Where Emotions and Behaviors Come From

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The Fifteen Minute Warning

KIDS HAVE FUN....ME WISH TO BE KID AGAIN TOO

(Photo credit: Kenny Teo (zoompict))

The five-minute warning wasn’t enough for my daughter.

Mommy, please tell me when it is fifteen minutes before it’s time to leave.  So I have time to finish my game.

The truth is, sometimes I forget to give a warning at all and we just have to go when we have to go!  Warning or no warning.  But my daughter had a point that reminded me how often we take for granted or even assume we have a right to be warned.  Oh the rights we possess!  Or not.  Well, not really.  We don’t have many rights in life and “the fifteen minute warning” isn’t one of them.

We have the right to love and friendship, (with who is another discussion,) but not much else.  Yet even without the right, many of us have the privilege of “the fifteen minute warning.”  And time tics away and what have we done with it?

At work we are told about working better as a team member.

At home we are asked to stop yelling when we are upset.

We are warned.  Time passes.  Pride keeps us from being friendly to ourselves often enough.  Friendly would be to forget about how we are right and hear the warning.  Being right is over-rated.  Friendly is the crisis.  Friendly is to go toward the wanting.

If we can’t do this even though we know we hear, maybe we don’t have what it takes?  That’s a turn in the warning to get an opinion of “why” from a medical professional and then to respond to the recommendations.  “The fifteen minute warning” is designed to improve our experience and readiness.  If we can’t, than shift gears into finding out why.

Questions:  What warnings have you heard that improved your experience and readiness?  Please tell us your story

Self-Care Tip:  Deliberately use warnings as the privilege that they are, rather than entitlement, to be friendlier to yourself.

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Hatred and Brain Health

Hatred

Hatred (Photo credit: dton23)

Have you ever noticed that hating the person who hurt you is never enough?  The damage does not respond.  The edges do not come back together.  Hating them harder, hating them more effectively, with your voice, with your body, committing your talents toward their detriment, recruiting forces, community – this is not enough.  Finally, you grow plans from dragon teeth.  You wish them death and an after-life of repeating hateful deaths.  It is still not enough.  You are left with you.

When the extreme, when the hate that is to say, is not enough something is wrong.  But it’s not what you think.  The thing that is wrong is not that.

We could say you are a sinner.  We could say pray more.  We could say exercise, destress, do yoga, karate, eat less sugar and drink grass juice.  We could and perhaps we do.  But this time, please put that aside.  It is not disqualified.  It’s just not the bit we are going to talk about.  Don’t be mad at me.

The hate is in the brain.  The brain picked this to perseverate on and return to like the tongue over a canker.  Lick.  Ouch.  We don’t ask for these emotions.  We don’t ask for these behaviors.  They come, symptomatically telling us a story about our condition.  Hear the story?

It goes something like this.  We are persons who know enough to know that this is a feeling stronger than deserved. This is a response not entirely rational.  This is a behavior that we would choose not to do otherwise and nor would a friend of ours support.  Our mother would tell us, “No.”  We experience a whole body response that surprises some level of our awareness and that part stands by uncertainly with her fingers picking at her lip.

The story tells about the other times when we endured worse and responded without as much personalizing.  We remember that someone else we knew acted like this and we didn’t think much of it.  We thought they were “off.”  We realize that what we are experiencing might not have as much to do with the crime as we thought.  It might just be that we are not feeling and behaving well.  It might be our brain.

That darn double-crossing organ!  How is anyone supposed to trust themselves?  It’s tough but we have each other and we have our story and we have grass juice.  We have God.  We have medication.  We have ECT (electroconvulsive therapy.)  We have acupuncture, our support groups and DBT (dialectical behavioral therapy.)

Considering where emotions and behaviors come from is the bit that gives us a chance to find and be found by help.  Hate is a very strong emotion from the brain and it isn’t so friendly to Me.  If we can’t put it aside, consider the brain.

Self-Care Tip:  When emotions and behaviors come that you don’t want, and won’t go away even when you say, “Please,” consider your brain health.

Question:  What has helped you disentangle the effect from a cause that wasn’t really the cause?  

How do you allow for the biology of brain health when it comes to feelings so personal?  

How is considering the brain a friendly thing to Me?  Please tell us your story.

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Seeing Your Brain As The Place Emotions and Behaviors Come from is Terrifying

Terror

Image by pablokdc via Flickr

Where do emotions and behaviors come from?

Now think about it and answer your true beliefs.

I was speaking with a wonderful physician the other day to whom I asked this question, (let’s call her Doctora.)

I respect Doctora for her character, personality, standard of medical practice and interpersonal beauty. She is a bulldog in the operating room. When patients need studies done that insurances won’t pay for, she tears barriers to treatment apart with vicious tools of rightness. And she cares.  She sits.  She asks.  And she cares.  She sees the person in the paper gown, each one for the person she knows them to be and the person yet unknown.

I admire Doctora greatly not only for these qualities but also because it gets personal.  I, who have my own special practice of medicine, cannot do her’s.

When just a green bumbler in medical school, there was a fateful day when I shadowed another great artist of medical care into a locker room.  I suited up in that blue sack they call scrubs.  I put little blue sacks over my tennis shoes too.

Do you know why there are blue sacks on the surgeon’s shoes?  So that when wet things come out of the human body and fall onto their feet, their toes won’t feel squishy. Yep. That’s what was going through my mind as I scrubbed my hands, each finger and each finger nail the ten minutes it takes to reach what is considered clean.

Surgery in progress, the color red mixed with a smell and monstrous sensual force that clobbered me to the ground.  I swooned, gagged and promptly ended my surgical career.

There is nothing more irritating to a surgeon than someone who doesn’t appreciate the “fun” of “cutting.” Yes. I irritated this mentor and others too I’m afraid.

This doesn’t keep me unfortunately from pleasuring in telling people, “I am licensed to do surgery.”  I am you know.  Any Jane with a medical license can pick a scalpel up and bring back the dark ages, or contemporary, depending on who holds the license.  I’m irritating to my mentors, remember.  It reminds me how anyone can go online and pay to become a marriage registrar, i.e. perform a marriage ceremony for couples.  My brother did that twenty years ago and has yet to perform the marriage ceremony for a willing couple.  For real judges and clergy, this might be irritating too and that makes me a little happy as well.

Anywho, Doctora and I were rolling with the injustices haranguing us in the practice of medicine, both from the angle of the physician and the patient. I was pumping her up for being the cutting-wonder who she was and she was dutifully marveling at my jabber-mouth work that she would, “never be able to do in a million years.”  Somehow this brought us round to how our culture avoids embracing the biological paradigm of anything inside our skull but is so willing to celebrate it for any other part of our human bodies.

Where do emotions and behaviors come from?

Doctora answered me with a frozen breath. Then after I soiled the air with a lot of jabbering and she was finally able to speak, she said,

I would just be horrified if my brain got sick!

I wondered if it was scary enough to clobber her to the ground, but I do agree.  Terrifying.  Don’t you think?

Question:  Is that why hardly anyone can speak about the brain being human and largely responsible for where our emotions and behaviors come from? How has this played into your experience of self-care?  Please tell me your story.

Self-Care Tip – Go to the fear that keeps you from embracing your biology to gain more freedom.

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Fighting For Brain Health Is At The Core Of Being A Friend To Yourself

Nose-picking in progress.

Image via Wikipedia

Demanding what we cannot give is a cruel relationship with ourselves.  It is cruel that we must have insight to pursue health treatment for the brain whose variety of illness destroys our capacity to see into ourselves.

It’s one thing for us to choose not to do what we see is to be done.  We all choose not to take care of ourselves by degrees.  We all make choices against information and sight;

Smoking, exercise, sugar intake, sleep hygiene, working more hours, avoiding interpersonal connections, soda, driving fast, jay-walking, hand-washing, self-medication, self-injury, brushing hair from the top down, splashing our soup, flossing, nose-picking and eating with our mouth open.

Insight is there and we choose not to.

Even so, it is arrogant to presume insight into our own human condition and the more I know, the more I agree with the humility of any great teacher – there is so much out there that we don’t see into.  However this is critically different from the inability to see into and that is the cruel irony of requiring a decision that our brain is unable to be informed about.

There are a number of these.  I’m wondering if you can tell us about your own story of what healing has done for your ability to “see?”  It’s a service to many to know that fighting for brain health is at the core of being a friend to yourself.

Self-Care Tip – Fight for brain health – it is at the core of being a friend to yourself.

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Rotate Your Picture To Connect And Grow Presence In Your Life

Hello Dear Friends.

Seems I’m heading toward a different blog-site level of productivity.  Wasn’t deliberately turning that way, but turn I have.  I’m just saying this so you know that I acknowledge the change in flow and am thunking, thinking on it.

I will post a minimum of one to two times a week.  In between, I hope to develop the material we have now, clean it up and share it again, integrated with your comments and what we’ve worked over this past year.

_______________________________________

That done, I can chat about other stuffy stuff.

20080726 - Melanie's Birthday party - DSCN1530...

Image by Rev. Xanatos Satanicos Bombasticos (ClintJCL) via Flickr

Today, I was thinking about our interpersonal connections we believe so strongly improve our ability to be our own friend.  However, that is not the same as pairing with someone who is bad to us.  We’ve talked about how abuse, any kind, disables us from connecting.  “Get off of me!” is self-care when there is an unequal sense of power being used and we are trying to gain accountability for where we are at in life now.

In my mind’s eye, imagining that, I saw a figure lying on her side and someone heavy lying on top.  “Get off of me!” could mean, “Get off and get away.”  It could also mean, “Rotate the picture.”

See the picture turn 90-degrees?  Now the two figures are standing beside each other rather than subjected.  The two figures are connected, proximate and present to each other’s experiences.  “Get off of me!” doesn’t have to mean, “Get out of my life.”  It might be able to mean, “Rotate.  Stand beside me.  I choose connection in my life and not subjugation.”

Insight isn’t everything though.  If saying, “Get off of me and stand beside me.  Stay connected.  Stop controlling.” doesn’t happen despite insight, we might be looking at behaviors and emotions that are symptoms of brain disease of Me or of the other person(s).  Medical illness needs more than word play and adjusting picture frames.

Questions:  Have you been able to rotate any pictures in your life in any ways that have helped you be a better friend to yourself?  What?  Has that improved your sense of connection with people you didn’t want to lose?  Please tell us your story.

Self-Care Tip – Rotate your picture to connect and grow presence in your life.

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Are You Empowered to Start Everything and End Everything With Me?

Yesterdays blog-post brought a few neighborly questions for us to follow-up with.

One is regarding emotions from bluebee.  Is jealousy medical?  Followed by, What part of emotion is under our control?  Indeed.

Second, Sarah quietly slipped the question under our door of how to respond to emotions and behaviors that come from brain illness.  How?  Indeed.

Third, Carl banged a little louder when asking, what keeps him in a relationship with someone who is maltreating him verses leaving?  Indeed.

There is a nice flow to these.  They are leading into the next and circle back.  Emotions and behaviors come from the brain, much which is out of our control and some of which is.  The choice to engage in the life of the ill is like any other choice.  Our own.  If it matters to us if the way the brain is working in the “other” is in their control or not, we can spend more time trying to sus that out.  I’m not sure myself when I get it good from someone mean, but it has become easier to take care of my junk rather than there’s.  For that, I will say a million thanks.  If I’m getting yelled at, I do the checks on myself – anxiety? fear? anger? fatigue? shaking? dizzy? tone of my voice? do I know what this person is yelling about? (most often it has nothing to do with Me), empathy? empowerment? You’ve told me that you are growing in similar refreshing ways.

Face Down w/Laundry and Gwen Stefani

Image by NCM3 via Flickr

I’ve seen this play out a little in my children.  My daughters and son are supposed to do the laundry every morning before they play.  I don’t know how many years now, but their arguments haven’t changed.

I’m doing this all by myself.  No one is helping me!

Mom!  He’s just laying on top of the clothes!  

Mom!  …

These questions above…;

  • where emotions and behaviors come from,
  • control over biological symptoms,
  • do I respond to others with brain illness
  • or do I walk away

These questions don’t mean much if we don’t find where our empowerment comes from.  Me.  Everything starts and ends with Me.

I’m ill for reasons I have nothing to do with, yet I will be accountable for myself and how I affect others.

I feel emotions I didn’t ask for, behaving ways that I am a spectator to rather than a whole person, yet I will do what I can to gain health.  In that, I have control.

I surrender what I don’t control to my Higher Power.  I take medication.  I exercise, guard my sleep hygiene and get regular sleep, eat responsibly, gather and engage community, attend therapy groups and/or individual, I try while at the same time I let go, I love my flaws as I love my perfections, I try to develop my natural genius, try as often as I can to pour any energies I have in that direction as I know I will heal faster, enjoy life more and be more successful at all my efforts when I do.

It reminds me of that saying, that if I have success, it is from standing on the shoulders of giant midgets.  We are all flawed.  We are all wonderful.  We are supported by others who also are full of flawed perfections.

Do I have control?  You bet.  …And no way.  Always, there are both.

Do I talk when someone is mistreating me? or mistreating themselves by neglecting their own self-care? by letting their illnesses shape their lives?  Do I walk away as that may be what my self-care demands.

Everything starts and ends with me.  There are a lot of stops along the way with other forces, but empowerment is mine.  Indeed.  That’s what I hope my kids will learn when doing the laundry.

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Emotions and Behaviors Will Get Better As You Heal.

Punch to the Face

Image by Ninja M. via Flickr

Don’t worry.

When you hear that, don’t you think violent thoughts?  Or how about, “Calm down?”  Got to love that.  I have visuals of my back swing.  Sure.  You might call them hallucinations.  I’ve never actually hit someone but I have pulled into ready position.

Here’s the thing though.  After all this on-and-on about taking care of ourselves, I have found myself saying things that get awfully close and I’m looking out.  Pretty soon I’m afraid I’m going to get it.  (I’ve got my eye on you!  And you!)

Here’s what happened.  Augustina was wondering what to do about her best friend.  They had quarreled and then quarreled again.

Naming someone, “best-ie” sounds pubescent but Augustina was no child.  Her best-ie had been her chosen family (as Jackie Paulson reminded us yesterday)  since she was twelve, fat and leaked.  Kids were laughing.  Future Best-ie wasn’t.  That’s the kind of girl she was.  Safe; a light in a house that she had gone toward naturally and that had not been put out by Augustina’s misty self.  Wet face, stained pants, fat neck and pimples – Future Best-ie wasn’t laughing.  And that’s about all it took.  She was her friend.

Why had Augustina and Best-ie quarrelled these thirty-some years later?  This was am apparent mystery to Augustina.  You know those kind of mysteries, when they belong to only one person while everyone else with the answer key is looking on.  It was almost like she was standing there, twelve-years-old and bewildered.  This time though, Best-ie wasn’t on her side.  Or so she thought.

Truth is, Augustina had been mean.  She was not keeping dates, she argued easily and she was more self-absorbed than the color black.  It had been months now and then they quarreled.  Augustina missed all the prodrome, the warnings, the recommendations from family, other friends and including Best-ie to get insight and help.  To Augustina, this quarrel stood alone and she was being misused and misunderstood.

So what do we do?  Do we discuss Augustina’s behavior?  Do we explain her problems?  Maybe.  But only long enough to help her join our treatment team.  Once she’s in treatment, we wait.  We for reasons of self-preservation won’t say, “Don’t worry,” but we will come close.  Why?  Because we know that many of her problems as perceived by others and herself will disappear when her brain illness heals.  Do you believe that?  Where do you think her emotions and behaviors are coming from?

See blog post, There is Less Space Between Emotions And Science.

Questions:  When have you seen maltreatment from others that feels personal to you appear without provocation?  When have you seen someone you trusted change into someone who is mean, angry, selfish and reject you when they never did before?  Did you see the opposite happen when their brain illness was treated?  Please tell me your story.

Self-Care Tip – Calm down.  (Duck!  I see you and I’m outta here!)

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Courage to take medication

So when is a psychiatrist going to get around to talking about medications already? Nobody really wants to take medications. But it turns out in this world that our brains are just as human as the rest of our bodies. When they get sick, what does it look like? Behaviors and emotions. Our brains are not hovering over us like a supernatural aura. When our brains get sick, our behaviors are in the fist of control about as much as our liver function is.

The people I see in clinic are some of the most courageous people I know. We find each other at an amazing time when they are aware of their plight, that of being disconnected from their journey. They are humble people, willing to consider that behavior is more than something the “will” or “force of character” can control. They use as many healthy means they can to get healthy. They believe that you can’t give what you don’t have, even to yourself.

Counterintuitive to culture and prejudice, taking medication is an act of courage.

Self Care Tip #11 – When your emotions and behaviors are messing you up, think of the many modalities to getting healthy, including meds. Be a friend to yourself.

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