Archive for month: February, 2020

In a world where people like Caroline Flack can be hounded into an early grave by the unkindness of trolls and the press. The press were blamed for Diana’s death and unfortunately it is believed that trolls are contributing factors for thousands of internet based suicides. Bullying, prejudice, harassment, violence and unkindness is never, and can never, be acceptable. It takes so little effort to be kind.

According to Wikipedia kindness is a behaviour marked by:

‘Ethical characteristics, a pleasant disposition, and concern for others.
It is known as a virtue, and recognised as a value.

Google defines kindness as

‘The quality of being friendly, generous, and considerate’.

How do you define it?

When I was a child I would read the book ‘The Water Babies’ by Charles Kingsley. In the story there was a wonderful character called ‘Mrs Do As You Would Be Done By’. She ensured that whatever the children’s behaviour it was reflected back to them. Later in my travels I discovered the laws of Karma and Dharma and the concept that ‘what goes around comes around’.

If the law of karma is real then we should all have a vested interest in treating other people well on the basis that we will also be treated in the same way. This can make acts of kindness and altruism begin to sound too calculated though, in terms of social stability, in any community or group of people, treating others fairly means that I will be treated fairly as well. This makes good sense.

In Ayurvedic psychology acting positively and serving the needs of others without expecting anything in return is termed ‘Bhakti’. People such as Ghandi, Mother Theresa and Nelson Mandela, amongst many others, would fall into this category. People who have given of themselves without great reward or aggrandisement. You will probably know of people in your life or community who are like that and are Bhakti.

Kindness or treating other people fairly and well is enshrined in most religions and philosophies.
In the Ayurvedic and Hindu worlds acting in the right way is termed dharma. According to…

‘The word “dharma” has multiple meanings depending on the context in which it is used. These include: conduct, duty, right, justice, virtue, morality, religion, religious merit, good work according to a right or rule, etc. Many other meanings have been suggested, such as law or “torah” (in the Judaic sense), “logos” (Greek), “way” (Christian) and even ‘tao” (Chinese).’

Though there are no equivalent word for the concept/word dharma in the Western lexicon.

‘Dharma has the Sanskrit root dhri, which means “that which upholds” or “that without which nothing can stand” or “that which maintains the stability and harmony of the universe.” Dharma encompasses the natural, innate behaviour of things, duty, law, ethics, virtue, etc. Every entity in the cosmos has its particular dharma — from the electron, which has the dharma to move in a certain manner, to the clouds, galaxies, plants, insects, and of course, man. Man’s understanding of the dharma of inanimate things is what we now call physics.’

For me psychological or spiritual dharma is to act in the right way in every situation all the time. An ideal to aim for, though hard to achieve. This is what we in ‘live in the present’ term mindfulness. To be mindful in the moment, to be aware of yourself and the other people around you means that you can do nothing but act in the right way which is to act with kindness. Being mindful, being positive, being kind and being happy are all facets of the same attitude of mind and way of being.

Kindness is in the same spectrum as love. It is part of the positive forces that brings people together, solves problems and creates happiness.

It was a joy to read on twitter about the person who offered to buy a stranger a copy of reasons to stay alive by Matt Haig, because it had helped her when she needed it and she anted to help someone else who might need it. Well this then led to a bookshop – Big Green bookshop who picked up on this and soon hundreds of people who had read the book were offering to pay for other people to have it too. As I type this 1000’s have people have gifted books to total strangers and other bookshops have become involved. Kindness and love right there, amazing.

However you would express your acts of kindness, it would be good if we could all spend one day each week being consciously kind.

Be happy

Sean x

Phobic anxiety is often like a low level panic disorder. If someone is forced into engaging with a phobic situation they may well develop a full blown panic attack, (see last weeks blog). Throughout this mini series on anxiety it is important to remember that anxiety is a good thing. It is our friend that has kept use safe throughout evolution. Being anxious about heights kept us safe when we lived in trees. Being anxious about predators kept us from being eaten. In our modern world being anxious about electricity keeps us from being electrocuted and being anxious about roads saves us from being run over. Anxiety is good. Anxiety disorder is a problem.

The Encyclopaedia Brittanica defines a phobia as…

…an extreme, irrational fear of a specific object or situation. A phobia is classified as a type of anxiety disorder, since anxiety is the chief symptom experienced by the sufferer. Phobias are thought to be learned emotional responses.

Many years ago I came across a man, in psychiatry, who was terrified of being turned into orange juice. Obviously this could not have any logical component. If he saw an orange his phobic response would make him distressed and if he could get away from the orange he would develop a full blown panic attack. It can be easy to look at other people’s phobias and fears a see them as silly or even stupid. The thing to realise is that the trigger to someone’s fear is very real to them. It is their reality.

Most phobic responses have a causal event. To be phobic about something infers that there is a negative connection to it. A difficult flight involving turbulence or a difficult landing in the wind can create a phobia to flying. Food poisoning from eating a particular food can create a phobic avoidance of that food or that restaurant forever.

Most of us are phobic about something. It could anything from a colour to a fairground ride. One the relationship has been made the mere mention of the trigger can cause the symptoms that are common to all anxieties.

• sweating
• trembling
• hot flushes or chills
• shortness of breath or difficulty breathing
• a choking sensation
• rapid heartbeat (tachycardia)
• pain or tightness in the chest
• a sensation of butterflies in the stomach
• nausea
• headaches and dizziness
• feeling faint
• numbness or pins and needles
• dry mouth
• a need to go to the toilet
• ringing in your ears
• confusion or disorientation

Complex phobias include agoraphobia and claustrophobia.

Treatment

Talking treatments, such as counselling, are often very effective at treating phobias. In particular, hypnotherapy, Cognitve Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Mindfulness and one to one counselling. Medication maybe prescribed for anxiety but is not usually very effective for phobias.

The important things is that phobias are learned and can be unlearned.

Take care and be happy

Sean x

In this blog I am looking at anxiety and it’s sibling panic attacks. I’d like to try in this blog and explain a bit about the brain and emotion along with the appropriateness of different forms of therapy. At a scientific level our understanding of neuropsychology and therefore our understanding of the neuropsychology of anxiety has come on leaps and bounds.

The human brain is different to all other mammals and primates in that we have the developed the higher cortex that gives rise to cognitive function, including speech, language, reasoning and self awareness. This we may term the “New Brain” and is the result of millions of years of evolution. If there is truly a difference between humans and other hominids this is it. The “Old Brain”, shared with many other species, that is also the result of millions of years of evolution, is dominated by the amygdala and the brain stem. The difference between these two parts of the brain is the difference between worry and fear.

Panic and fear based anxiety is emotional

Fear is an instinctual response, often a reflex, in the amygdala of the old brain that may lead to the physical, fight, flee and freeze responses that are activated in the brain stem. This tends to be highly emotional, often below awareness and may be triggered by thoughts, sounds, smells, colours and so on. When people have an old brain anxiety/panic attack it is a fear reaction and they will appear to be temporarily out of control. Once they have calmed down and the cognitive new brain is back on line they may be filled with remorse and be shocked and horrified by their instinctual behaviour.

The amygdala is a dual almond shaped organ, one in either hemisphere of the brain though usually termed in the singular. The difference between the two amygdalas, which  in Ayurvedic neuropsychology is recognised as a part of our intuitive function, that sense of knowing without knowing why we know. As such its function is both above and below our awareness. When it is functioning above our awareness we call it intuition. When it functions below our awareness we see it as the primal response of instinct. This is where we processes fear, yet we may never understand why we are afraid.

Panic

A dictionary definition is a sudden uncontrollable fear or anxiety, often causing wildly unthinking behaviour.

The Mayo clinic defines panic as…

“ …a sudden episode of intense fear that triggers severe physical reactions when there is no real danger or apparent cause. Panic attacks can be very frightening. When panic attacks occur, you might think you’re losing control, having a heart attack or even dying”.

Symptoms 

Panic attacks typically begin suddenly, without warning. They can strike at any time — when you’re driving a car, at the shops, sound asleep or in the middle of a business meeting. You may have occasional panic attacks, or they may occur frequently.

Panic attacks have many variations, but symptoms usually peak within minutes. You may feel fatigued and worn out after a panic attack subsides.

Panic attacks typically include some of these signs or symptoms:

• Sense of impending doom or danger
• Fear of loss of control or death
• Rapid, pounding heart rate
• Sweating
• Trembling or shaking
• Shortness of breath or tightness in your throat
• Chills
• Hot flashes
• Nausea
• Abdominal cramping
• Chest pain
• Headache
• Dizziness, lightheadedness or faintness
• Numbness or tingling sensation
• Feeling of unreality or detachment

Worry Based Anxiety is cognitive

Worry based anxiety is completely different to emotional based panic anxiety. The anxiety that is experienced in the new cognitive brain is completely different to primal amygdala responses, in that it is experienced as a reasoned response based in logic.

The reasoning and the logic may, in reality, be faulty but it is experienced by the person as factual. People will say “it is a known fact that…” when it is nothing of the sort. Worry based anxiety comes from the person not living in the present moment. They have projected themselves forward into ideas and experiences that may never happen but they are living them in the present as though they have. The tools of worry based anxiety are obsessing, which may lead to obsessive compulsive disorder or OCD, rumination, dog with a bone syndrome where we cannot let it go and tend to go over and over the same issue again and again.

Ayurveda

In Ayurveda, worry based anxiety, in the cognitive cortex, is seen as part of the process of the imagination. People with a poor imagination do not get worry anxiety because they have difficulty imagining negative futures to become anxious about. Cognitive anxiety is dealt with by Tantric therapy, which is not all about sex it is about dealing with and controlling the imagination. Worry in the amygdala is dealt with in the Raja therapy.

Tantric therapy is based in using visualisation to create future images that are positive and do not have the worry attached to them. The habit if attaching worry anxiety to a particular thought or image is replaced with new positive images that are the new worry free habit. Raja based therapy is mindful relaxation and meditative practice that reduces the levels of stress hormone in the body system reducing the instinctual feelings of fear.

Cognitive behavioural therapy

Over the years I, and many other therapist, have a stream of people presenting with emotional anxiety who will state how they have had CBT for their anxiety and how it worked really well, although it is not for everyone.

What happens is someone presents for therapy with amygdala based emotional anxiety. Because the world of therapy is awash with CBT practitioners the patient will almost certainly see a CBT therapist who uses their learned tools for dealing with cognitive anxiety. What happens is that the therapist uses a set of cognitive exercises that suppress the patients fear based emotions. it is as though they force in a cork to trap the emotions in a bottle of fizzy emotions. Because the emotions have not been processed or resolved over time the emotions gradually push the cork out of the bottle and the patient ends up just where they began with the same emotional anxiety.

Don’t get me wrong I am not against CBT, just the way that it can be limited or misused. The bottom line is cognitive therapy works best for cortex based worry anxiety. Emotional therapy works best for amygdala based fear anxiety and panic. The trick is that you need to know the difference.

If your anxiety if based in logical reasoning seek out a cognitive therapist they will be great for you.

If your anxiety is fear based find a therapist skilled in emotional work they maybe psychodynamic, cognitive analytical (CAT), Mindfulness based therapies or sit an 8 week Mindfulness based stress reduction (MBSR) course and you should get what you need.

Most importantly none of us need to suffer anxiety, If you do then please do something about it.

Take care and be happy

Sean X