Tuesday, September 10, 2019

  

    I went to school yesterday and worked with the three kids, K, D, and B.  K is the one who gives me attitude.  I know it’s a defense against bone-shattering fear.  Last time I worked with her, I asked her where she felt the bad feeling in her body. She said all over and described it on her back.  It sounded like shame to me.  I didn’t have a chance to work on it at that time.  Nonetheless, her behavior was better today than it had been. She delayed a little less before coming out to work with me.  I used EFT on the negative feelings she described the other day.  “Even though I have this terrible feeling when I make a mistake, I choose to know that I am safe.”  I used Pat Carrington’s format. (I wrote I did this yesterday. I lied.)  

I did the set up on the karate point. I used 8 tapping spots, adding on the top of the head. I went through all the spots for the first half of the setup, and all the points again for the second half of the setup and then went through all the points again, alternating between the first and second half of the setup phrase.  She said she went from a 10 to a four on the SUDS scale.  That is a satisfying improvement for one pass.  She may need more help with this in the future, but we know what works now.  After we did the EFT, she was somewhat more cooperative. She still twisted her body and head to look away, but I could get her to put her eyes on the work by just politely saying, “Please, put your eyes here on the work.”  I sometimes had to repeat this more than once, but it took her less time to respond. We agreed on how much she had to read.  When we completed it, I asked her if she would do one more page. She said yes. WOW! We’re moving in the right direction.  I see a little improvement in her cooperation with every session. She also told me – reluctantly- that she is improving.  How does someone so young become so withholding?

    During the last session, D made it clear he was having problems remembering things he has heard and seen.  With the listening exercise, his short-term memory worked very well. When I gave him a sentence to repeat, he could do it correctly.  The problem was that he couldn’t remember what he heard afterward. I worked on having him pull up information from his long-term memory.  It doesn’t look like there is anything neurologically wrong with him.  He just developed a habit of not using his long-term memory. Why someone doesn’t wind up using it is a mystery? As he worked, he remembered the sentence I had given him even after repeating other sentences and doing other activities - distractors.  I taught him to ask his long-term memory to provide him with the information and then w-a-i-t and listen for the answer.  

    I worked with B on both spelling and word recognition. He remembered that this spelling lesson features different spellings for the long o sound. That’s a good start.  He was able to produce the phonemic sounds in each word reasonably well.  He only had a problem with one word, where he pronounced the word with a short o, and he still had some difficulties pronouncing the sh as an /s/, and the s and a /sh/. But the good news is that he started using the crossbody blending strategy on his own.  Yay!

    Today was the day Elsa got her heartworm meds and the top spot for tick and flea protection. She loves the heartworm pill and tolerates the top spot application reasonably well. She’s a good girl. 

 

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Musings:

 

 

    As part of my perspective from evolutionary psychology, I think that all human drives that survived into the 21 century have something to do with survival, survival during the period where our brain circuitry was built.  So how do fame, fortune, and power translate to survival? 

    Fortune is the easiest to deal with.  There are basic needs for food, water, and shelter, and I will throw in aesthetics. In other words, we prefer something not just safe, but we have a preference for clean and comfortable, too;  I’m adding on the last two because they are part of my minimal standard.  Once we have satisfied those criteria, the rest is gravy. The pursuit of those standards in primitive times had something to do with survival, particularly the safe test. I suppose that the criteria could be extended to clean and comfortable if the environment were safe enough. 

    In the 21st century, the criteria for safe, clean, and comfortable far surpass anything our ancestors had, including the wealthiest people in the 15th century.   But not everyone has this minimal standard.  People are living in refugee camps whose circumstances do not meet it.  On the other hand, some people live far above the criteria.  As I have learned to consider what I have as a basic necessity, they learn to consider luxury a basic necessity.  What I have is luxury to many people on the planet. Very confusing. There are moral issues here:  how much do I need for myself if it limits what others have?

    There are minimal standards for clean water and decent food.  We all understand clean water. Or do we?  I live in an area of the world where I don’t have to worry about getting water I can safely drink. (If you don’t include the discussions about the fluoride and all the pharmaceuticals that have leached into the water supply.) I know that I’m lucky. 

    Food. I don’t think anyone questions that this is a basic need. We were designed to pursue food. Without it, we would all die. Every animal pursues food, but not every animal has access to the amount of food some of us have today. Now food’s pretty easy for me.  I’m not a gourmand or gourmet.  I eat to stay alive. My indulgences run in the area of Hersey Milk Chocolate bars with whole almonds, and sometimes Haagen Das ice cream.  While I don’t need much in terms of food, I do need the basics, and I need to know I can get it whenever I want, assuming it is during the store’s opening hours.

            On the other hand, some need heaping plates of expensive and exotic foods.  We pursue food, and then we seek more food. This pursuit of material goods is the pursuit of fortune.  But so much more is available. More and more and more is better. If there is more accessible, do I have to pursue it?  For some people having it all is the minimum standard. In primitive times, all was quite limited and worthy pursing.  Now that we have abundance on top of abundance, pursing all we can get is not such a good idea, either for ourselves or for others.    

    Then there is fame.  What could the function of fame be? Well, in primitive times, it would be essential to be known by every person in your group.  You want to be recognized as part of the in-crowd. Otherwise, you could get yourself killed.  Perhaps, that fame could extend to a neighboring tribe that would identify you if you came by and not harm you as a result.  But nowadays, being known by everyone in our tribe has an entirely different meaning. In primitive times, that knowledge was mutual.  Now it is possible to be recognized by someone we don’t know.  Possible??? It’s a given for anyone on social media.  

    Power, ah, power.  I think it is as simple as ‘ might makes right.”  I don’t remember where I heard that expression.  It’s old, and it certainly applied to the upper class. It was an equation, “If I do it= it’s right.” Sort of like the expression, “It’s Thursday, it must be Belgium.” (Anyone remember that New Yorker cartoon?) There’s no logic. It is by fiat.  Oh, to be in that position and be able to assure your safety.  I think most human conflict, once the basic material needs are addressed, is over who’s right- about anything. We see these conflicts between family members and between countries.  We are prepared to fight, die, and kill to defend our views.  

    Humility: back to this subject.  It has to do with understanding our minimal needs, in the world we live in, I’m going to add plus some. At what point does this all become excessive? Why is enough, never enough?  Why do we compulsively pursue fame, fortune, and power?  They are survival skills at a basic life level, but many have surpassed that point and purse more and more and more. Why?  Maybe like Oprah, they never feel they have enough even though they are considered one of the people who have the most in the world. Or is it the Pringle Potato chip problem: We can’t just have one, not even if we are satisfied by it.  How do we stop this rampage?  Religions address this issue; both in how our behavior affects others and how our behavior affects us.

Monday, September 9, 2019

    I just slept in today instead of going to Bikram.  I compensated by doing a long walk. For the second time, I saw an elderly lady struggling on her walk up the hill.  I spoke to her.  Her name is Ginny, and she is 90.  I wouldn’t have guessed that much; she was doing pretty well.  She was walking slowly but taking on a pronounced incline.  She moved here recently to live with her youngest son, who didn’t want her living alone anymore.  I think she’s my kind of lady. Among other things, she is looking for a yoga studio. 

    When I got home, I worked on the plumbago, just about finished pulling it off the fence. Then I showered and went to school to tutor my three students.

    K. admits, reluctantly, that she is reading better. She doesn’t want to give anyone any points, oh no. She finally gave a two thumbs up, but she still had that terrible feeling when she makes a mistake in reading. I did some EFT with her. “Even though I still make mistakes when I read, I know that I am safe,’ was the setup, and I used Pat Carrington’s format for the tapping. Her SUDS level dropped from a 10, distressed to a 4, where she felt safe.

    With D, I worked on his auditory processing.  His short-term memory was good; he can repeat a sentence correctly, but then he has trouble with long term memory. I showed him a better spot for short-term auditory memory and how to encode and decode from long term memory. He practiced this recall skill, using those spots, for the rest of the class.

    B. says his reading is much improved.  He says his mother recognizes that but no jumping up and down for joy.  What a shame.  It’s not that he is doing grade-level work, but improvement should always be recognized, as well as effort  Pushing beyond previous limits should always be celebrated. He still does not stop to write down and process the words he doesn’t know.  I think the first step is getting him to recognize that he doesn’t know and stop the wild guessing based on the first letter of the word.  That would be a good start.  When he does write them down and go through the procedure I recommend, he usually gets them on the first try. When he doesn’t get them on the first try, he shifted a sound from the front to the back of the word or vice versa or intruded another sound.  When he does the cross body blending, that problem is eliminated.  I can’t get him to do this on his own so far.  Oh, well.  Just a few moves at a time.  I see improvement in his use of context clues to figure out the word when his pronunciation is slightly off.  He wasn’t doing that at all when we started. He didn’t even understand that was what he was supposed to do it. 

    I left school a bit earlier than I more normally do.  I had an appointment with the acupuncturist at two and then with the chiropractor at three.   I still see no change in the hot flashes with the needle treatments and the Chinese herbs.  The problem isn’t that I have them; they have become private downpours over the last few years. The acupuncturist recommended ‘cooling’ foods.: asparagus, watermelon.  I stopped off at Safeway to snag those two before I went home. When I got home after those two treatments, I slept. 

    Yvette and I had a dinner date.  It was three slices of Kona Crust Pizza, two for me, one for her.  We ate in the library so we would be alone.  Kathrin would have left the house if I had asked her, but I didn’t. The library worked just fine.  I like that we are making an effort to connect more.

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Musings:

    Toni Morrison wrote an article for the Book Review section of the NY Times for September 8 dealing with the question of goodness and altruism.  She reports that she found a bewildering number of conflicting definitions for both terms.  She wrote, “Thinkers, of whom none was as uninformed as I was, have long analyzed what constitutes goodness, what good is good, and what its origins are or maybe.” 

    I give a lot of thought to these topics.  I find simplistic answers tough to bear.  I have only vague ideas as to why this is so upsetting to me.  She listed the diverse interpretations of altruism.  What is the term when you read something that supports your opinion and latch on to it as evidence of validation?  That’s what I’ve done here. To that end: different “interpretations, contrary analyses, and doubt. A few of these arguments posited wildly different interpretations:

1.    Altruism is not an instinctive act of selfness, but a taught and learned one.

 

2.    Altruism might actually be narcissism, ego enhancement, even a mental disorder made manifest in a desperate desire to think well of oneself to diminish self-loathing.

 

3.     Some of the most thought-provoking theories came from scholarship investigating the DNA, if you will, seeking evidence of an embedded gene automatic firing to enable the sacrifice of oneself for the benefit of others; a kind of brother or sister to Darwin’s “survival of the fittest.””

    

    Do I need to tell you who know me that I think all three can play a role?  I have at least one more to add to the list: Once someone has decided that they want to live a life caring and protecting others,  they practice it daily.  With that practice, as with any form of behavior practiced, soccer, table manners, reading, etc., the response can become automatic.  Therefore, when someone finds themselves in a situation calling for an immediate response, they have programmed themselves to give that response of self-sacrifice, even of life.  Yes, I think that it is part of self-image, “I am a good person.” But no, I don’t believe this is always an indication of a mental disturbance.  When the genetic component of altruism hasn’t been disturbed or downright destroyed,  combined with social input on the value of caring for others and practicing something, or better yet someone, good may come out of it.

    Many years ago, I heard a lecture on self-image.  The speaker said most people need to be seen as good people. Even serial killers will argue they are not bad people; they only did something bad. This is another nagging question: when do we say someone is not a good person?

    My speculation on the ‘genetic’ source is that being seen as good by our group was essential to our survival.  Anyone who wasn’t seen as good was threatened with expulsion from the group and certain death. 

    While the need to see ourselves and be seen by others as good people may be universal,  I am particularly suspicious of those who match the second definition of altruism, see above. I think I can tell who they are because they keep insisting that they never think of themselves. Yikes!  I think they are downright dangerous for anyone they come in contact with. But then, aren’t we all?  All we can hope for is to do the least damage possible without having to wipe ourselves out totally.  We humans face quite a challenge.

 

Sunday, September 8, 2019

    In today’s reading in church, Jesus says that you have to hate our mother, father, sisters, brothers, and yourself to follow him. Okay, if Jesus’s way is love, why all this hate. Does the meaning of hate differ from the way we use it today? I do believe that is the interpretation, but I find it interesting that the use of the word isn’t often discussed in the context of Jesus’s teaching.

    I talked to Judy about how I feel about Mike.   In some ways, my feelings are unchanged.  I am often not thinking of him; I am always thinking of him. He has been in my life forever; it feels like it was all a dream.  I know when I do think about him, I choke up. Some part of me understands what has happened and feels sad about it. That’s for sure.  

    Through it all, I know that I am lucky: Lucky I had Mike in my life and lucky in my current circumstances, having to go on with my life without him.  My niece Shivani lost her husband after a few years of marriage. They had plans.  These plans for a future together have been lost.  Mike and I had our future.  The basic structures of our lives were in place; the rest was window dressing.  Not that I don’t feel sad about losing that.  Mike was so happy here in Hawaii doing what he was doing: deacon at the church, board of directors of Habitat for Humanity, and spiritual director for the diaconate program.  It was only going to get better. It is the loss of his joy that makes me feel the saddest.  I don’t even understand what has happened to me in this whole process. It’s not that I don’t think about myself.  I don’t know what to think.  It’s all an illusion.  It’s too slippery.

    I talked to Elijah as he was leaving to go home to Hilo this evening.  His mother asked me to help his brother, who has delayed speech.  They live too far away for me to work with him every week.  I told them to play my audio file while he slept, which teaches phonemic awareness.  Elijah said he had played it on and off. Nonetheless, he shows some improvement in his speech and a great deal of improvement in his ability to understand what is said to him.

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Musings:

 

    In today’s sermon, the priest said the path to Jesus is complicated. Very.  Now I was not raised with a religious orientation, but I was raised with a moral one. My father was more of a philosopher than a minister.  For me, this means he didn’t work from a given set of rules handed down from some authority but struggled with the question of what is right and wrong within himself.  He taught this to me, for better or for worse. 

    The path to Jesus in the sermon today referred more to our deeds than our faith since the reading was on behavior.  In Christianity, the emphasis is always on how we treat others.  The question of how we treat ourselves is not discussed.  Well, that’s not entirely accurate. It says we should hate ourselves, and the source of love for us comes only from Jesus.

     I don’t think you can treat others well unless you also consider your welfare.  As I have said before, taking my welfare into consideration does not preclude sacrificing my life for someone else.  (I know this is not conventional thinking, but I don’t think we ever do anything that is not in our own ‘interest.’)

    I would say the narrow path is in finding your way between what is best for ourselves and what is best for others.  I would say this is an incredibly complicated path.  It is always looking for what is optimal for all concerned.  It is looking for the win-win. 

    How to deal with situations when someone we’re dealing with doesn’t operate that way?  What if they’re into a win-lose scenario? Some people only consider themselves to have won if the other party has lost.  That’s their criteria. Sounds like a very tiring way to live.

Saturday, September 7, 2019

    Except for me yelling, “Honey bunny, it’s time to come home. Enough of this crap,” it’s been a peaceful day. I do and don’t miss Mike.  It’s weird. When he was alive, it always felt like the relationship had gone on forever and, yet, we had only been together a short time. I guess you’d say time flew by. We weren’t strained in the relationship except for a period when we had grown silent with each other; there was no laughter.  That dragged on forever.

    Of the 171 books which the librarian in the Notre Dame Seminary requested, I have something like 50 left to find.  I have already sent out four boxes and have three more packed and ready to go to the post office.  The boxes are of varying sizes, but none are the size of a U-Haul book box.  I couldn’t manage that – too heavy.  I suspect too heavy for postal workers also.  Instead, I ask everyone to save all the boxes that could hold two or three books for me.  That saves a lot of money too.  Boxes are expensive. 

    Thanks to Judy, I will be getting what’s left of her roll of butcher paper, which she used for the bottom of her birdcage. He bird died recently, and now that roll is available. Even after I get through all of that, I now know that Costco sells it.  It is way less expensive than buying brown wrapping paper from Office Depot.  I’m down to having to spend money only on tape and postage.  Pretty good. 

    I spent an hour looking for books today.  I found four more. I’m beginning to wonder if some of the books on the New Orleans seminary list were ever in this library.   I kept looking.  I found 4 in an hour.  I figured each time I look through, I  become more familiar with the books, and I will find them more easily when more lists come in.

    I think when I’m down to 10 more to find, I’ll contact John Coughlin and tell him to contact the next seminary to go through the list of books and make their request.  But, before they do that, we have to make sure that all the books I already sent out have been deleted from the list.

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Musings:

    Reading about mirror neurons being the basis for empathy in Mike Fanuele’s book, “Stop Making Sense. “  It’s a fun book to read, even if I don’t agree with all his conclusions.

    The one on mirror neurons being the basis for empathy is one of them.  Mirror neurons are the ones that fire when you watch someone perform an action or feel an emotion.  I have also read somewhere else that they fire more actively the more you’re familiar with the activity.

    These neurons were discovered when neuroscientists in Parma, Italy. They found that the neurons in test monkeys fired when they reached for peanuts also fired when they watched the scientists reach for peanuts. Note, it said nothing about them firing when the scientists reached for pencils or anything else.  

    The more you experience an emotion or a movement, the more readily your mirror neurons will fire.  While it is possible that the mirror neurons in a couch potato fire when watching Michael Jordan play basketball, it is more likely that more such neurons fire in the brain of someone who has played basketball themselves and even more so in someone who has played it extensively and even more so in someone who has received training. 

    But then there is also the issue of mirror neurons explaining empathy/ sympathy.  What the hell happens in the brains of the roaring crowd watching a lynching?  Clearly, they are seeing someone suffer, experience fear, and physical pain.  What are those mirror neurons doing so they feel no inclination to step in and stop that cruelty?

Friday, September 6, 2019

      I skipped making an entry yesterday.  Bikram left me very tired as it did today too. I am always working on opening up my arthritic hip more and changing my spinal alignment.  If I am successful, my body doesn’t want to be pushed anymore. I limit how much of the class I do after such I get that signal.  Yesterday, I was exhausted and napped.  Today, I fell asleep in class. Heather woke me up because the 9: 30 hot Pilates class was about to start.  I had had a significant movement in my hip and wasn’t sure I could get up.  Heather stood by me, ready to haul me to my feet, but I could get up myself.

    Yesterday, working on the plumbago (love the word) required a ladder so I could reach the high growing branches.  The area I am working in right now is particularly dense. When I came back in the house, I was covered with flowers after working on the plumbago; love that word.  I  looked like I was dressed for camouflage. 

    After showering, I went to school, but I couldn’t find a parking place.  I went back home after texting the teachers.   Today, Katrin dropped me off on her way to Walmart to deal with her phone problems. Perfect!  I didn’t have to deal with parking at all.

    I saw three students. I dealt with B, K, and D.  B’s teacher asked me to work with him on his spelling words.  He had only got two right. The lesson was on the long /o/, with three different spellings.  I had him identify the words he could spell. He picked out a few he could read.  It was apparent that he paid no attention to the repeated pattern used in the lesson.  He picked one from each pattern and drew a blank on the rest of the words. Couldn’t even read them.  

    I pointed out the pattern and had him look for the words that used the same pattern.  He was able to do that.  I had him read those words by blending the sounds. Two problems: He still had problems identifying the vowel followed by a consonant and then a silent e  as being a long vowel.  Then he had problems holding the sound.  He would convert the long o to a short o when he tried to blend it.  He had a third problem: despite having success using cross body blending, he doesn’t use it.  After asking some questions, I come to find out that he sees the mind and the body as separate things: if you are using the mind, you are not affecting the body; if you are using the body, you are not affecting the mind. He says he doesn’t play any sports, but he does run. When I asked him if he was using his mind, his body, or both when running.  He was clear; he was using only his body. Ah! I pointed out to him that without a mind, he wouldn’t be able to run. This simple piece of information made a difference.

    After classifying and decoding all the words on the spelling list, I worked on spelling those words.  I provided the spelling for the vowel sound.  “In each of these words, the long /o/ is spelling with oa.” Then he had to spell the rest of the word on his own. I would have to remind him to sound the word out.  This is not an approach to spelling that appeals to this young man. I would tell  him to “follow your mouth.” “Your mouth knows how to say the word.”  He did more of this as he went along.  Yeah!  The only sound he had trouble spelling was the /sh/ sound.  In fact, he had difficulty identifying the sound of the /s/ in same. He pronounced it as /sh/even though it was not the initial sound of the word.  This fellow does not have good phonemic awareness.  I showed him my phonemically transcribed stories on Bandcamp, but I doubt he used them despite having found them fascinating.

    K, ah K.  She made a face when I called her to work with me.  Well, let’s include some good news. When I started with her, her hair was a mess. It was unkempt, grabbed, and stuck in a ponytail holder. I took one look at that and thought, “I will know when she is making progress when her hair looks better.” It looked better last week and looked good today. My mom always said you could tell how people feel by the way their hair sits.  Days when they are not feeling well, they can’t get it to behave. 

    Her biggest problem is that she goes into deep shame whenever she makes an error. Her reading is pretty good. It’s just that she’s not willing to do it because of how mistakes make her feel lousy.  I assured her that no one is error-free. She told me her mom was. Really?  Where is this coming from?  Her mom or her?  The good news is she is a fantastic writer.  She surges ahead to express herself, making up spellings as she goes along.   If I can get her to relax, I think she will be functioning on a 4th or 5th-grade level already or at least shortly.

    Then finally, there was D. The teacher said his mother would like to hire me to work with him after school.  I suspect that won’t be necessary.  I can do a session with her to show her how to follow up on my work.  D has Hooked on Phonics at home and listens to it.  I asked him which helped him more, what I do or that.  (When I ask this question, I work on staying open-minded. If the other approach is helping more, it suggests that I make some adaptation in my work.) He said what I was doing helped more.  I had done phonemic analysis on continuous text, writing down the letters representing the phonemes as I went along. That’s what he responded to most.

    After going through the first paragraph of the transcribed story I gave him, I asked him to reread it.  He couldn’t. “Do you have trouble remembering words?” Yes. “Do you have problems remembering words you see or words you hear?” “Both.” Ah.

    I started working on his visual memory problems.  I wrote out a five-letter word, spoke, on a slip of paper. After he looked at it for a minute, I held the paper up to his forehead and asked him to read the letters from the imprint in his visual memory. All he could remember was the letter s.  I asked him my standard question, “When you remember what your blanket at home looks like, where in your brain to you feel that memory?”  He pointed to the soft spot in his head.  That’s too far back in my experience.  I asked him to see it in front of his forehead.  Then I showed him the word again and asked him to read the letters from what he saw in his mind.  He remembered more, but not all.  

    Then I told him to write the word on his blanket in his imagination. With this trick, he was able to read all the letters. But then, the letters started moving around.  That’s another problem. I told him we would fix that one on Monday.

    When I was done, I went to the school driveway to meet Kathrin, who was there to pick me up after her visit to Walmart to wrestle with her device problem.  She said the clerk at Walmart was very helpful. She had all her issues resolved.

Musings:

 Empathy versus sympathy. Sympathy is when you feel what someone else feels.  Empathy is when you recognize what someone else feels.  These two terms are often used interchangeably. I prefer to see them as different. 

    I have a relative that some consider very empathetic, but I see her has deficient in this skill.  She is, however, very sympathetic. If she identifies with your joy or your suffering, she is responsive.  But, if you are someone who she considers a villain, well, you’re stuck. She has divided the world into villains and victims. She sees herself as a victim and identifies with all those she also considers victims.  She can do great work helping people like that.  But when it comes to people who she sees as having power, and therefore being villains, they receive no sympathy. They also receive no empathy because that’s not on the menu.

    I once heard someone describe empathy is something a skilled conman is good at.  Empathy can lead to compassion but not necessarily. For that matter, sympathy can be so overwhelming; their feelings incapacitate people who suffer from it. Neither sympathy nor empathy guarantees compassion and/or appropriate action. 

    A simple example of empathy is if I am enjoying loud music but consider that it might not be pleasurable to someone else. I might ask the other listener if they are okay with the music.  And action, I might turn down the music. 

 I can hear someone say, “Well, that’s being considerate.”  Yes, but you can’t be considerate in response to a need you can’t perceive.  Perceiving the need of others when it contradicts your own is empathy.  Empathy precedes consideration.  No empathy no consideration.

Wednesday, September 4, 2019

    Okay. I’m feeling lonely.  I have people who are there in case of an emergency, and I have people who visit me, call me, have lunch with me, but I have no companion. A companion is someone I get along with who does their own thing in the same space, parallel play. A companion reads or naps on the lanai as I read or nap on the lanai.  A companion is someone I am happy to share the space with, someone I can negotiate with if I have to, someone I can share a meal or a conversation with.  More critical than conversation are those passing smiles as our eyes meet, which say, “I’m good with you being here.” 

    I am not looking for a Mike replacement.  He was a companion plus, plus, plus, plus.  I don’t think I need all those pluses.  Well, I don’t seem to need them yet.

    Sadly Elsa is not very companionable.  She was with Mike, but not with me.  If Mike went down for a nap, she was with him.  If I came home and saw he was napping, I didn’t have to wonder where Elsa was. But she doesn’t do that with me.  She comes to me when she needs or wants something, having a ball thrown or being petted, particularly belly rubs.  She used to jump into bed whenever we got in. Now, she doesn’t even do that. She usually comes to bed sometime during the night, but she is not a cuddler.  I don’t think a second dog is an option because she doesn’t seem to get along well with other dogs.  She doesn’t fight, but neither does she play. She ignores them.  And, if there is another dog, she becomes very demanding on the available humans.  At least she is something for me to think about besides myself.  I have to feed her and walk her regularly.  I have to clean her ears and take her to the groomer. I tried grooming her with scissors. After snipping her several times, she had had enough. Can’t exactly blame her.

    I stopped off at Ace Hardware after Bikram to pick up sun cloth and batteries for my pedometer. We have to block Elsa’s view of the dogs next door. She barks at them like mad if she can see them, and they bark back. Annoying.  I bought some ripstop nylon tarps, but they don’t let the wind through and will be ripped off in a good wind.  I was trying to find a way to deal with the problem.  Yvette turned Scott on to the problem.  He told me to buy sun cloth, which is dense netting that lets the wind blow through while blocking out light effectively.   He plans to suspend it from the fence and weigh down the bottom edge with twenty feet of pc pipe.  

    I had lunch today with Mindy afternoon mass.  We had lunch in the Indian restaurant across from the church.  I love that location. The sound of the pounding surf is perfect: calming, not deafening. It was lovely getting to know her better.  Most people from the church have a commitment to me because of my connection to Mike, but they don’t see me as just Mike’s wife. If they did, that wouldn’t last long. 

    Mindy asked me about the book I was writing on my reading method.  She talked about a couple she knows: The wife reads fast and loves reading novels, but doesn’t do well with unfamiliar material.  The husband is a slow reader who describes himself as dyslexic.  He claims she doesn’t really read.  I see them as “Jack Sprat and his wife.’  She depends entirely on her automatic ‘fast’ thinking system; he’s dependent on his conscious, ‘slow’ thinking system. Now, in her case,  I see someone for whom reading came easily early in life and never learned to do the work of consciously expanding her reading skills. With him, I’m not sure.  Is he someone who just never switched on the automatic system, or is he someone who avoided the automatic system because it was unreliable? 

    I would love to play with this problem.  However, the couple is in their late 70s and early 80s.  The more we practice a way of doing something, the more ingrained it becomes.  It would be interesting to see if people that old could be motivated to change. I love seeing what my mind is capable of and how it responds, but not everyone is like that. 

    After lunch, I stopped off at Costco. The low tire air pressure was on.  Of course, as I sat there, it went off. The temperature today went over 90. That heat increased the air pressure as the reduced temperature decreased it.  It was 74 earlier that morning. So far, sleeping temperatures have been pleasant despite the daytime heat. 

    I went inside the store to buy my salad and pick up another case of almond milk.  I look for the large case by Kirkland because I can use those boxes to ship books.  I also stopped at the receiving section and asked if they had any boxes that didn’t have the tops cut off. The lady got me two.  I also have several people saving boxes for me.

    When I got home, I hit the sofa and slept deeply.  I have no idea why I get so tired.  I want to think that it is because my body is making radical changes.  Yes, today, while doing my morning walk, I achieved something new.  It’s slow, but I find the process fascinating. 

    Yvette left me another Hersey’s milk chocolate bar with almonds.  This is the second one in two days.  She also came to visit for a few minutes.

    Dinner was my breakfast drink since I had a large lunch. I watched some tv and search for a few more books.  I almost have enough for another box, actually two boxes.  One is a good-sized one holding something like 15 books. The other one only holds two. Since it’s all by weight, it doesn’t make much difference. The little bit of extra cardboard paper and tape on the smaller boxes isn’t going to make that much difference, and they’re easy to carry. 

_________-__________-_________

Musings:

    Boy, am I ever glad I kept on reading Brook’s book  The Road to             Character.  I still don’t think we agree on some essential points, but I have learned a lot.  He thinks the way I do about what I enjoy thinking about, even if he doesn’t come to the same conclusion.  

    He covered the development of the Romantic Movement.  Rousseau introduced the idea that man was good. My father spoke about Rousseau to me when I was a child. If I remember correctly, there was the idea of the noble savage. In our primitive stage, we are good.  Hobbes could have shown Rousseau a thing or two.  Hobbes argued for the social contract to keep us all in line.  

    I’m not in one camp or the other.  I believe we have impulses to be part of something larger than ourselves, to be loving and giving. I also think that we have impulses to think of ourselves only, survival. I think both impulses can be good or bad.  A person’s need to be part of something bigger than himself and give himself to it totally can be a fanatic who resolves to press his ideas on everyone.  A person who only thinks of himself can be prepared to sell his mother for something he wants.  

    I guess I’m saying that it isn’t our nature alone, good or bad, which determines what we become in the world.  It has to do with circumstances.  It occurs to me that the colors look different depending on the surrounding colors.  Opportunity!  It comes back to opportunity.  

    There are schools of thought that argue that we should restrict opportunity.  Religions that say no dancing, no music other than religious, men and women that are not members of the same family should never be left alone together, women should never be out in public unless escorted by a male family member, limiting opportunity. Does that eliminate all bad actions?  I don’t see it.  

 

Tuesday, September 3, 2019

 

    After Bikram, I went to the post office to send off the first four boxes of books to the seminary in New Orleans. I had hoped that Katrin would help me, but she wasn’t up to coming to class.  I asked Ned, but he wasn’t even staying for class. I asked Jeff, but he had to go to work right after class and didn’t have the time.  

    Jeff is my go-to guy for hugs.  He gives great ones.  I can feel Mike being joyful that I have someone who I can get comforting hugs from.  I don’t know what makes his different from anyone else’s, but they are almost as good as Mike’s. Only one problem.  I don’t hug back or, more importantly, send love back as I did with Mike.  That’s a loss; there’s no easy fix for this one.

    There was a new couple in class today.  They were tourists from California, and I had the nerve to ask them if they could follow me to the post office and help me.  They did.  I carried in one box; the husband in the couple took in the remaining three.  As I figured, the cost averaged $10 a box.

    Then I went to Costco to get gas. As I expected, the line was something else.  Since they were closed yesterday, all of us who needed gas now were there this morning.  The line moved quickly, so it was not too much of a problem.

    Kathrin has agreed to be here for a good part of the two weeks I will be away in September.  I thought Elsa could stay downstairs with Josh, who will be home alone. Yvette contacted Kathrin and told her that it wouldn’t work.  It would be too much stress for Josh, who works 12 hours a day these days. She also said that Elsa ignores her dogs and demands attention from the humans, leaving her dogs out in the cold. She doesn’t think it is a good mix.  She’s right, but it makes me sad.

_________-_________-_________

Musings:

    Brooks describes an experiment where young people are asked to describe a moral dilemma they faced.  He said they had no idea.  One young man came up with a situation where he pulled into a parking space and realized he didn’t have change for the meter.  Brooks did not consider this a moral dilemma.

    I consider myself someone who thinks about morality a lot. However, I can’t think of a moral dilemma I faced recently.  I have to say, thank God.

    People who research moral dilemmas use extreme situations: picture yourself at the control of a train switch, meaning you can shift a train from one track to another. The train is heading on a pathway that will result in the death of five people. You can throw the switch, so the train goes onto another track -but one man is standing there.  You have to choose between doing nothing or throwing the switch and sacrificing one man’s life to save the lives of five people.  How many of you have faced moral dilemmas like that in the last year?  Hopefully, none of you. 

    The closest I can think of a moral dilemma is telling someone a painful truth or keeping my mouth shut.  I will not tell someone a painful truth just to state it – I hope. (I am capable of bitter anger; in which case, I have been known to spit it out. If provoked, it takes great restraint not to.) 

    But is this s a moral dilemma? The question is, will I do greater good by speaking the truth or not.  Well, then it becomes a practical matter. Do I feel this person is ready to learn from what I have to say, or will it just be a source of pain? If it’s just pain I’m causing, I don’t see the point.  Maybe they will profit from it even if it is not the perfect moment to present it, even if it is ripped from my mouth by bitterness. But I prefer not to take that risk.  I want to wait until the person can benefit from hearing what I have to say: the perfect teaching moment.

  

Monday, September 2, 2019

    After Bikram, I stopped off for a sale at a local diving shop.  I remember hearing, somewhere, that divers wore weights. I'm not planning to dive, no. I'm a woman of a certain age and, I guess, a certain weight. When I go swimming, my rear end bobs up to the surface, or I get tossed around by the waves just like so much debris. Women tend to be more buoyant than men, and what little mass sat in my abdomen when I was younger has withered, leaving more space for air, creating more buoyancy.  

    I went swimming with Judy and Paulette in a quiet inlet. They handed me a noodle.  I felt like one of those shmoo toys which you can't knock over. In my case, I couldn't keep my rear end under the water.  It bobbed to the surface, forcing my face down into the water. Next time I go swimming, we'll see how wearing those weights work.

    After the diving shop, I headed to Costco. Closed???! Are you serious? Costco was closed for Labor Day.  Well, I had enough food for tonight. I'd stop off tomorrow.

    At home, I drank my morning soup and did some work on the blog. I meant to do some work on the book, Chapter 2, but I played FreeCell instead.

    Then I went out and did some work on the plumbago.  Both my neighbors and the parents of the woman who lives there were in the yard.  The mother called, "Hello, Betty." She is the only friendly one. What a difference that simple act made. It dissolved some of my hostility toward them.  The wife won't even look at me when she sees me in the street.  I can imagine that she doesn't want anything to do with me because her dogs hurt Elsa.  She wasn't home at the time, but someone might have told her. There's no way I blame her or her dogs.  Elsa got away and ran onto their property. But then again, she doesn't talk to anyone. Several neighbors have asked me about them and pointed out how unfriendly they are. Don't get it.

    Yvette reported that she had her hot flashes under control with acupuncture and Chinese herbs.  She gave me a gift of an appointment with the woman she worked with.  When I saw her today, she said hot flashes are just about her bread and butter.  This makes me very optimistic that I can see an end to them.  Of late, I have had worse ones.  I can be dripping wet.  Yuck. Yvette had six hot flashes a day, and now they have stopped.  Erin, the acupuncturist, gave me a list of foods that were good to eat to foster my yin versus my overdeveloped yang.  This excess of yang makes me wonder if I'm a few chromosomes short of a trans.  ¬ I stopped at Safeway on the way home to pick up some food items: watermelon, asparagus (yum), and apples. 

    Mike frequently offered to share the burden of the hot flashes with me.  So sweet.  When he was in so much pain and so lonely during his hospital stint, I offered to take turns with him. I'm sorry I couldn't give him some relief, and much relieved that I couldn't and didn't have to suffer the way he suffered.

________-________-_________

MUSINGS:    

Wow! Do I ever need to read Augustine's Confessions! Here I find someone's who's thinking is like my own on the subject of human nature. Well, roughly like my own. He used self-observation to get a better understanding of the human condition.  He also felt that it was through deep self-knowledge that one got to know God.  I don't think he meant that he would discover that he was God in the Buddhist sense. From my own experience, I suspect that the more I know about the specific, me, the more understanding I develop of the general, all humans.  It means seeing my dark side.  It means realizing that I am capable of what any human being is capable of, both good and bad.  I recall the family motto: "Don't confuse lack of opportunity with virtue." My father quoted the words to me.  My uncle, his brother, told me they were posted on a wall in the house.

 

Sunday, September 1, 2019

 

    I woke up naturally at 7, took Elsa for our long Sunday walk to compensate for not doing Bikram.  I was going to do some work on cutting back the plumbago before church but never got around to it.  

    Paulette was alone this morning when she came to pick me up for church.  Judy stayed home with plans of going to the 4 pm mass because she hadn't slept well.  My first reaction was to be worried about her condition when I saw it was Paulette alone. But when I found she wasn't coming because of a bad night's sleep, I felt reassured.  Unfortunately, this is something that plagues Judy.  I consider myself fortunate to be a good sleeper. I'm a great sleeper. I love to sleep.  And that's what I did when I came home from church.  All plans to do something functional went out the window.  

    I woke up around 2:30 pm.  I had to be out of the house to make the special yin yoga class.  I got a free one because I did at least four Bikram classes a week for August. Crista had run a contest. The prize was a month free pass for one lucky winner. I had no idea what yin yoga was but decided to give it a try. I can do it because it moves slowly and encourages mindful body awareness, right up my alley.  The teacher, Rochelle, a visitor from Chattanooga, Tennessee, has her studio there. She and her husband come to visit twice a year.  The class was full with more than just students who participated in the contest to get a free month of yoga.  Besides the prize of the free month, two students had contributed other gifts.  I won second place and got a huge jar of honey. 

    Ned, whose honey this is, came up to me and told me he doesn't smoke or feed his bees.  His honey is as close to what the bees make as it is possible. I'm interested in trying it.  The jar is huge.  I have a lifetime supply. That's probably no joke. 

    Mike and I used to joke about having lifetime supplies of this or that. In fact, our supply of Dove soap, which we brought with us from Ohio, has outlasted Mike.  It is a lifetime supply and then some. 

    The phrase "Who gave you permission to die?" has been coming to mind.  Mike and I used to joke, "Who gave you permission to be sick?" In this case, the question is, "Who gave you permission to die?" The irony is that, of course, I gave permission for him to die.  I think there is a good chance he would have died anyway, but it would have to have been on the surgical table as they tried a last-ditch effort to save him.  Every doctor said the likelihood of him surviving a surgical procedure was nil. I'm glad I could save him that agony added to all that he had already suffered.  Thinking of his suffering makes me sad. 

 

_______ ________ _________

Musings:

    The reading and sermon today were on humility (and generosity).  I want to address humility.    It talks about humility in the sense of not assuming you're due a position of honor at the table.  The reading says that you're better off selecting a lowly position and let the host invite you to a higher place at the table.  The alternative is that you place yourself at the high table, and your host has to ask you to move. 

    As a child, I learned that humility is the opposite of hubris.  The concept of hubris, which comes from the ancient Greeks, was to see yourself at the gods' level and above other humans.  Humility is then seeing oneself on the same plane as all humans, regardless of their life circumstances.  

    As defined by the passage in the bible, it is having an inappropriate view as to your ranking among other humans.  It has nothing to do with seeing yourself as comparable to the gods.

    I suppose by either definition, anyone who inappropriately sees themselves as above another is somewhat out of touch with reality. However, I find the two criteria quite different. By the biblical standard, your problem is seeing yourself as among the most elevated in the social group. There are always some who are higher than others for one reason or another. No matter how socially elevated, no one rises above all humans to be compared with the gods, no one. I prefer that definition of humility.  As illuminated in this story, the biblical one is just sound advice, so you're not put in an embarrassing position.

Saturday, August 31, 2019

    Kathrin invited me to go to the beach yesterday after Bikram.  She took me to the beach at the Old Airport. It's a large beach with a series of coves. The parking lot is the old runway.  We walked and sat at a picnic bench under a tree and talked. I am looking forward to showing the beach to Damon, Cylin, and August.  While the beach is beautiful, it seems like it's too rough for swimming for Cylin and took rocky for boogie boarding.  There were surfers out there.  A good sign that it is not a good place for us garden variety swimmers.  I very much enjoyed Kathrin's company.  We have a lot in common.

    I spent the afternoon packing up some books for shipping, my first three boxes. Notre Dame ordered about 100 books.  I have found about 30 of them. Only 3770 more books to go before I have emptied the library.  As I worked, I wondered what Mike must be thinking about having left me with this chore.  I can't imagine that he ever thought of it.  His plan was for us to die together in our nineties and leave it Yvette and Damon's job.

    I had dinner with the Glicksteins last night. No special occasion, just Judy making sure I'm getting a decent meal.  It was lovely.  I miss having people around.

    I am going to have to work on having someone else to live with. I'm not comfortable just navigating around furniture.  That leaves me feeling 'I'm not the chair I'm sitting in. I'm not the table I'm walking around." I also need, "I'm not this other human being I'm taking into consideration.," so that I can remember that I am human.

    Elsa doesn't cut it.  Besides being a dog and not a human, she doesn't cling to me.  When I picked her up from the groomer yesterday, she was sitting on his lap.  He said she was needy.  Boy, not with me.  She has her own life.  I suspect that she is waiting for Kathrin to come home.  She was here long enough to become part of her pack.

    Kathrin hasn't been home now for over two weeks.  She has moved in with her friend, Michael.  Well, that is until her visitor's visa runs out.    

  _____________ _________ _________  

Musings:

    Whenever Brooks refers to the ego's needs, he refers to the needs of fame, fortune, and power.  (Again, the poor ego gets a bad rap being judge by its worst moments only.) Now, for starters, I disagree with him on the ego needs.  They can manifest as constructively as easily as they can destructively: the need to see oneself as good can be either good or bad. That's as much an ego need as any fame, fortune, and power, and it can go just as wonky.

    As I have mentioned previously, I view the human psyche from the perspective of evolutionary psychology.  Therefore, our drives to secure fame, fortune, and power must have a survival purpose.  When our brain circuits developed, the opportunities for excessive fame, fortune, and power were limited by our circumstances.  How much fame, fortune, and power can be accrued when you are one person in a group of 10 to 100 wandering the wilderness in search of food.  Everyone is in search of fortune: food, water, and safe shelter. 

    I remember an anthropology teacher saying that stealing is not a problem is a small primitive tribe. If you stole something from someone else, you couldn't use it anyway.  Everyone would know, and, boy, would you ever be in trouble.  Doing something like that could easily cost your life when you were exiled from the group for your behavior.

    Fame: does everyone in the group know me?  Am I well-liked? Are they happy to have me as part of the group?  I am possibly known by the members of a neighboring tribe, so when I go to visit, they don't kill me? How much would more fame be possible?

    Power: Am I respected? Do people acknowledge my needs and my point of view?  I believe that once basic physical needs are satisfied, power is what we fight over between family members and between countries.  It has to do with our precarious grasp on reality.  Each one of us sees the world slightly differently.  We need to know that some share our point of view to be validated.  Even in the most structured cultured, there are small differences in point of view.  I think these differences are scary for people. It brings into question our grasp on reality.

 

Friday, August 30, 2019

 

    I missed writing about yesterday.  It was a busy day: I did work on the plumbago, went to school, and saw the chiropractor. Done.

    I find I am missing Mike more and more.  I don't know how much this is because that's what I'm up to in the grieving process or because no one is living in the house with me — too much alone time.  I wasn't wholly isolated; I spoke to my friend Carol from Ohio, Judy and Dorothy made her usual Thursday call. Thank you, Dorothy, for your commitment. I don't have another human being to consider as I move through the house I get along with. It's just me and the furniture, and Elsa, but she's not a human being.  Maybe if I had five or six dogs that would equal one human being. Perhaps I'll have to resort to that.

    I dropped Elsa off at the Dog Groomer this morning at 7.  She had to be there until 2 pm because I had a haircut at 12 and then school.

    I worked with three kids yesterday. K's hair looked somewhat more kempt. My mother said you can always tell how people feel by the way their hair looks.  Those days you can't do anything with it; something is bothering you that causes it.   Looking at K's hair made me want to cry out, "My kingdom for a comb!" Yesterday, her hair looked better.  

    The other day I worked with her to inform her nonconscious mind that her life wasn't in danger even if she never learned to read; no one would try to kill her because of this lack. Today, I told her how angry I was at my mother when I was a child.  I was mad at her all the time. She died at 98. My anger did not affect her; it didn't kill her. I asked her if that made her feel better. She said yes to that.  I don't know if her take on her mom is correct or not, but I do know this is one angry little girl. I also know that that anger won't kill her mom.

     One of the operators at the hairdresser has been particularly sympathetic to my loss of Mike.  I found out today that she lost her husband about ten years ago to pancreatic cancer.  She has had two children, one an infant.  The woman in her chair announced she had lost her husband to pancreatic cancer two years ago.  This last woman was 35 when her husband died. She was left with five kids. Mike died of severe acute pancreatitis.  There were only four people in the shop; three of us were widows who had lost their husbands to a pancreatic disorder.  

    I headed to school.  It was 1 pm when I arrived  I parked and was about to go sign in when I realized that I wouldn't have enough time to do anything at school and make it to the dog groomer in time to pick up Elsa by 2 pm.  I turned around and headed to the groomer and Elsa.  

    Elsa was sitting in his lap. He said she was needy, so he gave her love.  Sounds good to me.  When I checked my phone, I saw that the mysterious phone call I had received in the morning was from him, telling me she was ready.  I could have picked Elsa up on my way home from Bikram.  That sounds much better. I will pick her up early — that way, the poor girl doesn't have to be away from home for so long.

    In the evening, I tried to figure out when I would be traveling from Seattle to San Francisco to make my final flight arrangements. I sent the information to Damon. 

    I spent the evening listening to a tv show while I searched for more books. I already had three boxes filled. Now I have enough for a fourth.

_______________ _____________ ____________

Musings;

 

    I found a comment in a modern love story in the NY Times that made me stop in my tracks.  The article's author said that her parents were incompatible because her father expected happiness, and her mother didn't. That's illuminating. I have always thought happiness was something available to human beings.  I don't know where I got this idea from.  I don't know if either of my parents held that belief.  

    Believing it had its pluses and minuses.  On the minus side, facing a low reality with high expectations is nerve-wracking.  On the other hand, I also believed that I could achieve it if I worked for it.  Fortunately for me, the path to that achievement was through personal transformation.  Moreover, success had something do with being a loving person-  being loved was a nice bonus. 

    While I never escaped the pall of sadness and disappointment, I do think I achieved a lot of what I set out to do. When my mom was alive, I told her that I thought my two greatest accomplishments were my relationship with her and Mike.  Neither was perfect, but both had love in them, and both relationships allowed me to be loving. All told, a pretty good deal.

            

Wednesday, August 28, 2019

  

    At Bikram this morning, I worked on shifting the bottom of my left rib cage forward and out to the side.  The sequence has been moving the right hip to the left using the psoas and obliques, then shifting the right hip to the left targeting the sits bone, putting more pressure on the center of the bone rather than the right side, and then opening up the rib cage on the left side. All this is part of the unwinding of my spinal curvature.  I continued to work on changing the alignment of my left foot. This is causing some discomfort between the left big toe and the arch of the foot.  I am assuming it is muscle strain from the different position and will resolve itself in time. It doesn't bother me at all when I am not walking.

    I had a telephone appointment with my therapist at 10 am.  The thing that came to mind was the little third-grade girl I am working with who is frightened of making a mistake.  I know my fear.  It stops me from doing so many things.  With her, I worked on her fear that someone will kill her if she never learned to read, specifically her mom.  She feels that her mom yells at her a lot.  I have no way of verifying it, but I know how Mike and Randy's memories of their family life differ and how subjective perspectives can color reality. In helping this little girl, I don't have to know the truth.  All I have to know is that she is scared. (I checked that there is no physical abuse.)

    I developed a process for calming that fear over thirty years ago. Don't ask me how I came up with it, but I looked at it from the perspective of evolutionary psychology and found a solution to excessive fear.  The procedure is simple.

 

    Step 1: tell the student I am going to ask a stupid question. 

    I point to the front of the forehead and ask the stupid question:

    "Does this part of your brain think your mother, father, teacher, etc. will kill you if you never learn to read, do math, dance, etc.? "

    If the student looks uncertain, I say I am asking this part of the brain (pointing again to the front of the forehead), not this part (pointing to the back of the head).  This procedure lessens the problem and often resolves it. 

    The basis for the question is discerning the difference between what the conscious mind knows and what the nonconscious mind thinks/believes.  The students have never made this distinction before. 

 

   Step #2:  Once I have established that the conscious mind is confident that they are not in danger, I tell them to picture a' little you' sitting around where the soft spot on their head is.  I instruct them to have the 'little you' at that spot facing toward the back of the brain and tell every cell in the back of the brain that their life is not in danger.  This may sound like the silliest thing you ever heard of, but I have had a great deal of success with it.  Children generally report feelings of relaxation.  They don't have to believe it works.  They don't have to do anything but what I instruct them to do.  It requires some imagination, but nothing else.

 

    The only caveat to this prescription is an individual who has had their life threatened by another human being or anyone who cannot believe their life is not in actual danger.  I am in that class of people.  Members of my family are survivors of the Holocaust.  I know in a way that bypasses the intellect that people may seek to kill me for some arbitrary reason.      

    I worked with a young Vietnamese man whose family went through the war.  He knows that people may seek to track him down and kill him even though he wasn't born at that time.  That memory was silently passed on to him from his parents and grandparents. We know it can be done through epigenetics.  You can tell me and him that we are not in those circumstances now, but we understand that the circumstances are greater than some local conflict. This belief has to do with the human condition. All circumstances hold the potential of ultimate danger. Your friendly neighbor can betray you or clap their hands in relish as you are carted away.  People who have this in their historical background may not respond as well to this process as those who have not. It is imperative that the person believes with their conscious mind that they are not currently in danger, and specifically not for some current failing.  If someone says their conscious mind doesn't believe it, I never push it. For those who think they are safe from death despite some failing with their conscious minds, this process does wonders.

    I figured if this student came to mind, it suggested something that I could work on.  Fear, fear of failure, which interferes with performance or even effort.  As a child sitting with my father, I can remember as he helped me with my homework, crying, "I can't do it." I know now there are many times when that feeling wells up in me, and I walk away from a task that I know perfectly well I can do.  When I do healing with a client, I start by asking the person to share whatever comes to mind even if it doesn't sound relevant, or what has been most annoying recently. It always connects to something more profound.

    The therapist asked me what does it feel like. I said it feels like something is welling up in my stomach, like a burp or repeating food.  I so dread the feeling that I will avoid the task, preferably for FreeCell. If it rises high enough, it reaches my throat; it feels like a tightness there.  I sat with that feeling.  

(The following describes what was in my imagination, like a waking dream.)

    When just watching that tension rise up in me, I experienced some release of the tension.  It felt as if wispy smoke was coming up through my mouth.  Then I said, "I release anything negative about this feeling and keep anything positive or anything I still need." With that, large blue solid objects, the shape of bolts of lightning came up.  My stomach gurgled. That's always a good sign.  It means there has been some relaxation; relaxation implies change.  Whatever I was doing, it was working. 

    While the bolts of lightning came from my stomach area, a troll-like character appeared at my waistline. (Note: all these bizarre thoughts are in my imagination. I do not think they are real.)  This character was one angry dude, filled with hatred.    (I will expound on my theory behind this character in the musing section.)  The hatred was for all humanity that didn't affirm me, approve of me, give me what I want, etc. It's the "me, my precious" part of me. It's there to protect and defend me in a hostile world.  I sat with the anger. 

            Once I was consciously aware of the troll, I realized that I would not allow that part of me to damage others. Then that anger wasn't so scary.  When I see my little girl self again, I  have to show her that she will not do damage to her mom, no matter how angry she gets.

    After therapy, I got to work dealing with problems with I am having with Square. I have received a few payments via debit card through them.  I could find no record of the payments.  Winds up, I had used the local bank instead of Raymond James. Winds up also that the bank charges me $6.00 for each direct deposit.  Square made a trial deposit for $.01 to check if it worked.  That cost me $6.00.I don't think so.  I was able to change the account for direct deposits to Raymond James.  This was one of the chores I have been putting off forever because it seemed overwhelming, even though I knew damn well I would solve it, which I did. 

    I spoke to an old friend from Ohio, who is a wonderful source of support for me. I also talked to Judy, who checked up that I was still alive after not speaking to me since Sunday.  

_______ ______ ______

Musings:

 

    When I spoke to my therapist about negative thinking being more prevalent in people who spent time alone. I asked her if she thought this fear was found only in people who needed therapy or more people in the population suffered. She thinks, as I do, that most people are vulnerable in this way. 

    As some of you already know, I view the human psyche through the lens of evolutionary psychology.  This belief does not mean that I think we are ruled by our brain construct, but that we have to have an accurate view of how it works to modify or control it without doing damage to ourselves or others. 

    So the question came up, "Why do we sink into negative thinking when we are or feel isolated." During hunter-gather times, we all lived at a basic survival level, not unlike the way a soldier lives in combat conditions.  In those circumstances, you never want to be alone.  You need someone to cover your back or pull you to safety.  Danger can come from anywhere. 

 Being alone means something is wrong.  You have made a technical mistake, gone in a wrong direction, or committed a social blunder, done something that offends your group's members.

    In survival circumstances, behavioral rules are very narrowly defined. There's not a lot of room for diversity. Everyone has to act in unison or else put everyone's life in danger.  You can put the lives of others in danger by not conforming.  Under those circumstances, the only option is for the group to press the deviant into shape or get rid of the person.  The survival of everyone else depends on it.  It makes sense that someone who finds themselves alone would start thinking about what they did wrong to solve the technical problem or the social one.  A social threat has a more significant effect on our psyches than ones emanating from nature.  We can't argue or negotiate with nature. Nature isn't judging us; nature just is.  It is people who judge us as inadequate, insufficient. 

    A primitive man must have been scrambling to figure out what he had done wrong and how to get himself back into the good graces of his tribe.  On the other hand, the tribe was posing a threat to this person's life.  This threat activated our primitive minds and revved us up to fight. Anger is the evoked emotion.  So while the ingrate may have understood why he/she was being reprimanded, banished, or threatened with death, they were also furious.  They couldn't help but be furious as we all would if someone means us harm — a reasonable response.  Therefore, the troll.

    While in the modern world, many of us experience social isolation by choice:  we choose to live alone; we choose not to participate in group activities.  There is plenty of evidence now that social isolation is not just bad for the psyche; it's terrible for our physical health. We stop thriving.  

    While there is no one knocking on our door telling us we failed the most basic test of the tribe, being alone triggers this feeling.  Yes, I am proposing that just being alone can do this to us. If a primitive man found himself alone, he knew he was in trouble and had to figure a way out.  Being alone – or feeling socially isolated -is a trigger for negative thinking. It's our primitive brains getting to work figuring out how to get us to perform the right actions so we can get back in with the tribe and assure our survival.

Tuesday, August 27, 2019

    Okay, I'm not doing so well today. Mike's regular hugs helped me to regain balance. He didn't just hug me; he sent me all his love and affirmed me in a thousand ways. There was a program on NPR today about Sweden's problems where it is the ideal to live alone.  People talk about dark thoughts overcoming them.  I wonder if this is universal.  

    When I got to Bikram, Jeff came up to hug me.  He offers that to a number of us.  These hugs are usually aloha hugs, per functionary greetings.  When I told him I really need a hug today, he leaned into it and sent me good vibes. I said how much I missed Mike and sobbed once or twice. It helped. Doing the class helped too.   

    Why would we sink into negative thinking if we are alone? To begin with, I'm sure this isn't true for everyone. Some people retire to the wild and live happily. Well, maybe I'm thinking of a book I read about someone who lived in a desert setting alone.  Of course, he wrote a book, so mentally, he wasn't alone.  He was reaching out to others. Also, I don't know how long he stayed out there.

    Back to why we would sink into negative thinking: I thought I wrote about this already. Maybe not. As you may already have realized, I think in terms of evolutionary psychology a lot.  I ask, "How would this behavior have helped us survive in the period when our brains circuits were formed?"  "How would negative thinking promote our chances of survival?"

    My thinking is that if we found ourselves isolated, totally alone, in the hunter-gatherer period, something had gone wrong.  Either we were physically lost in the wild when we got separated from a group, or we had been banished from the tribe for some social infraction.  Either way, it was a life-threatening situation, and we had to think of a way to solve this problem. Since I am not lost in a physical wilderness, I must have offended the tribe members.  I have to think, "What did I do wrong? How can I get back in their good graces?" Ergo, I set in on negative thinking. Since I haven't done anything wrong and I haven't been exiled from my tribe, I don't have a real-life circumstance to contemplate. I have to fish around for negative things to think about myself. Remember, if early man couldn't figure out how to get back into their good graces, he was as good as dead. No one could survive out in the wilderness alone forever in those days.  Maybe thirst and hunger could be addressed, but when would he sleep? Who would keep watch and protect him from wild animals?   What if he injured himself?  He was doomed. 

    I have read some books which tell of people who get lost for extended periods in the wilderness,  but these folks had modern-day weapons, and they weren't out there forever.  I confess I don't know enough about how the hunters of early America functioned.  I have a feeling there are stories of survival that will contradict my theory.