Archive for September, 2004

Anxiety and Elephants, Part Four

Published on September 24, 2004 in Personal, Philosophical and Waiting for the miracle. 0 Comments

I think the reason it’s so hard to discern the difference between biologically and environmentally caused diseases is partly because of the way we think about causality. What does it mean to acknowledge that “stress” can cause or contribute to heart disease? When a gang member has a bullet removed from his brain, what was the “cause” of his death? The bullet? Bad parenting? Social policy?

There are people for whom the physiological and neuromuscular stress responses have become so repeatedly triggered and habituated that their lives are on the line. How best to treat these diseases of stress? The question is no different for heart disease than for depression. We take meds and have surgeries only to return back to the same stressful job. The paravertebral muscles in the back can be so chronically tensed that discs bulge. One person is shown the x-ray and encouraged to have surgery to correct the problem. This helps a lot with the pain. But there’s no insight, no improved awareness, so right back to the same stressful situation and more back surgery five years later. Another person is taught how to regain control of the paravertebral muscles. As a result of this learning process, the person can now relax these muscles; the spine is no longer bent; the disk no longer bulges; no more pain. Improved self-awareness, improved functioning, improved insight. Person gets a new job.

How we understand the cause of a problem will determine what we decide to do about it. If your eye doctor tells you your nearsightedness is caused by a refractive, structural problem in your eye, you will probably get eye-glasses. If you listen to Aldous Huxley or Dr. William Bates, you might be persuaded that your myopia is primarily a matter of poor seeing habits, and that you might regain perfect vision by replacing these habits with better ones. The bottom line is this: Glasses are fine. They help you see better immediately, and with no effort on your part. The Bates Method is a lot like meditation. It takes time, effort, and commitment. Glasses are an UR intervention that masks symptoms, and people’s vision continues to get worse and worse (anyone’s prescriptions going the other way?) Back surgery will help your back feel better; but it doesn’t address the problem integrally (no engagement of awareness). It’s the same for psychiatric problems, in my opinion. Awareness heals. But we don’t want to hear it! It may be true that the status quo, by its very nature, suppresses the integral truth of health and disease. But WE ARE THE STATUS QUO! We would rather wear glasses, have back surgery, take the heart meds and the psych meds. We want to be enlightened, but not if it might mean quitting that job of ours. Without the job we’d have no way to afford the glasses, Prozac, and back surgeries! Insanity!

Anxiety and Elephants, Part Three

Published on September 10, 2004 in Personal and Waiting for the miracle. 0 Comments

Tomorrow I head off the hospital once more, and it is my job to come up with and facilitate four group therapy/education sessions throughout the day. People are there for ECT treatment, suicidal depression, self mutilation, fork swallowing, shooting themselves in the head and gut, scratching their eyes to the point of blindness, drug addiction, drinking antifreeze, and on and on. By the time I clock in tomorrow, there will undoubtedly be a few newly admitted patients with their own unique stories and struggles. So what topics or activities should I do in my groups tomorrow? Tetra-emergence? Have ‘em all sketch out the four quadrants?

Lately I’ve been meditating a lot more, and my groups seem to be going well, no matter what I choose to do. Hmmm…

Anxiety and Elephants, Part Two

Published on September 5, 2004 in Personal and Philosophical. 0 Comments

I’ve worked with many, many people with psychological problems in the extreme, and it’s impossible not to think that some of these folks are primarily the victims of some kind of brain disorder. I don’t deny that genetics can be a factor, and that some people can inherit a dysfunctional brain or a tendency to have certain problems. Anyone who’s ever worked with developmentally disabled people or people whose brains have been affected by injury or disease can attest to the reality and effects of brain dysfunction. There are also some very interesting twin studies on schizophrenia that must be taken into account in any integral approach to understanding these issues. In my experience, however, these kinds of conditions are exceedingly rare, and certainly do not account for the “one of every four” phenomenon that we see in our society today. So, to be clear, I do think problems in functioning can be due primarily to structural problems in the brain, inherited or not.

My main point is that it is dangerous and flat-out wrong to think of “psychological” problems or subjective experience in general as being “caused by” objective or upper right quadrant realities. My examples of the tiger and elephant were a little over the top, I admit, but in general I do see people being seduced (by The Man as well as by their own understandable desire for relief) into making the upper right primary when, in fact, an emphasis on other quadrants is in order. In some cases, such as grief over the death of a loved one, or the psychological abuse of a child, we can see how simplistic and reductionistic it is to think in terms of “causes.” Someone in a prolonged state of grief or a child exposed to the stress of continued confusion and terror will change on a physiological level in ways that can be measured. But to say their subjective feelings are caused by the physiological changes is no more or less true than saying their feelings are caused by the death of the loved one or by the abuse. The way we respond to death is partly a matter of how death is viewed in our culture, and the child abuse might partly be influenced by cultural and economic factors. Human health has to looked at integrally, in my opinion, to effectively deal with problems. Even the language here makes things difficult. Calling something a psychological problem sounds like a denial of the upper right quadrant, while calling it a medical problem denies the other quadrants. “Problems of living” are always a four quadrant affair, although when it comes down to helping a real person having a problem, the main concern is “what works.” Even if the problems of a schizophrenic man stem from some sort of child abuse or whatever, still the most helpful thing to do for him may be to prescribe him some risperdal. A health care professional cannot fix all the problems in society, culture, and in the mind of the patient in three days. But they can prescribe risperdal, and that does help ease the suffering of many, many patients.

Anxiety and Elephants

Published on September 5, 2004 in Personal, Philosophical and Waiting for the miracle. 1 Comment

“Do you suffer from sleeplessness, anxious feelings, obsessive worrying about the future that makes it hard to function? If you find yourself saying Yes, than you may be suffering from generalized anxiety disorder and a chemical imbalance may be to blame.” — Paxil commercial

I mean no disrespect to any of you who have or are suffering from anxiety, depression, or any other mental health problem, but the notion that the so-called mental illnesses we see all around (and within) us are predominantly upper-right quadrant pathologies (i.e. brain disorders) is, to my mind, a striking example of ignorance and non-integral thinking. I say this with genuine compassion, having spent the last ten years of my life working with people diagnosed with mental illnesses.

Drug companies drive much of the current research in psychiatry these days, and the medical establishment (i.e. the people that prescribe Paxil) has produced an abundance of evidence to support their viewpoint: the brain scans, the analysis of neurotransmitter levels, etc. That the entire culture is unbalanced chemically is not the issue–this is, in fact, an obvious state of affairs, which the “evidence” nicely illustrates. What really frosts my balls is the cleverly marketed misunderstanding that an imbalance in our chemical structure necessarily indicates a chemical intervention, and furthermore, is a state of affairs which relieves us of the responsibility for our own state of being. If we took a brain scan and did a chemical analysis of a person who just stuck his head in an elephant’s asshole, we would surely note, when we compare the results to a scan and analysis of the same person a week later (head still in ass), many differences. The long term exposure to the elevated temperature of the elephant’s bunghole, along with the lack of breathable air, would undoubtedly have profound physiological effects. The Paxil pushers of the world would like us to believe that our subject’s chemical imbalance should be “treated” by giving him some pill (it would have to come in suppository form of course, as our subject’s head, and therefore mouth, is unavailable as a medication route) that will directly act on his physiological structure in a way that facilitates a change toward the closest possible approximation of his initial state of relative chemical balance. Well, that’s one approach I guess. The common sense alternative of simply having the subject remove his head from the elephant’s ass would seem a little simpler, and would undoubtedly achieve more satisfactory results. Clearly, pulling head from ass is the more appropriate response in this situation, but imagine if every time we tried to point this out we were encouraged to ignore the fact that the guy’s head was in the elephant’s ass, that every time we even glanced in the direction of the elephant’s ass, our attention was redirected to the brain scan and physiological data. Well, you get the point. Anything can be considered in terms of its chemical properties and physical structure, and any change in subjective experience has a correlative change on an objective, observable level. It simply does not follow that depression, anxiety, or any other mental illness is “caused by” a chemical imbalance, or should necessarily be treated by a chemical intervention. If a tiger were to walk onto my front porch, my physiology would change measurably, but I would consider it insane for someone to suggest that my resultant anxiety was “caused by” the physiological changes or that I should swallow some paxil. I am thankful that many of the folks I work with, such as those tormented by voices in their head or those depressed to the point of attempted suicide, find relief in medication. In fact, I’m all for the use of chemicals for any and all psychological problems, even having a few beers after a tough day at work. Anything that helps is good, so long as you understand (as much as possible) what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. The person who takes the paxil and stays on the front porch with the tiger might get eaten alive. The problems we face in life are complicated beasts, and they cannot be understood or effectively addressed with anything less than an integral approach.

But the paxil pushers of the world are only telling us what we want to hear. We want to keep our gaze fixed on those brainscans and hormone level print outs; we’re more than willing to spend however much it costs for those little pink pills.

It’s such a small price to pay for the warmth and security of that big, pillowy ass. It’s as cozy as mama’s womb, by golly, and once you get used to the smell, you don’t even realize where your head’s buried.