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Jamie Elkon Blog

Category: Psychotherapy

  • Paradise Found

    Paradise Found

    I have a beaten up copy of The Norton Anthology of Poetry which I treasure, it must be about 20 years old and I have found reliable refuge between its well thumbed pages during numerous dark nights. In Miltons epic poem Paradise Lost, we encounter Adam and Eve’s traumatic expulsion from the Nirvanic garden of Eden. It occurred to me, while re-reading it recently, that the ultimate rejection of the lovers from this idyllic paradise may in fact have been a quite a good thing. Let me elaborate…

    There are few things as distressing to humans as entering into what often feels like mortal combat with those we love. It never ceases to amaze me how someone we have shared our deepest secrets or most pinnacle life experiences with, can instantly transform into a raging, fanged, horned beast who , at times, can appear to threaten our very selfhood. During these raging conflicts, our antiquated defenses rush to our aid and very often, in an attempt to protect the ego, inflict grievous injuries not only on our partners but ultimately, on ourselves.

    Barbed words are expertly wielded to penetrate through the toughest defenses our lover can muster in an effort to make them feel the pain we too are experiencing. A predictably destructive spiral of recrimination ensues, during which both parties lose. So, what I hear you say, could possibly be the upside to this agonizing exit from the Edenic state many of us aspire to in relationship?

    Perhaps this expulsion, this separation from the intimate, tranquil, resonant space, echoes the separations we have all encountered in various ways, the progressive separation from the Cosmic Soul, from our mothers, our parents, our home, our friends, jobs, lovers…eventually we are forced to separate out from life itself… as everyone before us has had to. Perhaps these ruptures in the relational field are merely practice, a reminder that while we constantly seek Union, essentially we are here on our own…and that’s ok.

    Not only do separations teach us to be more than that we project onto others, they teach us to cultivate our own resources, to trust that we will survive in a bewildering world and finally, they offer us an opportunity to connect with our core essence in a very profound way, which ultimately enlarges our capacity for true, loving Union.

  • Creative Myth-Busting

    Creative Myth-Busting

    Today’s selection — in his marvelous book Daily Rituals, Mason Currey provides a brief glimpse of the work habits of 161 famous writers, painters, scientists, mathematicians and philosophers. While the details vary greatly and are filled with humorous and surprising quirks, one thing is constant for the vast majority of them. They work hard. And they work hard almost every day, belying the myth that creativity is the province of sudden inspiration rather than of commitment and a deeply-seated work ethic. We have included the vignettes regarding George Gershwin, Pablo Picasso, and Henri Matisse below:

    Henri Matisse (1869-1954)

    ” ‘Basically, I enjoy everything: I am never bored,’ Matisse told a visitor in 1941, during a tour of his studio in the south of France. After showing his guest his working space, his cages full of exotic birds, and his conservatory stocked with tropical plants, giant pumpkins, and Chinese statuettes, Matisse talked about his work habits.

    Do you understand now why I am never bored? For over fifty years I have not stopped working for an instant. From nine o’clock to noon, first sitting. I have lunch. Then I have a little nap and take up my brushes again at two in the afternoon until the evening. You won’t believe me. On Sundays, I have to tell all sorts of tales to the models. I promise them that it’s the last time I will ever beg them to come and pose on that day. Naturally I pay them double. Finally, when I sense that they are not convinced, I promise them a day off during the week. ‘But Monsieur Matisse,’ one of them answered me, ‘this has been going on for months and I have never had one afternoon off.’ Poor things! They don’t understand. Nevertheless I can’t sacrifice my Sundays for them merely because they have boyfriends.

    Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)

    “In 1911, Picasso moved from the Bateau Lavoir, a conglomeration of low-rent studios in Paris’s Montmartre district, to a much more respectable apartment on the boulevard de Clichy in Montparnasse. The new situation suited his growing fame as a painter, as well as his lifelong bourgeois aspirations. As the biographer John Richardson has written, ‘After the shabby gentility of his boyhood and the deprivations of his early days in Paris, Picasso wanted a lifestyle which would permit him to work in peace without material worries — “like a pauper,” he used to say, “but with lots of money.” ‘ The Montparnasse apartment was not without its bohemianism, however. Picasso took over its large, airy studio, forbade anyone from entering without his permission, and surrounded himself with his painting supplies, piles of miscellaneous junk, and a menagerie of pets, including a dog, three Siamese cats, and a monkey named Monina.

    “Throughout his life, Picasso went to bed late and got up late. At the boulevard de Clichy, he would shut himself in the studio by 2:00 P.M. and work there until at least dusk. Meanwhile, his girlfriend of seven years, Fernande, was left alone to her own devices, hanging around the apartment, waiting for Picasso to finish his work and join her for dinner. When he finally emerged from his studio, however, he was hardly good company. ‘He rarely spoke during meals; sometimes he would not utter a word from beginning to end,’ Fernande recalled. ‘He seemed to be bored, when he was in fact absorbed.’ She blamed his chronic bad mood on diet — the hypochondriacal Picasso had recently resolved to drink nothing but mineral water or milk and eat only vegetables, fish, rice pudding, and grapes.

    “Picasso would make more of an effort to be sociable if guests were present, as they frequently were. He had mixed feelings about entertaining. He liked to be amused between intense periods of work, but he also hated too much distraction. At Fernande’s suggestion, they designated Sunday as ‘at-home’ day (an idea borrowed from Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas), ‘and in this way managed to dispose of the obligations of friendship in a single afternoon.’ Still, Richardson writes, ‘the artist veered between anti-social sulking and gregariousness.’ Painting, on the other hand, never bored or tired him. Picasso claimed that, even after three or four hours standing in front of a canvas, he did not feel the slightest fatigue.

    ” ‘That’s why painters live so long,’ he said. ‘While I work I leave my body outside the door, the way Moslems take off their shoes before entering the mosque.’

    George Gershwin (1898·1937)

    ” ‘To me George was a little sad all the time because he had this compulsion to work,’ Ira Gershwin said of his brother. ‘He never relaxed.’ Indeed, Gershwin typically worked for twelve hours or more a day, beginning in the late morning and going until past midnight. He started the day with a breakfast of eggs, toast, coffee, and orange juice, then immediately began composing, sitting at the piano in his pajamas, bathrobe, and slippers. He would take breaks for a mid-afternoon lunch, a late-afternoon walk, and supper at about 8:00. If Gershwin had a party to attend in the evening, it was not unusual for him to return home after midnight and plunge back into work until dawn. He was dismissive of inspiration, saying that if he waited for the muse he would compose at most three songs a year. It was better to work every day. ‘Like the pugilist,’ Gershwin said, ‘the songwriter must always keep in training.’ ”

    Daily Rituals: How Artists Work
    Author: Mason Currey
    Published by Alfred A. Knopf
    Copyright 2013 by Mason Currey
    Pages 45-47, 94-96, 133

  • The Big Reveal.

    The Big Reveal.

    The upside of revealing yourself and making yourself vulnerable…and speaking your truth about your own fears, insecurities and problems, will always yield a greater good than it does a backlash…

    An obvious truth when you come down to it, is that we’re all in the same fucking boat- so many people experience fear and insecurity, lack of discipline, dark thoughts, self loathing- you name it, we all got it. When you raise your hand and talk about your own insecurities and problems- what you usually see is a lot of people out there nodding their heads saying ” oh my God! I’m so happy to hear someone say that- that’s what I’m feeling!

    And that is ultimately the purpose of this blog, to make us all feel, just a little less alone.

  • How to Think More about Sex.

    How to Think More about Sex.

    Having just reread Alain de Botton’s ” How to Think More about Sex”, I thought it prudent to share some of his insights with you. He maintains that it is rare to get through this life without feeling- generally with a degree of secret agony, perhaps at the end of a relationship, or as we lie in bed frustrated next to our partner, unable to go to sleep-that we are somehow a bit odd about sex. It is an area in which most of us have a painful impression , in our heart of hearts, that we are quite unusual. In truth, however, few of us are remotely normal sexually. We are almost all haunted by guilt and neuroses, by phobias and disruptive desires, by indifference and disgust. None of us approaches sex as we are meant to, with the cheerful sporting, non-obsessive, constant, well-adjusted outlook that we torture ourselves by believing other people are endowed with. We are universally deviant- but only in relation to some highly distorted ideals of normality.

    Many clients reluctantly drag the realities of their sexual life into the therapy space. It appears that most of what we are sexually remains impossible to communicate with anyone whom we would want to think well of us. The silence that surrounds our relationship with sex is often amplified by our comparison with others. Men often compare their performance, or penis size with porn stars, or with the guy who could tie his penis in a knot in matric, women similarly suffer from the virus of comparison battered into feelings of inadequacy with regards to breast or bum size, both sexes relentlessly pursue orgasm as if it were the Holy Grail. “Was that good for you?” is laced with a deep fear that we are not satisfying, not adequate, not ‘enough’ for our partners, or we feign indifference, or worse still, we don’t care.

    Whatever discomfort we feel about sex is commonly aggravated by the idea that we are living in a liberated age- and ought by now to be finding sex a straightforward and untroubling matter.
    The standard narrative goes something like this: for thousands of years across the globe, due to a devilish combination of religious bigotry and myopic social custom, people were afflicted by confusion and guilt around sex. They thought their hands would fall off if they masturbated. They believed they would burn in Hell if they ogled someone’s ankle. They had no clue about erections or clitorises. Our beliefs were, quite frankly, ridiculous.

    Then, sometime between Freud and the launch of Sputnik, things changed for the better. Finally, people started wearing bikinis, admitted to masturbating, grew able to mention cunnilingus in social contexts, started to watch porn and became more comfortable with a topic that had been the source of needless neurotic frustration for most of human history.

    Despite our best efforts, sex refuses to be tamed by our curiosity. It refuses to sit obediently on top of love, as it should. Tame it though we may try, sex has a peculiar tendency to wreak havoc across our lives: it leads us to destroy our relationships, threatens our productivity and compels us to stay up too late in nightclubs talking to people whom we don’t particularly like, but whose exposed midriffs we nevertheless strongly wish to touch.

    Sex remains in absurd, and perhaps irreconcilable, conflict with some of our higher commitments and values. Unsurprisingly, we appear to have no option but to repress its demands most of the time. According to Boton, “we should accept that sex is inherently rather weird instead of blaming ourselves for not responding in more normal ways to its confusing impulses”. This is not to say that we cannot take steps to grow wiser about sex. We should simply realize that we will never entirely surmount the difficulties it throws our way.
    Our best hope should be for a respectful accommodation with an anarchic and restless power.

  • Twelve reasons your life isn’t as crap as you think it is.

    Twelve reasons your life isn’t as crap as you think it is.

    1: You paid the bills this month, and maybe even had extra to spend on non-necessities. It doesn’t matter how much you winced as the debit orders went off, the point is that they did, and you figured it out regardless

    2: You question yourself. You doubt your life. You feel miserable some days. This means you’re still open to growth. This means you can be objective and self-aware. The best people go home at the end of the day and think: “or… maybe there’s another way.”

    3: You have a job. For however many hours, at whatever rate, you are earning money that helps you eat something, sleep on something, wear something every day. It’s not failure if it doesn’t look the way you thought it would – you’re valuing your independence and taking responsibility for yourself.

    4: You have time to do something you enjoy. Even if “what you enjoy” is sitting on the couch and ordering dinner and watching Game of Thrones.

    5: You are not worried about where your next meal is coming from. There’s food in the fridge or pantry, and you have enough to actually pick and choose what you want to eat. You can eat because you enjoy it. It’s not a matter of sheer survival.

    6: You have one or two truly close friends. People worry about the quantity but eventually tend to realize the number of people you can claim to be in your tribe has no bearing on how much you feel intimacy, acceptance, community, or joy. At the end of the day, all we really want are a few close people who know us (and love us) no matter what.

    7: You could afford a cup of coffee, or the petrol in your car this morning. The smallest conveniences (and oftentimes, necessities) are not variables for you.

    8: You’re not the same person you were a year ago. You’re learning, and evolving, and can identify the ways in which you’ve changed for better and worse.

    9: You have the time and means to do things beyond the bare minimum. You’ve maybe been to a concert in the last few years, you buy books for yourself, you could take a day trip to a neighboring city if you wanted – you don’t have to work all hours of the day to stay alive.

    10: You can sense what isn’t right in your life. The first and most crucial step is simply being aware. Being able to communicate to yourself: “something is not right, even though I am not yet sure what would feel better.”

    11: You have a space of your own. It doesn’t even have to be a home or apartment (but that’s great if it is). All you need is a room, a corner, a desk, where you can create or rest at your discretion; where you govern who gets to be part of your own world.

    12: If you could talk to your younger self, you would be able so say: “We did it, we made it out, we survived that terrible thing.”

    So, come now, I’m not asking you to ‘think positive’ and “be grateful”, we all know life can be shit and often is. But as humans we have the most incredible capacity to shift our perspective and sometimes, it is the smallest recalibration to our thinking that can influence a whole sequence of events. It’s a bit like changing your reality by what you are thinking…hmmm, more on that later.

  • The preferred treatment for Panic Disorders.

    The preferred treatment for Panic Disorders.

    A Large study has compared the effectiveness of different types of therapies for panic disorders.

    A new study has found that Cognitive behavioural therapy is the best treatment for panic disorders.

    In addition, most people prefer therapy to taking anti-anxiety medication.

    Dr. Barbara Milrod, a professor of psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College, said:

    “Panic disorder is really debilitating — it causes terrible healthcare costs and interference with functioning.

    We conducted this first ever large panic disorder study to compare therapy types and see if one type of therapy is preferable over another.”

    Panic disorders involve suffering from an extreme feeling of anxiety and fear, sometimes for no apparent reason.

    Panic attacks can also be triggered by many things, including irrational fears such as phobias.

    During panic attacks people can tremble, become sweaty, feel sick and may experience heart palpitations.

    The study randomised around 200 people with panic disorders to various different commonly-used therapies.

    Therapy lasted for around three months and involved one 45-minute session each week.

    Across the two different sites where the therapies were tested, cognitive behavioural therapy was the most effective, and only one-quarter of people dropped out.

    Professor Milrod said:

    “If patients stick it out and continue with therapy rather than drop out, they have a far greater chance of seeing positive results or getting better.”

    The study was published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry (Mildrod et al., 2015).

  • Mind Your Head- workshop

    Mind Your Head- workshop

    Mind Your Head is a 2 hour mindfulness based workshop on Saturday the 27th of June, from 3-5pm.
    The workshop is a gentle introduction to mindfulness approaches that can be used in the management and treatment of mild anxiety and depression.
    Mind Your Head is donation based, all proceeds will go the Homestead home for young boys at risk.

    Please RSVP directly to Jamie Elkon on 0825500750.
    The address is The Shala Yoga Studio, 15 Wandel Street, Gardens. Cape Town.

    Jamie Elkon is a registered clinical psychologist, yoga and MIndfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) teacher.
    (No prior yoga or meditation experience is necessary to attend)

    Jamie Elkon
    Clinical Psychologist

  • Yoga for Anxiety and Depression

    Yoga for Anxiety and Depression

    Yoga for anxiety and depression

    Harvard Mental Health Letter

    Studies suggest that this practice modulates the stress response.

    Since the 1970s, meditation and other stress-reduction techniques have been studied as possible treatments for depression and anxiety. One such practice, yoga, has received less attention in the medical literature, though it has become increasingly popular in recent decades. One national survey estimated, for example, that about 7.5% of U.S. adults had tried yoga at least once, and that nearly 4% practiced yoga in the previous year.

    Yoga classes can vary from gentle and accommodating to strenuous and challenging; the choice of style tends to be based on physical ability and personal preference. Hatha yoga, the most common type of yoga practiced in the United States, combines three elements: physical poses, called asanas; controlled breathing practiced in conjunction with asanas; and a short period of deep relaxation or meditation.

    Many of the studies evaluating yoga’s therapeutic benefits have been small and poorly designed. However, a 2004 analysis found that, in recent decades, an increasing number have been randomized controlled trials — the most rigorous standard for proving efficacy.

    Available reviews of a wide range of yoga practices suggest they can reduce the impact of exaggerated stress responses and may be helpful for both anxiety and depression. In this respect, yoga functions like other self-soothing techniques, such as meditation, relaxation, exercise, or even socializing with friends.

    Taming the stress response

    By reducing perceived stress and anxiety, yoga appears to modulate stress response systems. This, in turn, decreases physiological arousal — for example, reducing the heart rate, lowering blood pressure, and easing respiration. There is also evidence that yoga practices help increase heart rate variability, an indicator of the body’s ability to respond to stress more flexibly.

    A small but intriguing study further characterizes the effect of yoga on the stress response. In 2008, researchers at the University of Utah presented preliminary results from a study of varied participants’ responses to pain. They note that people who have a poorly regulated response to stress are also more sensitive to pain. Their subjects were 12 experienced yoga practitioners, 14 people with fibromyalgia (a condition many researchers consider a stress-related illness that is characterized by hypersensitivity to pain), and 16 healthy volunteers.

    When the three groups were subjected to more or less painful thumbnail pressure, the participants with fibromyalgia — as expected — perceived pain at lower pressure levels compared with the other subjects. Functional MRIs showed they also had the greatest activity in areas of the brain associated with the pain response. In contrast, the yoga practitioners had the highest pain tolerance and lowest pain-related brain activity during the MRI. The study underscores the value of techniques, such as yoga, that can help a person regulate their stress and, therefore, pain responses.

    Improved mood and functioning

    Questions remain about exactly how yoga works to improve mood, but preliminary evidence suggests its benefit is similar to that of exercise and relaxation techniques.

    In a German study published in 2005, 24 women who described themselves as “emotionally distressed” took two 90-minute yoga classes a week for three months. Women in a control group maintained their normal activities and were asked not to begin an exercise or stress-reduction program during the study period.

    Though not formally diagnosed with depression, all participants had experienced emotional distress for at least half of the previous 90 days. They were also one standard deviation above the population norm in scores for perceived stress (measured by the Cohen Perceived Stress Scale), anxiety (measured using the Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety Inventory), and depression (scored with the Profile of Mood States and the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale, or CES-D).

    At the end of three months, women in the yoga group reported improvements in perceived stress, depression, anxiety, energy, fatigue, and well-being. Depression scores improved by 50%, anxiety scores by 30%, and overall well-being scores by 65%. Initial complaints of headaches, back pain, and poor sleep quality also resolved much more often in the yoga group than in the control group.

    One uncontrolled, descriptive 2005 study examined the effects of a single yoga class for inpatients at a New Hampshire psychiatric hospital. The 113 participants included patients with bipolar disorder, major depression, and schizophrenia. After the class, average levels of tension, anxiety, depression, anger, hostility, and fatigue dropped significantly, as measured by the Profile of Mood States, a standard 65-item questionnaire that participants answered on their own before and after the class. Patients who chose to participate in additional classes experienced similar short-term positive effects.

    Further controlled trials of yoga practice have demonstrated improvements in mood and quality of life for the elderly, people caring for patients with dementia, breast cancer survivors, and patients with epilepsy.

    Benefits of controlled breathing

    A type of controlled breathing with roots in traditional yoga shows promise in providing relief for depression. The program, called Sudarshan Kriya yoga (SKY), involves several types of cyclical breathing patterns, ranging from slow and calming to rapid and stimulating.

    One study compared 30 minutes of SKY breathing, done six days a week, to bilateral electroconvulsive therapy and the tricyclic antidepressant imipramine in 45 people hospitalized for depression. After four weeks of treatment, 93% of those receiving electroconvulsive therapy, 73% of those taking imipramine, and 67% of those using the breathing technique had achieved remission.

    Another study examined the effects of SKY on depressive symptoms in 60 alcohol-dependent men. After a week of a standard detoxification program at a mental health center in Bangalore, India, participants were randomly assigned to two weeks of SKY or a standard alcoholism treatment control. After the full three weeks, scores on a standard depression inventory dropped 75% in the SKY group, as compared with 60% in the standard treatment group. Levels of two stress hormones, cortisol and corticotropin, also dropped in the SKY group, but not in the control group. The authors suggest that SKY might be a beneficial treatment for depression in the early stages of recovery from alcoholism.

    Potential help for PTSD

    Since evidence suggests that yoga can tone down maladaptive nervous system arousal, researchers are exploring whether or not yoga can be a helpful practice for patients with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

    One randomized controlled study examined the effects of yoga and a breathing program in disabled Australian Vietnam veterans diagnosed with severe PTSD. The veterans were heavy daily drinkers, and all were taking at least one antidepressant. The five-day course included breathing techniques (see above), yoga asanas, education about stress reduction, and guided meditation. Participants were evaluated at the beginning of the study using the Clinician Administered PTSD Scale (CAPS), which ranks symptom severity on an 80-point scale.

    Six weeks after the study began, the yoga and breathing group had dropped their CAPS scores from averages of 57 (moderate to severe symptoms) to 42 (mild to moderate). These improvements persisted at a six-month follow-up. The control group, consisting of veterans on a waiting list, showed no improvement.

    About 20% of war veterans who served in Afghanistan or Iraq suffer from PTSD, according to one estimate. Experts treating this population suggest that yoga can be a useful addition to the treatment program.

    Researchers at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., are offering a yogic method of deep relaxation to veterans returning from combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. Dr. Kristie Gore, a psychologist at Walter Reed, says the military hopes that yoga-based treatments will be more acceptable to the soldiers and less stigmatizing than traditional psychotherapy. The center now uses yoga and yogic relaxation in post-deployment PTSD awareness courses, and plans to conduct a controlled trial of their effectiveness in the future.

    Cautions and encouragement

    Although many forms of yoga practice are safe, some are strenuous and may not be appropriate for everyone. In particular, elderly patients or those with mobility problems may want to check first with a clinician before choosing yoga as a treatment option.

    But for many patients dealing with depression, anxiety, or stress, yoga may be a very appealing way to better manage symptoms. Indeed, the scientific study of yoga demonstrates that mental and physical health are not just closely allied, but are essentially equivalent. The evidence is growing that yoga practice is a relatively low-risk, high-yield approach to improving overall health.

    Brown RP, et al. “Sudarshan Kriya Yogic Breathing in the Treatment of Stress, Anxiety, and Depression: Part I — Neurophysiologic Model,” Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine (Feb. 2005): Vol. 11, No. 1, pp. 189–201.

    Brown RP, et al. “Sudarshan Kriya Yogic Breathing in the Treatment of Stress, Anxiety, and Depression: Part II — Clinical Applications and Guidelines,” Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine (Aug. 2005): Vol. 11, No. 4, pp. 711–17.

    Janakiramaiah N, et al. “Antidepressant Efficacy of Sudarshan Kriya Yoga (SKY) in Melancholia: A Randomized Comparison with Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT) and Imipramine,” Journal of Affective Disorders (Jan.–March 2000): Vol. 57, No. 1–3, pp. 255–59.

    Khalsa SB. “Yoga as a Therapeutic Intervention: A Bibliometric Analysis of Published Research Studies,” Indian Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology (July 2004): Vol. 48, No. 3, pp. 269–85.

    Kirkwood G, et al. “Yoga for Anxiety: A Systematic Review of the Research,” British Journal of Sports Medicine (Dec. 2005): Vol. 39, No. 12, pp. 884–91.

    Pilkington K, et al. “Yoga for Depression: The Research Evidence,” Journal of Affective Disorders (Dec. 2005): Vol. 89, No. 1–3, pp. 13–24.

    Saper RB, et al. “Prevalence and Patterns of Adult Yoga Use in the United States: Results of a National Survey,” Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine (March–April 2004): Vol. 10, No. 2, pp. 44–49.

  • A peek inside my head at 3:30 am.

    A peek inside my head at 3:30 am.

    I’ve got 18% battery life and it’s 3:30am, let’s see if I can bang something out.

    My three year old lies snoring next to me, she’s been restless tonight, I’m not sure how long I’ve slept, this week feels like one, very long day. My head has been full of turgid thoughts, clogging clarity, a slight anxious beaver runs through the periphery of my consciousness (in Afrikaans we’d say ‘bewer’- tremor- but I like the image of an anxious beaver).
    I’m thirsty for an adventure that would slow the undercurrent of midlife ennui. I turned 44 on Monday, it’s an interesting age, I met a mate for a pint in the pub and realized that I don’t necessarily want to be sitting around necking beers in a rainy, traffic clogged city, chatting about how much our home loans are costing us in (dis) interest.

    I watch once vital men writhe on my couch as they wrestle to rediscover the fire in their bellies and yet here I am, struggling with the same foe. I’ve heard weary, grey men, beaten senseless by the mediocrity they find themselves mired in, describe the taste of a cold, metallic gun barrel resting against their teeth as they try to find the ‘courage’ to tear themselves out of their numb lives. I’ve watched dull eyes flicker briefly with fiery life force as they describe past passions with a lovers remembrance. I spend a moment with them there, waiting to see if a gentle touch of the past can rekindle something resembling hope.

    Sometimes, it feels as if many of us have lost our way, crucified by expectations and comparisons, we become disconnected from our essential essence , no longer stretching beyond our confining comforts, we become small and shrunken, nursing ourselves on series and pornography, wishing that we were something more, but not taking enough time to figure out what that could possibly look like, what it would feel like to have life rush through our veins again.

    Come, dream with me a moment, close your eyes and remember the happiest moment of your life so far…were you on your own?
    with a partner? were you witnessing the birth of your child?
    Now…fast forward to your funeral, who will be there, who won’t? What squabbles will you drag to your grave? What measure of ‘success’ will you have wanted to achieve by the time your bones return to the earth? A bigger house? A fancy car? A better job? More money?
    Or will it be the experiences and relationships you have engaged in and nurtured during this time that will have mattered?

    And slowly, as I write these words, I begin to realize that the adventures I seek can also be found in the small hours of morning, with my daughter’s little body tucked into my side, watching her eyes flicker beneath closed lids as she dreams…her eyelashes are so long!

  • The Organized Mind

    The Organized Mind

    Today’s selection — from The Organized Mind by Daniel J. Levitin.

    We live in a world with 300 exabytes (300 billion billion) of information, an amount that is rapidly expanding to ever greater amounts from this already brobdingnagian level. And yet the processing capacity of the conscious mind is a mere 120 bits per second. This presents a challenge to not only our processing capacity, but also our decision-making ability:

    “Neuroscientists have discovered that unproductively and loss of drive can result from decision overload. Although most of us have no problem ranking the importance of decisions if asked to do so, our brains don’t automatically do this. … The mere situation of facing … many [small] decisions in daily life creates neural fatigue, leaving no energy for the important decisions. Recent research shows that people who were asked to make a series of meaningless decisions … showed poorer impulse control and lack of judgment about subsequent decisions. It’s as though our brains are configured to make a certain number of decisions per day and once we reach that limit, we can’t make any more, regardless of how important they are. One of the most useful findings in recent neuroscience could be summed up as: The decision-making network in our brain doesn’t prioritize.

    “Today, we are confronted with an unprecedented amount of information, and each of us generates more information than ever before in human history. … Information scientists have quantified all this: In 2011, Americans took in five times as much information every day as they did in 1986 — the equivalent of 175 newspapers. During our leisure time, not counting work, each of us processes 34 gigabytes or 100,000 words every day. The world’s 21,274 television stations produce 85,000 hours of original programming every day as we watch an average of 5 hours of television each day, the equivalent of 20 gigabytes of audio-video images. That’s not counting YouTube, which uploads 6,000 hours of video every hour. And computer gaming? It consumes more bytes than all other media put together, including DVDs, TV, books, magazines, and the Internet.

    “Just trying to keep our own media and electronic files organized can be overwhelming. Each of us has the equivalent of over half a million books stored on our computers, not to mention all the information stored in our cell phones or in the magnetic stripe on the back of our credit cards. We have created a world with 300 exabytes (300,000,000,000,000,000,000 pieces) of human-made information. If each of those pieces of information were written on a 3 x 5 index card and then spread out side by side, just one person’s share — your share of this information — would cover every square inch of Massachusetts and Connecticut combined.

    “Our brains do have the ability to process the information we take in, but at a cost: We can have trouble separating the trivial from the important, and all this information processing makes us tired. Neurons are living cells with a metabolism; they need oxygen and glucose to survive and when they’ve been working hard, we experience fatigue. Every status update you read on Facebook, every tweet or text message you get from a friend, is competing for resources in your brain with important things like whether to put your savings in stocks or bonds, where you left your passport, or how best to reconcile with a close friend you just had an argument with.

    “The processing capacity of the conscious mind has been estimated at 120 bits per second. That bandwidth, or window, is the speed limit for the traffic of information we can pay conscious attention to at any one time. While a great deal occurs below the threshold of our awareness, and this has an impact on how we feel and what our life is going to be like, in order for something to become encoded as part of your experience, you need to have paid conscious attention to it.

    “What does this bandwidth restriction — this information speed limit mean in terms of our interactions with others? In order to understand one person speaking to us, we need to process 60 bits of information per second. With a processing limit of 120 bits per second, this means you can barely understand two people talking to you at the same time. Under most circumstances, you will not be able to understand three people talking at the same time. We’re surrounded on this planet by billions of other humans, but we can understand only two at a time at the most! It’s no wonder that the world is filled with so much misunderstanding. With such attentional restrictions, it’s clear why many of us feel overwhelmed by managing some of the most basic aspects of life.”