Saturday 6 June 2020

Trust each other implicitly

Only possibilities. In an age where we can turn to pocket pals like Siri or Google for resolutions to almost every big question or trivial pursuit, we found ourselves with only suspicions and no concrete answers. A big question mark came within the first twenty-four hours, when my friend wrote to inquire as to what Lauren had been taking to help her in her struggles to breastfeed. If you were going to drop in a plot twist, this would be the one to add. IT seems almost impossible now, as parents, to look back and realize how much we did not know--and didn't even know we didn't know. Imagination is casting off mooring ropes, taking one's chances that there will be new mooring posts in the vastness ahead. In creative endeavors the imagination operates in juxtaposition with form. When these endeavors are successful, it is because imagination infuses form with its own vitality. The question is: How far can we let our imagination loose? Can we give it rein? Dare to think the unthinkable? Dare to conceive of, and move among, new visions? At such times we face the danger of losing our orientation, the danger of complete isolation. Will we lose our accepted language, which makes communication possible in a shared world? Will we lose the boundaries that enable us to orient ourselves to what we call reality? WHAT essential oils CAN DO: Besides changes in the amygdala, changes in the ECS are also common for PTS sufferers. That's because so many ECS receptors are present in the amygdala and other parts of the brain involved in memory and in fear response. In PTS sufferers, ECS receptors are fewer and the endocannabinoids--which interact with them to keep the body balanced--are lower. Research has shown that essential oils may interact with the ECS receptors and the entire system to help calm PTS symptoms such as stress and anxiety. A study in the 2017 British Journal of Pharmacology explained that it shows signs of disrupting the amygdala's association with fear.

If you are one of the 30 million men who suffer from prostate condition, you know the discomfort that comes with inflammation and painful urination. Situated just below the bladder, the prostate is a small walnut-sized gland that encircles the urethra, the tube that carries urine from the bladder to the penis. When the prostate becomes inflamed and enlarged, it blocks the flow of urine, causing urgency and increasing the risk of bladder infection. Most prostate disorders appear as a man approaches the age of 50 and beyond, but they can also happen earlier. In bacterial prostatitis, inflammation sets in as bacteria infiltrates the prostate gland. Yet, history attests to the allure of siding with the aggressor as a way to access benefits. In today's hostile political atmosphere, we may cling to the side of power even when the person wielding it defies our values. And this can happen in very subtle ways. Consider your social media behaviors. Do you readily hide or unfollow offensive posts from the other side of the political spectrum while smiling to yourself as you read vile posts from your own side? Are you less critical of aggressors who are cool, socially influential, or nice to you? Do you tolerate name-calling, violent images, and humiliation when directed toward a mutual target? Do you hide reasonable contrary points of view only because they might be unpopular with aggressive allies? Do you fuel a bully's fire by contributing evidence to support his or her rants? Do you support the bully in secret, through a private message or nod, while frowning more publicly? It made him realize that the body possesses latent physiological powers--unleashed in such dramatic moments--that elevate the mind to an even higher level of focus. Rodriguez would go on to have one more kill in Desert Storm, and another in the 1999 Kosovo campaign, more than any pilot in recent combat, earning him the nickname the Last American Ace. In our daily, conscious activity we generally experience a separation between the mind and the body. We think about our bodies and our physical actions. Animals do not experience this division.

When we start to learn any skill that has a physical component, this separation becomes even more apparent. We have to think about the various actions involved, the steps we have to follow. We are aware of our slowness and of how our bodies respond in an awkward way. At certain points, as we improve, we have glimpses of how this process could function differently, of how it might feel to practice the skill fluidly, with the mind not getting in the way of the body. With such glimpses, we know what to aim for. Yes, there was always that readily available advice from our own mothers, mothers-in-law and even grandmothers--the sisterhood of those who'd gone before and had so much more experience and knowledge than we did as new moms, and who were more than anxious to share it. But it is difficult to measure how quickly that steady stream of advice became a firehose as soon as every know-it-all, every been-there-done-that-got-those-stretchmarks, got a megaphone and a soapbox with the arrival of the internet. Not every opinion needs to be expressed, especially when it comes to issues about which people know little or nothing. But who are we kidding? This is the twenty-first century, when it's perfectly okay to argue facts and science with opinions and feelings, and when being offended is considered by some to equal being right. People seem to search the internet only for answers with which they already agree. And in no subject on this wonderful worldwide web are there more opinions than on parenting in general and motherhood in particular (with the possible exception of politics). So let me share a story from back in the day, before everyone had access to all the answers (or purported to have them already), when we fumbled along and did the best we could by using good old instinct and a new parent's handarticle. In our house, as in so many others, we consulted the paperback version of Dr Benjamin Spock's The Common Sense article of Baby and Child Care when the questions were too numerous or embarrassing to pick up the phone and call Mom. That was until, of course, Dr Spock's parenting methods were blamed for turning out a bunch of spoiled tyrants. This, again, is the problem of form or, stated differently, the awareness of limits. Psychologically speaking, this is experienced by many people as psychosis. Hence some psychotics walk close to the wall in hospitals. They keep oriented to the edges, always preserving their localization in the external environment. Having no localization inwardly, they find it especially important to retain whatever outward localization is available.

As director of a large mental hospital in Germany which received many brain-injured soldiers during the war, Dr Kurt Goldstein found that these patients suffered radical limitation of their capacities for imagination. He observed that they had to keep their closets in rigid array, shoes always placed in just this position, shirts hung in just that place. Whenever a closet was upset, the patient became panicky. He could not orient himself to the new arrangement, could not imagine a new form that would bring order out of the chaos. The patient was then thrown into what Goldstein called the catastrophic situation. Frequent, painful urination; Regular prostatitis, which is enlargement without bacterial infection, carries the same symptoms of frequent, painful urination and painful ejaculation, but without the flu-like symptoms. Older men are the targets for benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH), which usually sets in between the ages of 50 and 60; Unlike the infected prostate, this one simply enlarges so much that urine can no longer flow smoothly. Growth may be prompted by a change in hormones, much like the one women go through during menopause. This increases production of a compound called dihydrotestosterone (DHT), which in turn causes cells to multiply until the prostate blocks the urethra's path. A weak urine stream is accompanied by frequency and urgency, but inability to begin the flow--and to stop it; Finally, there is cancer. Prostate cancer is one of the most common cancers in men; Simply, cells become abnormal and gradually grow into a tumor. Do you nominate the aggressor to do your dirty work? These behaviors can seem benign in isolation but have the cumulative effect of creating social media echo chambers that, unchecked by rational and diverse voices, proliferate hatred and aggression. The Subtle Art of Managing Aggression Stepping back from the Join the Aggressor dance does not mean denying aggression, as this denial is usually one of the steps. Freeing oneself may start with some uncomfortable realizations.

Let's look at these realities and how they can help free you from the destructive dance. It would be much easier if this were not true, but love and abuse can coexist. If you are in an abusive cycle, recognizing that what you love also hurts you is hard to accept. So when the bully goes fragile, his misdirection may be a welcome respite from that reality. The victim can ignore her hurt and focus on the bully's pain. If we take our practice far enough the skill becomes automatic, and we have the sensation that the mind and the body are operating as one. If we are learning a complex skill, such as flying a jet in combat, we must master a series of simple skills, one on top of the other. Each time one skill becomes automatic, the mind is freed up to focus on the higher one. At the very end of this process, when there are no more simple skills to learn, the brain has assimilated an incredible amount of information, all of which has become internalized, part of our nervous system. The whole complex skill is now inside us and at our fingertips. We are thinking, but in a different way--with the body and mind completely fused. We are transformed. We possess a form of intelligence that allows us to approximate the instinctual power of animals, but only through a conscious, deliberate, and extended practice. In our culture we tend to denigrate practice. We want to imagine that great feats occur naturally--that they are a sign of someone's genius or superior talent. So, did we toss our paperbacks and search for other experts? Of course not! We furtively consulted his article and didn't dare tell our parents that we were going to go ahead and raise a hardened criminal behind their backs! Oh yes, we were rebels, all right. More than once in my own early stages of motherhood, the burgeoning internet, had I consulted it, might have come in most handy.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.