Your Brain on Writing

Article

Ram Dass: Still Amazing After All these Years

Support & Surrender
by Ram Dass

The wild geese do not intend to cast their reflection and the water has no mind to receive their image. That was the first message I got from the first fortune cookie I opened when I returned from India. That seems like a fitting contract for these writings, and perhaps the full implications of that contract will become clear as we continue.

What I’d like to do is to present a model to you, and the specific model is my own life experience. That’s really all I have to offer to you – of my own experiences. I would like to clarify the reason for doing this. It is not my expectation, or my hope, that any of you necessarily would undergo the particular journey that I am pursuing. I am not proselytising for Ashtanga yoga.

But we in the West are faced with a very interesting predicament through a variety of circumstances, some of which are built into the culture like changes in communication media and so on. Some of them are the result of the chemicals that have appeared and been widely used – psychedelics.

Some of them are personal experiences people have had which previously they kept hidden but now they begin to redefine or they’ve hidden them under labels that society provided them which made them seem like psychosis or insanity or something, and they now reconsider them. As a result of all these circumstances many people in the west including me, and I assume you and that must be what’s bringing you here; appreciate the possibility of states of consciousness other than our normal waking state of consciousness.

Or maybe you are here just because you look at the world in which you’re living and you say, ‘Well, we obviously can’t handle it with what we’ve got going, so I’ll at least look for something else,’ even though you may not have the faith in the possibility that there is something else, but you’re gonna look anyway.

So we’re presented with a possibility and it filters through to us from one source or another that there is a very ancient tradition of people who have realized other states of consciousness and have sent messages and made maps. But the problem that we have as westerners is, that we can’t understand the maps. The maps are there, the secrets are not secrets in the sense of ‘I’m not gonna tell you’, they’re secrets in the sense that we cant hear.

Jung writes in a book by Wilhelm called the Secret of the Golden Flower, its a eulogy. He commends Wilhelm for having the courage as a westerner to give up his predispositions of thought to be able to get into that position from which he could appreciate the eastern writings from an inside point of view, in other words give up his identity as a westerner.

The term that you may be familiar with is what’s called surrender.

And so what we can do for one another as westerners, is collect the data that are available to each of us as we open ourselves to them. We are all on a journey. We are just as Herman Hesse talks about the fellow travellers on our journey to the east. East not being literal necessarily but metaphorical.

And what we can do is we can help each other along.

We can be the satsang, the sanga, the spiritual community, the support for one another.

Giving each other the confidence to keep pursuing this possibility.

And we give each other our own lives to help and that’s what I would like to do.

I’d like to present as I say, the model, because maybe there’ll be some clues that will be of some use to you in your own sadhana, in your own spiritual journey.

But in doing this I am going to work on myself as I’m always doing. Doing my mantra, japa, and therefore I’m really not speaking – Because the place where I am and I hope you are – is the same place where we are together witnessing one of us speaking and the rest of us listening.

But let’s not get trapped in our social roles. It’s a good exercise.

– Ram Dass, 1968

Anne Lamott

I've discovered...that the lifelong fear of grief keeps us in a barren, isolated place, and that only grieving can heal grief.
-Anne Lamott

Three Wishes

Three wishes: world peace, end hunger, stop global warming, share food and music. Okay I am not good at math. And while your at it: string up the bad landlords, abolish leafblowers, dryer-sheets, jetski's, motorboats, and perfumed anything.

Blended, Stirred and Separated: Battered Families

My half-brother's birthday is today. He is fifty. I have not seen him in over 20 years. This is not unusual in our blended,stirred, separated, battered family. I have some siblings I have only met once or twice and a few that I've never met.

Fiona McColl on Siblings

While we can be “thrown into” relationship with our siblings, the quality of being a “brother” or a “sister” requires the same nurturing, care and attention to developing and maintaining relationship demanded by any other close and connected relationship. Mutuality of parentage, does not a best friend make.

Brothers and sisters have the capacity to push our buttons like no other person {and of course, we’re given the same ‘gift’ to push theirs}. Across our lifespan we may grow, develop and change, but our siblings have the ability to throw us back into family roles that we may be a lot less willing to play; the baby, the responsible one, the caretaker, the mediator, the trouble maker or the scapegoat, the clown, the lost kid, the loser … Many of us aren’t all that interested in playing those roles out now that we are grown up and busy living our lives as distinct and separate people. It can also be hard work to get to know your sibling as a person outside of the roles you both used to play within the family system.

Our relationships with our siblings can also be part of the “collateral damage” that occurs when there are estrangements between us and our parents. Lines are drawn, sides are taken and the sibling relationship is often irreparably damaged. For some people who are estranged, this family civil war is cultivated, alliances are strategically developed and explosions of connections are just one more part of the ongoing war.
-Fiona McColl
Article

Toxic Manipulatotion

Sometimes it is family that most take advantage of their ability to cause and manipulate negativity. If they repeatedly hurt you and kick you when you are down, you must let them go and build yourself a family of people who support you, raise you up, and bring love, light, and balance to your life.
- Sharon Sabbatino

Some negative people you can “tune out” and still keep a relationship, some you can give them more than a few mulligans and if you find yourself being hurt badly more times than acceptable then you can [cut] those people out or limit your time with them. It takes time and [it is] agonizing if they are family but if they are acquaintances or friends it is easier. You can’t let anyone be toxic to you on a regular basis and walk away unharmed.
- Gioia Pomerene

The Brain and PTSD

Article

PTSD Questions & Answers
with
Joyce Boaz & Dr. Frank Ochberg, M.D.

Read "Survivor Psalm" by Frank Ochberg



Does PTSD affect the brain?

Q: Dear Frank, I read recently that prolonged and extreme fear or stress, including PTSD (especially prolonged) can cause damage to the brain. If it's true, what part of the brain, and what are the consequences or symptoms? I know in children it can affect the frontal lobe development. But this article claimed even adults can be affected by brain damage.

A: Dear Joyce,Stress can damage the brain. Recent studies of combat vets with PTSD, compared to identical twins without stress, showed statistically significant brain-scan changes. There was a reduction of grey matter (nerve cell bodies) in a part of the brain known to connect thought centers and emotional centers. That part of the brain is called the anterior cingulate gyrus. But there have not been long term follow-up studies to see if the brain recovers those losses. We do know that PTSD is treatable and the symptoms usually improve.

This recent finding is interesting, because a similar twin study showed there was no reduction in the size of another brain part called the hippocampus. We know that a small hippocampus correlates with vulnerability to PTSD. The hippocampus is a switching station for memory.

The larger hippocampus seems better able to manage terrifying life events without generating the kind of trauma memory that bursts forth later as flashbacks and unwanted, piercing recollections. In this older study, the scientists looked at combat veterans, some of whom developed PTSD and some who did not. All the vets had identical twins who were not exposed to trauma. The vets with PTSD had smaller hippocampi than the vets without PTSD, but those PTSD vets had twins with smaller hippocampi.

These studies seem to say that a small hippocampus is a risk factor for PTSD, but PTSD is a risk factor for a reduced anterior cingulate gyrus.

Does brain anatomy affect stress-resilience? Yes.
Does stress affect brain anatomy? Yes.

Is the brain damage from stress permanent? We do not know. I doubt it, however. The brain is an organ with amazing recuperative powers. Unless it is very old or very damaged, the human brain forms new pathways, new cellular connections and new ways of responding to anatomical disruption.

Webcast: How Does PTSD Affect Brain Function?

Exposure to a traumatic event may cause PTSD symptoms. Stress can damage the brain. In this webcast, Dr. Frank Ochberg discusses what happens to the brain after a traumatic event.

Toxic Family Kyrptonite

Article

There is something about the way these families interact that protects the perpetrator and blames the victim. Adult survivors who return, after a healing period of absence, usually find themselves treated like a child or an infant. They cannot assert themselves effectively. I have thought of these families, or of individual family members, as "kryptonite." They are elements from a past life that rob one of his or her powers and make a survivor weak and vulnerable.

In the case of a soldier returning from war, the "kryptonite" works in different, but related, way. A 30 year old may be treated like a 16 year old. There is either too much or too little interest in hearing about life and death among comrades-in-arms. The veteran wishes that civilian family life can be restored, but has little tolerance for those who can't appreciate the reality of war. And to be treated as an adolescent ironically elicits adolescent emotion: rage and rejection.

The kindest of families may have a hard time assimilating one who has been "to hell and back." Toxic families add insult to injury and are
often clueless and remorseless.

So why try to maintain loyalty to a toxic family? I often wonder why. There are times when I advise a survivor to forgo a family holiday or to avoid contact with a demeaning, demoralizing relative. You don't HAVE to go home again. PTSD means that the past pursues you. Successful treatment entails escaping from a relentless past. Since adults with PTSD have competing responsibilities, I almost always reinforce a survivor's responsibility to current concerns: job, new family, health and self, before obligations to past family members. There are times when a doctor writes a medical excuse from work. I can't exactly write a medical excuse from attendance at a family reunion, but I wish I could. The next best thing is to work on the "Board of Directors," the voices of authority from a survivor's past that yap away in one's mind, creating guilt and doubt for avoiding the toxic family.

PTSD: Victims of War and Victims of Household War

Interview
Complex PTSD

Q: Dear Frank, Could you give a brief explanation of complex PTSD? How do we know if we have PTSD or Complex PTSD? Is the medication and/or therapy similar?

A: Dear Joyce, Complex PTSD is a concept first defined by Judith Herman, MD (see http://www.ptsd.va.gov/professional/PTSD-overview/complex-ptsd.asp) to account for the effects of prolonged, severe interpersonal stress. She was thinking about cases in which a person is captured and humiliated or is sexually victimized within the family. But it is true of victims of war and victims of household war: battered spouses. When emotional trauma is continuous and inescapable, the mind and body adapts in several ways, from stoic to tragic. People can "zone out" or, technically, dissociate. They experience an altered state of consciousness. This might, in extreme cases, develop into multiple personalities. People can abandon hope. Without yearning for dignity and freedom, they accept psychological slavery. People can love their abusers. This is called Stockholm Syndrome (see http://www.giftfromwithin.org/html/stockhlm.html).

The therapy for oppression is different than the therapy for simple PTSD. It requires moving to a safe environment. It requires retraining survival instincts, once there is no real danger. The medication may be similar (anti-depressants, tranquilizers, sedatives) but medication is never enough. And therapy is never enough. It takes liberation and love and plenty of patience to emerge from complex PTSD.

Listen and Look Deeply

Every Christmas my brother sends me photos of the family partying around their Westchester holiday banquet table. I cover my computer with a blanket while I find the delete button. "Don't they get it?" I ask my husband. "They are in more pain than you," he reminds me. "They are still trying for 'the prefect family.'" "Ouch," I say. "I'm the unlucky lucky one, the third daughter just like in the folktales. I ditched the charade and dove after survival. At least I still have most of my body parts," I say laughing. But the damage is lifelong and haunts me like rocks surfacing in the garden every spring.
"Demand your treasure, right beside every tragedy is a gift, You just have to listen and look deeply." He said.
How true.

Stress, Social Media + Suicide

In 1954, the social psychologist Leon Festinger put forward the social comparison theory, which posits that we try to determine our worth based on how we stack up against others.

In the era of social media, such comparisons take place on a screen with carefully curated depictions that don’t provide the full picture. Mobile devices escalate the comparisons from occasional to nearly constant.

Article

Prison Pup Partnership

Article
More information here.

A.T. Wall

A.T. Wall is Director of the Rhode Island Department of Corrections.

Mr. Wall’s career in corrections began in 1976 as a line probation officer. After his graduation from law school, he served as a prosecutor in Manhattan and then joined the Vera Institute of Justice, where he directed a sentencing project for chronic offenders convicted in New York City. He returned to his native state of Rhode Island in 1985 and worked in the Governor’s Policy Office on criminal justice matters.

In 1987 Mr. Wall was tapped to become Assistant Director for the RIDOC where he subsequently oversaw the central management of all operations and served as the Director’s second-in-command. He was named interim Director in 1999 and appointed Director in 2000. As such, he is the Chief Executive Officer for an agency that includes all aspects of the state’s adult correctional system: prisons, jails, probation, parole and home confinement. He is the longest serving corrections director in the nation and is currently the President of the Association of State Correctional Administrators, the membership association of the fifty state corrections directors.

Mr. Wall received a B.A. degree from Yale University and a J.D. degree from Yale Law School.

"Ex-inmates have gone from America's most wanted to America's least wanted. The churning of repeat offenders through the system poses a risk to public safety and contributes to rising correctional costs."
A.T. Wall, II, RIDOC Director

Reentry-Related Publications and Press Coverage

Noah Kilroy

“I fell in love with education. I fell in love with learning,” Kilroy said one morning in the paneled conference room of the city law department. “That feeling I got from making a $5,000 drug sale was the same feeling I got from getting an A on a paper, an A in class. I literally got goose bumps.

Amazing story

Old Mr. Flood

“...you can hate a place with all your heart and soul and still be homesick for it.”
― Joseph Mitchell

“Also, I had not yet found out about time; I was still under the illusion that I had plenty of time - time for this, time for that, time for everything, time to waste.”
― Joseph Mitchell, Up in the Old Hotel

“He had a habit of remarking to bartenders that he didn't see any sense in mixing whiskey with water since the whiskey was already wet.”
― Joseph Mitchell

“I have a great deal of experience in justifying myself to myself.”
― Joseph Mitchell

“All information of a spiritual or personal nature will have to come from our father, who art in heaven, and I think he's in New York right now.”
― Joseph Mitchell

“It is perhaps an ugly comment on the American press, but the function of the interviewer on most newspapers is to entertain, not to shed light. . . . An interviewer soon begins to judge public figures on the basis of their entertainment value, overlooking their true importance. It is not easy to get an interview with Professor Franz Boas, the greatest anthropologist in the world, across a city desk, but a mild interview with Oom the Omnipotent will hit the bottom of page one under a two-column head. . . . It is safe to write accurately only about the nuts and bums. When a public figure does something ridiculous reporters may then write about him accurately.”
― Joseph Mitchell, My Ears Are Bent

“I’m not going to stand for it any longer," said Mr. Flood. "I’m going to put my foot down. All I want in this world is a little peace and quiet, and he gets me all raced up. Here a while back I heard a preacher talking on the radio about the peacefulness of the old, and I thought to myself, ‘You ignorant man!’ I’m ninety-four years old and I have never yet had any peace, to speak of. My mind is just a turmoil of regrets. It’s not what I did that I regret, it’s what I didn’t do. Except for the bottle, I always walked the straight and narrow; a family man, a good provider, never cut up, never did ugly, and I regret it. In the summer of 1902 I came real close to getting in serious trouble with a married woman, but I had a fight with my conscience and my conscience won, and what’s the result? I had two wives, good, Christian women, and I can’t hardly remember what either of them looked like, but I can remember the face on that woman so clear it hurts, and there’s never a day passes I don’t think about her, and there’s never a day passes I don’t curse myself. ‘What kind of a timid, dried-up, weevily fellow were you?’ I say to myself. ‘You should’ve said to hell with what’s right and what’s wrong, the devil take the hindmost. You’d have something to remember, you’d be happier now.’ She’s out in Woodlawn, six feet under, and she’s been there twenty-two years, God rest her, and here I am, just an old, old man with nothing but a belly and a brain and a dollar or two."

"Life is sad," said Mr. Maggiani.”
― Joseph Mitchell, Old Mr. Flood

"... a trouble-maker. What race do you belong to, anyhow?’ ‘The human race,’ I said. ‘I come from the womb and I’m bound for the tomb, the same as you, the same as King George the Six, the same as Johnny Squat."
― Joseph Mitchell, Old Mr Flood

“I’m immune to the average germ; don’t even catch colds; haven’t had a cold since 1912. Only reason I caught that one, I went on a toot and it was a pouring-down rainy night in the dead of winter and my shoes were cracked and they let the damp in and I lost my balance a time or two and sloshed around in the gutter and somewhere along the line I mislaid my hat and I’d just had a haircut and I stood in a draft in one saloon an hour or more and there was a poor fellow next to me sneezing his head off and when I got home I crawled into a bed that was beside an open window like a fool and passed out with my wet clothes on, shoes and all. Also, I’d spent the night before sitting up on a train and hadn’t slept a wink and my resistance was low. If the good Lord can just see His way clear to protect me from accidents, no stumbling on the stairs, no hell-fired automobiles bearing down on me in the dark, no broken bones, I’ll hit a hundred and fifteen easy.”
― Joseph Mitchell, Old Mr Flood

“The trembly fellow sighed and said, “I’m all out of whack. I’m going uptown and see my doctor.” Mr. Flood snorted again. “Oh, shut up,” he said. “Damn your doctor! I tell you what you do. You get right out of here and go over to Libby’s oyster house and tell the man you want to eat some of his big oysters. Don’t sit down. Stand up at that fine marble bar they got over there, where you can watch the man knife them open. And tell him you intend to drink the oyster liquor; he’ll knife them on the cup shell, so the liquor won’t spill. And be sure you get the big ones. Get them so big you’ll have to rear back to swallow, the size that most restaurants use for fries and stews; God forgive them, they don’t know any better. Ask for Robbins Islands, Mattitucks, Cape Cods, or Saddle Rocks. And don’t put any of that red sauce on them, that cocktail sauce, that mess, that gurry. Ask the man for half a lemon, poke it a time or two to free the juice, and squeeze it over the oysters. And the first one he knifes, pick it up and smell it, the way you’d smell a rose, or a shot of brandy. That briny, seaweedy fragrance will clear your head; it’ll make your blood run faster. And don’t just eat six; take your time and eat a dozen, eat two dozen, eat three dozen, eat four dozen. And then leave the man a generous tip and go buy yourself a fifty-cent cigar and put your hat on the side of your head and take a walk down to Bowling Green. Look at the sky! Isn’t it blue? And look at the girls a-tap-tap-tapping past on their pretty little feet! Aren’t they just the finest girls you ever saw, the bounciest, the rumpiest, the laughingest? Aren’t you ashamed of yourself for even thinking about spending good money on a damned doctor? And along about here, you better be careful. You’re apt to feel so bucked-up you’ll slap strangers on the back, or kick a window in, or fight a cop, or jump on the tailboard of a truck and steal a ride.”
― Joseph Mitchell, Old Mr Flood

“Life is a goddam mess...but you wouldn't want to miss it!”
― Joseph Mitchell

“We get a lot of goormies in Libby’s,” said Mr. Murchison. “I can spot a goormy right off. Moment he sits down he wants to know do we have any boolybooze.” “Bouillabaisse,” said Mr. Flood. “Yes,” said Mr. Murchison, “and I tell him, ‘Quit showing off! We don’t carry no boolybooze. Never did. There’s a time and a place for everything. If you was to go into a restaurant in France,’ I ask him, ‘would you call for some Daniel Webster fish chowder?’ I love a hearty eater, but I do despise a goormy. All they know is boolybooze and pompano and something that’s out of season, nothing else will do. And when they get through eating they don’t settle their check and go on about their business. No, they sit there and deliver you a lecture on what they et, how good it was, how it was almost as good as a piece of fish they had in the Caffy dee lah Pooty-doo in Paris, France, on January 16, 1928; they remember every meal they ever et, or make out they do. And every goormy I ever saw is an expert on herbs. Herbs, herbs, herbs! If you let one get started on the subject of herbs he’ll talk you deef, dumb, and blind. Way I feel about herbs, on any fish I ever saw, pepper and salt and a spoon of melted butter is herbs aplenty.”
― Joseph Mitchell, Old Mr Flood

“Gould is a night wanderer, and he has put down descriptions of dreadful things he has seen on dark New York streets – descriptions, for example, of the herds of big gray rats that come out in the hours before dawn in some neighborhoods of the lower East Side and Harlem and unconcernedly walk the sidewalks. ‘I sometimes believe that these rats are not rats at all,’ he says, ‘but the damned and aching souls of tenement landlords.”
― Joseph Mitchell, Up in the Old Hotel

Joseph Mitchell

Article, fascinating obituary.

Joseph Mitchell: If You See What I Mean

You pick someone so close that, in fact, you are writing about yourself. Joe Gould had to leave home because he didn't fit in, the same way I had to leave home because I didn't fit in. Talking to Joe Gould all those years he became me in a way, if you see what I mean.
-Joseph Mitchell interview

Up in the Old Hotel

It's the birthday of Joseph Mitchell, born in Fairmont, North Carolina (1908). He was a writer for The New Yorker magazine for many years. His stories focused on people living on the fringe in New York City. They featured gypsies, alcoholics, the homeless, fishmongers, and a band of Mohawk Indians who worked as riveters on skyscrapers and bridges and had no fear of heights. Much of his journalism is included in the book Up in the Old Hotel (1992). While at The New Yorker, Joseph Mitchell interviewed criminals, evangelists, politicians, and celebrities. He said that he was a good interviewer because he had lost the ability to detect insanity. He listened to everyone, even those who were crazy, as if they were sane. He said, "The best talk is artless, the talk of people trying to reassure or comfort themselves."

Mitchell published his last book in 1965, Joe Gould's Secret, about a man who said that he learned the language of seagulls and was now writing the longest book in the world. For the next 30 years, Mitchell kept going to his New Yorker office without publishing another word.

-Writer's Almanac

Along the Pond

Last night when Bill got home I said "I miss walking along the pond." So we drove to Saint Theresa's and walked from there. We ran into everyone we know. Angela and Troy were out. They have built and painted an amazing playhouse for their kids. It had a red roof and a miniature purple couch and little windows that open with flowered curtains that Angela sewed and a little kitchen. It even has a mailbox which her son checks every day. I must write him a letter! At the pond the sweet couple with the apple tree invited us into their cozy yard for a glass of wine. We accepted and it was magical to chat. We could see the water from under their tree. Lily ate all of the fallen apples and Pepper the dog came over twice to visit. The family that is moving away has painted their house gray. It is no longer oxblood red. I still hope they stay. I love them.