First Attempt Transforming Anxiety: A Meditation Gateway to Zen Dharma Recovery | Anxiety

First Attempt Transforming Anxiety, Zen Dharma Meditation Recovery Gateway 1 Response »

Apr 142011

First Attempt Transforming Anxiety: The Gateway to Zen Dharma Recovery

Prologue

Much of what is discussed on this page about anxiety and meditation is part of a training being manualized and piloted at UCLA on an NIMH grant by Ed Knight,PhD. Specific meditation instructions are linked from this page and will be indicated as such.

Kierkegaard said that anxiety was his greatest spiritual teacher. I find for me this is true. Anxiety was a dharma gate to zen dharma recovery.

Anxiety mindfully approached can teach the basic truths of the dharma: impermanence; no self or the lack of substance in our experience; craving, grasping or greed; aversion or pushing pain away. And ignorance or belief that the substantiality of our experience will bring security and happiness. All these are on the path of anxiety.

For more the Zen Skillful Means of meditation to achieve anxiety recovery see: Zen Not Knowing Ujaya Breath Meditation Anxiety Recovery Indeed “psychiatric symptoms” which are most frequently numbed are an enlightened path. There is great controversy in the Buddhist and Yoga communities about whether to allow psychiatrically labeled people in their midst. To deny this is to deny the dharma. Either everything is liberating or not. Either we are all capable of mindfulness or not. Either we are all fully human or not.

We are indeed the “untouchables” in America , “the mentally ill”. No person there in that phrase. Just “the”. As Howie the Harp used to say “I have the same middle name as Winnie the Pooh”. He was a street harmonica player and a great early leader of the mental health recovery movement. Founded one of the first mental health client owned 501c3′s.

The path of zen dharma recovery includes not only anxiety but “hearing voices” and other hallucinations, mania, depression and addictions. The use of meditation for anxiety recovery is a key to all mental health recovery. Anxiety in my experience is part of the experience driving all symptoms. See for example Bipolar Mental Health Recovery Patterns Recovery from all of these conditions is not only possible but probable.( see What Is The Actual Schizophrenia Recovery Rate) Life has been good to me. God has given me many knots to untie. He has made me brave enough to pursue mindfulness against all the opposition and oppression and now to teach zen dharma recovery to others in many venues. By Abwoon’s (Father in Aramaic) grace, this wisdom path has brough mental health recovery to many. The following is a talk I frequently give. I wrote it down for the desperate mother of a young lady labeled with Borderline personality disorder. BPD is mostly a labeling of the angry reactions to abuse or some other form of trauma. The mother had seen all medications fail and make her daughter’s condition much worse. I am the steward of the Zen Peacemaker Circle, The Healing Circle and a senior student of Ken Tetsuji Byalin. I also am a mentor with the Prison Dharma Network of a person in a psychiatric unit of a high security prison.

Ed Daigu Knight,PhD,CPRP is currently manualizing his mindfulness meditation-based peer mental health training at UCLA with a team of psychiatrists, led by Alex Young MD, on an NIMH grant and at Nathan Kline Institute also on an NIMH grant, led by psychologist Mary Jane Alexander,PhD. The UCLA project hopefully will be piloted in the fall of 2011 in the Los Angeles area.

Most of Daigu’s web links for Zen Dharma Recovery and meditation are at Zen Dharma Recovery Mental Health Meditation Links

About Anxiety as The Enlightened Path.

I was overwhelmed with anxiety to the point i could not carry on any meaningful activities at times. With this constant anxiety I found mental health recovery impossible. At least it seemed constant.
Anxiety is perhaps a limiting word. It is hard to describe the various kinds of emotional pain i felt. It was at times rage. At times disorientation and at times feelings for which words have not been invented. But they often would lead to panic or angry verbal outbursts. I was on a third floor ward with large trees out the window. I finally thought if i could pay attention to the underlying terrible anxiety i could begin to free myself. The psychologists and social worker had refused all help for various reasons. I had thought often of suicide and begun to act at times but stopped short but this is another story.  I began to reason that if I could pay attention to the intense feelings of which I was terrified I could figure out what they were about and do something.

I knew from testing it out that the anxiety over what i was feeling was almost impossible to pay attention to. It was way too painful.

i needed strength to do this. How to develop this?  A Sufi Murshid or teacher had taught me basic concentration exercises as part of my meditation training. Pay attention to something for 5 minutes that you love with eyes open and then close eyes and draw the object into your mind’s eye and produce an image of it. It is ok if the image shifts, changes is only very vaguely there. It is ok if all you can get is a vague sense of the object. He suggested doing this for 5 minutes a day and then work your way up to 15 minutes eyes open and 15 minutes eyes closed. With this beginning insight mental health recovery and dealing with anxiety seemed more possible. It was a dharma gate to the world of mindfulness although i did not yet know that word.

It seemed possible that meditation especially with anxiety instead of being a problem could be a source of mental health recovery.

Well there were trees out the window. I love trees so i had an object to pay attention to. But 5 minutes? No way. I would start with a minute eyes open and an minute eyes closed. If this were too much i would do less but i would begin and persist. Constant daily effort. I also reasoned that the feelings of anxiety had to be in my body not in some abstract place i called mind. They were mental physical so to speak. I would try to locate the anxiety in my body and thus begin to learn how to recovery my mental health. So this was my beginning understanding of mind body a term Dogen uses often. A unity.

I immediately discovered the feelings of anxiety were slippery.
They shifted as i paid attention. I could not pin them down. They seemed like a cloud as the Buddha said.

So i thought perhaps i could paid attention to a broader area like my whole chest or upper body. That gave me some success. It allowed for the constant shifting or the impermance of the feeling I was calling anxiety. Meditation I found was a skill that required practice and honing to apply to feelings of anxiety.
A psychiatrist who was fired shortly after I came, for being too friendly to us, had mentioned i might flood with uncontrollable emotion just talking about the painful events in my life. So i figured I could flood and flip out if i paid attention. Psychologists call this abreaction and fear that we will get psychotic. Thus the fear of losing control of my mind and body was involved. This is a very basic primitive fear. But living my life with so much pain was worse. So how could i deal with flooding? Meditation needs to be I found carefully applied to mental health dharma recovery. (Seeking the Heart of Wisdom by Joseph /Goldstein later helped me with using Insight meditation in mental health dharma recovery. It helped me to further the process of mastering anxiety and symptoms.)

This book helped transform my life

If I was using concentration to learn about my terrifying feelings of anxiety and panic, i thought i could also use the skill to stop paying attention and pay attention to something else. I was concentrating on the tree eyes open and eyes closed. When i sensed flooding coming on or just too much emotion to handle, i could pay attention to the tree out the window. Or a pattern on the wall or anything. So i began. It took months of work. Slowly learning to concentrate to build my mind muscle. Slowly paying attention to different parts of my anxious body. Beginning to flood. Paying attention to the tree. Slowly i learned the nature of my anxiety and other weird and or painful feelings.

I took steps to deal in my conduct with what came up. This is the ethical dimension of recovery, often overlooked.

Like learning to hold peaceful short conversations about something other than myself and my problems. I figured people would like me better if i could converse about impersonal topics. I learned many other skills. All on my own. The most important thing i learned was the nature of feelings especially anxiety. They are simply impermanent shifting body sensations which we like or don’t like and label pain or pleasure.
They are constantly changing sensations linked with ideas or images mostly from the past or an imagined future. The form or pattern of anxiety producing thoughts is “I think I can’t handle how i will feel if what I think is going to happen, happens.” These thoughts are all imagination which produces anxiety or fear. (Some of these techniques are discussed in Zen Recovery Mental Health Video )
They are sets of conditioned responses to what we perceive to be similar situations to one’s we have been anxious in before. I have learned to let go of ideas and images, to pay attention to my breath or a tree or flower and just let go of thoughts and images.  I learned to ride through painful sensations which are indeed painful but when letting go of thoughts and ideas the sensations themselves are more tolerable. I learned that the label “pain” or “anxiety” was at times bringing on or intensifying the suffering.  Indeed the term “self” is a label. We create it temporarily all through the day with the comparisons we make. “He is in better shape than I” “She has a nicer car”. (Related article Healing Objectifying Self Mediatation Making the self an object is a basic anxiety process. Methods of dealing with anxiety and self as object are discussed in this article. )

I learned that some ideas are sticky. They are hard to let go of. Why? Because i am gaining something from them somehow.

Like fear of losing a job. Part of me wants too. I hate parts of my job. Or my anxiety can gain me sympathy from some people. But it screws up my life to live this way. The gain is not worth the cost. Being mindful of the hidden benefit by itself helped untie the knot of these ideas. Slowly over a long period of time i became comfortable in my body. Now i am mostly ok. I like life and how i feel and if i don’t i can ride it out and learn skills. Finally i learned that when I pay attention to feelings by trying to push them away I give them strength. If I in other words fear fear it gets worse. This is the cyclic nature of feelings first discovered to my knowledge by Abraham Low MD in the 1930’s. ( His basic book Mental Health Through Will Training has an Amazon.com link just below. He called them vicious cycles. Now we call them “strange loops” as in the work of Steven Hayes Acceptance and Committment Therapy.  See Steven Hayes Amazon book link below. Or if I cling to what changes, I get burned by constant disappointment.

 So meditation became a skill that I honed and was one foundation of my mental health recovery. Dealing with anxiety is a principle way I practice zen dharma mental health recover.

This video by Thich Nhat Nanh is wonderful.

A version of this is at Zen Peace Maker Seniors Dharma Talks Check under Ed Knight

Helpful books on recovery from anxiety:

Abraham Low MD, who wrote in the 1930′s, founded the peer run mutual support group Recovery International and was in my opinion the most brilliant and overlooked psychiatrist of the 20th century. He anticipated the entire cognitive behavioral approach. And as a matter of fact did a better job of implementing behavior change methods than cbt. There are free online and phone peer mutual support meetings available at the Recovery International website. RI has excellent research outcomes for ‘serious mental illlnesses’ and is also excellent for dealing with anxiety.

Victor Frankl MD a Nazi concentration camp survivor discussed taking the self as an object as a process in those labeled with schizophrenia.

Victor Frankl wrote Man’s Search for Meaning while in a concentration camp in WW II. It was the way he survived. He wrote it and memorized it as he went putting it on paper only when he was released. Many of my psychiatrically labeled friends as well as my self have found it an important book for recovery.

Steven Hayes, PhD the psychologist who founded contextual therapy and its principle application Acceptance and Committment Therapy is excellent. A.C.T is recognized as an evidence based practice for the treatment of schizophrenia by the Veterans Administration.

Rollo May’s book The Meaning of Anxiety was very important for me when in a hospital. I was taught nothing about anxiety by the hospital staff. Rollo May was very helpful in understand something about anxiety.

Fritz Perls teaches basic self help applications of Gestalt Therapy in this book. Very helpful for anxiety and treating the self as an object.

About A.C.T. for anxiety.

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Support this page: Buy from Amazon.com from this page. We get 3% of the price.

Join the following organizations:

National Coalition for Mental Health Recovery

MindFreedom and INTAR are organizations of survivors, family, friends and friendly professionals. JOIN!!! ACT!!!

MindFreedom International

Take steps to protect your self. Mind Freedom says about Mind Shield “Members of MindFreedom International use mutual support to help protect one another from unwanted coerced psychiatric procedures. Current MindFreedom members may register for the MindFreedom Shield for free.”

Mind Shield

International Network Toward Alternatives and Recovery

Icarus Project members helped my stay out of an emergency room when I had a non-psychiatric emergency. In ER’s labeled people are often mistreated.
The Icarus Project

Will Hall, psychotherapist from Portland Oregon(website WillHall.net):

Harm Reduction Guide to Coming Off Psychiatric Drugs

Anxiety and other diagnoses are NOT hopeless!!!

Read some on Kindle. The best buy to me is the $189 because it includes free 3g and is available in most places like your home if you can’t afford a monthly expense. You also get wifi capability and can access it free at places like McDonald’s. This gives you internet access cheaper than a computer.

The $139 model of Kindle gives you access to internet where wifi is free like McDonald’s and is less than a computer.

Kim Hopper PhD. A research study covering 18 countries. Showing 40% of people with schizophrenia work for pay across these countries and 20% with moderate to severe disability work for pay. Another %20 do meaningful household work as measured by scientific standards. This means that a meaningful contribution was made and would on the open market be paid for. So the total doing work is 60% with schizophrenia. Certainly a different picture than the media labeling and stereotyping.

Ralph and Corrigan reach the same conclusion that the actual recovery rate is 90% using a different method which gives further verification.

On the unnecessary and costly tragedy of “hospitalization”.

Transforming mental health systems to recovery.

Healing Objectifying Self Meditation | self

Healing Objectifying Self Meditation 9 Responses »

Jul 282011

We unwittingly take our “self” to be an object we can manipulate. However, it is not an object.

Taking the self as object is a basic process by which we unwittingly produce stress for ouraelves and thus one of the ways we create our own suffering especially anxiety. Taking ourselves as object is not a skillful means to end suffering. It is based on ignorance of the constantly fleeting notions we have of “self” changing each moment.

Now “I am worse than her because she has a better car.” Now “I am better because I am more fit the he is.” We think we can capture a constantly changing “self entity” we actually construct moment by moment with our comparisons to others and manipulate it to be what we want, our pre-designed notion of ourselves.

This leads to all kinds of fears and anxiety. We are attempting to grasp something that cannot be grasped.

Mental Health Zen Dharma Recovery skillful means will be discussed in a moment. Now let us see a little more about the manipulation process.

For example I am having trouble learning how to post a blog with my computer!!!

Now I could manipulate “myself” to feel better. I could tell my self various things. How smart I am. Or how others can’t do this. Or just “so what”. Or I could figure out how to use this thing called a computer to post this blog.

This manipulation of self is called retroflection in the psychotherapy of Fritz Perls website.

One of his principle books is Gestalt Therapy: Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality

The process consists in “identifying” ourselves by thinking we are this or that image or set of thoughts and clinging to them. Then one manipulates how the body/mind feels to fit the image or set of thoughts.

One can further manipulate by trying to fit what one thinks the image is others want.

This process of taking the self as object is the core of schizophrenia Victor Frankl MD points out. He is author of Man’s Search for meaning. Man’s Search for Meaning book review (Buy the book Man’s Search for Meaning: The Classic Tribute to Hope from the Holocaust. Viktor E. Frankl)
It was written in a Nazi concentration camp. His discussion of taking ourselves as object is in The Doctor and the Soul: From Psychotherapy to Logotherapy.
Schizophrenia which is often called hopeless is not at all. (See for example our blog: What Is The Actual Schizophrenia Recovery Rate)

The process of trying to take ourselves as a object keeps one’s body/mind in a constant state of stress.

One is always straining to be something other than one is at the moment. This strain wears one out.

The process of taking the self as object is also the core of separation and thus is the source of suffering. There is always an image in our head between us and the persons around us. Instead of talking to the pretty woman or handsome man our attention is on an image we think we need to be. Not on the person in front of us.

Mental Health Zen Dharma Recovery Meditation, a skillful means to heal from taking yourself as an object:

What to do? Be one with one’s self . Instead of an object.

How to do that?

Let us do an example, an awareness experiment. Hold your right hand in front of you. Stare at it as if it were an object. How does that feel? Pretty strange for most of us.

Now put your left hand in your right hand and rest them in your lap. Feel the right hand as part of you. This is the feeling of “being one with”.

When you meditate on the breath, let your awareness meld with the breath. If one counts the breath, “one” on the in breath, “two” on the out breath, “three” on the in breath, “four” on the out breath and so on up to 10, one merges with the inner sound of “one” “two” and so on. This comes with practice. The thoughts of the next number fade away the more one practices. One is the sound of the number. Once learned this begins to pervade one’s experience and one joins with what one is experiencing like the right hand merged with the left.

One lets go of thoughts and images as they arise and no longer “identifies” the “self” with images or thoughts. One’s mind settles down, peacefully abides.

Another way of describing the basic skill for letting go of ourselves as an object is simply letting go of thoughts and images. This is done with Zen Mindfulness and Ujjayi breath if one has difficulty letting go of mental stuff.

Here are some links on that:

Zen Not-Knowing Ujjayi Breath Meditation Anxiety Recovery

Zen Dharma Schizophrenia Mental Health Recovery Hearing Voices Coping

Healing from treating one’s self as an object is important in bipolar recovery. Bipolar Mental Health Recovery Patterns
See for more skillful means Ed’s Zen Dharma Recovery Mental Health Meditation Links

As a student of Bernie Glassman for a short time I was able to deepen giving up making an object of my self. Infinite Circle is a classic commentary on basic Zen texts. Very difficult to comprehend. Instructions to the Cook and Bearing Witness are basic instruction and easy to understand. Bernie is a clear writer. Very helpful in getting into the Zen life style.

We is no longer an object.

I maintain this page at considerable cost to myself as a promise to God to give away all i know about mental health recovery. I firmly believe recovery should be free. If you want to support this work please buy from Amazon through this page. I get about 3% of the sales. it is small but helps considerably with my costs.

One might ask what is the self?

Suicide Thoughts Coping Style | suicide

Suicidal Thoughts Coping Style No Responses »

Apr 022011

Mental health services systems are usually seen as the principle way people cope with thoughts of suicide. In the article linked below we clearly see most of the time suicide coping is not.

Other peer friendly ways are used to cope. It has been Ed Knight’s opinion that the way people are treated by such services systems leads to increased suicide in the long run and not recovery. The large number of attempts or completions within 6 months of hospital “treatment” is a clear indication that this is the correct understanding. The extremely low effectiveness of anti depressants (only 2.7% better than a placebo) which are almost the only treatment and the indications that for many such drugs increase suicidal ideas is a risky way to “treat”> The way people are treated in such systems retraumatizes and leads to avoiding such systems. Research data to back this up is found in the linked research article.

This is not a easy subject to get researched. Professionals including researchers resist seeing what is going on in suicide coping.

Suicide and coping is an issue with many people diagnosed and undiagnosed. It is the considered opinion of co-researcher Ed Knight that there is widespread avoidance of mental systems when people are thinking of suicide due to widespread negative word of mouth advertising about the often cruel ways people are treated in such systems.

Follow up research shows psychiatrically labeled people avoid services due to (1) being treated with force, (2) being stereotyped by professionals and subsequently treated with less respect (3) over reaction by professionals.

Labeled people cannot openly talk to professionals due to this. Talking about suicide is the principle treatment that actually works. Professional reactions at this point seem to close down this healthy talking. People talking about suicide are less likely to do it than people not talking about suicide.
This is the first in a group of three articles. Hopefully the other two suicide coping articles will be submitted this year.

On general coping see Zen Dharma Recovery Mental Health Meditation Links

We are working on a piece based on the linked research article specifically on coping with suidical thoughts. See also Suicide Anonymous
In suicidal thoughts we can find a temporary mood changer. Seem strange? Think about it. With such thoughts we imagine we are no longer in the situation we are in which is causing us such pain. That temporary relief can be addictive. Hence a 12 step approach may be helpful.

See research Coping with thoughts of suicide: techniques used by consumers of mental health services

Zen Not-Knowing Ujjayi Breath Meditation Anxiety Recovery | Anxiety Recovery

Zen Not-Knowing Ujjayi Breath Meditation Anxiety Recovery 5 Responses »

Apr 102011

Anxiety Recovery

Anxiety is a feeling that is hard to stand. Knowing something about it helps deal with it, helps us recover. Anxiety recovery is very possible. But we don’t think so.

Thinking anxiety recovery impossible we don’t try and it then is impossible to recover.

I was driven by anxiety itself to seek a solution, to seek anxiety
recovery since my life was controled by it. Medications were only somewhat effective and have side effects I did not want. Bensodiazapines are addictive and only are effective for a short time. The anti depressants cause weight gain. And they can cause sexual side effects making it difficult to have a romantic relationship … and so on.

Seraquel and other drugs like can kill you from metabolic syndrome. Metabolic syndrome is obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, and high colesterol.

. And all these drugs can interfer with the ability to pay attention and cause fatigue. They for anxiety supression and certainly were not anxiety recovery.
So i sought a more healthy way. Being a trained research scientist (a sociologist), I knew how to find out what i needed to know to begin anxiety recovery. And being at the time a Sufi initiate (and since then an Vipassana and Zen meditation student) I also knew a few skillful means
to support me in finding anxiety recovery. For the account of how I learned anxiety recovery and a fuller discussion of it see First Attempt Transforming Anxiety, Zen Dharma Recovery Gateway A little of what I discovered to live my life in recovery from anxiety follows.

Anxiety comes and goes but seems constant. We give it more constancy than it has by focusing on it trying to push it away. Negative attention called in Zen aversion is attention nevertheless. Aversion stops anxiety recovery. And aversion is like pushing on a cloud of steam. It doesn’t work.

We fear that anxiety will grow worse. This prevents anxiety recovery. This fear of fear is a self fulfilling prophecy and hence anxiety does grow worse. Fear of fear creates more fear of course, spirals out of control. At this point anxiety recovery just does not seem likely to us. And therefore is not.

It builds to panic. Or lingers as general anxiety about seemingly everything (generalized anxiety disorder). It may be very specific, about open spaces (agora-open space, phobia-fear), about people (social anxiety), or a phobia (fear) about anything that for us has been associated with trauma.
It may last after the fear of trauma even though the traumatic event is over
(post traumatic stress disorder). We may feel better if we develop rituals to calm ourselves from fear creating ideas we can’t get our mind off of(obsessive).
The rituals are often addictive and the calm lasts only a short time. The rituals may interfer with our lives, become compulsive (obsessive compulsive). Anxiety recovery is possible from all forms of anxiety.

The ideas that accompany my anxiety usually seem to make it impossible to deal
with it. “It will get worse.” “I can’t stand it.” (perhaps the most dangerous
thought for me. “It will last forever.” “I must end it.” “I can’t… (fill in
what ever).”

For me the general structure of anxious thoughts is “If that (I think) happens, ( I think) I will not be able to stand it, and (i think) I will not be able to deal with it and it will ( i think) cause ( what ever catastophy we cling to).” Letting go of these thoughts as they arise supports anxiety recovery.

The body sensations that we label anxiety are just that, body sensations. In a
famous experiment, the Two Factor Theory of Emotion, body sensations were only felt as emotion as a result of our mental labelling of them.

To quote Wikipedia, “The two-factor theory of emotion, or Schachter-Singer theory,is a theory of emotion suggesting that human emotion has two components (factors): physiological arousal and cognition (a conscious understanding of that arousal). According to the theory,”cognitions are used to interpret the meaning of physiological reactions to outside events.”

So body sensations plus images and thoughts are producing anxiety. And can cause it to spiral out of control. Not exactly anxiety recovery.

Letting the images and thoughts move by like clouds in the sky is what anxiety recovery is about. How to do that? In a moment we shall see that.

There is a physiological limit my psychiatrist informed me to adrenaline responses like anxiety. Adrenaline is released to receptors. Once the adrenaline
receptors are full they can receive no more.Knowing this assists anxiety recovery. Once we are at the peak of anxous feelings, there is no physiological increase. But we think there is. So we continue to think we can’t stand this. It will only get worse. and so on.
How do we step out of this spiral? By letting go of mental boxes, ideas, images, concepts. By letting of the “cognition ( a conscious understanding of that arousal)”, the set of ideas and images. AND by learning to ride through the sensations. This is the essence of anxiety recovery. The riding though will be discussed in detail in another post in the near future. Once however the we learn to let go of the ideas the riding through is not that difficult. In Zen dharma teachings, the practice of letting go of ideas, images, concepts, mental boxes is zazen or the art of thinking non-thinking. Roshi Bernie Glassman (Bernie’s Homepage) calls this not-knowing. Not knowing is the heart of anxiety recovery.

Zen Not-Knowing.

Not knowing is letting go. It must be practiced. In beginning Zen, one pays attention to sensations of the breath. At the tip of the nose, in the throat, in the lower abdomen. Where ever one choses. The practice is in the Theravada lineage called Vipassana or Mindfulness Meditation. For mindfulness meditation see: Joseph Goldstein. Seeking the Heart of Wisdom: The Path of Insight Meditation (Shambhala Classics) Jon Kabot-Zinn. Mindfulness for Beginners

These books assist with learning letting go for anxiety recovery.

It is simple. Pay attention on the sensations of breathing. And count the in and out breaths. One in, two out, three in, four out… Do this up to ten. Then begin at one again. I have many times found myself at 40 or 50. Or off thinking of something else entirely. Ok. Don’t punish yourself. This is a work out. It is mind exercise. The more you exercise the stronger your attention gets. Let go when you notice a thought or image and return to the breath. Again and again and again. The physiological and health benefits are many. AND THEY DO NOT DEPEND ON THOUGHT STOPPING. No one completely stops thinking forever. But we can let go of each thought or group of thoughts as we notice we are thinking them.
This is the practice of not-knowing. Or of “thinking non-thinking.” It is very powerful. It brings anxiety recovery.

Books by Bernie Roshi: Infinite Circle: Teachings in Zen

Instructions to the Cook: A Zen Master’s Lessons in Living a Life That Matters

Ujjayi Breath.

I will describe the bare bones of ujaya breath here and why it is effective for anxiety recovery. We will give a fuller account in another post. The technique is similar to Kazuki Sekida’s bamboo breathing. See his book: Zen Training: Methods and Philosophy (Shambhala Classics)
There is recent research on this form of breath. Here is a link to a report on the research. I have been doing and teaching this for years. Panic Treatment Targets Breathing Symptoms
It is simple and should be for free!!! So here it is. NOTICE if you read the article it didn’t say a word of how to. You don’t have to pay a fortune to someone to teach you this. Anxiety recovery should be free.

Just very slightly close your throat muscles and breath without effort otherwise. A simple way to do this is to silently say “hum” or “ha” to yourself as you breath in an otherwise unrestricted way. In yoga full ujjayi breath is much more controled. Silently say “hum” or “ha” instead of counting. Or count silently with the throat slightly constricted or slightly closed. See a dharma talk on letting go of thought boxesf that is useful for anxiety recovery. Zen Dharma Recovery Mental Health Video And hear some more methods of silent body oriented meditation. Mental Health Zen Dharma Recovery Guided Meditations Audio. Staying in contact with the body helps anxiety recovery.

This method of anxiety recovery can be used with to cope with any “symptom” driven by anxiety. Most are. On use with Bipolar diagnoses see Bipolar Mental Health Recovery Patterns

This closing of the throat muscles cuts way down on thinking. Why? Well thinking is subvocalization. We very very slightly move our throat muscles when we think. And this type of breathing interfers with subvocalization. Hum a melody and see how much you think. Ujjayi breathing does the same thing. Or counting the breaths with a slight pressure on the throat muscles. And as I learned from a mountain climber, a slightly closed throat balances the blood oxygen and carbon dioxide. This stops the development of hyperventalization. This accomplishes anxiety recovery.

An excellent video by Jon Kabot-Zinn on Peaceful Abiding or Mindfulness Meditation is found at Mindfulness Meditation. As a regular practice this aides in anxiety recovery. Ujjayi breath needs to be practices but a regular mindfulness practice with a completely natural breath in addition is very useful for anxiety recovery.

Bipolar Mental Health Recovery Patterns

Bipolar Mental Health Recovery Patterns 13 Responses »

Mar 272011

Awareness that mania patterns originate in feedback loops is the beginning of bipolar mental health recovery. Mental and emotional symptoms are driven by strange loops ( Steven Hayes PhD) or vicious cycles (Abraham Low, MD). The most common strange loop is fear of fear which triggers panic.

Extreme states of mania, depression, anxiety, and voices, delusions, thought disorders and lack of motivation are all thought patterns. Bipolar mental health recovery depends like other recoveries on awareness of thought patterns. Zen Dharma Recovery facilitates this.

Each kind of extreme state has its own patterns of talk in working one’s self up. Until one is aware of these patterns one is driven by them.

When one awakens one’s own patterns then a greater degree of control is possible.

Then bipolar mental health recovery seems like an achievable goal.

There are six patterns of mania which i have found in working toward bipolar mental health recovery. Fuller discussions of each on separate blog posts will follow in the next few weeks.

The five forms of mania are (1) fear or anxiety mania, (2) anger mania , (3) creative mania, (4) rescuer mania, and (5) reaction formation mania, (6) excitement grasping mania.

These are NOT meant as diagnostic categories. Rather they are patterns one becomes aware of using mindfulness for bipolar mental health recovery.

The mania patterns are not unreal or “delusional” in the psychiatric use of that term. As a matter of fact the reality base is what drives the urgency of the pattern. Unattended these patterns become delusional. Early awareness is crucial to recovery.

Manic feedback loops or spirals are ways of working one’s self up. Increasingly intense thoughts driving mania are “I must get this done NOW. If i don’t what will happen will be terrible. Intolerable.” Practicing mindfulness brings awareness to these patterns of thought and allows bipolar mental health recovery.Zen Dharma Recovery Mental Health Links

Fear mania or Anxiety Mania is mania induced by fear. Waking up to the fearful situation triggering mania is a first step to bipolar mental health recovery.

The spiraling thought pattern driving conduct is “I must get this solved right now. I can’t stand the fear i feel. If I don’t solve what is causing this terrible anxiety i won’t be able to stand it” One moves from the early warning sign of fear to hypomania, then to mania trying to resolve the fear.

Anger mania is mania induced by anger.

Waking up to the anger situation triggering mania is another step to bipolar mental health recovery. The spiraling thought pattern driving conduct is “I must stop this person right now. This person is in my space. This is unjust. If I don’t stand up for my rights it will only get worse to the point that i can’t take it. I must act immediately and continue till they KNOW i will NOT tolerate them being in my space.” One moves from the early warning sign of anger to hypomania, then to mania trying to end the injustice large or small.

Creative mania is mania induced by clutching tightly one’s creative visions.

The urgency to “get it all down” or “get it all painted” when the “Muses speak” triggers creative mania. One must face this fear to resolve this kind of mania. As we shall see in later posts this fear does not materialize. Mindfulness of this pattern is another step to bipolar mental health recovery. The spiraling thought pattern driving conduct is “I must get this down right now. If I don’t it will never come again. I will lose it for ever. I don’t care if it is 1am. I can do without sleep.” One moves from the early warning sign of clutching at creativity to hypomania, then to mania trying to get it all expressed.

Rescuer mania is induced by grasping on to the need to rescue those around you or the world.

The urgency to rescue someone in dire condition and believing you are the only one who can drives this mania. And action must be immediate. These thought patterns trigger rescuer mania. Waking up to this pattern is vital to bipolar mental health recovery. The thought pattern is “I am the only one who can help. This must be done right now or things will bet worse. If I don’t act right now, it will be awful.” One again moves from urgent feelings to rescue to hypomania to mania working one’s self up.

Last week i was teaching a peer specialist class. Eleven people. Six women. All of them identified with this pattern. Five had a bipolar diagnosis. And five said the rescuer mania fit them. These patterns are all interrelated and we often have more than one. Usually one is dominant. In these women the rescuer mania was a dominant pattern. Recognizing the dominant pattern is important to bipolar mental health recovery.

Reaction formation mania is the key to all of them.

Reaction formation is a psychological concept not a self help concept. I seldom rely on psychological concepts but in this case i make an exception. Using such terms can lead to symptom talk and fear of getting “symptomatic”. The fear then as Abraham Low MD pointed out drives increasing symptoms and the increased symptoms drives more fear until one relapses. So careful how you use such terms. Bipolar mental health recovery depends on NOT seeing one’s symptoms as written in stone, as unchangeable. The Zen Dharma Recovery principle of impermanence is supports this crucial insight.

The basic use of reaction formation is in anxiety. One feels anxious and controls those in one’s vicinity. In mania the easiest case is getting very tired from overwork. Adrenalin kicks in and i tune into it. I disconnect my awareness from my tired body and tune into the charge of energy. Almost everyone experiences this.

Telling one’s body to move slowly, to speak slowly and to reconnect to the pain of one’s tired body is the remedy. One “crashes” to use the phrase in common use. This is a pattern similar to bipolar movement from depression to mania. Awareness of this pattern when it just begins is the crux of bipolar mental health recovery.

The diagnosis of bipolar is to move from depression to mania and crash going back to depression. Then starting again. I would hypothesize that the mania is a reaction formation to depression.

One’s body reacts to being depressed with an adrenalin burst. As in the case of being over tired, when this happens one tunes in to the relief of the adrenalin burst and grabs on to it. This shuts out all the pain of depression. Then we disconnect from awareness of our depressed body and spiral out of depression. If this were the end, it would be fine. But it is not. Our self talk keeps us worked up. We fear crashing. We think something like “Thank God for the energy. I must keep it up at any cost.” Other patterns kick in. And we move from a burst of energy to hypomania to full blown mania.

The sixth form of mania is mania just for the excitement. This is the most addictive form of mania. Usually one learns to deal with this pattern only through consequences, often fairly severe consequences. Here I would suggest 12 step work ( I will post soon on the 12 steps and mental diagnoses.) Or if one prefers Smart Recovery which is a cognitive behavioral in orientation. Smart Recovery is publicized for chemical addictions but is recommended for any behavior pattern one finds problematic. The skills we mention below are useful for all manias but the issue of “will” comes into play in this mania. Thus I recommend the above modalities. In the blog on excitement mania we will mention much more about this pattern.

Skillful means to deal with this are as follows:
(1) Waking up to the pattern of thoughts or mental boxes in each of the types of mania. Zen Dharma Recovery Mental Health Video
(2) Using skillful means to let go of the thoughts for example ujaya breath. Zen Not Knowing Ujaya Breath Meditation Anxiety Recovery>
(3) Connecting to one’s body. Not taking one’s body as an object. Healing Objectifying Self Meditation>
(4) Realizing that, as Recovery International> folks know, one can tell one’s body what to do. One does not have to give in to impulses. One can tell one’s body to move slowly, to talk slowly.
(5) When one’s body is hyper one can move to a quiet less stimulating place.

In the next few weeks we shall post on each of the six forms of mania and apply skillful means. Bipolar mental health recovery is for everyone.

Mania blogs:

Bipolar Mental Health Recovery Anxiety Mania

Bipolar Mental Health Recovery Patterns by Edward L Knight, PhD, CPRP is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Steven Hayes book recommendations: Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life: The New Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
Learning Act: An Acceptance & Commitment Therapy Skills-Training Manual for Therapists (Context / Nhp Context / Nhp)

Abraham Low, MD book recommendations: Mentral Health Through Will-Training

Do not forget that bipolar mental health recovery is possible for everyone.

Bipolar Mental Health Recovery Anxiety Mania

Bipolar Mental Health Recovery Anxiety Mania 5 Responses »

Mar 282011

This post is about anxiety mania and we discuss how to cope with bipolar.

This is the second post about Bipolar Mental Health Recovery where we discussed the six forms of mania.

Anxiety mania is mania induced by fear. Waking up to the thoughts in the fearful situation and the emotions of fear triggering mania we begin to learning how to cope with bipolar and achieving bipolar mental health recovery. How do we wake up to this pattern?

Awakening to the patterns of our conditioning and letting them go is Zen Dharma Recovery

It generally begins for anxiety mania with awareness of the thoughts, “I cannot handle what I am feeling and what I might feel if what I fear happens.” Before recognizing these kinds of thoughts how to cope with bipolar remained a mystery for me.

One needs to be specific about the social context in which we tend to get manic from fear, very specific.

(1) Waking up to the pattern of thoughts or mental boxes in fear mania is the first step to learning how to cope with bipolar.

First notice the spiraling thought pattern driving manic conduct. It generally is of the form. “I must get this solved right now. I can’t stand the fear i feel. I won’t be able to stand the fear I am going to feel if such and such happens. I won’t be able to stand it if I don’t solve what is causing this terrible anxiety.” One moves from the early warning sign of fear to moving faster into hypomania, then to full blown anxiety mania trying to solve the causes of fear. With insight about the mental boxes driving fear mania one begins to know how to cope with bipolar.

The mental box “I can’t handle the anxiety?” triggers fear. Working one’s self up to deal with the anxiety gets one moving fast. Moving fast is sensed as threatening often from past mania experience. That produces more fear which in turn triggers moving even faster. This is a basic mental/emotional feedback loop. When we begin to see this we begin to know how to cope with bipolar. We sense now the possibility of bipolar mental health recovery.

Notice again the pattern of one’s speech or thought. We begin “working ourselves self up.” We talk to ourselves about the urgency to get this done, to end the fear. Instead of ending the fear we drive anxiety mania. I repeat for emphasis.

We often experience this kind of fear as work related. One has deadlines to meet to keep a job or to get a raise. This happens also in relationships. We work hard to please. We worry we will not please. Or any other self imposed goal that we are highly motivated to achieve can be a fear generating situation. Begin to mindfully notice these kinds of situations and you will be on your way. This is part of how to cope with bipolar.

Worry strikes. About job. About relationship. “What if i don’t get this done?” We begin to work ourselves up. The fear talk or thought begins. Notice your own pattern of thoughts during this phase. Recall if you can how you have engaged in worry talk when first struck by job or relationship worry.

When we first become mindful we first notice AFTER something arises. As we practice we notice DURING the arising. And as we practice more we become aware BEFORE the arising. We become aware of what psychologists call “prodromal symptoms”. At this point what Abraham Low MD calls “symptom idiom” can begin to drive worry and worry drive symptom. This is another feedback loop. Low points out this can lead to a “relapse”. Fear talk and symptom talk can form a feedback loop as each drives the other. Fear drives symptom and symptom drives more fear. Once we begin to concretely grasp our feedback loops we are well on our way in knowing how to cope with bipolar.

There is a basic loop in most extreme mind body states. It operates in any form of mania.

Instead of panic we speed up to deal with the fear. We intentionally speed up to get things done. We are driven by worry. We think we can do nothing except do more and more and more. If we unskillfully try to slow down we run smack into the fear we are trying to escape.

The next phase is usually tiring out and adrenalin kicking in. Then reaction formation mania is operating. See discussion Bipolar Mental Health Recovery Patterns

(2) The next step in learning how to cope with bipolar is “not knowing”. By this i do not mean ignorance. I mean letting go of mental boxes, of thoughts driving mania. Using skillful means to let go of the thoughts or mental boxes in mania is very important.
This is the crux of how to cope with bipolar. Learning how to let go of the fear feedback loop is the key to bipolar mental health recovery. How are we working our selves up with fear talk? What are the mental boxes.

Ujaya breath does something very powerful. Here is the technique.

Just very slightly close your throat muscles and breath without effort otherwise. A simple way to do this is to silently say “hum” to yourself as you breath in and as you breath out. Sometimes with kids I call this Darth Vadar breath. But don’t close the throat that much or it will make you horse fast/ Just slightly close your throat. This is sometimes called “audible breathing”. But we are not roaring load. With our mouth closed we can “think” the sound hum. Or we just so very slightly close the throat and we will hear an internal breath sound. This is the basic know how to cope with bipolar.

Now we can begin to notice the power of ujaya breath. Thought is “subvocalization”. When we think thoughts we are ever so slightly moving our throat muscles. Thought is actually conduct or behavior. It is an activity of the body. Ujaya breathing interferes with subvocalization. So our thought activity slows down. We are beginning to let go of mental boxes. At this point we know how to cope with bipolar. We begin to gain mastery over bipolar mental health recovery. This is sometimes in Zen called “not-knowing” this process of letting go of thoughts. And at times it is called “thinking non-thinking”. This is how to cope with bipolar. It is to think non-thinking.

To let go of these fear and mania feedback loops of mental boxes one needs to connect to one’s body. Not take one’s body as an object. We generally experience mania, anxiety, depression as if we did not have a body, as if mania, fear, depression is only a mind thing. This disconnect from the body is clear in tiredness induced mania. Ujaya breath grounds one in one’s body. This is the key to slowing down. At this point we can tell our body to move slowly. We can tell our mouth muscles to talk slowly.

Another way to get into your body is to pay attention to your feet. Actually the Zen Master Kaizen said for speeding thoughts pay attention to the feet. The combination of ujaya breathing and focusing on the feet will get one into one’s body.

Taking one’s body as a object is basic disconnection. as James Joyce said “Mr. Duffy lived a short distance from his body.”

With ujaya breath be in your body and let go of thoughts. Let thoughts go by like clouds in the sky. Let thoughts be and they will let you be.

Realize what Recovery International folks know, one can tell one’s body what to do. One does not have to give in to impulses. One can tell one’s body to move slowly, to talk slowly. nofollow
To heighten this slowing down one can move to a quiet less stimulating place when one’s body is hyper.

Put it all together. Walk slowly in a quiet place paying attention to one’s feet. Breath with one’s throat slightly closed. Be in your body slowly. This is how to deal with bipolar.

Being connected to one’s body is very important in coping with mania to achieve bipolar mental health recovery.

This is the opposite of numbing one’s self out. This is the opposite of dumbing down. This is waking one’s self up about how to cope with bipolar.

Bipolar Mental Health Recovery Anxiety Mania by Edward L Knight, PhD, CPRP is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Bipolar Mental Health Recovery Bipolar Anger Mania

Bipolar Mental Health Recovery Bipolar Anger Mania 2 Responses »

Apr 052011

Bipolar anger mania is mania triggered by anger. This is often diagnosed as type II bipolar. Coping with bipolar type 2 takes effort but is not impossible. In the typology here, It is the third of the six types of mania outlined in the first post on bipolar recovery. Bipolar Mental Health Recovery Patterns
My first understanding of mania was of bipolar anger mania.
For medical reasons I began to work with my psychiatrist to lower my mood stabilizer dosage. He is a meditator and has encourage my Zen practice and development of Zen Dharma Recovery Mental Health Meditation Links. In this case bipolar recovery.

I found in this journey that it is unfortunate the issue of anger is medicalized. It leads to the emotional de-skilling of our culture. Hence the bit of irony in my use of the term “bipolar anger mania.” One could as well simply say anger which becomes ANGER, which becomes AAANNGGGERRRR, which becomes anger out of control. How does this pattern develop? For me the motive is to keep from being subject to force. But more importantly to keep from making hurtful remarks to those I love as much as I can.

Mindfulness of when bipolar anger mania arises is the crucial skill to which I turned. See Zen Dharma Recovery Mental Health Video
Reflect : when does your mania arise?

Becoming mindful of these situations is your key to bipolar recovery.

I first became aware of hypomania arising when I was angry. The principle source of anger was the media, TV and news sources like papers, the internet…

Andrew Weil MD suggested in his writing “Take a vacation from the media.” I did. In a day my hypomania started to go down. After a week my life was much more peaceful. There was a much less speedy mind and body. I began to not be frightened by my tendency to bipolar anger mania. Bipolar recovery seemed possible.

This motivated me to practice more and I began to be aware of other bipolar anger mania generators.

These are the typical patterns of anger I found generating mania.

When I think my space is invaded.

The pattern of though boxes is “He is in my space. If I let this go on it will get worse and I won’t be able to stand it.”
I begin speaking irritably. When we speak in this way, the other person (as Bill W points out AA Big Book Free Download page 63) will “retaliate” or react. That makes me more irritable and feeds my anger thought which in turn sets off moving and talking faster to force my point. This may occur over a period of time. After a day or two, I may have trouble sleeping. My fatigued tired body reacts with an adrenalin surge and i latch on to it. I over ride what my body feels and get hyopmanic. (This is reaction formation mania and will be discussed in another blog). If the pattern continues and is added to with other angry situations I will move to full bipolar anger mania.

One needs to remember that “my space” is a concept. It varies with time, place, persons involved with us. At different times we feel “my space” to have quite different boundaries.

Essentially “my space” is a menial box which when rigidly clung to and enforced leads to anger which for some of us spirals out of control due to working ourselves up. We move toward bipolar anger mania. We can let go however. We can practice thinking non-thinking.

Another pattern of mental boxes similar to someone “getting in my space” is “I can’t let them get away with saying that”.

This can also develop into a feedback loop. In this pattern we hold tightly to what may or may not be said around us. We cling to ideas with which we identify. Again this may develop into a social feedback loop. We hear. We interpret as offensive. We speak with anger. The other person reacts. We interpret as even more offensive to us. We speak strongly with anger. We begin to speed up. We move toward bipolar anger mania.

Any rigidly held idea or belief over which we are easily offended can lead to an internal and social feedback loop leading to bipolar anger mania. The most rigidly held ideas I have are expectations. Expectations are pre-meditated resentments. I hold rigidly to the idea that others should be different than I am. I am tolerant of myself with the faults I get enraged about in others. As we say, “If you spot it you got it.” A gentleman I know says that he cannot pray just any prayer for that he hates. His special prayer on the occasions he must deal with people he hates is “Just Like Me”. Bipolar anger mania, or anger, ANGER, AAAANGGGERRR and then anger out of control, is diffused by him with this “special” “prayer.”

Applying Zen Mental Health Recovery to bipolar anger mania.

Mindfulness of the patterns of mental boxes and spirals of working myself up are needed for to cope with bipolar anger mania and achieve bipolar recovery.

Letting go is the next step once we are aware of our mental boxes leading to bipolar anger mania.

The steps are to coping with or transforming bipolar anger mania with Zen Mental Health Recovery are:

1) Mindfulness of our mental boxes. Seeing how we work ourselves up. Click here to begin to learn patterns of bipolar mania. See Zen Dharma Recovery Mental Health Video for general instructions on Zen and mental boxes See Jon Kabat Zinn teaching Mindfulness at Google offices.

Click here for enough free Buddhist Dharma Talks to last a lifetime.

2) Realizing one can let go of mental boxes as they arise and not be trapped by them.Click here for instructions on using Ujaya Breath to let go of mental boxes for mania. The instructions are at toward the end of the blog post. The blog is entitled Bipolar Mental Health Recovery Anxiety Mania.

4) Being in one’s body to keep from disconnecting from the present which will increase the mania in my experience see discussions in
Healing Ojectifying Self Meditation and again at end of Bipolar Mental Health Recovery Anxiety Mania you will find instructions on being in one’s body.

5) Dealing with changing relationships (not necessarily by leaving them) and how we deal with the social contexts we are in which generate anger.

In this process it is necessary to avoid what Abaham Low MD calls “symptom idiom” or symptom talk. Symptom talk when one sees one’s symptomns as unchangeable can lead to a feedback loop or vicious cycle of fear, symptom talk generating more fear leading to more symptom talk until one has a crisis.Mentral Health Through Will-Training
These kinds of patterns are also called strange loops in the contextual psychology of Steven Hayes Mindfulness and Acceptance: Expanding the Cognitive-Behavioral Tradition
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Bipolar Mental Health Recovery is very possible. Bipolar anger mania is NOT written in stone. It is changeable. Bipolar anger mania can be let go of.

Zen Dharma Schizophrenia Mental Health Recovery, Hearing Voices Coping

Hearing Voices Coping, Zen Dharma Schizophrenia Mental Health Recovery Hearing Voices Coping 5 Responses »

Jul 302011

Zen Dharma Schizophrenia Mental Health Recovery, Hearing Voices Coping

Hearing voices is a common phenomenon.

Aaron Beck MD cites research that 5% of the population hears voices but it only interfers with the daily lives of 1% hearing them.

It is thus inadvisable to suggest that “hearing voices” alone is a symptom of an “illness.”

Schizophrenia mental health recovery depends on coping or transforming this phenomenon only if it is interfering with daily life.

For those of us who have been or are bothered by “hearing voices” enough to interfere with daily life there are many ways to deal with them. In a series of blogs we will discuss several. Here we shall discuss a basic technique for schizophrenia mental health recovery. Later more.

“Voices” “heard” are thoughts.

As a Zen Buddhist once said to me, “Whether they are your thoughts or someone else’s thoughts, they are just thoughts.” Realizing this helps one maintain balance in the face of our own mind. Such balance is the basis of schizophrenia mental health recovery.

Another Zen saying,”Just because a voice is disembodied does NOT mean it is wise.” Treating “voices” like any other set of thoughts may be difficult but will help schizophrenia mental health recovery.

Something which may assist perceiving “voices” as just thoughts if you are bothered by them is a point made by Aaron Beck MD. Aaron Beck points out that “hot thoughts” transform into “voices”. “Hot thoughts” in “cognitive behavioral therapy” are emotionally loaded thoughts. When emotionally loaded thoughts present themselves forcefully and appear “real”. Realizing this again helps me gain balance and experience “voices” as just thoughts and assists with schizophrenia mental health recovery.

“Voices” are generally NOT commands, often called command hallucinations. This notion of commands is a very misleading stereotype on the media. The media is also very misleading about schizophrenia mental health recovery. On this see, What Is Actual Schizophrenia Recovery Rate Even when on the rare occasions that “voices” command something most of the time the commands are not followed by those hearing them. Chadwick and Berchwood point out “Without fail, voices believed to be malevolent provoked fear and were resisted…” The Omnipotence of Voices I: A Cognitive Approach to Auditory Hallucinations So schizophrenia mental health recovery is not hindered by a phenomenon which is unchangeable. Voices can be successfully coped with. They are not somehow immutable and written in our genes or brains.

The impression that command hallucinations are common comes principly from an overgeneralization of research by Lee who worked with a very small sample (53) skewed to this phenomenon. The work of Marius Romme,PhD cited by Beck shows that voices are rather common and coped with well by many.

Romme is a key researcher on schizophrenia mental health recovery in Europe and his contribution on the phenomenon of “voices” is key.

Romme says “The form and the content of chronic auditory hallucinations … compared in three cohorts, namely patients with schizophrenia, patients with a dissociative disorder, and nonpatient voice-hearers was not significantly different between the three groups. The subjects in the nonpatient group, unlike those in the patient groups, perceived their voices as predominantly positive: they were not alarmed or upset by their voices and felt in control of the experience. In most patients, the onset of auditory hallucinations was preceded by either a traumatic event or an event that activated the memory of earlier trauma.” In other blogs we shall deal further with this material. Romme found a rich range of “voices” not just command hallucinations. Auditory Hallucinations: A comparison of patients and non-patients. Romme’s work is cited as well as many other research papers on “voices” at Intervoiceonline.org see also for peer mutual support Beck and the data he presents help as he says normalize the hearing of ‘voices’ which Beck sees as a key element in schizophrenia mental health recovery.

“Hot thoughts” are at times so laden with emotion that they are heard as a voice outside one’s self, as if “out loud.” Often this seems to happen against background noise and one’s hot thoughts seem to be “read into” this background noise. These things can be learned and do not have to dominate a persons mind. They can recede into the background and schizophrenia mental health recovery happens, happens quite often.

Usually the “hearing of voices” is within one’s mind. “Mind reading” is an example of “voices” within one’s mind. One thinks one can “hear” someone elses thoughts. This is called thought insertion. Or one can think someone else is reading one’s thoughts. This can be terrifying as we think many things we would not like others to know.

Schizophrenia mental health recovery is aided by understanding thoughts as “hot thoughts” expecially in instances like this.

It might be pointed out that there are very famous people who “talk to spirits” or make a living hearing “voices”. People like Sylvia Brown, or James Van Praagh. Millions of people are entertained by this. There are books in stores like Barnes and Nobles and Borders teaching thousands upon thousands of people to channel.

But somehow people limit their perceptions when it comes to those labeled even though research consistently shows those labeled with schizophrenia no more dangerous than anyone else. In the presence of alcohol people with schizophrenia are dangerous but LESS so than someone without a psychiatric label. I will post on this in another blog. This kind of selective perception promoted so by the media is a major block to schizophrenia mental health recovery.

This block is due to the internalization of these kinds of destructive stereotypes as well as the blatant descrimination due to them.

I myself many years ago had a great fear of this “mind reading” phenonemon. It was a feedback loop. Fear brought on voices. Voices drove fear and thus more voices. What relieved me of this fear of others “reading” my mind happened more than 25 years ago. My wife an I were living with a Sufi in New York City who had taken us in off the streets while I looked for a job. He was just entering the kitchen where my wife and I were seated chatting. I was thinking a question. My Sufi friend answered the question. I felt comfortable around him and being a Sufi I knew he would not freak out. So I asked, “I was just thinking that. Did you know I was thinking about the same thing?”

He answered, “No things like that are ‘just in the air.”

So if “just in the air” then no one need read my mind to pick up on thoughts about the same thing. Hence I need not fear another knowing my thoughts. This ended a feedback loop of “mind reading”, embarrassment and fear at someone knowing my thoughts driving more “mind reading” and so on. Schizophrenia mental health recovery seemed much more possible when I realized this.

Once a cognitive underpinning of things like “mind reading” has been challanged then other methods are more viable like interferring with subvocalization. Subvocalization is the slight movement of our throat muscles when we think. Thinking is thus a form of behavior which can be changed.

Zen Dharma Recovery is thus applied to schizophrenia mental health recovery as it is with anxiety, the various forms of mania and depression. One can think non-thinking, the basic Zen Dharma Recovery art.

When “hot thoughts” as voices are powerful enough to interfer with daily life one needs a way to be relieved. “Hot thoughts” as “voices” are like all thoughts subvocalization. One needs to be mindful of the phenonemon. Zen Dharma Recovery is based on this. Once mindful one can do something. Humming a tune will interfer with them, slow them down, since it interferes with subvocalization. For some it brings complete relief. For other a little. For a few none at all.

For optimal effectiveness the cognitice underpinnings of “voices” needs to be challanged as I said earlier. This challanging need not be that the voices are unreal. Rather it can be the sorts of things that the Zen students or the Sufi had told me. If one reads the scientific literature on “voice” hearing one will see that voices are given credibility not just due to thinking them real but due to the “authority” given them. The Zen and Sufi wisdom I have heard over the years challanges the “authority” of the “voices”. Schizophrenia mental health recovery is enhanced when the “authority” of “voices” is undercut. Then a technique like humming is much more effective.

Zen Dharma recovery is mindfulness and letting go of thoughts or thinking non-thinking. It allows freedom and can be a basis of schizophrenia mental health recovery.

Iistening to music is another way to let go. In this method one can more easily pay attention to music instead of the noise of “voices” in one’s head if the voices have less authority. Less authority, less interest, the more easily distraction will work.
It is also easier to directly challange the “voices”, to say “go away” successfully.

Of course as we have discussed in other posts on this page, ujaya breathing can also bring relief when one is not in a social situation where one can hum.

Here is a brief description of ujaya breathing once again. See also Zen Not-Knowing Ujaya Breath Supports Anxiety Recovery and Bipolar Mental Health Recovery Anxiety Mania

Just very slightly close your throat muscles and breath without effort otherwise. A simple way to do this is to silently say “hum” to yourself as you breath in an otherwise unrestricted way. In yoga, full ujaya breath is much more controled. Silently say “hum” instead of counting. Or count silently with the throat slightly constricted or slightly closed.

We had a yoga instructor in our training a while back. She taught ujaya breathing as follows. Imagine a very small soda straw in one’s throat. Close the throat muscles on the soda straw holding it very gently. This of course allows the throat to close a little. Breath will be slightly audible doing this. One can count: one on out breath, two on in breath, three on out breath, four on in breath, five on out breath, six on in breath, seven on out breath, eight on in breath, nine on out breath, ten on in breath. begin again, one on out breath, two on in breath and so on. One can count with a slightly tightened throat instead of saying “hum”. These methods will assist schizophrenia mental health recovery and allow more consistent attention to the tasks of everyday life, to focusing on the task at hand in one’s daily life.

What ever mindfulness or breath method you chose, practice from two minutes to twenty five minutes a day in a comfortable position. Consistency is more important than how long you do it each day. When you need the skill it will be there.
There are many other ways to deal with bothersome “voices” to aid in schizophrenia mental health recovery some of which we shall discuss in other blogs.

So to summarize:
Schizophrenia mental health recovery happens frequently.

Schizophrenia mental health recovery is based on research.

Schizophrenia mental health recovery is aided by understanding the research of Aaron Beck, Marius Romme and others on “voices”.

Schizophrenia mental health recovery can be supported by Zen Dharma Recovery.

Some books of interest.
This first book from The Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation has a chapter by Dr. Courtenay Harding with a summary and analysis of 10 longitudinal outcome studies of schizophrenia demonstrating that it is not a degenerating biological disease but has rather high recovery rates. She trains at the Coalition of Behavioral Health Agencies in New York City.

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Zen Dharma Mental Health Bipolar Recovery, Bipolar Creative Mania

Zen Dharma Mental Health Bipolar Recovery Bipolar Creative Mania No Responses »

Apr 142011

Bipolar Creative Mania can be a problem from which we can recovery and in the process learn much about Zen Dharma.

Creativity used to strike me most often around midnight and keep me up till dawn just in time to go to work. I seemed unable to stop thinking and go to sleep. Once in awhile this is ok. As a regular pattern it can cause chaos in one’s life.

This is a pattern i call bipolar creative mania.

It would lead to other kinds of mania kicking in ( see Bipolar Mental Health Recovery Patterns ) and to full blown mania, a crisis and possible homelessness once again. So creative mania I saw had to be dealt with. It became imperative to do something about it.

There were two issues to dealing with bipolar creative mania. How to let go of such beautiful thoughts? How to deal with the fear of the beautiful thoughts never coming back if I did let go.

While I recommend ujaya breathing for this, I found more was needed. (see Zen Not Knowing Ujaya Breath Supports Anxiety Recovery. Ujaya breath is a skillful means for many mental health recovery issues. Thus Zen Dharma Mental Health Recovery is the method we use. Letting go. Thinking non-thinking. It can be used with creative mania. However, I use other practices in addition. I also “enhance” the ujaya breath with counting up to ten. One in, two out, three in and so on…

In Japan there is a practice to address being attached to the beauty of one’s thoughts. It is this attachment from which creative mania arises. Thus non-attachment is essential to zen dharma mental health recovery.

The Japanese sit by the river and write short poems, called hiaku. ( Haiku-poems.50webs.com They are written on rice paper in lovely calligraphy and then thrown in the river. Peter Orlofski, Allen Ginsberg’s friend, said he and Allen would sit by the river and write poems but could never throw them in the water.

I had the same problem for the longest time. I could not let go of all those beautiful thoughts. That is until I could see my creative mania might make me homeless again.

So I faced the fear of loss of creative works and began to form hiaku in my mind as I sat waiting in the car for my wife. I let the haiku go without writing them down. I practiced diligently doing this for a few weeks.

I noticed after a few days that the creativity increased but the creative mania did not arise. I did not stay up all night. I could let go. I did not have other kinds of mania kick in.

I gained control over when my creativity happened. The muses were nolonger fickle. They came when i summoned them. I could be spontaneously creative whenever I liked. The loss of creativity that I feared never happened. That particular haiku was lost perhaps but many, many others replaced it. I also gained the ability to write and speak more spontaneously and concisely. I no longer feared bipolar creative mania. Nor was i any longer addicted to it.

Thus I could let go of creative thoughts at night while i lay in bed. Going to sleep was nolonger threatening. I could let go and sleep. Bipolar creative mania no longer dominated me.

The brain adjusts to the presence of medications. Getting off medications quickly without medical support is very likely to cause psychosis from rebound effects

Books of interest.

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Zen Mindfulness Meditation Dharma Talk Enhancing Mental Health Depression Recovery Lifestyle

Depression Mental Health Recovery, Zen Mindfulness Meditation Enhances Depression Mental Health Recovery Lifestyle 1 Response »

Mar 312011

Zen Mindfulness Meditation Enhances Mental Health Depression Recovery Lifestyle

Anti-depressants have come under close research scrutiny recently in research we discuss below for only being marginally better than sugar pills. Anti-depressant effectiveness is questionable. This class of drugs has been shown in many studies to not improve depression recovery by much at all. If your anti-depressant isn’t working it may not be you. It may be simply the ineffectiveness of the drug. Blaming your self will only make things worse.

So how is depression recovery to be enhanced? Research has much to say about depression recovery and the results are quite hopeful for lifestyle changes. This includes mindfulness meditation. We shall discuss life style research below. The first grave precept of Zen dharma is “non-killing”. That to me includes a healthy lifestyle. We will talk about this more extensively in other depression dharma talks. We have suffered from re-occurring depression since our teens. Zen Dharma and lifestyle has been the most healing thing we have found including periods on anti-depressants among other drugs. This is how we have achieved depression recovery.

Let us first summarize the research findings calling into question the effectiveness of anti-depressants. Then turn to research on depression recovery life style and Mindfulness Meditation to see if there are ways to enhance depression recovery through life style which includes meditation. This will be a series of several blogs.

A Medscape article reports: “A new review of 4 meta-analyses of efficacy trials submitted to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) suggests that antidepressants are only “marginally efficacious” compared with placebo and “document profound publication bias that inflates their apparent efficacy.” Broad Review of FDA Trials Suggests Antidepressants Only Marginally Better than Placebo It would seem much more than medications is needed to achieve depression mental health recovery.

The term “meta-studies” means a study with brings together a number of other studies. The study reported above is meta study of other meta studies and thus brings together a very large number of primary studies of depression.

The Medscape article continues: “In addition, when the researchers also analyzed the Sequenced Treatment Alternatives to Relieve Depression (STAR*D) trial, “the largest antidepressant effectiveness trial ever conducted,” they found that “the effectiveness of antidepressant therapies was probably even lower than the modest one reported…with an apparent progressively increasing dropout rate across each study phase.” We shall review briefly lifestyle and meditation research to support depression recovery. But let us first look at the important side effects of drugs which may make depression much more chronic.

There are also side effects of anti-depressants likely to increase the chronicity of depression. Self esteem is closely tied in our culture to body image. Anti-depressants it turns out cause weight gain. This hinders depression recovery

Previous research has shown an association between people who have had clinical depression and obesity. What is the direction of the association? Does depression cause obesity or obesity weight gain? Or is there a third factor, anti-depressants.

But does having a major clinical depressive episode — or the drugs used to treat called antidepressants — increase the risk of obesity?

Unexpectedly, the researchers found significant effects for a specific type of newer antidepressant medications — serotonin-reuptake-inhibiting antidepressants (SSRIs) and venlafaxine. The researchers did not find any significant effects for older tricyclic antidepressants nor antipsychotic medications. Do Anti-depressant Drugs Increase Risk of Obesity

The researchers concluded that clinical depression in itself does not appear to increase the risk of obesity. This seems to be a block to depression recovery.

This being the case there may be a feedback loop operating to make depression more chronic than need be. One has a depressive episode. Takes an anti-depressant. Gains weight. Feels worse from fatigue due to weight and due to lower self esteem due to a damaged body image from weight gain.

Another side effect of drugs which may contribute to the chronicity of depression is loss of sexual interest and ability to perform. “…antidepressants may cause 30% to 40% of patients who take them to develop some degree of sexual dysfunction.” Sexual side effects of antidepressants It is likely that here also a feedback loop operates. I am depressed. I take an anti-depressant. I lose romantic interest. I see this as depression and feel even more depressed.

Anti-depressants may make depression chronic while blunting the feelings of depression. Thus how do we achieve depression recovery. By life style change!

We shall review the research findings with much larger treatment effects than 2.7% for anti-depressants from switching from junk and processed food to whole food, from exercise, from increasing ones circle of friends and the kinds of friends one has, from meditation and from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Depression, from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for depression and for Mindfulness Based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Depression. Each of these has a greater effect than anti=depressants. Research has not been done on the aggregate effect of doing all of them at once.

Whole food diet is very important for depression recovery.

Medscape reports the following: “A large, cross-sectional study conducted by investigators at the University of Melbourne in Australia shows that women who regularly consume a so-called traditional diet were more than 30% less likely to have major depression, dysthymia, and anxiety disorders compared with their counterparts who consume a Western diet. In addition, the Western diet was associated with a 50% increased likelihood of depression.

Those are huge treatment effects. 30% in a positive direction for whole foods to ward off depression and anxiety and 50% in a negative direction to bring on anxiety for junk and processed foods. Thus change in diet is likely to enhance depression recovery.

The Medscape article continues:”Simply put, if you habitually eat a healthy diet that includes fruit, vegetables, whole grains, and high-quality lean meat, then you may cut your risk of depression and anxiety,” principal investigator Felice Jacka, PhD, told Medscape Psychiatry.” Whole Food Diet May Ward Off Depression Anxiety

Exercise has a huge treatment effect also on depression recovery.

“The effect of exercise was similar to that of cognitive therapy (standardised mean difference −0.3 (95% confidence interval −0.7 to 0.1)).” That is a 30% treatment effect in lowering depression compared to 2.7% for antidepressants. The effectiveness of exercise as an intervention in the management of depression: systematic review and meta-regression analysis of randomised controlled trials by Debbie A Lawlor, Stephen W Hopker Exercise is another large support for depression recovery.

Meditation is another modality with a large treatment effect favoring depression recovery.

“Overall, both controlled and uncontrolled studies showed similar effect sizes of approximately 0.5 (P< .0001) with homogeneity of distribution." That is a 50% treatment effect.

Mindfulness-based stress reduction and health benefits: A meta-analysis Thus adding mindfulness meditation to a healthy life style is likely to greatly enhance depression recovery.

Another important impact on depression is a sense of belonging. This positively impacts depression recovery.

It is more important than structural social support or the number of people around a person. The Effects of Sense of Belonging, Social Support, Conflict, and Loneliness on Depression

It is likely that mutual support groups have a positive treatment effect. Mutual help groups for mental health problems: a review of effectiveness studies.

It seems also that giving support may be more important than receiving it. Providing Social Support May Be More Beneficial Than Receiving It
Results From a Prospective Study of Mortality

There are other social support associations we will explore.

We shall delve more deeply into each factor in a depression recovery lifestyle in other blogs. We shall also review the research on effective forms or therapy.

This is half of bipolar recovery. On mania see Bipolar Mental Health Recovery Patterns Depression is also often accompanied by anxiety. On anxiety see Zen Not Knowing Upaya Breath Supports Anxiety Recovery

It is likely that a life style of whole foods, exercise, mindfulness meditation, mutual support groups and giving support will go a long way to achieving depression recovery.

Perverse financial incentives driving medicaid costs and deepening disability.

A Set of Perverse Financial Incentives Driving Medicaid Costs Deepening Disabliity, Schizophrenia, neuroleptic medication, mortality 8 Responses »

Jul 172011

The perverse financial incentives driving medicaid costs and deepening disability.

An incident in a large metropolitan area of Colorado. A medicaid client is admitted to a hospital. He is missing both his legs. He uses a wheel chair. A bit over weight but otherwise healthy. Not obese. No history of any mental illness and no history of psychosis.
He is admitted for routine surgery.
The surgery requiring anesthesia goes well.

This is a billable service under medicaid.

He awakens in the post op recovery room confused and disoriented. He seems to be hallucinating. This is called post operative psychosis. The usual treatment is to wait a good long time, to discharge under care. This person had parents capable of caring for him with whom he lived.
In this medicaid case this was NOT done. The doctors did not wait. He was given an atypical antipsychotic. And again no history of psychosis. or any other mental diagnosis.

The prescribing of the atypical and the drug itself are billable under medicaid.

He quickly develops out of control diabetes. A common side effect of the atypical class of drugs is diabetes along with obesity, high colesterol and high blood pressure. It is not always so fast developing. But it sometimes is. The metabolic side effects are a principle reason people given them and other psychiatric drugs die 25 years younger than average. He is taken off the atypical successfully. it takes time to do this. Cold turkey can cause further problems.

But the longer time to detox is billable to medicaid.

The patient now is kept for a longer time in the hospital for stabilization of his blood sugar.

This is a billable services under medicaid.

The patient now needs special care to be discharged. Disease management must be found.

This is a billable service under medicaid case management.

The patient is discharged and under disease management care.

This is a LONG TERM billable service under medicaid.

The various drugs for diabetes cause weight gain. They make diabetes chronic. The patient was missing legs. He was otherwise self sufficient. Now he will probably be over weight and chronically diabetic. All of course billable under medicaid. He is now likely to develop additional health problems due to being over weigh, like pressure sores which for a diabetic are very expensive to treat.

And this is even more billing under medicaid.

And in this case in Colorado metropolitan area one company owned by the hospitals and the large mental health provider and other medical and mental health entities collects ALL the medicaid billing for each of the medicaid billable services for this unfortunate young man.

This is a perverse financial incentive driving the deepening of disability for many many medicaid and probably medicare clients.

This is a big money maker for managed care companies who exploit medicaid and medicare and the patients treated by them.

The senerio as is, is bad enough but it gets worse if the contract is an “at risk” contract for both physical and mental health.

Why does it get worse? The industry standard profit for an at risk contract in medicaid is usually 6%. But the 6% is calculated on the total revenues. The total revenues are driven much higher by multiple services as in the case of the unfortunate young man we describe. And thus the 6% is on a much larger base. The amount is considerably higher than just an operation. Hence much larger profits the more patients can be multiply billed for medical diseases caused by improper use of atypicals .

Thus managed care in medicaid is a death and disability machine.

And it may be in private insurance.

What is the probable cost?

Veterans Administration senior psychiatrists say on co-occurring medical costs from proper atypical use in the VA is 30% lower per patient.

And the VA care is considerably better. People are generally not disabled so severely by perverse financial incentives. I am a volunteer researcher with the VA mental health QUERI committee which sets research policy.
On psychiatric usages Dr Sederer Medical Director of the Office of Mental Health of New York State has said his principle cost in medicaid is co-occurring medical costs from the multiple use of atypicals. There are no incentives to take people off of atypicals they are already on. So many are on 3 or 4. Each additional atypical adds high risk of metabolic side effects like diabetes or obesity but does not add treatment benefit except in very rare cases.
Another common and illegal problem is the off label use of atypicals for sleep and anxiety. FDA has guidelines not often followed.

Off label use is use NOT for psychosis. It still causes diseases. And drives up costs. And billable medicaid services and profits.

Is this consciously done? Very angry managed care psychiatrists, physicians and senior executives have said and written to me: “I don’t make a cent on this. I don’t get paid to do this.” I pointed out as politely as I could that market incentives don’t operate consciously. But as long as money is made no one looks. It is only when there is a loss that someone looks. However, regional executives of mco’s are rewarded for sending the quarterly profit margin to corporate offices and that is usually calculated as a percent of revenues. As I have said revenues are driven up by co-occurring medical billing for diseases caused by what happened to this young man. By the improper use of atypicals.

The solution? One pot of money. All medical and mental expenses come out of it. NO SEPARATE BILLING for each service caused by the addition of services because of medically caused co-occurring medical conditions. The managed care company or large provider is responsible for all costs of care for each patient for out of same pot of money. This is REAL capitation. NOT phony capitation with lots of hidden perverse financial incentives. And safe guards against not admitting or dropping patients. And NO pre-existing conditions exclusions.The industry would staighten out over night.

Over night medicaid and probably medicare costs would drop and over night fewer people would have their manageable disabilities turned into expensive life draining unmanageable disabilities for which you and I pay unnecessarily.

Is accountable care actually going to do this? Perhaps if it is done properly. That is why insurance and managed care companies hate Obama. Perhaps accountable care will correct this but it will depend on the billing mechanisms more than on the pretty sounding rhetoric. However it is only a partial fix. The basic problem is that at present the separation of acute care and long term care will continue in accountable care to drive the kind of perverse incentives I have described here. If one causes a disease say by off label use of atypicals in acute treatment then one can make money in the long term treatment of the disease caused. But at least the perverse incentives are fewer. Again that is why insurance companies hate Obama. Off label use is not recommended by the FDA and most states have rules to use them. These rules include generally eliminating “other products”. This is generally not done in my experience.

The following material is being developed as part of a UCLA pilot being co-directed by Ed Knight, PhD,CPRP. Alex Young MD is principle investigator. On recovery see Bipolar Mental Health Recovery Patterns
Zen Dharma Schizophrenia Mental Health Recovery Hearing Voices Coping
Mindfulness Meditation Enhances Depression Mental Health Recovery Life Style
Zen Not Knowing Ujjayi Breath Supports Anxiety Recovery

Insurance company influence on the House of Representatives and Senate needs to stop. It disables people more than they are. AND it drives medicaid costs sky high.

Medicaid does NOT have to cost a fortune and drive up costs with perverse financial incentives.

Zen Mindfulness Emotional Strange Loops Mental Health Recovery

Zen Mindfulness Emotional Strange Loops Mental Health Recovery 1 Response »

Jul 272011

Zen Mindfulness, Strange Loops , Mental Health Recovery

We are often “fragile” or in a space/place where we are easily hurt or more sensitive than may be helpful. This is the space/place where strange loops can develop easily and interfer with mental health recovery.

A strange loop or feedback loop is a term taken from the world of computer programming. Zen mindfulness can help our mental health recovery with awareness of these loops operating in our lives.

Wiki Feedback. see also Douglas R. Hofstadter I Am a Strange Loop (See all Science Books)
These loops used to be called a vicious cycle. The term vicious cycle was used by Abraham Low MD to describe the process of relapse in 1937 in his book Mentral Health Through Will-Training

Put simply a feedback loop, or strange loop, is for example fear of fear causing more fear and eventually panic. Zen mindfulness allows us to see what is going on and do something. This supports mental health recovery.

In current research this particular loop is called anxiety worry. This loop is called a strange loop because we begin with fear. And we end with fear while trying to get out of it. We take a step to stop it by pushing it away (or fearing it). This paradoxically increases the fear. So we think we are moving away from fear and we generate more. We end up where we started but worse off. In modern psychology Steven Hayes Ph.D. has done excellent research on this. His solutions are based on mindfulness.See Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life: The New Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (See all Mental Health Books)

We may be restless, irritable, discontent, tense and preoccupied. We may have a great deal of trouble relaxing ( and often turn to alcohol, drugs, food or lust )

This temporary loss of the ability to relax may be aggravated by a sense that we are “different’ , “too different” from those around us. We may feel that we “stick out”, are too noticeable for being “different”. This sets the stage for a feedback or strange loop. But there is hope. Mental health recovery is possible if we use Zen mindfulness skills to be aware and slow down or stop these loops. “Weird”, “different” “crazy” “hopeless” are all labels we can let go of instead of swallowing them whole. Zen mindfulness training as suggested and described partially on this website can help learn to let go.

Often when in “treatment settings” especially “hospitals” the constant and consistent messages are that we are different, very different, not normal and usually worse.

Indeed that we are “dangerous”. And we ARE observed 24/7. This social context is often internalized. We swallow the messages whole See Fritz Perls on introject in Gestalt Therapy: Excitement and Growth in the Human Personality (See all Psychology & Counseling Books)
We swallow messages whole without examining them and our conduct to see what this “stigma” is all about. We do not chew up what we take in by examining it.

We take these “stigmas” into us. Zen mindfulness can help us be aware, examine and chew up what we take into our minds.

We are constantly “prodded and poked” psychologically. “How do you feel?” and “How are you today?” are not meant as they usually are in everyday life. We know depending on how we answer we may be “written up”. “Privileges” can be denied.

We are being conditioned to fear our own minds.

This process of conditioning is not intentional but it is all pervasive. This is conditioning that will lead to feedback or strange loops, vicious cycles. Lets see how.

No wonder when “on the outside” again we tend to freak when someone asks innocently how we are doing. We have been conditioned to respond to this as a psychiatrists or nurses probe to find our “mental status” or what they may think it is. These kinds of questions are turned into anxiety triggers by the conditioning we have received.

This freaking at “How are you?” or “How do you feel?” is not odd given where we have been and how we have been treated. These are the ways in which behavior management has conditioned us. For critique of behavior management from the point of choice see Glasser’s book Choice Theory: A New Psychology of Personal Freedom (See all Health, Mind & Body Books)
A brief summary of Glasser’s ideas can be found at Choice Theory

Many labeled people report behavior management to be traumatizing. A person is not even seen as have the capability of choice but rather as a completely determined biological organism instead of as a person. So trauma informed questions are helpful at this point. In trauma informed treatment “what has happened to us? ‘ not “what is wrong with us?” is a healing question. Ask your self this.

At times then the question “How do you feel?” triggers this conditioning, we feel stigmatized. We feel self conscious. It may trigger us while shopping when asked innocently “how are you?’ by a cashier.

Feeling stressed we might have trouble falling asleep that night and begin to think we are going to have a crisis. We begin to worry. This worry makes it harder to fall asleep. And the increased difficulty falling asleep makes us worry more. This is a feedback loop, a strange loop or a vicious cycle.

Other strange loops may begin. For example, a fatigue strange loop. A small sensation of fatigue like any person may experience is we think due to our “illness”. We worry about relapse. The “stigma” we have taken into ourselves is kicking in. This worry increases the fatigue. And the fatigue the worry. The deeper the fatigue the more haunted we are by the possibility of relapse.

Other “experiences” begin to be noticed and we begin to label them as “weird” as “signs of relapse”. Perhaps we feel “spaced out” or “irritable”. We begin to notice perhaps a “strange” itch at night. Or a weird sensation on the tongue, an awful buzzing in the ears. We label. We use strong language to describe the sensations caused by stress.

We describe our stress experiences as “weird” or ‘”strange” or “awful.” TV ads for psych drugs or TV shows push our thinking in this direction and we begin to act as our own doctors and diagnose ourselves.

We have a “critical doc” within us, renting space in our heads due perhaps to our frequent encounters with MD’s in our life as well as to the all pervasive messages of the media.

We may join a Facebook “support” group where we find “sympathy” for our “awful” suffering that we are not given by the people we are living with. This encourages us to think we are “symptomatic” in order to continue to get the “support”.

We never look at the social context of our “symptoms” to see what might be going on. William Glasser in Choice Theory suggests we look at social context. As he says “All long-lasting psychological problems are relationship problems.
The problem relationship is always part of our present life.” Again see Glasser’s website Choice Theory and Choice Theory: A New Psychology of Personal Freedom (See all Health, Mind & Body Books)

Here is a list of helpful questions to look at what is going on in your social life. First in your romantic relationship. Are there any long term unresolved conflicts. Or dissatisfactions. Especially ones you don’t talk about.
Then look at larger family. Same question. Are there unresolved conflicts you do not talk about.
And at work. Same question. Unresolved conflicts?
And at your friends and religious life. Same question.
And are there any medication side effects interfering with your relationship with the significant person in your life?
Need to look. They are there anyway. So then find someone you can talk to. Most especially another person of the same sex.
And get to a recovery international support meeting either in person or on line or by phone. Recovery International Their skills are based on the feedback loop understanding and help stop them. These stressful social situations causing stress lead to new sensations which we label “weird” or “strange”. We begin to freak out and a feedback loop begins. Seeing the stressful social situations helps us see that what we are experiencing is NOT so unusual. This helps stop feedback loops.

Instead of thinking of our social context as real and valid and stressful enough to bring up unusual sensations, we think of ourselves as a solitary “biological” being who is “abnormal” This is sold to us on TV to sell a quick effortless fix, a pill, “meds.” NO effort needed. But the side effects may be intolerable. This is NOT to say some meds are not necessary at times. They are. And just quickly jumping off them will surely cause a psychotic crisis. The brain adjusts to the presence of the drug. It grows more neuron receptors for the shortage of dopamine and begins to produce more dopamine. If you simply stop the meds abrupty your brain will be flooded with dopamine and you will become very disoriented and psychotic. The same with seratonin. The brain adjusts and you will experience a severe seratonin shortage by just jumping off. So don’t. Seek medical support for any med changes.

Back to the questions “How are you?” or “How do you feel?” When these questions trigger our conditioning we often respond with labeling and blame. We label as “weird” instead of “new” or just something we have not felt before. We begin “symptom talk” when we label as “weird”. This is accompanied with blame talk. Blame talk begins in our minds. We either blame the person asking “how are you?” by thinking “They have no right to be asking this?”. And this grows. We also call this “anger talk.” Anger talk blames the outside world. Or we blame ourselves. “What is wrong with me?” we may ask out of fear that we indeed are “weird”. This is fear talk. Fear talk blames the inside world. In anger talk we blame others. In fear talk we blame ourselves. But again we do not look at social context or our effort or lack of effort in that context. These loops of symptom talk and fear talk and anger talk deepen unless we know how to step out of them.

On using Zen Mindfulness and Ujjayi breath to slow down thinking driven by feedback loops see:
Zen Not-Knowing Ujjayi Breath Meditation Anxiety Recovery
Bipolar Mental Health Recovery Patterns
Zen Dharma Schizophrenia Mental Health Recovery, Hearing Voices Coping

Just very slightly close your throat muscles and breath without effort otherwise. A simple way to do this is to silently say “hum” or “ha” to yourself as you breath in and out in an otherwise unrestricted way. In yoga full ujjayi breath is much more controled. Silently say “hum” or “ha” instead of counting. Or count silently with the throat slightly constricted or slightly closed. See a dharma talk on letting go of thought boxes that drive symptoms. Zen Dharma Recovery Mental Health Video
This method of Zen Mindfulness Mental Health Recovery can be used with to cope with any “symptom.” d
This closing of the throat muscles cuts way down on thinking. Why? Well thinking is subvocalization. We very very slightly move our throat muscles when we think. And this type of breathing interfers with subvocalization. Hum a melody and see how much you think. Not much. Ujjayi breathing does the same thing. Or counting the breaths with a slight pressure on the throat muscles.

An excellent video by Jon Kabot-Zinn on Peaceful Abiding or Mindfulness Meditation is found at Mindfulness Meditation. As a regular practice this aides in recovery. Ujjayi breath which enhances mindfulness needs to be practice but a regular mindfulness practice with a completely natural breath and no ujjayi breath in addition is very useful for mental health recovery.

Buying through this page helps support it. It costs money to keep it on the World Wide Web.

Here are some links to do that.

There are products advertized on these pages. I get revenues from the ads to support the page. It is a small amount but helps defray the expenses of this page.

Aspen Pointe
Colorado Access
Ed Knight.net

Zen Mindfulness of Emotional Strange Loops Supports Mental Health Recovery.

Self Help Meaning, Two

Sociological Theory No Responses »

May 202012

This is the second part of the qualitative study and grounded theory of peer mutual support.

The Meaning of Self Help Two

Recovery Garden

Recovery Garden 2 Responses »

May 162012

Recovery Garden

This is a power point of a workshop. It is about me. So it is principle about schizophrenia recovery. I have many other symptoms as well. This is a gift as i have been able to find ways to transform them all. To view click on the title. It will upload to your computer. Then open on your computer and it will be visible. This is a free upload that you may use for your self. It is a powerpoint that Ed Knight uses in some of his trainings.When i was laying on my back in the back yard meditation on the night sky about 4 or 5 years ago I said I would give away what i knew about recovery. The Garden is used by Ed Knight as an analogy for the work of mental health recovery. Weeds are used as a principle analogy for blocks to mental health recovery. The reason we have trouble dealing with weeds or blocks to mental health recovery is we have been taught we can’t and we believe it.

Universe Contracts Expands Equinimity Supports Recovery | recovery

Universe Contracts, Expands No Responses »

May 082012

Face the wind with equinimity. Strong wind comes, weak wind comes. Recovery comes with the wind. Recovery goes with the wind. Equinimity (balance) supports recovery.

The universe contracts and expands. We breath in and out. All the contractions and expansions are done with less suffering if done with balance or equanimity, rating none better or worse. This balance brings recovery like the wind. All are lessons to be learned in the once-happening participation in being. The funding comes, the funding goes. The weather comes, the weather goes. Life comes, life goes. “Mental illness” symptoms come and go. Mental health recovery comes and goes and and comes again.

Equanimity comes with meditation and mindfulness practice. These practices bring recovery.

The universe itself is of such a nature that it balances, that it has equanimity.

“The rain falls on the good and evil alike.” as Jesus said in the Sermon from The Mount. Rain gives not a whit whether the person on whom it falls is good or bad. Whether it is a “flower” or a “weed”. It just falls. And a few lines later Jesus suggest be like the rain, be like Abba, The Father. The word in Greek Jesus used for mental illnesses was not “demon possessed” but “moon stuck” because of the coming and going as the moon does. That is all moon struck meant, all lunacy means. It comes and goes. Mental health recovery is supported by this realization. Clinging to passing good moods brings on suffering.

Jesus was a non-dualist. These passages show that clearly. Fr. Thomas Keating especially his Daily readings for contemplative life helped me realize that. This book was essential to the Christian view of my recovery. To stop the guilt tripping. The self indulgence of guilt tripping hinders equinimity. ( Here is a link to that book).

Daily Reader for Contemplative Living: Excerpts from the Works of Father Thomas Keating, O.C.S.O., Sacred Scripture, and Other Spiritual Writings

It is also a thing to remember. When we are doing well, the rain falls on us. When we are doing poorly, the rain falls on us. The great Christian Meister Eckhart of the 13th century pointed out that the door of love swings on a hinge of indifference. The rain and the hinge are alike in this quality. Eckhart taught a form of silent prayer similar to mindfulness meditation. Link to Meister Eckhart:
Selected Writings (Penguin Classics)

If one is overly involved one suffers. if one is not involved at all one suffers. And we like the rain fall on all. We are happy recovery comes. We are sad, recovery comes.

We need not be controlled by the tyranny of mood. Then like the hinge, we swing the door of love open.

Meditation on the breath, connecting with the breath and letting go of thoughts, concepts, images, judgements, justifications brings balance. It is the letting go. The balance in the face of suffering or happiness comes from the non-labeling. It is in the labeling that the pain or suffering resides. So as the universe expands and contracts let us breath in and out. And let go.

Extreme mind body states (symptoms) quite down with letting go.

This kind of balance support mental health recovery. Mental health recovery is possible for all. Do not forsake the course because moods, or symptoms, or “mental illnesses” or mental health recovery come and go. Persevere in equanimity and recovery will be there. Persevere in mindfulness meditation and recovery will come. Breathe and let go!!! Breathing brings recovery. Breathing brings equinimity.See also Healing Objectifying Self

Consumer Operated Services Support Community Functioning

Consumer Owned Services, Functioning No Responses »

Mar 262012

Consumer operated services are an important way in which people psychiatrically labeled recover.

; Consumer operated services are a form of peer mutual support or mental health peers helping other peers. The mental health research consistently shows consumer operated services to be most helpful. The research here presented is a sociology of recovery from mental illness.

This piece of research by Philip Yanos and myself show that

successful urban de-institutionalization is possible

with community based services run and owned by “consumers” or survivors of mental health services most often called consumer operated services.

Consumer operated services are linked to improved coping and functioning needed to live in the community successfully.

Consumer Owned Services and Functioning

Self Help Meaning, One

Sociological Theory No Responses »

Nov 182011

This is part one of three posting of the full version of this seminal qualitative analysis of peer mutual support. It is perhaps the first grounded theory or theory from grounded in the experience of those doing it. This is how i feel theory should always be done rather than in the totally abstract reductionist way in which most science proceeds. Such objectifying processes kill the meaning of what people are doing and in the words of Jacque Maritain turning experience into an object is substituted intelligibility and not the intelligibility of people as they live. It is this lived experience which is vital and not the dead intellectual games of “scientists” who think they can control the experience of everyone around them. This control is the stated aim of the social “sciences” since August Compte. His formula “predict and control” has created the monologue we now experience in the Western world especially America where more and more only one voice is allowedd, the dead voice of the “scientist”.

The Meaning of Self Help

Older Entries

First Attempt Transforming Anxiety: The Gateway to Zen Dharma Recovery

I knew from testing it out that the anxiety over what i was feeling was almost impossible to pay attention to. It was way too painful.

It seemed possible that meditation especially with anxiety instead of being a problem could be a source of mental health recovery.

I immediately discovered the feelings of anxiety were slippery. They shifted as i paid attention. I could not pin them down. They seemed like a cloud as the Buddha said.

This book helped transform my life

I took steps to deal in my conduct with what came up. This is the ethical dimension of recovery, often overlooked.

I learned that some ideas are sticky. They are hard to let go of. Why? Because i am gaining something from them somehow.

So meditation became a skill that I honed and was one foundation of my mental health recovery. Dealing with anxiety is a principle way I practice zen dharma mental health recover.

This manipulation of self is called retroflection in the psychotherapy of Fritz Perls website.

The process of trying to take ourselves as a object keeps one’s body/mind in a constant state of stress.

Mental Health Zen Dharma Recovery Meditation, a skillful means to heal from taking yourself as an object:

What to do? Be one with one’s self . Instead of an object.

Mental health services systems are usually seen as the principle way people cope with thoughts of suicide. In the article linked below we clearly see most of the time suicide coping is not.

This is not a easy subject to get researched. Professionals including researchers resist seeing what is going on in suicide coping.

Follow up research shows psychiatrically labeled people avoid services due to (1) being treated with force, (2) being stereotyped by professionals and subsequently treated with less respect (3) over reaction by professionals.

Thinking anxiety recovery impossible we don’t try and it then is impossible to recover.

Seraquel and other drugs like can kill you from metabolic syndrome. Metabolic syndrome is obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, and high colesterol.

Anxiety comes and goes but seems constant. We give it more constancy than it has by focusing on it trying to push it away. Negative attention called in Zen aversion is attention nevertheless. Aversion stops anxiety recovery. And aversion is like pushing on a cloud of steam. It doesn’t work.

Awareness that mania patterns originate in feedback loops is the beginning of bipolar mental health recovery. Mental and emotional symptoms are driven by strange loops ( Steven Hayes PhD) or vicious cycles (Abraham Low, MD). The most common strange loop is fear of fear which triggers panic.

Extreme states of mania, depression, anxiety, and voices, delusions, thought disorders and lack of motivation are all thought patterns. Bipolar mental health recovery depends like other recoveries on awareness of thought patterns. Zen Dharma Recovery facilitates this.

When one awakens one’s own patterns then a greater degree of control is possible.

The five forms of mania are (1) fear or anxiety mania, (2) anger mania , (3) creative mania, (4) rescuer mania, and (5) reaction formation mania, (6) excitement grasping mania.

Fear mania or Anxiety Mania is mania induced by fear. Waking up to the fearful situation triggering mania is a first step to bipolar mental health recovery.

Anger mania is mania induced by anger.

Creative mania is mania induced by clutching tightly one’s creative visions.

Rescuer mania is induced by grasping on to the need to rescue those around you or the world.

Reaction formation mania is the key to all of them.

The diagnosis of bipolar is to move from depression to mania and crash going back to depression. Then starting again. I would hypothesize that the mania is a reaction formation to depression.

Anxiety mania is mania induced by fear. Waking up to the thoughts in the fearful situation and the emotions of fear triggering mania we begin to learning how to cope with bipolar and achieving bipolar mental health recovery. How do we wake up to this pattern?

(1) Waking up to the pattern of thoughts or mental boxes in fear mania is the first step to learning how to cope with bipolar.

Becoming mindful of these situations is your key to bipolar recovery.

These are the typical patterns of anger I found generating mania.

When I think my space is invaded.

Another pattern of mental boxes similar to someone “getting in my space” is “I can’t let them get away with saying that”.

Applying Zen Mental Health Recovery to bipolar anger mania.

The steps are to coping with or transforming bipolar anger mania with Zen Mental Health Recovery are:

Aaron Beck MD cites research that 5% of the population hears voices but it only interfers with the daily lives of 1% hearing them.

Schizophrenia mental health recovery depends on coping or transforming this phenomenon only if it is interfering with daily life.

As a Zen Buddhist once said to me, “Whether they are your thoughts or someone else’s thoughts, they are just thoughts.” Realizing this helps one maintain balance in the face of our own mind. Such balance is the basis of schizophrenia mental health recovery.

Romme is a key researcher on schizophrenia mental health recovery in Europe and his contribution on the phenomenon of “voices” is key.

Schizophrenia mental health recovery is aided by understanding thoughts as “hot thoughts” expecially in instances like this.

He answered, “No things like that are ‘just in the air.”

Zen Dharma Recovery is thus applied to schizophrenia mental health recovery as it is with anxiety, the various forms of mania and depression. One can think non-thinking, the basic Zen Dharma Recovery art.

Zen Dharma recovery is mindfulness and letting go of thoughts or thinking non-thinking. It allows freedom and can be a basis of schizophrenia mental health recovery.

Of course as we have discussed in other posts on this page, ujaya breathing can also bring relief when one is not in a social situation where one can hum.

This is a pattern i call bipolar creative mania.

There were two issues to dealing with bipolar creative mania. How to let go of such beautiful thoughts? How to deal with the fear of the beautiful thoughts never coming back if I did let go.

The brain adjusts to the presence of medications. Getting off medications quickly without medical support is very likely to cause psychosis from rebound effects

There are also side effects of anti-depressants likely to increase the chronicity of depression. Self esteem is closely tied in our culture to body image. Anti-depressants it turns out cause weight gain. This hinders depression recovery

Anti-depressants may make depression chronic while blunting the feelings of depression. Thus how do we achieve depression recovery. By life style change!

Whole food diet is very important for depression recovery.

Exercise has a huge treatment effect also on depression recovery.

Meditation is another modality with a large treatment effect favoring depression recovery.

Another important impact on depression is a sense of belonging. This positively impacts depression recovery.

This is a billable service under medicaid.

The prescribing of the atypical and the drug itself are billable under medicaid.

But the longer time to detox is billable to medicaid.

This is a billable services under medicaid.

This is a billable service under medicaid case management.

This is a LONG TERM billable service under medicaid.

And this is even more billing under medicaid.

This is a perverse financial incentive driving the deepening of disability for many many medicaid and probably medicare clients.

This is a big money maker for managed care companies who exploit medicaid and medicare and the patients treated by them.

Thus managed care in medicaid is a death and disability machine.

Veterans Administration senior psychiatrists say on co-occurring medical costs from proper atypical use in the VA is 30% lower per patient.

Off label use is use NOT for psychosis. It still causes diseases. And drives up costs. And billable medicaid services and profits.

Over night medicaid and probably medicare costs would drop and over night fewer people would have their manageable disabilities turned into expensive life draining unmanageable disabilities for which you and I pay unnecessarily.

Insurance company influence on the House of Representatives and Senate needs to stop. It disables people more than they are. AND it drives medicaid costs sky high.

A strange loop or feedback loop is a term taken from the world of computer programming. Zen mindfulness can help our mental health recovery with awareness of these loops operating in our lives.

Put simply a feedback loop, or strange loop, is for example fear of fear causing more fear and eventually panic. Zen mindfulness allows us to see what is going on and do something. This supports mental health recovery.

Often when in “treatment settings” especially “hospitals” the constant and consistent messages are that we are different, very different, not normal and usually worse.

We take these “stigmas” into us. Zen mindfulness can help us be aware, examine and chew up what we take into our minds.

We are being conditioned to fear our own minds.

We have a “critical doc” within us, renting space in our heads due perhaps to our frequent encounters with MD’s in our life as well as to the all pervasive messages of the media.

Equanimity comes with meditation and mindfulness practice. These practices bring recovery.

The universe itself is of such a nature that it balances, that it has equanimity.

We need not be controlled by the tyranny of mood. Then like the hinge, we swing the door of love open.

Extreme mind body states (symptoms) quite down with letting go.

Consumer operated services are an important way in which people psychiatrically labeled recover.

successful urban de-institutionalization is possible

I immediately discovered the feelings of anxiety were slippery.
They shifted as i paid attention. I could not pin them down. They seemed like a cloud as the Buddha said.

 So meditation became a skill that I honed and was one foundation of my mental health recovery. Dealing with anxiety is a principle way I practice zen dharma mental health recover.