled.

As you can see, I’m a great fan of yoga for enhancing physical and mental health. Through the years, I’ve seen yoga benefit my life in many ways. I encourage you to take a Yoga Stand, today. You’ll be happy you did.

If you liked my post today, please let me know by selecting the Like icon that immediately follows. You can also Tweet or Google+1 the post to let your friends know about it. Do all you can to live well. As they say in Yoga ~ Namaste friends. Bow to the lord inside of you. Warmly Deborah.

It is in moments of illness that we are compelled to recognize that we live not alone but chained to a creature of a different kingdom, whole worlds apart, who has no knowledge of us and by whom it is impossible to make ourselves understood: our body. Marcel Proust: BrainyQuote.com

Some of you are fortunate to have only an occasional cold or flu from time to time. For the most part, you can depend upon the health of your body to support you. But, others of you are struggling with physical illnesses (e.g., cancer, diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, crone’s disease, irritable bowel syndrome, allergies, and chronic fatigue/Epstein-Barr syndrome) that force you to chronically contend with downward changes in your health. How well you feel, think and act fluctuates from one day to the next. To be sure, your body may seem to you like a creature of a different sort that you are forever trying to tame, manage, repair, strengthen, and boost up.

People with mental health disorders often feel the same way. They too cannot depend upon their bodies to support them from one day to the next, as the symptoms that debilitate them are also physical. Weakness, fatigue, muscle pain, slowed motor movements, inability to concentrate and think, insomnia, changes in eating pattern, and nausea, headache, and constipation are physical symptoms that accompany major depression, anxiety, Bipolar Disorder, and even the attention-deficit and thought disorders.

There is a reason why physical and mental illnesses share many of the same symptoms. It’s the body’s response to stress. The body treats injury as a threat, no matter if it is through infection, physical or emotional harm, or by environmental toxin or irritant. The body calls for an all out response to stress to help you to cope with the threat on hand. The brain reacts to the threat by releasing stress hormones (cortisol), fat and sugar, and stimulating nerve transmitters into the bloodstream to help you to fight the threat or run away from it. This gives an immediate rise in blood pressure that leads to a pounding heart, sweaty palms, shakiness, rapid breathing and all of the other symptoms related to brain and body arousal. But, it doesn’t stop there.

Emotional and physical stress also affects the activity of the immune system that causes a widespread inflammatory impact on the brain and body. The brain signals the immune system’s cytokines (pro-inflammatory hormone) to tell the white blood cells to clean up the infected or damaged tissue resulting from the threat. It is these pro-inflammatory cytokines and the white blood cell cleaning up process that actually causes the symptoms in both physical and mental health illness rather than the stress or injuries themselves.

Weakness, fatigue, muscle pain, slowed motor movements, inability to concentrate and think, insomnia, changes in eating pattern, and even nausea, headache, and constipation are just some of the physical symptoms of inflammation that exist in all types of illness. Thus, although the death of a loved one, sexual or emotional abuse, social anxiety and fears, physical injury, infection, and environmental toxins and irritants differ in the type of injury, the body’s stress response is always the same.

Now, here’s the clincher. Once physical or emotional stress subsides, anti-inflammatory agents move in to begin the healing process. 
In a normal immune system, anti-inflammatory agents are able to restore balance throughout the body so that inflammation diminishes. But, in some cases, the immune system gets stuck in high gear, and symptoms of inflammation do not go away. This is known as chronic inflammation. Here, the immune system watchmen never  rest, so to speak, so that the body ends up attacking itself resulting in auto-immune diseases, like Rheumatoid Arthritis, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Crone’s Disease, Type II diabetes, and allergies.

Inflammatory Theory of Depression

Research is showing that chronic brain inflammation is also connected to virtually all types of mental illness that suggests that mood disorders may actually result from a dysfunction in the immune system (Depression linked to Brain Inflammation; The Role of Adipose Tissue in Inflammation and Depression; Allergy and Depression; Inflammation Theory of Depression; Antidepressants Suppress Inflammation; Suicide Attempts Linked to Brain Inflammation and Brain Inflammation).

Specifically, it is the increased inflammatory markers seen in depressed patients, the ability of the immune system’s pro-inflammatory cytokines to influence the neurotransmitter system relevant to stabilizing mood, and also the ability of administered cytokines and other inflammatory stimuli to induce depressive symptoms in mice that supports the strong role of brain inflammation in depression.

Additionally, scientists studying the developmental roots of mental illness have zeroed in on the body’s stress response as the likely culprit (The Beginnings of Mental Illness, The American Psychological Association; APA Monitor, Feb. 2012). Thus, it seems that inflammation not only plays a role in the symptoms of mental illnesses like depression but may also influence their onset.

What Does The Role of Inflammation in Depression Mean To You?

You need to start thinking about mental health disorders, especially depression, as not only having their roots in the body’s response to stress but also being problems of brain and body inflammation. This is good news, as you have another way to manage your symptoms besides prescribed medication and psychotherapy alone. You can make changes in your lifestyle (eating, sleeping, exercise, attitude and coping habits) that help to reduce inflammation that underlies many of your symptoms.

Inflammation Reduction Lifestyle Program

The six steps that follow make you less physically reactive to stressful changes and help you to reduce symptoms of depression that involve brain and body inflammation. You can start to make lifestyle changes that work with, rather than against, your body. You are going to befriend your body through your good habits, so that it does not seem to you like a creature from another kingdom that is always threatening your health, performance, and joy.

1. Calm Body: To lower inflammation, you need to relax your brain and body at a cellular level. Just laughing, socializing, playing tennis or golf isn’t enough, as any activity that requires that your mind and body be alert involves brain and body arousal. This means that stimulating chemicals and hormones, like the immune system’s cytokines are chronically circulating through your system. Only deep breathing can help to tone down the fight-or-flight response to stress and diminish these chemicals, so that the calming and anti-inflammatory nerve transmitters and hormones can come out. Thus, you need to set aside times in the day where you treat yourself to exercises that involve deep breathing.  Muscle relaxation, visualization and deep breathing, alternate nostril breathing, and even a good nap are excellent ways to restore well being. Deep rest and relaxation is vital to keeping your immune system in proper working order. Even 10 minutes two to three times per day can do much to restore your nervous system to calm.

2. Contemplative Mind: Much of our daily stress has to do with the way we think about the things happening to us. We tend to dramatize experience by emotions and value statements that do little more than give us anxiety and stress. A meditative mind is just as important as a calm body.

Mindfulness practice reduces stress by focusing your attention, so that do not dramatize what’s happening or ruminate on stressful thoughts, and it also lowers your reactivity to stressful situations that activates the fight or flight response and kicks your immune system into high gear. Just like the stress management techniques that relax the body, mindfulness suppresses the activity of pro-inflammatory cytokines. Mindfulness practice not only protects the immune system, but over time can help it to recover.

At the very least, a practice of mindfulness can stop a stress response from carrying itself out. There’s an abundance of research showing the benefits of mindfulness on physical and mental health (Mindfulness and the Immune System on Early Stage Breast Cancer; Alterations in Brain and Immune Function Produced by Mindfulness Meditation; Mindfulness Meditation Reduces Loneliness and Immune Function; Mindfulness Meditation has Positive Health Benefits; and Mindfulness Practice Helps Fibromyalgia Patients). Also, take a look at my  articles on mindfulness for more understanding of its benefits on well being (Become Mindful: Take Charge of Your Life; What You Say To Yourself Matters; and Strengthen the Empathy Muscle).

3. Anti-Inflammatory Diet. Some foods inflame the brain and body, while other foods lower inflammation. If you have physical or mental disorders that involve inflammation, it’s especially important for you to eat an anti-inflammatory diet. Dr. Andrew Weil is a leading authority on the topic. He maintains that by”following an anti-inflammatory diet, you can help counteract the chronic inflammation that is a root cause of many serious diseases, including those that become more frequent as people age.” You can learn how to select and prepare foods that do not stress your body. Dr. Weil gives you an anti-inflammatory food pyramid and anti-inflammatory vitamin advisor.  But, there’s a lot of information available on the web that you can find on the subject matter (15 Top Anti-inflammatory Herbs and Spices; What You Need to Know About Inflammation.

Additionally, over-eating can lead to too much brain and body inflammation. The accumulation of lipids (fat) in the body in the form of white adipose tissue in the abdomen is now known to activate immune mechanisms (Eating Ourselves To Death, National Center for Biotechnology Information). One primary source of inflammation in depression involves adipose tissue (fat tissue) that is a rich source of inflammatory factors (adipokines, chemokines, and cytokines). Not only can fat increase depression, but depression in turn influences the inflammatory capability of fat tissue (Inflammation in Depression: Is Adiposity the Cause?, National Center for Biotechnology Information). By maintaining a healthy weight, you will do much to lower inflammation related to symptoms of depression.

4. Exercise. There’s a large body of research that shows the benefit of exercise on depression. Exercise stimulates your body’s anti-inflammatory abilities and keeps your blood circulating at its optimum level. This may underly the lift in mood that often accompanies an exercise regimen. Some advocates of exercise emphasize exercising to reduce whole body inflammation rather than to lose or maintain weight (GeneSmart.com). This is especially good advice for those of you struggling with a mental health disorder, as many of you have sensitive immune systems that too little or too much exercise can activate.

Start off slowly, and work your way up until you are getting 20 to 30 minutes of exercise at a minimum of 3 times per week. But, remember too much exercise increases inflammation and breaks down the body. It is especially critical in immune-system disorders, like allergies, chronic fatigue and arthritis disorders.

5) Social Support. You don’t need research to tell you the importance of having loving, warm, and supportive people in your life. Nonetheless, there is a vast body of research extolling the health and well being virtues of social support. The quality and quantity of social relationships affect gene expression and also inflammatory markers of the immune system. Relationship conflict and lower social support produces a pro-inflammatory cytokine response in the body. Thus, if you don’t have enough meaningful, supportive friendships, you need to find a way to get more, to reduce the stress response and the brain and body inflammation that comes with it (Social Support, Social Strain, and Chronic Inflammation; Princeton University Press; Close Relationships, Inflammation and Health).

6) Self Love. What you think about yourself affects your body. If you hate or disapprove of yourself, your body hears this message and responds in kind. Eating well and exercising isn’t enough. You have to appreciate and value who you are to create an emotional state that is friendly to your body.  Thus, give yourself a break. Don’t be so hard on yourself. Self-love is an integral part of a healthy lifestyle. Learn to accept yourself for who you are with your strengths, talents, weaknesses and flaws. See my Seven Step Prescription for Self-Love for steps you can take to start to love yourself more. But, if you need professional help here, don’t hesitate to see a therapist.

One thing has become very clear to me, in treating people for many years. You cannot easily understand or adequately treat a mental health condition, without a full assessment of one’s physiology and lifestyle habits. If you don’t approach depression, anxiety, addiction disorders, and anger and stress conditions through lifestyle, as well as prescribed medication and psychotherapy, you lessen the effectiveness of treatment and recovery.

Thus, get into good relationship with your body starting today. Treat your mental health condition through a whole lifestyle. The good news is that you may not have to take as much medication for the problem or may be able to forgo medication altogether. I hoped liked today’s article. You can let me know by selecting the Like icon that immediately follows. Or, you can Tweet or Google+1 it. Warmly Deborah.

I saw the Angel in the marble and carved until I set him free. Michelangelo

A little boy and his dad were walking toward me the other day in a shopping center. They were dressed identically in polo shirts, baseball caps, sandals and shorts, and, oh yes, sunglasses too. But, even sweeter than dad and his child’s matching look was the child’s smile. So, as we met up, I asked the child his name. “Nawh”, he mumbled back to me. Noah, his dad said clearly. “Tell her how old you are”, his dad said. Two fingers lifted shyly upward. “Two-years-old; That’s wonderful”, I said. Then, we parted ways.

I couldn’t get that cute image of dad and his boy out of my mind, and I began to think about how early identity begins. By 2-years-old, we are already teaching children who they are and also who they should want to become. Name, age, mommy and daddy, and whether or not they favor peas or carrots eventually matures into a preference of living style, beliefs and values, biases and choice of career, politics, religion, type of romantic partner and everything else that puts a stamp on who we are. Psychology calls this our ego-identity; a necessary point of reference that let’s us consider day-to-day experience against what we have come to believe and know. But, this learning, although vital to development, can also become a block to unfolding your true purpose and fulfillment.

There is more than the identity that helped to ground you in the everyday world. There is the authentic self; the natural instincts, desires, intellect, talent and capabilities with which you are born.

Is the authentic self God-given, genetic, or both? I’ll let you decide upon this. But, one thing is for sure, each of you has been born with desires and capabilities that, when freed, put you on the path to realizing your true purpose.

The Problem Between Ego-Identity and the Authentic You

The problem between ego-identity and the authentic you is that there is often a mismatch between the two. For example, the real you may be a Picasso, but your family values business entrepreneurship. Indeed, for long, you even suppressed this desire to fit in with your mother, father and siblings. I, for example, had no idea growing up that I had a natural talent to teach. I actually come from a long-line of family members who are successful business persons. Like so many of you, I had to bump into my true self through making mistakes here and there until I learned who I really was along the way.

Unless we have family members who can step out of their own ego-identity to see us clearly, our true selves will remain hidden to us. You start to learn about your natural talents and abilities by having parents reflect back to you what they see. “Oh, Johnny, you paint wonderfully.” Or, “Melissa, you write so well.” But, parents cannot show you where to look for your true self, if they haven’t found their own. What is often the case in childrearing is that parents teach children about the ways of the world, and who they should want to be, rather than who they really are. They don’t mean to suppress their children’s inner desires, but nonetheless, they do.

Thus, your parent’s lack of self-awareness, and the hundreds of value-statements that they impose upon you daily, may actually be stopping you from fulfilling what feels most natural to you. But, thank goodness our true selves are not lost to us, despite early training. Life has a wonderful way of getting us back on the right path to our true self, no matter how far away we’ve strayed from it. We are always learning and evolving and bumping into our real selves along the way. We eventually find ourselves, but at what cost? Some mistakes bring as much pain and suffering as they do learning. Also, they eat up a lot of precious time when we could have been doing what comes most naturally to us.

People often go to psychotherapy precisely because they made life choices that supported their ego-identity rather than their true selves. They divorce, switch careers, return to school, get religious, or dump their ego-identity altogether, to find authentic purpose and fulfillment.

Wouldn’t you love to make choices that get you closer to your true self rather than mindlessly bump into it? That’s what I’m going to show you how to do, today. I’m going to teach you how to chisel away at your ego-identity so your inner talents, intellect, and desires that express the real you can come forth. By quieting the ego, the paths of least resistance to your true self are easier to see.

The Paths of Least Resistance To Your True Self

Unlike the roads that lead directly to Rome, some life choices do not take you straight away to your true self. You have to approach life experience mindfully to know which roads are right for you. The paths of least resistance to the authentic self not only show you more about your true self in temperament, instincts, talents and purpose, but also are richer in opportunities for expressing them. In contrast, the paths of great resistance to your true self are tortuous and winding. They express the ego-identity and as such are full of lessons that are mostly painful.

The steps that follow help you to distinguish between ego-driven ideas, beliefs and learning and intuitions that speak to your true temperament, instincts, talents, and purpose. Now, because you are aware mindfully of the various forces that cause you to act, you can consciously choose for the authentic self.

Let’s start now!

1. Describe your ego-identity. What are the ideas, beliefs, values and desires that helped you to make your way in the world thus far? For example, in the 70’s, women legitimized their existence primarily through marrying and having children. And, if they worked outside of the home, they did more so out of need than personal desire. Thus, at 21-years-old, I did what I was expected socially to do; I married. It took unhappiness and a divorce to get me thinking about what was really right for me.

Which family or social ideas and values have been dictating what you choose in life? Bring these ideas forward, so they do not operate outside of your awareness where they have greater power to influence your choices.

2. Reflect upon your choices to date. What have you learned about your true temperament, instincts, talents and purpose from them? I recall a young patient of mine, Margie, who came to me because she was very depressed. She was working as an accountant and married to a man whose only virtue, to her, was that he was a loving father to their child. Margie had a very conflicted relationship with her mother. Her mother was very disapproving, so that Margie identified more with her father than her mother. This is what motivated Margie to become an accountant. At 31 years old, Margie was deeply depressed and acting out sexually because of it. What Margie learned, at this time, was that two of her major life decisions (job and relationship) came out of her ego-identity rather than her true self. She ended up divorcing her husband and leaving her job to go back to school for art. It didn’t matter that she had less money and didn’t know exactly what all of this would bring her. Margie was truly happy, for the first time in her life.

3. Connect to your inner self. Get into a relationship with your inner self. You have to remember who you are in the inside to bring your authentic self forth.What makes you happy or sad? What do you fantasize and dream about? Intuitive wisdom is there for you, when you quiet the reasoning mind. Get quiet, breathe deeply, and turn inward. When you quiet the mind, you can hear the inner self speaking to you through feeling, images, and momentary fantasies that reveal needs and desires.

What comes up for you? What needs, desires, and instincts are making themselves known to you? Make sure you do not reduce your hunches and intuitions to silliness. Don’t rationalize away your feelings and desires; don’t sell your true self short!

4. Face your fears and push open the doors to your true self. What is the worse thing that can happen by following your true self rather than ego?  Yes, like Margie, sometimes you may have to forgo security as you change a career or relationship path. And, family and friends may not like that you are following your true desires. Some people may call you selfish or think you’ve gone off on the deep-end. But, remember, the loudest protestors are often people who foreclosed on their true selves long ago. And, remember, you don’t have to have everyone accept and like you. If you lose a few people on the road to your authentic self, they were meant to disappear from your life. For sure, you will meet friends and lovers who resonate deeply with your authentic values, desires, ethics and capabilities ~ when you dare to face your fears and push the door open to your true self.

Thus, dare to step into the unknown for a short while. Walking the path to your true self can be scary at first. But, the journey to the authentic self is lush with opportunities to learn and grow. Don’t make life any harder than it need be. When you learn how to make choices that support who you really are in temperament, instincts, talents, and purpose, you will journey through life experiences that are paved with great beauty, depth of meaning and purpose, and wisdom.

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On Bipolar Disorder: “You are not your illness. You have an individual story to tell. You have a name, a history, a personality. Staying yourself is part of the battle.” Julian Seifter, www.Tumblr.com

Just a few days ago, eighty-seven year old comedian Jonathan Winters died. Some of you may be too young to know him, but I’m sure you know the many gifted entertainers who were influenced by Winter’s brilliant improvisations, like that of Robin Williams, Jim Carrey, Jimmy Kimmel and Steve Martin. You may also be unaware that Mr. Winters struggled with bipolar illness his whole life. One of the most damaging manic episodes came in 1959, when Winters was reported to have climbed the mast of a moored historic ship in San Francisco while drunk and naked; he was subsequently transported to a sanatorium.” (Washington Post, Jonathan Winters, Improvisational Genius).

But, no doubt, bipolar disorder contributed to Mr. Winter’s comic genius of being able to dig ruthlessly into American archetypes as the subject matter of his routines and also to his nervous breakdowns. Friends, family and employers viewed him as wildly unpredictable and thus a professional liability, which is often the perception people have of bipolar persons. Nonetheless, like Jonathan Winters, there is a long history of entertainers (Catherine Zeta-Jones, Marilyn Monroe, Patty Duke, Robin Williams, and Carrie Fisher), entrepreneurs (Larry Flynt and Ted Turner), writers and poets (William Styron, Sylvia Plath, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, William Blake, Walt Whitman and Ralph Waldo Emerson), composers (Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky and Mozart) and world leaders (Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, and Napoleon Bonaparte) who have still been able to leave their creative mark on the world despite having bipolar disorder (Famous Bipolar People).

The link between creative genius and bipolar illness does exist. But, let’s not get too carried away by the exceedingly good company that you, or a family member, are keeping if you have this disease. Because, as you know too well, the periods of high creative productivity is no match for times that you have had to spend either in manic confusion or in the despair of depression; the kind of depression that makes 20% of bipolar people take their lives through suicide.  American Clinical Psychologist, Kay Redfield Jamison describes well her own emotional struggle with the disease. “There is a particular kind of pain, elation, loneliness, and terror involved in this kind of madness. When you’re high it’s tremendous, you’ve never functioned better. But, somewhere, this changes. The ideas come too fast and are far too many. Confusion replaces clarity, memory goes, and humor and absorption are replaced by fear and concern. Everything previously moving with the grain is now against— you are irritable, angry, frightened, uncontrollable, and enmeshed totally in the blackest caves of the mind that you never knew were there. It will never end, for madness carves its own reality.” Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

Indeed, Bipolar Disorder does carve out its own reality, if left untreated. With proper diagnosis, treatment and management, people can achieve their goals and forge a fulfilling life. Unfortunately, some bipolar people do not seek treatment, until a manic episode gets them in trouble sexually, financially, or with the law. Or, they are misdiagnosed, as the symptoms can present as a range of disorders that include clinical depression, schizoaffective disorder, and even the attention deficit and anxiety disorders. And, still some people refuse treatment altogether, to maintain their creative edge.

For sure, BPD is a challenging mental health condition. Its onset, progression, diagnosis, treatment and management of the illness is challenging to patients as well as to the professionals treating them.

The Cause

Bipolar disorder is a combination of genetic, neurochemical, and environmental factors that come together in ways to trigger the onset of the disorder. Bipolar disease runs in families. Twin studies have taught us that bipolar disorder is more genetic (nature) than a result of childrearing (nurture). Identical twins who share the same gene profile will have a 65% chance of sharing BPD. This drops to around 5% to 20% for fraternal twins. Also, if one of your parents has bipolar disorder, then you will have a 15% to 25% chance of also having the illness. Overall, studies have placed the genetic heritability of bipolar disorder at 60% to 85%.

But, how does the gene for BPD actually lead to the symptoms that makeup the illness? The gene for BPD causes a malfunction in the brain’s neurotransmitter system (nerve chemicals and messengers) that is responsible for thinking, modulation of mood, and control of behavior. The illness is generally dormant in childhood. But, tends to be activated by stress in the late teenage, young-adult years. Fluctuations in hormones, pressures to establish an adult identity, and to settle on an educational and professional path can overwhelm the brain chemistry of the person who has the gene for this disease.

But, even more instrumental to the progression of the disease process is what happens to the brain upon its onset. Essentially, the first bipolar episode sensitizes the brain’s chemicals and nerve messengers to subtle stresses coming from within and outside the person. Think of the first onset, like a wood log that is hard to light on its own. But, once you position twigs around it, the log lights easily. This is what happens to the brain after the first onset of a bipolar episode. Stress repositions chemical messengers (twigs) around the gene for bipolar illness (the log) that makes it highly likely that the next time the person is stressed the gene will get expressed in brain activity. Over time, the brain becomes increasingly sensitive to stress so that even the mildest change can activate a manic-depressive episode. It’s like with each stressful episode, more and more twigs get added to the fire. This is called the kindling effect, and it is the reason why BPD is so hard to manage.

There are two types of bipolar disorder that are distinguished by type, frequency, and intensity of the manic and depressive episodes.

Bipolar I Disorder

One of the defining features of Bipolar I disorder is a manic episode that does not have to be preceded by depression. The manic episode consists of extreme changes in energy level, activity, sleep, and behavior that accompany a dramatic shift in mood. Symptoms include an inflated sense of one’s capabilities, little need for sleep, pressure to talk, flight of ideas and racing thoughts, rapid shifts in attention, hyperactivity, impulsivity, and destructive action. There is also an increase in goal-directed behavior (social and occupational) and involvement in activities that have a high risk for harmful consequences to the person (buying sprees, sexual acting-out, foolish business investments, drug and alcohol use, explosive emotionally and irritable, and scrapes with the law) Symptoms of Bipolar Disorder, National Institute of Mental Health.

Bipolar II Disorder

In contrast, Bipolar II is characterized as the presence or history of one or more major depressive episodes and at least one hypomania episode, without  precedence of a manic episode. Hypomania has similar features to mania only in a much lesser degree and lasting only a few hours at a time. Because their symptoms are milder, it’s easier for the affected person to deny that they may have bipolar disease, especially because their hypomania seems normal to them. It’s a welcome relief from their usual depression (Bipolar II People Masquerade As Just Happy, New York Times).

Like bipolar I persons, they are usually  intelligent, artistic, and emotionally sensitive people. But, it is their history of depression, rather than a manic episode, that usually gets them to seek treatment. Nonetheless, they can suffer just as much as people with the type I version of the disease and can engage in the same types of self-destructive behaviors that worsen their illness.

Clinicians themselves have difficulty differentiating between bipolar I and II disorders. Since the types of patients, lengths of episodes, and age of onset are very similar. However, the real difference between the two is the difference in mania (bipolar I) versus hypomania (bipolar II).

The following questions about BPD come from people who follow me on my Facebook page for Psychology in Everyday Life. I want to share these questions and my responses with you, as you may have the same questions.

1. Can you cure bipolar disorder? Bipolar illness, like diabetes or epilepsy is managed rather than cured. It is a high-maintenance disorder. To manage it well, you have to take prescribed medication, reduce your stress, eat a nutritious diet, and refrain from using too much alcohol and drugs. Unfortunately, these treatment and health habits can be a challenge for people who have this disease. 30% to 60% of persons with BPD also struggle with alcoholism or substance abuse, as a way to self-medicate rapid changes in mood (National Institute of Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse). This is why following a treatment regimen is critical to avoiding behaviors that activate mood swings.

2. Is it possible for bipolar people to live normal lives?  Yes, most certainly, you can, if diagnosed and treated properly. I have treated many people in the past who are bipolar. Once they got treatment, they completed their educations, were able to have stable, healthy relationships, married, and have successful careers.

I treated a young woman who struggled with long periods of dark depression, in which she wished to sleep and never wake up, just to end her pain and suffering. She was very intelligent and talented, but was unable to get up in the morning, let alone finish her education. Psychiatrists first put her on antidepressant medication, which made her feel a little better. But, the telltale sign that there was something more going on than just depression was the destructive acting-out she did when she felt better. She went from one lover to the next and shopped until she, and her finances, dropped. After being put on Lithium, she was able to finish school, establish a career, and eventually marry her lover of many years. Without the right treatment, her biology would never have had permitted her to live a normal life.

3. Should you avoid stress if you have this disorder? It’s not possible to completely avoid stress. But, you can learn how to manage stress better, through psychotherapy, sound diet, and by engaging in behaviors that strengthen rather than weaken you. Alcohol and drug use are a no-no with this disease. Also, it’s vital that you bring supportive, healthy people into your life, so that you are not traumatized by relationship. When you accept that you don’t have the biology to stand such traumas to your psyche and body, you will begin to choose better.

4. Can you treat bipolar disorder without medication? If a person has a true bipolar I disorder, they have to be treated with some medication. But, eating properly helps to manage the disorder. A diet that high in the omega fatty acids stabilizes neuronal firing, which reduces the brain’s sensitivity to stress (A Dietary Treatment for Bipolar Disorder, Psychology Today). This suggests that extremes in diet, like eating protein alone (depresses the brain) or eating too many carbohydrates or sugar (over excites the brain) can bring about fluctuations of mood. A balanced diet is best, to keep mood swings at bay.

5. Which medications treat bipolar I disorder? Bipolar disorder is treated with mood stabilizers, along with antidepressants, and psychotics if needed. Lithium (a cell salt) is one of the oldest mood stabilizers, but, it’s still one of the most effective medications for manic-depression. More recently, psychiatrists have begun to treat mood destabilization with anticonvulsant medications (Depakote, Lamictal, Topamax, Tegretol and Trileptal) that are typically used in epilepsy. They reduce brain excitation that desensitizes the brain to stress and the mood swings that come with it. But, like most of the powerful psychiatric medications, there are side effects, like cognitive slowing, forgetfulness and brain fog. Sometimes, antipsychotic medications are used to reduce psychosis that can come with extreme states of mania or deep states of depression. These include Zyprexa, Geodon, Risperdal, Abilify, and Clorazil. Also, antidepressant medications, like Prozac, Paxil and Zoloft treat depression in bipolar disorder (National Institute of Health on BPD). Remember, these are all powerful medications, the combination of which can often cause more side effects than benefits. The goal is to feel better not to become a zombie. I have treated people who first came to me so doped up with medications that they could barely remember the door out of my office. I recommend that you do a lot of self-study on your own, so that you can work with your doctors to find the best treatment regimen that works for you. If your doctor resists your participation in this effort, I say, shop for another doctor!

6. Who do I see to make the diagnosis? Psychiatrists and clinical psychologists are most qualified to diagnose bipolar disorders. They have extensive education and training in diagnosis and treatment of mental health disorders. Even if you see a clinical psychologist first, you still have to see a psychiatrist to confirm the diagnosis and to prescribe medication. In addition to medication, you should also get some psychotherapy, to help you to manage the disorder and to learn to cope better with stress. I have worked very harmoniously with psychiatrists through the years managing my patients who needed prescribed medications. Many times patients ask me if I can call their primary care physician and tell them which medication to prescribe. They want to avoid the higher price of a psychiatric visit and also to waste no time in getting treated. Of course, I say no, because prescribing medication falls outside of my education and degree. But, even more than this is the welfare of the patient. Remember, especially with bipolar disorder, it’s critical that you see professionals skilled to make a proper diagnosis so that you get the right treatment. It’s not smart to cut corners, when it comes to your mental health.

7. How can I be sure that my family member really has bipolar disorder?  To be sure, I would get two separate evaluations from psychiatrists or a psychiatrist and a psychologist. They are best trained to make this diagnosis. But, remember, this disorder is difficult to diagnose for the many reasons I mention here, today. Thus, you have to give the professional a chance to help you, which means you may have to try a few medications before you find one that helps. Also, there’s a rule of thumb when it comes to medication. If the medication stops the bipolar symptoms that are troubling you, then most likely you have a bipolar disorder.

It’s not easy to accept that you have to live with a mental health problem for life, especially bipolar disorder. You have to remember that it’s a diagnosis that tells you what is wrong and what you need to do to treat and manage it. But, it is in no way a prison sentence. Indeed, as Julian Seifter says well, just because you have an illness doesn’t mean that it takes away from who you are. “You have an individual story to tell. You have a name, a history, and a personality.

Thus, if you think you may have this disorder, get the help that you need to make the proper diagnosis. Push through your embarrassment or fear of discovering that you may be bipolar. The only thing worth fearing is the lack of knowledge and resource to help you to live the best life possible.

I hope you liked my post today. If so, please let me know by selecting the Like icon that follows. You can also Tweet or Google+1 today’s post to let your friends know about it. Take good care of yourself. Warmly Deborah.

 Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart.” Kahlil Gibran

There are times in all of our lives when we look in the mirror and don’t like what we see. We may be aging, struggling with teenage acne, unhappy with post-pregnancy weight gain, or hating that bump on the nose, size of thighs, or anything else that makes us feel less than. Flawless models, gorgeous television stars and endless ads for ways to improve our looks bombard us daily. There’s no two ways about it, we live in a world obsessed with perfection and will stop at nothing to achieve it. And, the success of the Aesthetic surgery industry, today, supports this observation.

Aesthetic surgery is a booming industry, especially in the United States. Even in a down economy women regularly initiate cosmetic procedures to improve upon their looks, no matter that the total cost is out-of-pocket. But, it’s not only women who want to enjoy the benefits of looking better and younger. Research shows men too have joined the race to turn back the clock of time. They want skin-tightening, brightening and plumping up procedures almost as much as women do. In 2010, Americans spent 1.6 million dollars on plastic surgery procedures (17% of total expenditures). Men accounted for 8% of these dollars citing career and health concerns as their motivation to medically enhance their looks (CosmeticSurgeryStatistics; Men Seek Plastic Surgery).

The growing interest in looking good may be partly due to a shift in how the public views physical procedures to prettify oneself. We owe this change to the arrival of non-invasive procedures to look younger. Today, you do not have to go under the knife to look better. You can inject chemicals into muscles to stop sagging (Botox), fill lines and wrinkles with hyalonic acid to plump up the skin (Juvederm and Restylane) and increase collagen production, by your own blood, (the Vampire Lift) to turn back time. This has given rise to a whole new industry called cosmetic and medical aesthetics that has made the public much more psychologically comfortable with the idea of enhancing their looks to improve appearance. Nowadays, people equate the naturalness of these types of beautification procedures to eating healthily to live longer and better.

But is it vanity alone that drives people to improve upon their looks ~ to fix, remove, embellish and enhance their face and body features?

Research says there’s more to this story than at first meets the eye. People want to look better to feel good. They mostly want a boost in their confidence and self-esteem. Also, because, today, they are working beyond their retirement years, they want to be able to compete effectively with younger people in the workforce (PsychCentral.com).

There is a reality to their concerns, as better-looking people have long enjoyed an advantage in securing employment, getting higher pay, obtaining loans more easily, and negotiating better terms for these loans, and getting the more educated and better looking spouses. Indeed, culture’s standard for beauty has a profound impact on our lives.

Positive Self-Regard: Inside and Out

Sigmund Freud would agree that the choice to improve one’s looks is rooted in people’s core motivation to have a competitive advantage socially. But, I think there’s more than competition going on here. You need self-love to keep learning and growing, to make good choices, and to cope effectively with life’s problems. Even the healthiest of you can be weakened emotionally by stressful life changes, depression, and aging. Without positive self-regard (Simply Carl Rogers), you will have a hard time accepting positive change and failures and loss that come your way.

People low in positive self-regard have a hard time accepting positive and negative change. Consequently, if they make serious cosmetic changes, before they’ve done enough work on themselves emotionally, they may be unprepared for the psychological changes that ensue. They may falsely believe that such changes will make all of their dreams come true and be disappointed that their problems remain no matter that their bump on the nose, crooked teeth, extra weight, love handles, or sagging jowls are gone. I think you get my point.

Thus, if you are opting for one of these aesthetic or surgical makeover procedures, it’s good to like your life and yourself enough, before you proceed. Take, for example, fifty-year old Carmen whose husband of 35-years divorced her for a much younger woman. She had to fight tooth-and-nail to get a satisfying divorce agreement, as if dealing with menopause and a thyroid that decided to conk out wasn’t enough for her to handle. By the time the dust had settled, Carmen was exhausted physically and emotionally and her face showed it. Psychotherapy helped her to cope and to start her life again, but it could not take away the wear and tear on her looks.

Carmen wanted a change on the outside that matched the positive change happening inside of her.  She chose medical aesthetic procedures to rejuvenate her appearance. Looking better was the icing on the cake, so to speak, that gave her the courage to get out there socially, which made her husband dumping her for a younger woman more tolerable.

Carmen’s a good example of a person who turned to medical aesthetic treatments for the right reasons. She dealt with how she felt on the inside, before she considered procedures to improve her looks. Doing it the other way around may bring you emotional problems that you didn’t expect that makes you depressed and anxious. Of course, you’ll enjoy the new you, but your whole life doesn’t change all at once. And, if you feel bad on the inside, you may feel uncomfortable with more social attention. Or, you aren’t prepared emotionally to cope with the vast physical and emotional side effects of the more serious surgical procedures. Take, for example, Mob Wife Renee Graziano who chose a head-to-toe plastic surgery makeover. She learned the hard way that surgical procedures can bring on anxiety, depression, and psychological changes for which she wasn’t prepared.

Also, you have to remember that who you are today may not be who you are tomorrow. Take, for example, Bravo’s Real Housewife of Orange County’s Tamra Barney who decided to have her breast implants removed. The size of her breasts did not reflect who she is on the inside, today.

Too, you can make many mistakes altering your looks on whim and fancy. Take, for example, Actress Lisa Rinna who had to have her lips surgically reduced to correct for having them enlarged surgically. We are not static psychologically and spiritually. Thus, you have to consider that someday you may not want the change you are about to make today.

Thus, if you have been thinking about getting Botox, wrinkle fillers, like Juvederm, or actually having plastic surgery to change your looks, please consider the following, before you proceed.

1. Is your desire fantasy or reality based? Sometimes, we get into a fantasy of who we would love to look like. This is understandable. Some of the greatest advancements of mankind have come because we can imagine more than we are today. Nonetheless, when it comes to changing your face and body, you have to engage in realistic thinking to get good results. Take for example, Nadia Suleiman, the Octomom. No matter how much she enlarges her lips, she will never look like Angelina Jolie and to try to only makes her look ridiculous. It’s not who you want to look like that you should be considering. It is what are the changes that can help you to feel good about yourself.

Above all else, be realistic. If you are 55, you can never become 25 again. Thus, if you want to turn back time 20+ years, there is something wrong emotionally. You don’t want to look like the infamous Cat Lady, Jocelyn Wildenstein, right? She most likely had a mental illness called Body Dysmorphic Disorder; ”a type of mental illness in which you can’t stop thinking about a flaw with your appearance — a flaw that is either minor or imagined. But to you, your appearance seems so shameful that you don’t want to be seen by anyone.”

If you are thinking about your appearance and body flaws for hours on end, you may have symptoms of BDD and need to see a psychologist or psychiatrist before you make any changes to your looks. Your fear that you are imperfect, ugly and even deformed stems from deep-seated lovability and acceptance fears showing up in a need for perfection, obsessive-compulsive behaviors, and clinical anxiety and depression. Medical aestheticians and plastic surgeons know this syndrome too well, as their BDD patients are rarely satisfied with the results of cosmetic and surgical procedures to “fix” their flaws.

Nothing can make you beautiful, when you feel ugly on the inside.

Thus, adjust your desires to who you are today in psychological characteristics, physical features, age, and lifestyle. No amount of physical change can turn self-hatred around. First, get some psychotherapy, like Carmen did. More perfect, thinner, richer, bigger or tighter is not always better. Doing more does not make you more handsome or pretty. In fact, doing too much can turn good to bad.

2. Consider how you might change emotionally in the future? There are some changes to your looks that are more difficult to turn around, as Tamra Barney and Lisa Rinna know too well. Hopefully, you are learning, growing and changing as time moves along. Think twice before you make dramatic changes to your looks that may not express who you are emotionally and spiritually over time.

3. Know what you want to achieve; set a cosmetic goal; and do no more. You buy a home based on the neighborhood, quality of schools, and access to resources, right? So why don’t you put the same due diligence into considerations to alter your face or body? You’ll get more realistic, if you take the time to think through exactly why you are considering this change and what is needed to bring it about. Be a good scientist; be specific in your goal so that you can measure the outcome. You’ll be happy that you did.

There’s nothing wrong with enhancing your looks or turning back time a little so that you can compete effectively in life. Many people think if you feel good about yourself, you won’t desire aesthetic changes to your face and body. This really isn’t the case. Many patients, like Carmen improve their looks mainly to have their outside support the positive changes taking place inside of them. Thus, if you are considering making an aesthetic change to your looks, just make sure that your self-esteem is healthy enough to support the change.

I hope you liked my post today. If so, please let me know by selecting the Like icon that immediately follows. You can also Tweet or Google+1 this article to let your friends know about it. Warmly Deborah.

Note: Today’s post is written by both Dr. Deborah Khoshaba and Medical Aesthetician, Sandi McGraw RN/BSN of M.K. Ambe Cosmetic Surgery Group in Newport Beach, California 92660 (949-759-5539).

Sandi had a mission to help others, this inspired her to become a Registered Nurse 16 years ago. Sandi began her career in aesthetic surgical nursing. Her experience includes 12 years of pre-operative, postoperative care, surgical assisting in the operating room, post anesthesia care, laser treatments and home care for post surgical patients. Currently she injects Botox, Dysport, Juvederm, Restylane, Perlane and Schlerotherapy. She is also additionally trained in the injectable threadlift technique. At Dr. Ambe’s office Sandi fulfills her ambition of helping women to look and feel their personal best.

In the near future, couples are given the option of engineering the DNA of their offspring for perfection or they can do nothing, and see what the luck of the genetic draw brings them. But, these naturally born children of God will never be able to fulfill their dreams or gain entrance into the highest social and professional echelons of life, as corporations screen their employees based on their genetic makeup. A genetic registry instantly identifies and classifies those who have been engineered genetically (genetic valids), or conceived naturally (genetic invalids). Gattaca, 1997, Movie Review IMDB. 

Imagine a future time when genetic engineering eliminates the chance to overcome challenges and to realize your full potential. There would be no more inspiring stories of overcoming disadvantage like those of Steven J. Cannell overcoming dyslexia to become a great television screenwriter, and of Ted Turner becoming a business and television mogul despite having Bipolar disease. And, what if Albert Einstein had let his failing of a school entrance exam stop him from coming up with theories of physics? Or, if Thomas Alva Edison or Ludwig Van Beethoven had let their deafness stop them from creating and inventing? Can you imagine if these persons were never allowed to approach the gate of possibility, let alone be let out of it? What a sad, impoverished world this would be.

Many things are possible when you are allowed to fail once, and twice, and to try again, in order to break through the barriers of disadvantage. In fact, the great personality theorist Alfred Adler believed that healthy living involves trying to strengthen shortcomings that may be stopping you from carrying out the life you’ve imagined for yourself. Rather than a liability, disadvantage (physical, mental, or psychological) is an advantage. It is an opening for self-improvement that develops and grows your life in deeply meaningful ways.

Take for example, my shift from singing opera to becoming a Clinical Psychologist. From early childhood, I dreamed of nothing else than becoming a professional singer. And, indeed, this is what I became. At 21-years-old, one of the world’s premier opera houses, the Chicago Lyric Opera, hired me as a full-time company singer. I thought I had hit the jackpot. I was on my way to fulfilling my lifetime dream. But, I didn’t realize that this job would actually be the point of departure from a singing career rather than its start. Health problems and a need to work full time to support myself did not permit me to extend my singing career beyond this wonderful experience.

I felt lost. I had only an education in music and was unprepared educationally and emotionally to do anything else. My vision of the life that I had imagined for myself seemed to die right there along with a singing career. “Who am I, if I’m not a singer?”  I felt insecure and unprepared to do anything else. I worked for a couple of years trying to find my way, but, nothing satisfied me.

I realized that if I didn’t face my fears and deficits and return to school, I’d be stuck forever in jobs that didn’t express my full intellect and talents. I needed to expand experiences that would open me to hidden desires and abilities that would show me the next steps on my life journey. As Adler says, my insecurities became signposts that I used to move my life forward beyond this painful loss.

School took up the next ten years of my life. But, during those ten years, I discovered desires, talents and abilities that uncovered the psychologist in me. But, perhaps, more than anything that I had learned about myself, I had learned something very precious about life. By strengthening what you are insecure about, you have a chance to reconfigure the best life possible as imagined by YOU. I was on the road again, as they say, and loving every minute of it.

Thus, use disadvantage as a door opener, so that your life progresses in timely and fortuitous ways. The next time you do not know what to do to move forward in life, look to deficits and losses to find your way again. And, remember to:

1. Assess the disadvantage. Most of us have at least one or two physical or mental liabilities or losses in life. Thus, select the shortcoming that will yield the greatest return in personal and professional growth, if you overcame it. You want to open up a path on your life journey that is lush with pathways for experience and development.
2. Have Courage. Be like Einstein and Edison. Don’t let failures or twists and turns in finding your way stop you from trying at all. Thankfully, this isn’t the world of the film Gattaca. You still have the right to try to unfold the best life possible. Don’t waste it.
3. Be Patient. Using disadvantage as a signpost for self-development takes consideration and planning. You might have to dedicate yourself to strengthening a particular limitation for some time. Remember, it took me ten years of education to become a psychologist. You have to be patient with the process and know that you are really taking the path of least resistance by attending to disadvantages that need to be addressed before you can move smoothly along your life journey.
4. Pay Attention to the Process. The process of strengthening a limitation will uncover desires, talents, and abilities that point you to true purpose and meaning. Thus, don’t go out looking for gold only to get caught up in people and situations extraneous to the task on hand. If you want to find the gold (the rainbow) of this process, you have to pay attention.
5. Be passionate. Love the life that you have been given. Don’t hold back. If there’s anything in life that you should pursue with abandon and passion it is the unfolding of your life journey. There’s a great part in the movie Gattaca where Vincent (a genetic invalid) and his brother Anton (a genetic valid) set out to prove to each other who is superior by seeing who has enough energy to swim farthest out to the sea. Vincent not only beats out his genetically-superior brother, but also saves Anton from drowning. When Anton asks him how he did it, Vincent replies, “I never saved anything for the swim back.”

Don’t save anything, my friends. Live your life fully, no matter any disadvantage you start out with in life. You have the power to overcome and take your place in the world in a deeply meaningful way.

I hope you liked my post today. If so, please let me know by selecting the Like icon that immediately follows. You can Tweet or Google+1 it, to let your friends know about the ideas in today’s post. Warm regards to you, Deborah.

“Do not waste yourself in rejection; do not bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good.” Ralph Waldo Emerson. 

Rejection doesn’t feel good to any of us. But, some of you respond better to being refused than others do. It’s easier for you to separate out who you are, personally, from the rejecting person or circumstance, as you are secure. Because, no only means no, you don’t feel unlovable, unaccepted, or disrespected. Of course, you may hurt temporarily, but you do not waste yourself in barking against the bad.

In contrast, some of you respond to rejection more deeply than the average person. You anxiously expect, readily perceive, and intensely respond to rejection as a total dislike of you. To you, rejection is saying that everything about you is wrong.

If you experience rejection in this powerful way, you may have a clinical syndrome called Rejection Sensitivity (RS) that can undermine your well being. To you, being refused in love, career, or friendship means something is wrong with you. You have difficulty separating out self-worth and lovability from having a desire or need unreturned. In your mind, if you were only better looking, more agreeable, powerful, wittier, smarter, or thinner, you would have what you want.

Undeniably, it’s hard to be you, as you turn rejection against yourself, which makes you prone to long stretches of self-hatred, depression, and physical and emotional fatigue. To protect yourself, you have learned to avoid people and situations that put you at risk of refusal. This may work in the short-term. But, you are avoiding the exact experiences that you need to learn how to relate healthily.

Rejection Sensitivity

Sensitivity to rejection isn’t just a passing fancy of the self-help movement. It’s a serious symptom of the mood and personality disorders that results in an inability to regulate emotions, exert self-control, and the tendency to give too much personal meaning to life happenings that it undermines the ability to cope with frustrating experiences.

RS often accompanies disorders of mood, like Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) and the Bipolar Disorders (I & II), because, here, the operations of the ego are comprised. Together, medication and psychotherapy strengthen the biology so that the brain’s higher processes (the ego’s secondary brain processes) can be accessed. However, the effectiveness of treatment depends upon the strength of one’s identity and ego prior to the onset of the mood condition. If a personality disorder (Avoidant, Narcissistic, or Borderline) accompanies the mood condition, and has rejection sensitivity as a main symptom component, then, treatment effectiveness may be lessened.

Shallow-rooted Eucalyptus Tree

Avoidant, Narcissistic, and Borderline persons take rejection very hard. It’s a life and death situation, for them, and, sadly, sometimes literally. For example, having a romantic interest reject them, or being turned down for a job is taken so badly that they feel their lives are over, and that they have nothing for which to live. You hear all or nothing type statements, like “I can’t live without this person.” Or, “Now, I have nothing to live for.”  You may call them drama queens, as their emotional turmoil can feel like a Shakespearean tragedy. But, their upsets have less to do with creating drama for the sake of drama than it does a lowering of their fragile self-esteem. The shallow-rooted eucalyptus tree personifies their sense of self. Every look and communication has the ability to overwhelm and knock them down. If you find yourself in this description, let’s toughen you up, so that no amount of rejection can uproot you.

Chant the Beauty of Your Good

Learn how to stand firm in the face of rejection. You have to know three realities of rejection that will free you of its control and let you chant the beauty of your good, no matter the ill winds that come your way.

1. Rejection is state of meaning. It’s true, you can be denied by a person or a situation. But, you decide what rejection means to you, by the way you explain the situation to yourself. Many of you tell me that you are “destroyed” and “can’t go on living” because your affection was unreturned or you didn’t get into the school or job of choice. When you assign life and death meaning to being refused, you have nowhere to go but broken and down. You’ve hemmed yourself into a trap by meanings that uproot you completely. Here, I’m talking less about being falsely happy or positive and more about changing the way that you speak about a situation, by the meaning you assign to it. You will be able to handle rejection, when you start to describe it in ways that don’t destroy your self-esteem. Turn a statement like, “I am destroyed and can’t go on living” into “I’m hurting, but not broken or down”. Your whole demeanor changes just by the meaning you give to the experience. Test it out for yourself.
2. Rejection is a state of body. Research shows that a nervous system that is braced on threat is also fixed on perceiving rejection. You perceive rejection like a ferocious tiger was running toward you. But, instead of fighting the situation you fear, you have learned to avoid people and situations that put you at risk of rejection. You may feel safe in the short-term. But, in the long-term, you are avoiding the exact experiences that you need to reduce your fear and grow in the process (Science Daily, Pain Sensitivity and Social Rejection). To be resilient in the face of rejection, you need to lower your brain and body response to perceived threat. Deep breathing and relaxation exercises are vital to achieving this goal. Learning how to deep breathe through the Alternate Nostril Breathing exercise is an excellent way to lower your response to threat.
3. Rejection informs you as to what you need to grow. Everything that happens to you is grist for personal development, including rejecting experiences. Perhaps, the toughest and also best learning experiences are those in which needs and desires are frustrated. If everything went your way, you’d have little to make you stop and think about what you really need to learn and grow. What a shallow person you’d be, indeed. Thus, carpe diem! Seize the moments of rejection to learn about yourself. Ask yourself, “How might this experience benefit me?” rather than crying over how it has ruined your life. So many of you let the details of the rejecting experience fill up your mind and heart so that there’s no space for you to self-reflect. Why this occurred dominates your reasoning process, rather than what can I learn from this experience. And, sadly, you do this to the point of depression and exhaustion. Know that we’ve all been there and understand your pain. But, to move beyond rejection, you have to stop asking why and start asking how you can benefit psychologically and spiritually from being denied.

Remember, it is less important that you may have started out vulnerable to rejection than knowing how to be resilient in spite of it. Thus, the next time you are denied, chant the beauty of your good, by letting these three truths of rejection guide your thinking and actions. Even if you have to fake it at the start, if you let these truths guide you, you’ll grow more secure and resist being knocked down.

If you liked my post today, please let me know by selecting the Like icon that immediately follows. You can also Tweet or Google+1 it to let your friends know about the ideas in today’s articles. Warmly Deborah.

“Perhaps the most important thing we bring to another person is the silence in us, not the sort of silence that is filled with unspoken criticism or hard withdrawal. It is the sort of silence that is a place of refuge, of rest, of acceptance of someone as they are. We are all hungry for this other silence. It is hard to find. In its presence we can remember something beyond the moment, a strength on which to build a life. Silence is a place of great power and healing.” – Rachel Naomi Remen

We are all hungry to be heard and understood. But, we often get criticism and negativity from loved ones, friends, and coworkers who are unable to empathize with what we feel and say, because their ego is unable to stay silent long enough to listen.

It’s hard to find people who know how to be a sanctuary of silence, for you. But, you know it when you find it. Your whole being relaxes; you feel safe and open, because you are in the presence of a person who really wants to know YOU, what you think, feel and believe.

But, perhaps, even harder than finding people who allow you to be you without criticism and negativity is being able to provide it to other people. You have to be able to put yourself aside to appreciate others’ point of view. But, doing this isn’t an easy thing to do, especially when you don’t agree with what you are hearing. You may have the capacity for empathy, but are so caught up in your own thoughts, ideas and problems that it is hard to focus your attention outside of yourself. Or, you have a developmental incapacity to appreciate others’ feelings and viewpoints—an underlying narcissistic order borderline personality style.

Each of you is born with the capacity to empathize with the suffering of others, to feel other people’s pain. In fact, empathy begins, as a fight-or-flight response to threat that allows you to sense if a person is a friend or foe. Over time, empathy grows from a sense of threat to an appreciation of people’s feelings, sufferings, and state of mind. Hence, empathy becomes the way we connect to people on an intimate level.

Additionally, empathy helps you to see that beneath our racial, cultural, and religious differences we are one, striving to be understood, to relate, and to have our worlds known by each other.

Empathy: Birds, Bees, and Even Mice Do It!

You can learn much about empathy through animal behavior. Empathic behavior has long been observed in apes and monkeys, and described by many owners of pets, especially of dogs. Although, that’s no surprise to animal lovers.

But, primates aren’t the only ones with feelings. It seems that mice have feelings too. According to neurobiologist Peggy Mason and her team of researchers, mice can detect and feel their cage-mate’s pain. Upon hearing the cries of their cage mates confined to a restrainer, the free mice focused their attention on releasing them. But, their empathy didn’t stop there. The mice left their newly freed friends a paw-full of chocolate chips, to eat upon their release.

Researchers called this empathic response in mice “emotional contagion”; a situation in which one animal’s stress leads to stress in another and activates what psychologists call “pro-social behavior”.  The researchers concluded that what they were seeing was empathy; selfless behavior driven by the experience of another.

Research on mirror neurons helps us to better understand how distress in one creature can activate distress in another and lead to helping behavior. We are hard-wired with mirror motor neurons that allow us to experience other people’s pain simply by seeing them in distress. Their pain is mirrored in our bodies at a deep sensory level. This is why you shrink back or cringe when you see, for example, a person roller skate into a wall, fall off a bike, or get hit in the head with a baseball bat. Ouch! Why do you think so many commercials today show you people getting punched in the face or running into walls? They want you to feel their pain, so that you are more apt to buy what the commercial is selling. “I feel your pain” takes on a whole new meaning to you now, right?

Hence, empathy, at first, involves recognition of other creature’s pain at a body level. It seems so simple. You see another creature in distress; his distress is contagious; you help. Perhaps, it is easy for mice, but not so much for us. Because we develop ideas, beliefs, and values (identity) that can get in the way of our natural response to people’s suffering and pain.

I recall a time in my early twenties that speaks to this. I saw that a well-known Monk would be speaking at a local event. I didn’t know what to expect, as I had never attended something like this before. But, I let my intuition guide me and decided to attend. The Monk was already in the room when we started to arrive that evening. I was noticeably different than the other attendees who were older than me, of the intellectual, academic type, and dressed in hippie-style clothing. Everyone sat down in a lotus-meditative posture encircling the wise Monk. Then, he spoke. “What do you do when you see a person who is hungry?” He began to scan the room, searching for a response to his question. Then, his eyes landed on me. “I’d feed him,” I said to myself silently. I couldn’t believe this was right. That is too simple an answer, to be right. There were so many learned people in this room, I thought; this has to be a trick question. Then, I nervously blurted out, “Don’t feed him“. He smiled and chuckled a bit. “Feed him“, I blurted out. He smiled so kindly to me and nodded yes.

My youthful insecurity had led me to distrust my natural inner wisdom, that day. The Monk was essentially saying, be like mice. Put aside your learning (the ego) and open yourself fully to the need of others. Don’t be afraid; let another person’s suffering spread through you. Herein lies compassionate understanding and action.

Can You Strengthen The Empathy Muscle?

Yes! The brain is flexible. You can rewire and strengthen its connections, to set new learning into place. It  just takes practice. Even a narcissistic or borderline personality can learn to empathize with other people, with enough practice. Although, admittedly, this can take a lot of effort and time.

In large part, empathy is a matter of awareness. By putting conscious effort into setting aside fixed beliefs and values, empathic responding stands a chance. You have to turn your focus outward, in order to activate your mirror neurons, so that you can feel people’s pain. Then, as your awareness increases, you begin to move beyond merely mimicking the pain of others, solely, at a physical level. You start to mirror internal states, which is the gateway to empathy (Dan Siegel). Unlike mice, our higher level brain functions allow us to set aside our emotions, so that we can mirror other people’s inner worlds accurately (Columbia University Researchers).

There are mindfulness practices that teach you how to notice a wide range of thoughts and feelings that rise from inside of you, so that you can learn how to set them aside in service of empathic responding. Now, you can notice when your neurons are mirroring another person’s suffering, and through mindfulness, stay focused on this empathic awareness, without having your ego circumvent the process.

Unfortunately, many people act out of unawareness. They let predetermined scripts for what certain experiences mean guide what they think they see and hear. Then, they regurgitate understandings that come out of these automatic thinking scripts. This leads to inaccurate perceptions and understandings, and frustrated social interactions. Empathic responding doesn’t stand a chance, here.

Mindfulness is the way to strengthen the empathy muscle.

Feeling other people’s pain doesn’t mean you have become them, or drop what you believe or value. Empathy is simply a bridge to understanding and respecting our differences.  By becoming more deeply aware of the way your mind works, you can exercise greater control over it (Become Mindful). You can choose to be less self-absorbed and more open and empathic to people. Just put your ego aside and let the mirror neurons start to work for you.

If you like my post today, please say so by selecting the Like icon that immediately follows. You can also Tweet or Google+1 it, to let others know about the ideas in today’s post. As always, I welcome your comments. Warmly, Deborah

Note: The featured image comes from http://aspergeradults.ca/Blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/empathyheadwaterdrip.jpg

“I’m so good at beginnings, but in the end I always seem to destroy everything, including myself.” ~ Kiera Van Gelder, The Buddha and the Borderline: My Recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder through Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Buddhism, and Online Dating.

Some of you have already heard of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). But, if you haven’t, you’ll connect quickly to the seriousness of this disorder by the dramatic films that portray this type of personality, like Girl Interrupted (Winona Ryder and Angelina Jolie), Single, White Female (Jennifer Jason Leigh), and Sleeping With the Enemy (Julia Roberts).

Although Hollywood’s rendition of BPD is quite extreme, you can find examples of these more dramatic, dangerous borderline persons in real life.  Some of them are capable of carrying out a grudge far beyond most of us could ever imagine. I’m sure many of you know of the infamous La Jolla, California socialite Betty Broderick (1989) who, in a fit of rage, killed her ex-husband and lawyer, Dan Broderick III and his new young wife Linda Cohenia. This story of borderline abandonment and revenge captured Hollywood’s attention (Betty Broderick: A Woman Scorned, with Meredith Baxter). It is such a popular television movie that Lifetime TV is still running it 20 years after Broderick killed her ex-husband.

There is also Jodi Arias who is on trial right now for repeatedly stabbing (30 times), almost decapitating, and then shooting her cheating lover. From what I know of the case thus far, Arias appears to fit the criteria for the more dangerous type of BPD. And, I’m sure Arias’ story will soon make its ways into Hollywood too, as we are ever fascinated by people who act out their impulses murderously.

But, unlike the infamous borderlines in the news, most borderline people harm themselves, rather than hurt other people. There are many contributing factors to the borderline personality condition (biology, early developmental experiences, and other personality features, like narcissism and antisocial impulses) that creates differences between borderline people. The weight of one factor over another can determine the extent of the borderline pathology and treatment outcome.

But, before I go further in helping you to understand BPD, let’s consider why these types of personality are called borderline in the first place.

Why Borderline?

Psychiatry called this disorder BPD, because these persons function somewhere in between a state of neurosis and psychoticism. They are not obviously crazy. But, they are dictated mostly by inner impulses, which makes their behavior fantasy-based, self-centered, and, at times, antisocial.

Nonetheless, the line between the real world and their inner processes is a fragile one, indeed. This is because borderline persons have limited to no ability to use the executive area of the brain (Frontal Lobes) to consider the effect of their impulses on themselves and other people. They are limited greatly in the ability to self-govern themselves through mental processes, so that they rarely reflect upon, learn from, or give meaning to experience that can grow them. They have what is clinically referred to as a fragile, immature ego, which is essentially to say that the capacities of the brain’s frontal lobes are insufficiently developed.

Their fragile ego is also why they have great difficulty defusing powerful emotions of hurt, sadness, and anger through reasoned thinking. Thus, their reactions are often self-centered, destructive, and out of control, which can lead them to threaten harm to themselves or to other people. It’s no wonder that people experience them as self-indulgent. And, only adding to the perception that they are self-absorbed is their inability to consider how their behavior impacts other people. But, their lack of empathy is less from self-preoccupation than it is from an inability to reflect upon other persons’ frustration and pain (See Mirror Neuron Explanation in Article: Can You Strengthen The Empathy Muscle).

If you have a friend or family member who has such difficulties, you know too well the affect of their self-indulgence on them and you. But, unless, you are clinically trained, you may think that their self-destructive behaviors are just to spite you and to resist growing up, rather than an expression of their inability to learn from experience.

Hallmarks of BPD

Early development plays a strong role in the making of a borderline personality. Either through neglect or spoiling of the child, caretakers did not provide sufficient teaching experiences for the child to learn how to regulate his or her impulses and emotions. Hence, the child’s intense needs overwhelm their ability to think through, reason and learn from experience, which frustrates their psychological growth. They experience each situation as new, with little to no connection to the past, and no anticipation of what their behavior means to their future functioning. They fluctuate between feeling bored, empty, and deprived, or highly anxious – craving excitement, attention, and emotional connection to quell this yearning. Food, drugs, alcohol, or even cutting on themselves are ways to allay the unbearable anxiety that they feel, at such times.

Sadly, this vicious cycle of need fulfillment stops them from learning how to cope with life’s problems on their own. They require things outside of themselves to soothe their frustrations, just like young children do. Only, instead of running to mommy for help and comfort, they turn to substances, risky people and activities, and self-injurious cutting on themselves, to calm down. These comforting agents are a life source to the borderline person, like a mother is to a young child. Without them, they feel afraid, empty, and abandoned. Can you imagine just how difficult it is to free a borderline person of people and activities that they view as a life source? It’s like taking a young child away from his or her mother.

BPD In Treatment

It’s critical that the treating therapist assesses accurately all of the contributing factors that are preventing the borderline person from learning through experience, as the main therapy challenge is to get the patient to use his or her frontal lobes to process what happens to them. This can be a challenging, lengthy, and frustrating task of having to reparent the borderline person. The therapist has to essentially connect up the borderline person’s inner world with outer reality. We become the patient’s frontal lobes until theirs are strong enough to take over. And, like a good parent, the therapist must be empathic, patient, and signed up to treat the patient for the long haul (at the least, two to five years). As I said, the good news is that borderline people can learn and grow, especially as they mature with age.

Nonetheless, borderline people are difficult to treat. It’s not easy to loosen them from destructive people and activities that soothe their anxiety and frustrations. The therapist must become the soothing agent, so that these destructive sources lose their appeal.

Additionally, as many as 75% of borderline persons hurt themselves and approximately 10% will commit suicide. This is an extraordinarily high suicide rate, by comparison to the 6% suicide rate for mood disorders (Borderline Personality Disorder: Mental Illness on the Rise? Time Magazine). Thus, therapists have to be continually alert to the risk of suicide in such patients.

As you can see, treating a borderline condition is no easy task and requires a special course of treatment to serve the patient well. Many people are wrongly diagnosed either because of the therapist’s lack of skill and knowledge in diagnosis or the patient’s underlying pathology is hidden until uncovered by therapy. This is unfortunate, as there’s nothing worse for the therapist and the patient than missing the risk of suicide.

The recent revision of the Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Psychiatric Behavior from its 4th to 5th edition made radical changes in the diagnosis of personality disorders, to avoid misdiagnosis as much as possible. Now, for a BPD diagnosis to be made, there has to be significant impairments in identity, self-direction, empathy and intimate relations and also the presence of emotional lability, anxiousness, separation fears, impulsivity, risk-taking and hostility. Additionally, the impairments of personality development and functioning must be stable over time, not due to stage of development or social and cultural influences, or solely due to drug or medication use (DSM V).

I’m glad for this attempt to refine the diagnostic process, so that there’s less chance of misdiagnosis and so that the public is better served. The more serious personality types, like the avoidant, borderline and narcissistic personality disorders can be a hard pill to swallow for those people who are receiving the diagnosis. Thus, it is so important to understand the great variability within the group of people who are given a specific diagnosis. And, that it is the level of the symptoms that heighten the probability of having a personality disorder.

The abstract features of a diagnosis do not say much about the concrete strengths and weaknesses of the person you are thinking about. I have treated several borderline people throughout the years. Their weaknesses can also be their strengths. They are often highly creative, intuitively sensitive, and intelligent and capable of bonding to people. With the proper diagnosis, treatment, and therapist, there is much possibility of them maturing and leading productive and happy lives.

I hope you liked today’s post. If you did, please let me know by selecting the Like icon that immediately follows. You can also Tweet or Google+1 this post to let others know about it. Warm regards to you, Deborah.

“The real hopeless victims of mental illness are to be found among those who appear to be most normal. Many of them are normal because they are so well adjusted to our mode of existence, because their human voice has been silenced so early in their lives, that they do not even struggle or suffer or develop symptoms as the neurotic does. They are normal not in what may be called the absolute sense of the word; they are normal only in relation to a profoundly abnormal society. Their perfect adjustment to that abnormal society is a measure of their mental sickness. These millions of abnormally normal people, living without fuss in a society to which, if they were fully human beings, they ought not to be adjusted.”  ~  Aldous Huxley, A Brave New World , Goodreads.com.

A friend of Psychology in Everyday Life recently posted this quote by Aldous Huxley.  I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I remember so many people whom I’ve counseled throughout the years, (patients, family and friends) who have suffered more from their loved one’s adjustment to a “normal” existence than their actual mental health condition. Let me share a story with you, to show you what I mean. Many years ago, a teenage boy was admitted to the inpatient adolescent psychiatric center at which I worked. He was admitted for explosive rage and signs of paranoia. In group psychotherapy, one day, the young man shared the event that got his parents to admit him to an inpatient psychiatric hospital. He had gotten into a fistfight with his father, because his father called him gay for wearing a pink shirt. Of course, the young man said, “My father denied that he said that to me.”

Later that evening, I attended group family therapy and got a chance to meet and observe the young man’s parents. As you know, adolescence is a time of trying to find oneself. Questions of identity can lead adolescents to dress in colorful ways. Unisex makeup, dress, and haircuts, safety pins in eyebrows, and a taste for the color black characterized the look of the young patients that evening. The black eyeliner circling their eyes seemed to say, “Heh, you adults, back off; don’t mess with me.” The only thing that let on that these non-conforming Gothic-dressed teenagers were actually harmless was the youthful blush that came to their faces when their moms gave them a hug or said something loving that made them smile. They were someone’s children. I could tell who the parents were of each child by the flow of warmth that connected them to each other, except for the young man whose fistfight with his father led to his hospitalization. Both of his parents were noticeably distant from their son, especially the father. The father looked at the young people in the room, like they had committed some evil crime. He had disdain in his eyes for these young people, but especially, for his son.

I understood so much that evening. I knew that this young man’s father had forfeited authentic self-expression long ago, in his own childhood. Someone in this man’s past stifled his inner voice, and so, now, he would stifle anyone or anything that didn’t consent to his view of the world.  He epitomized Huxley’s idea of abnormal normalcy. This man became so well adjusted to what others (parents, teachers, religion, society and culture) had told him to believe, and what was the right way to be, that his inner voice was silenced. Now, he doesn’t even struggle or suffer or develop symptoms mainly because he’s so shut down to his self. Other’s are ill or sick or bad or less than, rather than him. Because, according to him, he is “normal”.

My heart went out to the young man. The next day in psychotherapy, the young man asked me: “How can I get along with my father?” “How can I fit in?“ “I am not like my parents or even my friends.” “I want something different.” “I want to do good in this world.” To which I replied:

“You know, I learned a long time ago that if I would dress like them (symbolically), I could make my way in this world, although I wasn’t like them.” “It’s okay to fit in, as long as you never lose your inner voice.” “You can be for the world, but not of it.”

Although he was only 16-years old, he understood me. I saw it in his eyes. And, the following day, I was told that he repeated what I had shared with him in group psychotherapy.  I don’t know what happened to this young man. I know he was being considered for antipsychotic medication to calm his rage outbursts and the possibility of a paranoid schizophrenic disorder. Yes, I know what some of you might be thinking right now. Was he being medicated to silence his inner voice? I don’t know; he might have had an underlying psychotic illness. Nonetheless, although this happened twenty-two years ago, I have never forgotten him, mainly because of how tough it was for him to be raised by people who believe that anything other than what they believe to be true is abnormal.

To Be Fully Human

It’s hard to be fully human in a world that is enslaved to ideas of the larger group. You can opt out of mainstream existence. This is your choice. Or, you can find a way to express your own voice in life while at the same time fitting into the world as it is. Because, there will always be a world normed with ideas and beliefs that organize us into a group of people. It’s the anchor that grounds us, but, can also be the context from which we can evolve into fully human beings, if we choose it to be.

What does it mean to be fully human? I like the great personality theorist and spiritual counselor Carl Roger’s take on the subject matter. In his classic text, On Becoming a Person (1961), Rogers sees being fully human as a process, rather than a state of being or destination; it’s a direction of living that moves you toward the authentic you. But, you have to challenge any ideas and beliefs that shut down this inner process. You have to live life bravely. Specifically, you open yourself to a living process that leads you to new, healthier psychological and spiritual expressions of yourself. To do this, you have to:

1. Increasingly open up to experience, especially within you. Become less defensive. Open yourself to things that you do not understand or are unfamiliar to you. See what you think. You have a right to examine experience and to decide what you think for yourself. Acknowledge your fears and wounds and your feelings of awe and joy. By experiencing fully, you have choices. When you have choices, you live freely.
2. Live increasingly in the present moment. This is mindful, existential living. When you dare to experience each moment as if it were new, then, you bring nothing to the moment other than your intuitive self. What things mean arise from your inner voice that is separate from those ego-based ideas and reasoning that twist and distort what’s happening into these structures of mind. Many of you are familiar with my post Love is Being Present. I knew my husband was talking about himself, rather than the roses, because I was open to the moment and to my inner voice. If I was controlling the process, then, my set ideas, resentments, and stereotypes would have led me to be defensive and much less sensitive to what he was saying.
3. Increasingly learn to trust in yourself. You do know what’s right for you. When you become less defensive and present to the moment, you increasingly see that you can trust in your own self. YOU are the instrument for sensing what you need to live healthily and to evolve your life purpose.  You will increasingly get better at sensing the entirety of a situation in need, desire and demand and for determining courses of action that grow you into a fully functioning being.

If you liked my post today, please let me know by selecting the Like icon that immediately follows. You can also Tweet or Google+1 it. Here is to a Brave New You! Warmly Deborah.