Neuroscience & behavior

16 Apr With my heart in my mouth

What do you do when fear creeps into the heart - for good reason?

Photo by Kat Love on Unsplash

Waiting

I am sitting in my living room chair, my laptop wide open in front of me and anxious to swallow my words. But none are coming. I can’t focus. My mind is scattered like mist over my head, and none of it wants to flow onto the page.   I recognize this madness; I’ve been here before. It’s just another week-in-hell, of waiting for test results that will decide my life. I have zero ways of knowing which direction it will go – life or death.

There is no relief from this pile of uncertainty. I constantly scan my body for signs of disease, aches and pains. Suddenly, I get this feeling in my legs – like there are steel rods running inside each of them, so they feel simultaneously completely stiff and completely paralyzed. Bitter fear fills my mouth. It grows until I am gagging.

I can’t do this. I can’t live with my fearful heart in my mouth all the time. I can’t.  No. The answer is no. There must be another way. My way.

Fearless

See, I used to be fearless. Bold.  To have a sense of adventure in life, a need to explore and discover, things large and small. In a deep sense of “this-may-be-now-or-never”.

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15 Feb Trauma is everywhere. How to SPOT it in yourself and others, and how to FIX it

Navigating life's traumas through bad cancer and COVID-19

Photo by Aimee Vogelsang on Unsplash

What is happening to me?

I am lying flat in the passenger seat of my car, being driven down La Cienega Blvd right after my latest radiation treatment. I am letting out primal screams as I am reliving the earlier moments in the machine. High-energy particle beams spinning around my body and shooting at me, while I am immobilized in a position that causes me excruciating pain. I cannot move. I am in agony but trapped in this contraption. My heart rate goes up. I break out in cold sweat. It is terrifying. And the terror repeats, day after day, same time, in a relentless pattern of planned prison torture, like having your nails pulled out, or your tongue snipped daily.

In a rare moment out of the mental fog, it occurs to me to question: What is happening to me? Why am I having this reaction? After all, it is not my first time in pain! But this is different. I feel like my entire body is in violent shock, is revolting against it. Why?

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28 Dec How RBG made the medicine go down

We have an obligation to dissent. RBG teaches us how to do it successfully

Role models for weird people

If you are a bit odd (like me), where do you find role models that are a good fit for your oddness? I never did.  Until now.

Let’s talk RBG.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Supreme Court Justice. I suddenly grasped the immensity of her existence. Not just her impact, but her entire reality. Unique. Focused. Intense.  Aware that she saw the world differently from most and convinced she had it right. With striking clarity of mind. (What’s not to like?)

She is honored for many things. For winning cases. For arguing cases. For dissenting her losing cases.

Oh, the dissents! The legacy of RBG. She made dissent hip and famous. To me, that is a life-affirming boost. Because I dissent a lot: Traditions are beautiful and wonderful? I dissent. Mindfulness will save your life? I dissent. The ‘new normal’? I dissent. (more…)

12 May Mindfulness: It’s good for you, until it isn’t.

Meditate. Then, pick up the shovel and start digging for the roots of your problems.

There was that summer, many years ago, when my travels through the rough seas of mental pain hit a category 5 hurricane. My heart grieved losses so catastrophic, so life-crushing, that I lost all anchors. It felt like my brain had detached from my skull, that is was swirling and shifting inside my head.  I was in depression severe enough to have me dissolve into rivers of tears, so sudden, that I had to bolt from the dinner table and go hide until the storm passed. I needed to do something to not drown.

Know when you need help

And I did: I explored everything. The magic of therapists, and of mind-bending gurus; Medications; And meditations, kirtans, retreats, temples in Indian valley villages, I needed help. I did everything by the book: Sat through deep breathing exercises, trying to let my thoughts come and go without engaging them, without judging, passively staying in the one breath.

“You can do anything for one breath”, they said. “Your mind will be constantly buzzing, just let it be”; “try slow-eating a raisin for 5 minutes”. The problem was the mind, the mind, the mind. “We need to silence the mind”. Everybody was convinced that therein laid the root of human suffering.

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