Inoculation for anxiety and depression
So, you may not have been able to get the swine flue vaccine, but here is a “vaccine” that is widely available:
You have heard it many times from many different sources that exercise is good for you. But just in case the connection between exercise and mental health is not clear, let me attempt to make it transpicuous:
The research is coming out of Princeton University and the results were presented at the Society for Neuroscience in Chicago. The research team working with mice found that exercise did not just produce a temporary good mood in the mice, but it actually altered the brain of the mice that had been put through an exercise program. Exercise actually created new brain cells that remained calm under the stress that the mice were exposed to subsequently. The brains of the mice that had been exercised were biochemically and
molecularly calmer under stress!
Parallel research in the University of Colorado presented data showing that moderate exercise dampens the effects of oxidative stress (anxiety in mice and people has been shown to be linked with excessive oxidative stress).
The Colorado team showed that mice that had been exercised prior to been exposed to severe stress did not run and hide in corners like the unexercised mice but rather they actively explored their surrounding. Exercise inoculated brain cells and created neuronal pathways to handle toxic stress.
These changes did not happen overnight. It appears that in both studies effects started after 6 weeks. And although we do not know exactly what the timing will be with humans, one lesson seems to be clear to everyone: “don’t quit”. Reduction of stress may not happen after your first hour at the gym, but the molecular, biochemical changes will begin and will become evident with time.
So, here is my prescription/wish/ gift to you for this particular stressful time of the year:
Hit the gym, the treadmill the boardwalk and inoculate yourself.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Monday, October 19, 2009
Freeing Sisyphus
Freeing Sisyphus
How do you say goodbye to the person who held you in her arms, whose breast quieted your hunger pangs whose eyes and face were the mirror you looked into to define and know yourself? How do you let go of the person who gave you life and then for some unfathomable reason made it unbearable?
I have been asked this question so many times by so many patients. Souls divided between love and hate searching for understanding, comfort, absolution, peace.
Their personal agony tags on my professional responsibility to make sense out the whirlpool of their emotions. After all, am I not the Psychologist, the doctor who is supposed to know the workings of the human mind?
Like Ariadne I am asked to lead them deep into the heart of the Labyrinth where understanding and forgiveness are waiting to be mustered. But understanding more often than not does not fill the emotional void while anger becomes the final bond that ties us to the abuser in an insouciant search for both love and revenge.
Understanding abuse demands of us to transcend the childhood illusion that our parents are all- knowing, all- powerful, paragons of emotional health punishing us only for our own good and only because we are intrinsically and hopelessly “bad and stupid”. It requires that we put our pain aside and search for theirs. It asks us to do something that we often resist with every fiber of our being: seeing the abuser as damaged, tortured, herself a victim of abuse, emotionally retarded and pathetic. Forgiveness requires a level and kind of empathy (understanding a person’s emotional limitations) that our anger and the yearning for acknowledgement and retribution often do not allow.
Do you see how maddening this vicious circle is? We want an emotionally retarded, morally bereft person to acknowledge and understand the wrong of her actions, but if she was capable of this kind of understanding she would not have done them to begin with. The fault is not with the victim’s ability to explain how she was hurt, but with the abuser’s ability to comprehend. It is like expecting someone who never learned Greek to read the Odyssey in its original.
But isn’t understanding and accepting the abuser’s pathology and limitations letting her off the hook?
NO.
Letting go of the yearning to be validated, which feeds and multiplies the rage of the original abuse and abandoning the demand to be loved in the way you understand love is not saying to the perpetrator that what she did is ok. It does not even mean that you will ever have to talk to her again if this is not what is best for you.
What it does mean is that you will not let the anger corrode your soul. That you will not be tied to an abuser with the chains of an illusion: for ever seeking love and acknowledgement, incessantly explaining, placating, ingratiating or as a last resort threatening and forever been crashed.
Put down the boulder Sisyphus. This is an impossible task.
How do you say goodbye to the person who held you in her arms, whose breast quieted your hunger pangs whose eyes and face were the mirror you looked into to define and know yourself? How do you let go of the person who gave you life and then for some unfathomable reason made it unbearable?
I have been asked this question so many times by so many patients. Souls divided between love and hate searching for understanding, comfort, absolution, peace.
Their personal agony tags on my professional responsibility to make sense out the whirlpool of their emotions. After all, am I not the Psychologist, the doctor who is supposed to know the workings of the human mind?
Like Ariadne I am asked to lead them deep into the heart of the Labyrinth where understanding and forgiveness are waiting to be mustered. But understanding more often than not does not fill the emotional void while anger becomes the final bond that ties us to the abuser in an insouciant search for both love and revenge.
Understanding abuse demands of us to transcend the childhood illusion that our parents are all- knowing, all- powerful, paragons of emotional health punishing us only for our own good and only because we are intrinsically and hopelessly “bad and stupid”. It requires that we put our pain aside and search for theirs. It asks us to do something that we often resist with every fiber of our being: seeing the abuser as damaged, tortured, herself a victim of abuse, emotionally retarded and pathetic. Forgiveness requires a level and kind of empathy (understanding a person’s emotional limitations) that our anger and the yearning for acknowledgement and retribution often do not allow.
Do you see how maddening this vicious circle is? We want an emotionally retarded, morally bereft person to acknowledge and understand the wrong of her actions, but if she was capable of this kind of understanding she would not have done them to begin with. The fault is not with the victim’s ability to explain how she was hurt, but with the abuser’s ability to comprehend. It is like expecting someone who never learned Greek to read the Odyssey in its original.
But isn’t understanding and accepting the abuser’s pathology and limitations letting her off the hook?
NO.
Letting go of the yearning to be validated, which feeds and multiplies the rage of the original abuse and abandoning the demand to be loved in the way you understand love is not saying to the perpetrator that what she did is ok. It does not even mean that you will ever have to talk to her again if this is not what is best for you.
What it does mean is that you will not let the anger corrode your soul. That you will not be tied to an abuser with the chains of an illusion: for ever seeking love and acknowledgement, incessantly explaining, placating, ingratiating or as a last resort threatening and forever been crashed.
Put down the boulder Sisyphus. This is an impossible task.
Friday, June 12, 2009
Au Revoir
In the classic and wonderful book I never promised you a rose garden the young girl about to be released from the mental hospital is telling her beloved therapist (in real life the eminent psychoanalyst Frieda Fromm Reichman): “the worse thing about getting better is having to say goodbye”
As therapists we have to say good bye to so many people we came to know deeply and love and care for sincerely. As spiritual guides we watch people freeing themselves from the shackles of misguided notions and atavistic beliefs to find their own path and discover their own unique talents. And when their wings are wide and strong and beautiful we have to let them fly away with a mix of wonder and pride and nostalgia.
How do you do it? my patient asks me with tears welling up in her eyes. I imagine you at the end of your long day going to a mystical cave and seating around a healing fire with other healers and a golden dust rains down on you all and you get renewed and ready to come back and do it all over again the next day. She is right of course, but this magical cave is no other than the sacred space created between patient and her therapist. My own mentor said that “if you allow them, your patients will heal you”. I tell my patient that in the journey that we took together we both learned from each other. Both our consciousness were raised a few feet higher.
When I am settled in my new place, she tells me, I will continue to rescue and shelter stray and abandoned animals. Every time I write a check to take care of another cat I will do it in your name. Yes, she has learned to love herself and follow her passions and out of this new place she extended a loving hand to touch my own most sacred core in a most tender way. She just sprinkled a good amount of the magical, healing dust on me.
You saved my life, she continues with the tears streaming down her face now, and I will probably never see you in my life again. Oh, but she is not right there. You see she may not have realized it yet, but I have taken permanent residence in her prefrontal cortex, somewhere above her left eye. From there I will be able to remind her (whenever I have to) not to be so harsh on herself. I have set a camping site deep in her brain, somewhere between the hippocampus and the Amygdala. From there I will remind her not to be afraid of her feelings and when she feels alone or disconnected I will remind her that somewhere a few thousand miles away there is someone who knows her deeply and cares for her sincerely.
So, no goodbyes are necessary, I’ll be seeing you around…
In the classic and wonderful book I never promised you a rose garden the young girl about to be released from the mental hospital is telling her beloved therapist (in real life the eminent psychoanalyst Frieda Fromm Reichman): “the worse thing about getting better is having to say goodbye”
As therapists we have to say good bye to so many people we came to know deeply and love and care for sincerely. As spiritual guides we watch people freeing themselves from the shackles of misguided notions and atavistic beliefs to find their own path and discover their own unique talents. And when their wings are wide and strong and beautiful we have to let them fly away with a mix of wonder and pride and nostalgia.
How do you do it? my patient asks me with tears welling up in her eyes. I imagine you at the end of your long day going to a mystical cave and seating around a healing fire with other healers and a golden dust rains down on you all and you get renewed and ready to come back and do it all over again the next day. She is right of course, but this magical cave is no other than the sacred space created between patient and her therapist. My own mentor said that “if you allow them, your patients will heal you”. I tell my patient that in the journey that we took together we both learned from each other. Both our consciousness were raised a few feet higher.
When I am settled in my new place, she tells me, I will continue to rescue and shelter stray and abandoned animals. Every time I write a check to take care of another cat I will do it in your name. Yes, she has learned to love herself and follow her passions and out of this new place she extended a loving hand to touch my own most sacred core in a most tender way. She just sprinkled a good amount of the magical, healing dust on me.
You saved my life, she continues with the tears streaming down her face now, and I will probably never see you in my life again. Oh, but she is not right there. You see she may not have realized it yet, but I have taken permanent residence in her prefrontal cortex, somewhere above her left eye. From there I will be able to remind her (whenever I have to) not to be so harsh on herself. I have set a camping site deep in her brain, somewhere between the hippocampus and the Amygdala. From there I will remind her not to be afraid of her feelings and when she feels alone or disconnected I will remind her that somewhere a few thousand miles away there is someone who knows her deeply and cares for her sincerely.
So, no goodbyes are necessary, I’ll be seeing you around…
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Sin Athina kai xira kini
Yesterday I came across this story in the news: Tunisian pilot who paused to pray instead of taking emergency measures before crash-landing his plane, killing 16 people, has been sentenced to 10 years in jail by an Italian court along with his co-pilot.
My first reaction was to laugh, then as I kept reading horror replaced my defensive initial reaction. Picture this: you are a passenger on a plane happily anticipating a vacation to Sicily (where the plane was heading) or some business deal, or seeing grand mom and giving her a big hug. All of a sudden a fuel-gauge malfunctions and the plane starts to rumble. At this life and death moment your pilot abandons his training, the established aviation procedures, his instruments and instead begins to …Pray! Pray? While the plane takes a death dive into the ocean? Sixteen passengers dead, sixteen families devastated, a grand mom still waiting with her eyes pinned on the road and her arms yearning for the promised hug, and survivors clinging to a piece of the fuselage that remained floating after the ATR turbo-prop aircraft splintered upon impact.
My third reaction was rage. The pilot was sentenced to 10 years for 16 deaths, a little more than 6 months per death! Shouldn’t there be an outcry against the architects of his religious indoctrination? Who should write something about the stupidity, the arrogance and the utter irresponsibility of this kind of religious dogma? How far away do we have to go from the ancient Greek adage that titles this blog and which loosely translates: along with your prayers to Athena start rowing your boat, before we come back to our senses?
When are we going to leave the gods alone and take responsibility for our own actions? When are we going to demand from those who hold our lives in their hands to abide by the same ancient wisdom? After all, the ancient Greeks flourished under this dictum to become a world power unparalleled in human history.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
A Prescription for the economic jitters
A Prescription for the economic jitters
It appears that fear has become our constant companion these days. You turn the TV on and here comes the dreaded red arrow of the stock market taking yet another precipitous dive. You switch the computer on, same Friday the 13th scenario. And as you watch one business after the other being axed and friends losing their jobs you fear that the bells will toll for you next. It is evident that fear has overtaken our brains.
Now, the thing with fear is that although it has consistently saved our you-know-what through our evolutionary struggles to survive as a species, when it overtakes us it leaves very little space and time for anything else but saving our skin. Fear breeds avoidance and retreat both of which are serious obstacles to progress. So, now that more than any other time we need our creativity, inventiveness and thinking out of the box all we can do is fortify our box and make sure that we keep what we have.
Fear and pain are neuronally very closely linked in our brain. It has been shown that when our brain senses pain or anticipates loss, we tend to hold tightly onto what we have. Have you ever noticed how when you see in the news that a kid was harmed or kidnapped you want to hurry back home hug your kid and never let him out of your arms? When it comes to the economy when everyone holds on to what he/she has at the same time the result is the economic paralysis the whole world is presently gripped by.
This brings us to the prescription for the fear jitters: Pessimism is contagious, so avoid people who are overly pessimistic about our economic outlook. Turn off the media’s incessant talks about economic solutions (just remember what all these brilliant economists got us into), and unless you make a living trading stop watching the Dow’s impressive acrobatics.
I am not suggesting total denial just a healthy dose of it. I am not advocating blissful irresponsibility just a little less paranoia. No, now maybe not the time to buy that red Porsche but letting your hair turn white or walking around with holes in your stockings maybe taking it a bit too far.
When I first came to this country and I was trying to adjust, my mother in law gave me a very wise advice: when you feel blue go buy yourself a pair of stockings. The other advice comes from History: Americans have from the get go overcome inordinate obstacles on their way to becoming the greatest power on earth. They said that the settlers will never survive the wilderness of the new world. They said that they will never beat the Brits. They said that they will perish during the great depression. They said that we will never beat the Germans in splitting the atom. They said that we will never get to the moon. Yes, we heard it all before. And they were wrong!
In the words of our wonderful poet Maya Angelou;
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave
I rise
I rise
I rise.
It appears that fear has become our constant companion these days. You turn the TV on and here comes the dreaded red arrow of the stock market taking yet another precipitous dive. You switch the computer on, same Friday the 13th scenario. And as you watch one business after the other being axed and friends losing their jobs you fear that the bells will toll for you next. It is evident that fear has overtaken our brains.
Now, the thing with fear is that although it has consistently saved our you-know-what through our evolutionary struggles to survive as a species, when it overtakes us it leaves very little space and time for anything else but saving our skin. Fear breeds avoidance and retreat both of which are serious obstacles to progress. So, now that more than any other time we need our creativity, inventiveness and thinking out of the box all we can do is fortify our box and make sure that we keep what we have.
Fear and pain are neuronally very closely linked in our brain. It has been shown that when our brain senses pain or anticipates loss, we tend to hold tightly onto what we have. Have you ever noticed how when you see in the news that a kid was harmed or kidnapped you want to hurry back home hug your kid and never let him out of your arms? When it comes to the economy when everyone holds on to what he/she has at the same time the result is the economic paralysis the whole world is presently gripped by.
This brings us to the prescription for the fear jitters: Pessimism is contagious, so avoid people who are overly pessimistic about our economic outlook. Turn off the media’s incessant talks about economic solutions (just remember what all these brilliant economists got us into), and unless you make a living trading stop watching the Dow’s impressive acrobatics.
I am not suggesting total denial just a healthy dose of it. I am not advocating blissful irresponsibility just a little less paranoia. No, now maybe not the time to buy that red Porsche but letting your hair turn white or walking around with holes in your stockings maybe taking it a bit too far.
When I first came to this country and I was trying to adjust, my mother in law gave me a very wise advice: when you feel blue go buy yourself a pair of stockings. The other advice comes from History: Americans have from the get go overcome inordinate obstacles on their way to becoming the greatest power on earth. They said that the settlers will never survive the wilderness of the new world. They said that they will never beat the Brits. They said that they will perish during the great depression. They said that we will never beat the Germans in splitting the atom. They said that we will never get to the moon. Yes, we heard it all before. And they were wrong!
In the words of our wonderful poet Maya Angelou;
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave
I rise
I rise
I rise.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
THANKS...
This is the time for sincere wishes, heartfelt thanks and reminiscences…
There is one particular group of people in my life that I feel very grateful to: my patients, past and present, the hundreds of people through the years that invited me to share their journey of self-discovery. Some of those journeys were short, some long. They all taught me something invaluable, something about myself, something about life, something about human nature.
I remember one of my first patients. I was an intern at Elizabeth General Hospital, wet behind my proverbial therapeutic ears, scared, anxious and eager to do a good job. He was a gruff, big guy who for months said very little and he looked at me even less. At the end of my year as an intern when I was saying good bye to him he said that he wanted to give me a gift. He put a knife on my desk and informed me that he had carried it to every of our sessions for the whole year. Life had taught him to trust no one but, he said, I had taught him that there was one person he could trust. Thanks Antonio for sending me off to my new career with a boost of confidence.
I remember my first job as a staff psychologist at the hospital, still nervous, still a baby in the proverbial deep and challenging woods of psychology. I remember the woman who sat in my little office and said; “I know I need help, but she is telling me to tell you to f…off.” Who is telling you that I said baffled, “the voice in my head, she calls herself Ella”. And there and then she chose for me my specialty in DID (a.k.a Multiple Personality Disorder) and Trauma related disorders.
This was the most horrifying, challenging and rewarding learning expedition ever. It opened the door to the ineffable horrors human nature is capable of and at the same time the resilience and wonders of the human mind and its ability to heal. Along with these tortured souls I questioned life and its purpose. Along with them I lost faith in humanity and my nerve as a therapist and together with them and through their struggle to put the shattered pieces of their lives back together I redeemed both hope and faith.
I remember the old lady, a concentration camp survivor, the horrors of her past carved in the deep lines of her face as indelibly as the haunting numbers on her arm. She had just lost her son to cancer. She saw the tears in my eyes looking at the horrifying numbers on her arm and said : “oh Liebchen, I had kids, and grandkids, I still laugh and cry. I am here talking to you. He did not win, I did” Thanks Aida for the lesson in courage.
And then there were all the people that I could not reach, I was not able to help. They too had a lot to teach me about my shortcomings, about the dark places in my mind that I was unwilling to explore in order to help them. They disillusioned me and taught me humility.
For all the lessons taught,
for all the tears shed,
for all the laughs that lifted my spirit,
for all the journeys taken.
For the privilege and the trust that you have given me….
THANKS…
All acquaintances should certainly not be forgot
And they will always come to mind….
There is one particular group of people in my life that I feel very grateful to: my patients, past and present, the hundreds of people through the years that invited me to share their journey of self-discovery. Some of those journeys were short, some long. They all taught me something invaluable, something about myself, something about life, something about human nature.
I remember one of my first patients. I was an intern at Elizabeth General Hospital, wet behind my proverbial therapeutic ears, scared, anxious and eager to do a good job. He was a gruff, big guy who for months said very little and he looked at me even less. At the end of my year as an intern when I was saying good bye to him he said that he wanted to give me a gift. He put a knife on my desk and informed me that he had carried it to every of our sessions for the whole year. Life had taught him to trust no one but, he said, I had taught him that there was one person he could trust. Thanks Antonio for sending me off to my new career with a boost of confidence.
I remember my first job as a staff psychologist at the hospital, still nervous, still a baby in the proverbial deep and challenging woods of psychology. I remember the woman who sat in my little office and said; “I know I need help, but she is telling me to tell you to f…off.” Who is telling you that I said baffled, “the voice in my head, she calls herself Ella”. And there and then she chose for me my specialty in DID (a.k.a Multiple Personality Disorder) and Trauma related disorders.
This was the most horrifying, challenging and rewarding learning expedition ever. It opened the door to the ineffable horrors human nature is capable of and at the same time the resilience and wonders of the human mind and its ability to heal. Along with these tortured souls I questioned life and its purpose. Along with them I lost faith in humanity and my nerve as a therapist and together with them and through their struggle to put the shattered pieces of their lives back together I redeemed both hope and faith.
I remember the old lady, a concentration camp survivor, the horrors of her past carved in the deep lines of her face as indelibly as the haunting numbers on her arm. She had just lost her son to cancer. She saw the tears in my eyes looking at the horrifying numbers on her arm and said : “oh Liebchen, I had kids, and grandkids, I still laugh and cry. I am here talking to you. He did not win, I did” Thanks Aida for the lesson in courage.
And then there were all the people that I could not reach, I was not able to help. They too had a lot to teach me about my shortcomings, about the dark places in my mind that I was unwilling to explore in order to help them. They disillusioned me and taught me humility.
For all the lessons taught,
for all the tears shed,
for all the laughs that lifted my spirit,
for all the journeys taken.
For the privilege and the trust that you have given me….
THANKS…
All acquaintances should certainly not be forgot
And they will always come to mind….
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Vaccine or Assassin?
It is the flu season, in case you have missed the sniffles and the pains and the fevers and all the unsolicited "gifts" from the foreign invaders to our bodies. So, the skeptic and cynic that I am, I did my own research into the benefits of flu vaccines and I came across some disquieting findings. My source is Donald Miller, MD who is a cardiac surgeon and professor of Surgery at the University of Washington in Seattle. He is also a member of Doctors for Disaster Preparedness. So, this is what the good Dr. tells us:
Vaccine makers grow the viruses in fertilized chicken eggs with 500,00 eggs per day for up to eight months. Formaldehyde is used to inactivate the viruses. It is a known cancer-causing agent. Aluminum is added to promote an antibody response. It is a neurotoxin that may play a role in Alzheimer’s disease. Other additives and adjuvants in the flu vaccine include Triton X-100 (a detergent), Polysorbate 80, carbolic acid, ethylene glycol (antifreeze), gelatin and various antibiotics - Neomycin, streptomycin, and gentamicin- that can cause allergic reactions in some people.
If this did not gross you out here is some more yummy ingredients put in the mix: 100 million vaccines made for the 2008-09 flu season ( about 2/3 of all the vaccines made) contain full-dose Thimerosal, an organomercurey compound, which is 49% mercury by weight. Each shot contains 250 times more mercury than the Environmental Protection Agency’s safety limit. Mercury is a neurotoxin that has been implicated in Alzheimer’s and Autisms.
In addition to the “milder” side effects of the vaccine ( joint inflammation and arthritis, anaphylactic shock) it can also cause Guillain-Barre syndrome, and no you definitely do not want to risk this.
So,you say to yourself: Ok, I take all these poisons but at least I will not get the flu, not so. In September 2, 2008 New York Times published an article titled
“Doubts Grow Over Flu Vaccine in Elderly”. A study done by the Group Health Center for Health Studies in Seattle found that the vaccine does not protect the older people against developing pneumonia. The evidence in young children are not much more favorable either. A systematic study involving 260,000 children age 6 to 23 months found no evidence that the flu vaccine is more effective than placebo).
I don’t know about you, but I would think long and hard before I take another flu vaccine. Maybe next year I’ll take an extra vitamin C, wash my hands more diligently and hope for the best…
Vaccine makers grow the viruses in fertilized chicken eggs with 500,00 eggs per day for up to eight months. Formaldehyde is used to inactivate the viruses. It is a known cancer-causing agent. Aluminum is added to promote an antibody response. It is a neurotoxin that may play a role in Alzheimer’s disease. Other additives and adjuvants in the flu vaccine include Triton X-100 (a detergent), Polysorbate 80, carbolic acid, ethylene glycol (antifreeze), gelatin and various antibiotics - Neomycin, streptomycin, and gentamicin- that can cause allergic reactions in some people.
If this did not gross you out here is some more yummy ingredients put in the mix: 100 million vaccines made for the 2008-09 flu season ( about 2/3 of all the vaccines made) contain full-dose Thimerosal, an organomercurey compound, which is 49% mercury by weight. Each shot contains 250 times more mercury than the Environmental Protection Agency’s safety limit. Mercury is a neurotoxin that has been implicated in Alzheimer’s and Autisms.
In addition to the “milder” side effects of the vaccine ( joint inflammation and arthritis, anaphylactic shock) it can also cause Guillain-Barre syndrome, and no you definitely do not want to risk this.
So,you say to yourself: Ok, I take all these poisons but at least I will not get the flu, not so. In September 2, 2008 New York Times published an article titled
“Doubts Grow Over Flu Vaccine in Elderly”. A study done by the Group Health Center for Health Studies in Seattle found that the vaccine does not protect the older people against developing pneumonia. The evidence in young children are not much more favorable either. A systematic study involving 260,000 children age 6 to 23 months found no evidence that the flu vaccine is more effective than placebo).
I don’t know about you, but I would think long and hard before I take another flu vaccine. Maybe next year I’ll take an extra vitamin C, wash my hands more diligently and hope for the best…
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)