THE PHILOSOPHY OF RESPONSIBLE FREEDOM 49.HOW TO FORTIFY THE MIND IN TIMES OF CRISIS
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Main Academy of Ideas video HOW TO FORTIFY THE MIND IN TIMES OF CRISIS (Note--presciently published March 31, 2020 at the onset of COVID1984 lockdowns) “Maturity is the capacity to endure uncertainty.” John Finley
To trigger a nervous breakdown in someone you could apply the following steps: Force your victim into an atomized existence, forbid them from participating in the activities that imbue their life with joy, rid them of their job, destroy their daily routines, and tell them not to leave the confines of their home. To add icing to the cake of your diabolical plan you could then tell your victim that society stands on the precipice of an economic collapse. Sadly, this is not fiction, but reality for many people across globe and so in this video we are going to explore how to remain psychologically stable in the midst of a crisis.
PERSONAL WORLD CLOCK https://tinyurl.com/bdef97z7
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The below will be viewed in part or whole
THE PRIMARY PROCESS LEVEL, EMOTIONAL AFFECTS & THE COMPLEX SOCIAL BRAIN | DR JAAK PANKSEPP Confer, Sept 20, 2016. Video 2:14
Dr Jaak Panksepp draws a connection from affect feeling to Darwinian evolution
This package of resources brings together a fresh collection of video and audio presentations to illuminate the relationship between neuroscience and psychotherapy. The interface between the two disciplines has aroused great recent interest and this collection of talks asks some of the most influential neuropsychologists and practitioners to explain the neuroscientific concepts that they consider the significant in developing the skills of psychotherapy or in understanding the mind.
One of the key questions to engage psychotherapists is the extent to which neurobiology is interpersonal. Insights from infant development studies, supported by scientific research into the brain and peripheral nervous system, have revealed the dynamic interplay between the mind of the mother/carer and that of the infant at the levels of both emotional and biological growth. This neuroplasticity is found to be a life-long relational phenomenon, raising the question about how profoundly developmental deficits can be relationally redressed.
Dr Jaak Panksepp was the Baily Endowed Professor of Animal Well-Being Science at Washington State University, and founder of the field of Affective Neuroscience. Along with many students and colleagues, he published over 400 scientific articles, chapters and reviews devoted to elucidating the basic mechanisms of motivations and emotions as well as the fundamental nature of consciousness and self-representation in the brain.
AFFECTIVE BASIS OF DRUG AND SOCIAL ADDICTIONS | DR. JAAK PANKSEPP | MC4 L7 Meaning Conference INPM, April 7, 2023 Video 26:21
Jaak Panksepp, Ph.D., Baily Endowed Chair of Animal Well-Being Science, Washington State University TEMPLETON SYMPOSIUM The affective basis of drug addiction is rarely discussed among those who study the basic brain mechanisms of addictions. This is because a variant of “ruthless reductionism” continues to guide thinking in the field, and a guiding premise for many investigators is that one can go from molecular neural structures to addictive behaviors without any need to conceptualize the psychological infrastructure that mediate drug seeking urges. In fact, this is an inadequate strategy for understanding addictions since one of the key functions of complex neural networks is to create psychological processes that mediate basic emotions and motivations. There is now abundant evidence indicating that addictive urges arise from basic (i.e., cross-species) general purposes brain emotional systems, such as the SEEKING networks of the brain, whose fundamental role is to mediate the urge to seek environmental rewards. This presentation will also summarize our understanding of addictive urges as they are filtered through the primordial affective social-emotional structures of the mammalian brain.
EMOTIONAL FOUNDATIONS Seattle Atheist Church, Aug 16, 2021 Video 38:53
Before Jaak Panksepp, there was little agreement on the number of core emotions with theories ranging from 2 to12, but note a recent theory proposing 27. As an undergraduate student, still in the era of behaviorism, Jaak concluded that emotions were the basis of psychopathology. In graduate school he gave up clinical work and determined that in order to understand emotions he would need to study animal brains. He found supportive faculty and shifted into the neuroscience arena and basic brain research. Using electrical brain stimulation, his dissertation demonstrated that ANGER/Rage was distinct from Predatory behavior or SEEKING: The 2 brain systems utilized 2 different brain circuits. From this beginning he soon added FEAR and GRIEF/Sadness. LUST and CARE came next, and with the demonstration of innate brain PLAY systems, he established brain evidence for 7 “primary” emotions: with no additional candidates from other laboratories in over 30 years. Note that Social Dominance is likely an acquired behavior. But you have heard about these 7 primary emotional action systems and their associated affects previously. My goal today is to move past the academic discussion of these emotions to the topic that originally motivated Jaak’s interest in the first place, namely, how do we use this information to help people including ourselves. How do we take advantage of Jaak Panksepp’s 50 years of research to benefit our mental health?
DON'T LEAVE ME! - 5. THE PANIC SYSTEM FOR HORSES Connection Training, Video 9:26
THE HOLMES-RAHE STRESS INVENTORY Marko Papuckovski Sep 21, 2021. Video 3:25
The Holmes and Rahe Stress Inventory: The Social Readjustment Rating Scale. In 1967, psychiatrists Thomas Holmes and Richard Rahe developed this famous Stress Inventory, when they examined the medical records of over 5,000 medical patients - their health conditions and the link to the stressful events.
THE HOLMES-RAHE STRESS INVENTORY PDF
Score your life stress inventory using the downloadable PDF below or take our Online Holmes-Rahe Life Stress Asessment:
Instructions
Mark down the point value of each of these life events that has happened to you during the previous year. Then, add up all your points to calculate your final score.
What Does Your Score Mean?
150 points or less | a relatively low amount of life change and a low susceptibility to stress-induced health breakdown
150 to 300 points | 50% chance of health breakdown in the next 2 years
300 points or more | 80% chance of health breakdown in the next 2 years, according to the Holmes-Rahe statistical prediction model
https://www.stress.org/holmes-rahe-stress-inventory-pdf
https://www.stress.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/stress-inventory-1.pdf
THE TRUTH ABOUT RESILIENCE AND WHY IT MATTERS MORE THAN EVER Paradigm Shift, Aug 1, 2021. Video 3:58
What Is Resilience? Are you looking for ways to become more resilient in life? Do you want to learn how to cope with challenges, overcome adversity, and bounce back from setbacks? If so, this video is for you! In this video, I will explain what resilience is, why it is important, and how you can develop it. I will also share some examples of resilient people who have faced difficulties and thrived. You will discover the different types of resilience, such as emotional, psychological, and physical resilience, and how they can help you in different situations. You will also learn some practical tips and strategies to boost your resilience and improve your well-being.
RESILIENCE The School of Life Aug 2, 2017 Video 4:19
The route to greater resilience is to explore how well we would cope if so much of what we think we need were to be taken away from us. We would, almost certainly, manage far better than we think in our timid moments.
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RESILIENCE: THRIVING IN ADVERSITY Academy of Ideas, March 1, 2019. Video. 7:34
The following is a transcript of this video.
“Excellence withers without an adversary.” Seneca, Letters from a Stoic
Life deals us an abundance of obstacles and adversities and so, one would think, the mere passage of time would teach us how to profitably deal with the challenges that cross our path. But time only teaches the willing, and therefore many of us are sorely unprepared for life. One of the main culprits for this weakness in the modern day is the proliferation of a victim mentality. Being a victim is now looked upon as a badge of honor. But if we wish to flourish and become what Nietzsche called “the true helmsman of our existence” (Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations), we need to separate ourselves from this powerless spirit of the age, assume responsibility for our life, and learn to face up to what is presented to us.
To achieve this feat psychological resilience is crucial. We must learn how to emerge from the challenges of life not weaker and more apathetic, as the perpetual victim does, but stronger and wiser. Or as ancient Stoic philosopher Epictetus explained:
“Every difficulty in life presents us with an opportunity to turn inward and to invoke our own submerged inner resources. The trials we endure can and should introduce us to our strengths…Dig deeply. You possess strengths you might not realize you have. Find the right one. Use it.” Epictetus, The Art of Living
In cultivating resilience, it is necessary to discard the belief that it is better to avoid obstacles due to the stress they evoke. For as psychologists are discovering, not all forms of stress are equal; some in fact are crucial components of a flourishing mind and body.
“The latest science reveals that stress can make you smarter, stronger, and more successful. It helps you learn and grow.” Kelly McGonigal, The Upside of Stress
Whether the stress in our life is harmful or beneficial depends on how we respond to it. If we believe the barriers before us too burdensome and a threat to our well-being, the stress they evoke is detrimental to our health. But if we adopt a “challenge response” (Kelly McGonigal) – perceiving them as problems to solve in pursuit of success and growth – the stress we experience acts as a constructive companion; it spurs us to action.
Many people dream of living a stress free life; but in reality such a life would be unbearably boring. To flourish, we should not avoid hardship. Instead, we should adopt a more competitive attitude towards our existence – a life of agon, as the Ancient Greeks called it – and in whatever domains we devote ourselves to, our goal should be excellence. Living in this manner will call forth an abundance of challenges, and hence, the type of meaningful stress and struggle we need to feel life is worth living. Or as the writer and physician Boris Cyrulnik wrote:
“The worst form of stress is an absence of stress, because the feeling that there is no life before death gives rise to a despairing feeling of emptiness in the face of the void.” Boris Cyrulnik, Resilience
But developing resilience is not just a matter of seeking out stress and struggle in the service of meaningful ends. We must also learn to cope with the more severe forms of adversity which no one in their right mind voluntarily invites into life. While we like to believe that cruel twists of fate happen only to others, the longer we live, the more likely it becomes that such a time will befall us. It would be ideal if Nietzsche’s saying “That which does not kill you makes you stronger.” (Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols) were true for everyone. But severe adversity tends to destroy more people than it elevates. So how can we be one of the few who are not battered and broken by the more distressing periods of life?
One technique we can use to gain this type of resilience is what the Stoics called “premeditation of evils”. Rather than living with a naive optimism that everything will work out in the end, we should periodically meditate on losing the things we cherish most. They thought that if we make a habit of visualizing career or relationship failure, sickness, betrayal, or even death, we will become akin to the king who fortifies his kingdom from invasion. Over time we will develop a psychological armor to help us endure the hardships of life. “He robs present ills of their power who has perceived their coming beforehand.” (Seneca, Letters from a Stoic) wrote Seneca. Or as he further explained:
“Everyone approaches a danger with more courage if he has prepared in advance how to confront it. Anyone can endure difficulties better if he has previously practiced how to deal with them. People who are unprepared can be unhinged by even the smallest of things.” Seneca, Moral Letters to Lucilius
Many shy away from this practice believing that meditating on the dark side of life will breed a dark pessimism. For after all, isn’t it better to remain on the sunnier side of life? While it is common in our day to assume this, not all cultures have adhered to this view. In fact, two of the golden ages of history – Ancient Athens and Elizabethan England – were times infused with a “tragic sense of life”.
As the 20th century classicist Edith Hamilton noted, they had a lucid awareness that human life is “bound up with evil and that injustice [is] of the nature of things.” (Edith Hamilton, The Greek Way) Yet despite their proclivity to meditate on the evils of existence, these ages were also permeated with great productivity and a lust for life. It appears that in becoming aware and more accepting of the darker possibilities of life, we not only cultivate resilience, but also become more fully alive. For as Edith Hamilton explained:
“What these two periods had in common, two thousand years and more apart in time…may give us some hint of the nature of tragedy, for far from being periods of darkness and defeat each was a time when life was seen exalted, a time of thrilling unlimited and unfathomable possibilities. The world was a place of wonder; mankind was beauteous; life was lived on the crest of the wave. More than all, the poignant joy of heroism had stirred men’s hearts. Not stuff for tragedy, would you say? But on the crest of the wave one must feel either tragically or joyously; one cannot feel tamely.” Edith Hamilton, The Greek Way
Developing resilience is clearly not for the faint of heart – but neither is much of life. Thus, to give ourselves the best chance of not just enduring but thriving, we should resist the temptations of victimhood and try to behave more like a philosopher, in the ancient sense.
“To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school…it is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically.” Henry David Thoreau, Walden
For perhaps the most critical problem of life is how to remain strong and affirmative amidst life’s many burdens and blows. And to solve this problem, not only wisdom, but the cultivation of resilience, is required. Or as the Ancient Stoic Epictetus advised:
“Take example from the wrestling-masters. Has the boy fallen down? Get up, again, they say; wrestle again until you have made yourself strong. That’s the sort of attitude you should have…For both ruin and salvation have their source within you.” Epictetus, Discourses
https://academyofideas.com/2019/02/psychology-of-resilience/
HOW TO FORTIFY THE MIND IN TIMES OF CRISIS Academy of Ideas, March 31, 2020. Video. 9:29
The following is a transcript of this video.
“Maturity is the capacity to endure uncertainty.” John Finley
To trigger a nervous breakdown in someone you could apply the following steps: Force your victim into an atomized existence, forbid them from participating in the activities that imbue their life with joy, rid them of their job, destroy their daily routines, and tell them not to leave the confines of their home. To add icing to the cake of your diabolical plan you could then tell your victim that society stands on the precipice of an economic collapse. Sadly, this is not fiction, but reality for many people across globe and so in this video we are going to explore how to remain psychologically stable in the midst of a crisis.
A crisis whether it plays out at the level of an entire society, or whether it is more localized to just a single family or a single person, affects the psyche in similar ways. When a crisis leads to rapid and extensive change in the patterns of our life it is disorienting. But if such change is accompanied by uncertainty as to when, or even if, things will return to normal, the disorientation can be so extreme as to threaten our sense of self. For our identity is built on the patterns of our life. Be it our habits, our social roles, our job, our hobbies or our interpersonal relationships, all these things contribute to creation of our selfhood and as the psychologist Michael Mahoney explains:
“It is not easy to maintain a coherent sense of identity, self-worth, or competence in the face of multiple and chronic challenges to old patterns.” Michael Mahoney, Human Change Processes
Without a coherent sense of a self, without the order that produces our identity, the world around us will also become more chaotic and feel less amenable to our wants and needs, or as Jean Piaget explains: “We organize our worlds by first organizing ourselves.” If the shocks to the patterns of our life are serious enough, and if we cannot find a way to absorb them, we become susceptible to a psychological breakdown due to the intense emotionality that arises in the face of a disintegrating self:
“When novel experiences greatly exceed the individual’s capacities to balance, feelings of being overwhelmed are common. Episodic or chronic disorder and “breakdown” may result.” Michael Mahoney, Constructive Psychotherapy
During a societal-wide crisis a population will tend to fear most the threats that precipitated the crisis, but depending on the nature of these threats, it is this threat to our sense of self that may prove most dangerous. Fortunately, with some knowledge of the process that leads to a breakdown we can devise some steps to fortify our psyche.
What first must be recognized, and as counterintuitive as it may seem, is that a breakdown is not a descent into a more disordered state, but is a re-establishment of order at a maladaptive level. The extremes of a psychological breakdown tend toward two forms – severe depression or psychosis. Severe depression rids one of the disordered state that precipitated the breakdown by replacing it with an ordered state of utter despair and hopelessness in which the individual is convinced that things will not get better and so withdraws from life. The intense emotionality, usually in the form of extreme anxiety, that precedes a breakdown into severe depression is replaced by apathy and a psychological deadness to the world.
At the other extreme is the psychotic break. The process of a psychotic break tends to unfold as follows: events of one’s life, be it an acute crisis or more chronic problems that pile up over time, utterly destroy any semblance of a healthy sense of self. When this occurs the individual will enter the panic phase of the process. The disintegrating self and the disorientation this creates bring to the fore emotions of such an intensity that the individual becomes incapable of proper interaction with their environment. Eventually the panic becomes so overwhelming that the psyche re-imposes order through what is called the stage of the psychotic-insight.
To better understand this process we can turn to Silvano Arieti who devoted his life to both treating and studying schizophrenia. In his book Interpretation of Schizophrenia Arieti explains that the psychotic-insight occurs when the panic stricken individual: “...“succeeds in “putting things together.” By devising a pathological way of seeing reality, he is able to explain his abnormal experiences. The phenomenon is called “insight” because the patient finally sees meaning and relations in his experiences, but the insight is psychotic because it is founded on mental processes that occur only in a state of psychosis” Silvano Arieti, Intepretation of Schizophrenia
Or as Arieti further explains:
“The psychotic transformation will enable him to experience himself and the environment in strange, unique ways, often not susceptible to consensual validation.” Silvano Arieti, Intepretation of Schizophrenia
As strange as it may seem the state of psychosis is preferable to the panic phase that preceded it which is why Arieiti defines psychosis as
“an abnormal way of dealing with an [unbearable] situation.” Silvano Arieti, Intepretation of Schizophrenia
If we are most susceptible to a breakdown when stricken by the intense emotions that accompany a way of life under siege, then the first step to ward of a psychological breakdown, is to heed the advice of Henry David Thoreau and “When in doubt, slow down.” If we feel that our emotions are reaching a fever pitch, or spinning us around in circles of dread and despair, we need to somehow interrupt the process before reaching the state of acute panic. The worst way to go about this is to try reason or argue with the emotions, while the best way to deal with this situation is to use some form of activity to relax and to re-centre us. Many people find mindful meditation works well for this purpose, but this is but one of countless activities we can use.
Carl Jung, who endured a personal crisis so intense that he flirted with psychosis would draw and paint mandalas to calm his racing mind. Others may find reprieve in weight-lifting, walking, some form of craft or hobby, or a conversation with a calming friend. What is essential is that we have in our arsenal some activities that we can use to re-centre us when our emotions are knocking us too far off kilter. If we really feel overwhelmed one of the best tactics is what Nietzsche called “Russian fatalism”, which is not to do anything at all but just to let go and relax as completely as possible:
“No longer to accept anything at all, no longer to take anything, no longer to absorb anything—to cease reacting altogether. This fatalism...can preserve life under the most perilous conditions by reducing the metabolism, slowing it down, as a kind of will to hibernate.” Nietzsche, Ecce Homo
Or as William James wrote:
“The transition from tenseness, self-responsibility, and worry, to equanimity, receptivity, and peace, is the most wonderful of all the shiftings of inner equilibrium, those changes of the personal centre of energy, which I have analyzed so often; and the chief wonder of it is that it so often comes about, not by doing, but by simply relaxing and throwing the burden down.” William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience
But there are also steps we can take that will inoculate us from descending into the pits of despair that make us susceptible to a breakdown in the first place, and one such step is to turn off the fear porn. In the midst of a crisis, it is extremely difficult to separate fact from fiction and so allowing our minds to be absorbed and overwhelmed by the catastrophizing of the media will not contribute to our sanity. Furthermore, given the notoriously poor record of the mainstream media and the repeated episodes whereby they have been caught in their own lies and manipulations, it is foolish to place our trust in them anyway, for as the bible puts it:
“Like a dog that returns to his vomit is a fool that repeats his folly.” Book of Proverbs
After turning our eyes away from the fear narratives of the media the next thing we need to do to is to re-establish some semblance of order to our life. For when a crisis severely disrupts our patterns and for an extended period of time, our selfhood is at risk the more passive we become. Instead of filling our days drifting from one mindless distraction to another we should devote our time to more rewarding activities. We can create things, learn things, build things, fix things, we can focus on developing new habits or ridding ourselves of destructive ones, we just need to fill the void engendered by the crisis with activities that give our days some sort of structure, meaning, and feeling of accomplishment. Doing this may be the difference between descending into the disoriented state of a disintegrating self and remaining stable throughout the duration of the crisis.
While there are an endless variety of activities that can be used to re-establish some sort of order to our life, there is one project that may be particularly useful at this time and this project builds on the mantra of many a politician which is never to let a good crisis go to waste. For while a crisis can make us more prone to a psychological breakdown, such times are also ripe for achieving what is called a psychological breakthrough. The breakthrough is the mirror opposite of the breakdown as our sense of self does not lose touch with reality as in psychosis, nor does it descend into utter apathy and despair as in depression, but instead one’s sense of self is re-ordered around values and patterns of life that are more resilient and functionally adaptive. In times of great disorder silver linings can still be found and in the next video we will explore how for the bold few a time of crisis can be turned into a great opportunity:
“What a caterpillar calls the end of the world,” wrote Richard Bach “the master calls a butterfly.” Richard Bach
https://academyofideas.com/2020/03/how-to-fortify-the-mind-in-times-of-crisis/