Tuesday, July 9, 2024

Tuesday, July 9, 2024

 

   Yesterday evening, I told Lutz a story about something that happened between my cousin and me. However, I couldn't remember her name for love nor money.  As I struggled to remember this morning while lying in bed, I remembered the names of her parents, her sister, her sister's husband, and her niece and nephew. I could even remember the names of her niece and nephew's spouses and children, but not her  I went through the alphabet, hoping that would jog my memory. I felt attracted to the letter H. That didn't sound right. I knew her name didn't have the letter H in it. I tried to continue with the alphabet but got pulled back to the H. I contemplated it. Ah, her husband's name started with the letter H. While I couldn't remember his name, I only had a brief contact with him; her name came up. It must have been stored in my brain next to his: Barbara. 

   My brain was racing while lying in bed. I was frantically solving one problem after another, looking futilely for solutions. This had been going on for several days. Fortunately, it stopped when I had something else to do, writing or a conversation. When alone and not verbally occupied, my mind saw a golden opportunity and grabbed it. Damn! I was determined to get it under control. I meditated.

   As I meditated, I asked what was lying underneath the mental spinning. It was fear. Terror really.  I sat with it. My conscious mind knows there is no reason for this fear. My life is not in danger. I do not have to fear abandonment in a primitive world. 

  Thank God I'm not the only one talking about evolutionary psychology.  Wilson and Dawkins's books were published in the mid-1970s. This brought the concept, which had been introduced by Darwin in the late 1800s, to the public's attention. I was into it big time in the 1980s, developing activities for the children I worked with based on the theory that many of our responses were rooted in circumstances we had never experienced. Nonetheless, our nervous systems operate as if we were living in hunter-gatherer groups, where abandonment and isolation meant certain death. 

   But now I had my knowledge of the current reality to share with my biologically driven unconscious mind. I am not living in a group of 10 to 30 people, moving across an unoccupied landscape searching for food and water. I am living in a world jam-packed with people and almost devoid of meat-eating animals. Yay!  I am safe. My conscious mind knows what this world I live in is about. I can tell my unconscious,  "You are safe. We are safe.

   Loneliness is an epidemic. Behind loneliness is the fear we inherited from some primitive forebearer we know nothing about.  I'd say, "Thanks a ton for nothing!" but it's hard to hold someone who lived under different circumstances responsible for my nervous system. Well, at least, it's unfair.

   Having relieved myself of the fear of death, I could sit with the fear my mother's constant attacks generated in me from a different perspective. A. I did survive it. Despite emotional handicaps, I went on to have a decent life. I had a good marriage and a career I loved. B. I can survive any current attacks as long as they don't reach the fever pitch of the Nazis or the Hutus of the Rwandan genocide. Of course, anything is possible in the future. We're living in interesting times.  But weirdly, the thought of that is less distressing than my mother's attacks when I was a child and vulnerable at a different level.  

 I worked with the Twins and Adolescent D.  The work with D is routine, the same every day. He makes small improvements in each session, which is gratifying. If he did this exercise independently daily, he would someday be a fluent reader. The interesting work is with Twin E, as she forces herself to use the part of her brain for recall that works instead of the one that doesn't.

   It's worth sharing background information on this work with Twin E. Both Twins had terrible memory problems. At the end of first grade, neither one could name all the letters in the alphabet, and neither one could read anything. They are heading into fifth grade next school year. They are both reading at a second-grade level. Their comprehension is good, and they summarize a short passage on their own after receiving instruction on how to summarize. I think they will do well once they conquer their word recognition problem.

  Twin E revealed that she knew when she had a word wrong a few days ago. How did she know?  Another part of her brain gave her the right word, So why didn't she use that part of the brain?  It was on the periphery of her attention instead of in the center.  Could she force herself to use the part of her brain that she knew was giving the correct reading of the word?  That's what we have been working on,  not so much identifying the word as using the information from a particular part of the brain, she says, gives her the correct answer.  It's breaking a reflex action, breaking a habit like any other.  Changing her brain so that the part of the brain that gives the correct answer pops up in the center of her attention instead of the part that doesn't. I see her making progress. 

       Yvette proposed we have dinner together. She picked up a pizza, it was lovely spending time with her. I hadn't had pizza in a while, and I was stunned to learn that a small pizza costs $25. Really!!

  Rita Wilson appeared on the TED mainstage with a message. Ask yourself what you really want to do.  It's a good question. It was appalling hearing her up there telling her story. "I asked myself what I wanted to do, and guess what? I got it."  She learned she wanted to sing. When her agent asked her what she wanted to do, she said, "Be in a musical"- and just like that, she was in one.  I heard her sing. She's mediocre at best. I don't have the best ear, but she was off on a few notes.  For her to feel comfortable publicly singing suggests she has dementia, and her husband is using all his clout to protect her from that knowledge. Very sweet. But she didn't belong on the TED main stage. She didn't belong on any stage. The only message she had to deliver was one on entitlement. 

   Wilson's talk reminded me of Linda Lay's appearance on the Morning Show after the Enron debacle. Employees had lost their retirement accounts and had nothing. Mrs. Lay, looking for sympathy, complained that she and her husband, who had defrauded the employees, had to give up one of the homes. Really!  That sounds just as bad as being homeless to me, don't you agree? Grrr!