WHAT IS THE SOURCE OF EVIL?

Assuming that evil does exist, I believe that when anyone judges someone else or sterotypes others or thinks/discusses prejudicial ideas or in any way acts to separate theirselves from others, they are acting in a way that is potentially evil or are beginning of a process that will clearly become evil. [I am not referring to the dictionary definition of evil as profoundly immoral and malevolent.]

The above definition of evil might seem kind of wierd or wrong, however my patients have taught me that what I mentioned above is correct. Every time one of my patients [or myself] non-specifically criticize or judge others it is wrong. It is wrong because it separates us from those people and as humans we are meant to be connected to each other. 

So, how can any of this be clarified much less validated. One way I validate this information is by having the opportunity daily to learn from my patients how they relate to others when they are being judgmental compared to when they are able to stop being judgmental [reduce it by a lot] and how that impacts the quality of their relationships. Over and over I have seen this change correlated with significant improvements in their relationships to others [including their families] and their own level of happiness. They are much less stressed and are able to not dwell on the past as much. 

So now I appear to be promoting giving up judging others as a way to reduce stress and increase satisfaction with our lives and our happiness. Well, I am. Now what do others say? I searched for information and found an article in Psychology Today from October 24, 2014 by Barbara Markway, Ph.D. entitled  "10 Reasons To Stop Judging People."  The 10 reasons are: 1. don't blame yourself as we are "hard wired to have fight/flight/or frozen" reactions and it is "natural" to judge others; 2. be mindful so you are self aware enough to catch yourself before you say something judgmental; 3. depersonalize the situation as you remind yourself that it is really not about you but likely reflects the conflict that the other person is having; 4. Look for basic goodness in others. We "naturally scan for the negative," but the positive is there; 5. Repeat "just like me." This reminds us that we are more like each other than different and actually from the same subspecies; 6. Reframe what you are hearing to consider that it really is not personal [about you]; 7. Be willing to look at your own behavior as this may be the source of  your upset with someone else; 8. Educate yourself about the other person and see if they may be disabled in some way; 9. Give the other person the benefit of the doubt. We generally all do the best we can; 10. Feel good about yourself and you will be less likely to judge others.  A final comment by Dr. Markway states that judging other defines us, not others. There are many other articles and research that appears to support that we are happier if we do not judge others.

I disagree with Dr. Markway about her stating that it is natural to judge others and that we naturally scan for the negative about others.  I believe that we have learned to cope with our own insecurities by judging others and being critical of them. So, judging and criticizing others is not natural. But why then do we do these things? Many of us have had experiences when other people acted in ways that we felt overwhelmed and threatened. Then, to keep from feeling even more overwhelmed, we learn to judge others and be critical of them so we won't be fooled into trusting them.  We also try to keep things from getting worse by taking on responsiblity for others. These coping strategies may keep things from getting worse but they also alienate us from others that can lead to depression and anxiety.  

So, what can be do to stop coping by judging others and criticising them? It helps to be aware that we are doing this and then choosing [outloud] to stop doing it. We then will be able to learn that it is safe to stop judging and criticizing others and that we will actually feel calmer and less stressed if we do.

What do you think?

ST. AUGUSTINE: LOVE AND DO WHAT YOU WILL

Well, what does that mean? Does it mean that if you love then you can do anything that you choose to do? Is love really that powerful? Don't we humans need more checks and balances to keep us in line? Don't we need protection from ourselves vs having the license to do anything that we want? St. Augustine in a sermon about God's love for us said "love and do what you will." The meaning seems to be connected to St. Augustine's belief that God's love would transform those who opened their heart's to it and then they would follow God's will and do good things. So then they could do what they wanted as they would want good things for themselves and others. This might be an answer for the critique of "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" pointing out that if you do bad things to yourself then you could justify doing bad things to others...if that were actually what you wanted to do to yourself or others. 

So. what does this have to do with us? Over the last 30 plus years helping people with a variety of problems but virtually all were feeling stressed and were self-critical and hard on themselves. I tried to help them to be kinder to themselves and to be more self-aware. I have found that when we are more self-aware, we are more likely to see the good parts of ourselves and are then more able to let go of some of the self-criticism. So maybe part of the "love" in "love and do what you will" is our choosing to be kinder and more loving towards ourselves and then we would be kinder and more loving towards others. If we do this, we will then feel less stressed. What do you think?

OVERTHINKING: CHANGING A RIGHT ANSWER TO A WRONG ANSWER?

I wonder if most of us have had the experience of changing an answer on a test and finding out that we changed a right answer to a wrong anwer.  It is actually hard for some people to stop doing this as they feel that they have the correct answer after thinking about the question for a period of time.  So, why would anyone reject their first answer [first impression?] and instead change it?

Maybe this is influenced by our brain's being organized so that it will provide us with a response to something when we need it. It appears that information is stored in a way that what we need to know is there but not how we got to that place. There is no paper trail of the process of our learning something. Presumably this is because it is efficient to store just the answers and not all the steps it took to get there. Also, when we need an answer [or information] our brain will give it to us if we actually need it.  So, if we are quizing our brain [ourselves obviously] to recall something to reassure ourselves that we actually know it, our brain will not provide it [because we actually don't need it?].

So what does all this have to do with changing right answers to wrong answers? Well, what so many of my patients have made clear is that if they are feeling stressed, their brains will automatically focus on trying to figure out what is causing our stress and if we cope with stress by over thinking then that will take over and we will doubt that our initial answer is correct. When we have had traumatic experiences in the past, second guessing ourseslves and overthinking are very common ways that we learn to cope as these help us to believe that by doing this we are being careful, not making sudden decisions, and we are considering other's opinions. All of this reasurres us that we are keeping things from getting out of control, and thus we believe that we are changing wrong to right answers. Since overthinking and second guessing are ways that we cope with past stresses, it really is not actually about changing wrong to right answers, but it is about continuing to use coping mechansms that we no longer need as they are left over from past stresses. What do you think?

WHEN ARE PHYSICAL SYMPTOMS SIGNS OF ANXIETY?

It is clear that stress can lead to many types of physical symptoms. It seems that some of the physical symptoms we have are related to past physical symptoms we had that did not appear to be caused by stress. I wonder if the brain thinks that a new situation that we react to in a similar way as our reaction to the original physical symptom, requires the same type of symptom to help us to cope. This may be what happens when people have "pseudoseizures" as these look like actual seizures but there is no evidence of electrical disturbances in the brain that characterize actual seizures.  On the other hand, there is a strong correlation between pseudoseizures and actual seizures as if the actual seizures may have been the model for the pseudoseizures. Then there are physical symptoms that seem related to the impact of chronic stress.  Dr. Sapolsky at Stanford University, in a lecture series from "The Great Courses" entitled "Stress and Your Body," reports that chronic stress can lead to chest pain [heart muscle lack of oxygen], headaches from high blood pressure, obesity, abdominal pain or bloating, acid reflux, difficulty getting pregnant, increased miscarriages, low libido, etc. Some of these symptoms may be caused by actual neuronal cell death that is caused by the repeated stress reactions.

Importantly, even intermittant but repeated experiences of stress can lead to the same type of symptoms. This intermittant stress may represent what happens with PTSD, when past stresses are repeatedly recalled. It takes our brains longer and longer to recover from our brain's response to stress, thus becoming like a constant stress reaction. Apparently our lives are not supposed to be made up of frequent stresses, as our brains have trouble managing these. 

There are a number of physical symptoms related to stress that are familiar to us from our own experiences.  These include: gatrointestinal [GI] symptoms such as pain, cramping and diarrhea; neck pain and pain in the occipital [back of the head] area of the head; and pain in muscles as stress can cause us to tense muscles for extended periods. Stress can also lead to changes in women's menstrual cycles including stopping them. 

I wonder if these physical symptoms are ways that our brain's are helping us cope with the stress even if these symptoms are uncomfortable. What do you think?

NEW SUICIDE DATA

An article in the June, 2016 Clinical Psychiatry News by Howard S. Sudak, M.D. [Commentary New suicide data: Reason to panic or ponder?] discusses new suicide data from the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics indicating a 63% increase in U.S. deaths by suicide for females and a 43% increase for males equaling a national rate of 13.5/100,000.  In actual numbers this represents 42,773 deaths by suicide in 2014 compared to 29,199 in 1994.  Of additional concern was the 200% increase in suicides for girls aged 10-14 and for Native Americans an 89% increase for females and 38% increase for males. Of additional concern is the increased use of hanging or strangulation [presumbably easier access to these methods] while use of guns fell for both males and females.

Dr. Sudak reported about a New York Times article on the CDC Data that theorized that the increase in suicides was related to lower rates for marriage and increased rates for divorce.  Data indicate that unmarried men and women are more likely to die from suicide.  Of additional concern is the fact that divorce rates have doubled for middle-aged and older adults since the 1990's. There is also a correlation of lower marriage rates and increased divorce rates with increased suicide rates for men and women. They also reported that historically when "cataclysmic" events such as World Wars occur the suicide rate goes down while when there is a financial crisis the rates go up dramatically.  I have previously blogged about the connection between the threat of job loss and actual job loss and an increase in the risk of suicide.  

These data would seem to support that stress is a significant factor in the increase in suicides in recent years as the United States has experienced a financial depression as well as a barrage of increasingly alarming news from around the world and the United States.  Stress can cause people to withdraw from others as a way of coping with the stress. This withdrawal can lead to further isolation from others and decisions not to marry or to problems in marriages that can lead to divorce.  It is very clear to me in my work helping my patients that being [or feeling] isolated from others makes overcoming stress much more difficult.  

Importantly, our brains will seem to work against us as they "help" us to be isolated from others as the isolation is part of a pattern of coping to reduce stress and our brains are supposed to maintain patterns. Therefore, to change patterns of behavior we have to make it clear to our brains [ourselves] that we want to make a change and then have to make clear efforts to change these patterns.  This is difficult as we often feel that things will be even more stressful if we interact with others and we are often very concerned about things getting worse. For this reason we need support to change these behaviors and risk trying to interact again.  So, if you know or feel that someone is more isolated or withdrawing from others encourage and support them by initiating interactions with them and listening to them so that they can feel connected to you.  Listening can be very helpful and means hearing others without your own agenda getting in the way.  It is also important and helpful to ask people if they are feeling hopeless or suicidal.  If you are worried about someone's safety please talk to them about it and let someone else know, including professionals or even the police.