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July 28th, 2023                                                                  The artwork has been posted

Translation

“To think in terms of zoe [life], which is borderless, is not to ignore citizenship or its borders, but to enter a contact zone where everything is translation…. If translation suggests a movement between human cultures and an opening into the unknown, the current ecological crisis requires that this unknown also encompasses the non-human.”  Zoe Skoulding

“For we have been socialized to respect fear more than our own needs for language and definition, and while we wait in silence for that final luxury of fearlessness, the weight of that silence will choke us.” Audre Lorde / The Cancer Journals

“He cried all night. In the morning everyone was on the same level. It was easier to talk to the stranger, so the king welcomed him into his kingdom.” Kjell Ringi

Today’s post refers to a variety of things like: Audre Lorde’s book, The Cancer Journals / Τα Περιοδικά / Ημερολόγια του Καρκίνου; a children’s book by Kjell Ringi with the title The Stranger / Ο Ξένος; a podcast in which Dr Judson Brewer talks about how developing the habit of being curious can decrease anxiety, a recent Being Well podcast in which Dr Rick and Forrest Hanson and Dan Harris talk about a lot, including anxiety, mindfulness and (self) compassion meditations; an extract from a post by poet Zoe Skoulding, and finally, four new drawings.

The idea to write about these two particular books came while I was in town a few days ago.  First, a children’s book with a minimalist type of illustration on a book stall outside a bookstore caught my attention, and then, an incident in a shop brought to my mind The Cancer Journals.

“What are the words you do not yet have? What do you need to say? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence?” Audre Lorde

Audre Lorde was a Black writer, speaker, feminist and civil rights activist born in 1934. The Cancer Journals contains entry journals and essays written in 1978, 1979, and 1980.  The book was written over four decades ago and is situated temporarily and spatially, but aspects of it seem universal and elevant today.

Lorde begins by saying that “Each woman responds to the crisis that breast cancer brings to her life out of a whole pattern, which is the design of who she is and how her life has been lived. The weave of her every day existence is the training ground for how she handles crisis.” She argues that some women bury themselves in busyness, others go into denial and numbness, and suggests a different stance believing that our feelings need voice in order to be recognized, respected, and to be of use to others because imposed silence about any area of our lives becomes a tool for separation and powerlessness. She does not want her anger, pain and fear about cancer to fossilize into yet another silence, nor to rob her of whatever strength may lie at the core of this experience when openly acknowledged and examined.

In the book Lorde writes that she has tried to voice her feelings and the pain of amputation, her confrontation with mortality, the power of community, the power and rewards of self-conscious living, and also, state her ideas about the function of cancer in a profit economy. She describes the impact of the anesthesia on her abi;ity to think clearly and remember. She writes:  “Part of this was shock, but part of it was anesthesia, as well as conversations I had probably absorbed in the operating room while I was drugged and vulnerable and only able to record, not react.” She notes both the commonality of women’s experience of breast cancer and mastectomy and the different ways that each women will in the end navigate this journey. But she believes that what is most important to us must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood, and that every woman has “a particular voice to be raised in what must become a female outcry against all preventable cancers, as well as, against the secret fears that allow those cancers to flourish.”

An extract from the book:

“In becoming forcibly and essentially aware of my mortality, and of what I wished and wanted for my life, however short it might be, priorities and omissions became strongly etched in a merciless light, and what I most regretted were my silences. Of what had I ever been afraid? To question or to speak as I believed could have meant pain, or death. But we all hurt in so many different ways, all the time, and pain will either change or end. Death, on the other hand, is the final silence. And that might be coming quickly, now, without regard for whether I had ever spoken what needed to be said, or had only betrayed myself into small silences, while I planned someday to speak, or waited for someone else’s words. And I began to recognize a source of power within myself that comes from the knowledge that while it is most desirable not to be afraid, learning to put fear into a perspective gave me great strength. I was going to die, if not sooner then later, whether or not I had ever spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you……  We can sit in our corners mute forever while our sisters and our selves are wasted, while our children are distorted and destroyed, while our earth is poisoned, we can sit in our safe corners mute as bottles, and we still will be no less afraid.”

The Stranger by Swedish writer and artist Kjell Arne Sorensen Ringi (1936-2010), first published in 1968, is a modern fable for young children and people of all ages around xenophobia, the fear of the Other and the use of different forms of violence.

One day a giant stranger arrives unannounced in a peaceful kingdom and spreads worry and fear. At first the authorities decide to guard the stranger but without any result. Then they sent diplomats and messengers. Again nothing happens. More forceful suppression mechanisms are then activated. The army arrives with weapons, but still nothing happens. Then they use a cannon ball and the giant alien is wounded. He starts weeping and his tears create a sea……

Cultivating curiosity at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCW9lEg8UZ8

In this podcast Dr Brewer talks about how developing the habit of being curious can decrease anxiety, and distinguishes between deprivation curiosity and interest curiosity. The first is when we lack information and it can be linked to feelings of uncertainty, uneasiness, and non safety. When we don’t have information our brain fires like when we don’t have food.  It’s different from the second type of curiosity, which is connected to joy, openness, wonder, learning, interest. He refers to the fact that society has not, thus far, highlighted curiosity as a strength.  He also explains how subjective bias both saves cognitive energy and leads to false conclusions and things like sexism, racism, and ageism, and so on.

Mindfulness, Fear, and Love Without the Cringe at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjKuKl1pM2k

On the Being Well episode this week Dr Rick and Forrest Hanson and Dan Harris talk about Dan’s history with panic attacks mostly arising from public speaking and claustrophobic responses in places like elevators, exposure therapy and meditation practices; compassion and self-compassion and the experiences of mindfulness both in a secular frame and in moving away from a purely secular frame. They also explore concepts and experiences like love, kindness, caring, sharing and wise selfishness, as well as, the importance of marking our virtuous moments when they occ and recognizing personal changes as they happen one step at a time.

Finally, I’d like to share something I read by poet Zoe Skoulding at her website: https://www.zoeskoulding.co.uk/2020/10/10/from-underground-rivers-notes-towards-a-zoepoetics/

from Underground Rivers: Notes Towards a Zoepoetics, posted on 10 /10/2020

“The first word I remember writing was, unsurprisingly, my own name: Zoë. The Greek term zoe, as the widest definition of life itself, has always interested me, and I grew up knowing its Biblical interpretations, ‘eternal life’, or ‘life in all its fullness’ thanks to my clergyman father, who also tried to teach me when I was far too young to write it in Greek, ζωή, the strange forms of the letters escaping into unfathomable loops and scrawls of crayon across the page. …… It was much later that I came to Georgio Agamben’s account, particularly relevant to the current state of exception, of the unstable distinction between the bios, the politically qualified life of the citizen and zoe asthe state of ‘bare life’, a non-human status excluded from the body politic. Zoe, in his account, is life in its most vulnerable form, subject to the sovereign’s power over the embodied subject. More recently, Rosi Braidotti …… [has argued] for an understanding of zoe / life as a generative force, and for a ‘zoe-egalitarian’ politics.”

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July 18th, 2023

A biopsychosocial approach

“Much of each brain’s circuitry at any given moment in adult life, is individual and unique,  truly reflective of that particular organism’s history and circumstances” Antonia Damasio

The infant who has attained calm attention has taken a first gigantic step on the road to fulfilment of her human potential” (Stanley Greenspan, cited in Mate)

“Although we think of attention as a function of the intellect, its deepest roots are in the subsoil of emotion.” Gabor Mate

Today’s post is about a book I’ve been reading by Gabor Mate: Scattered Minds: The Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder (2019). It also includes three new drawings inspired by Greek actresses of the past and a poem  by late  actress and poet Katerina Gogou.

Look how the roads get lost by Katerina Gogou (1981)

Look how roads get lost   /   within humans
how cold the kiosks  get   /   from the wet newspapers                          how the sky  /  is punctured  by the cables

And how the sea ends / from the weight of the ships
how sad the forgotten umbrellas stand   / on the last ride

And the mistake of the one that got off  /  at the wrong stop
the clothes left at the drycleaner’s  /  and your shame
after finding the money two years later / to  ask for them
how little by little  /  gradually, methodically  / they shape us
so that we determine our position in life  /  depending on the style of the chair

 

 

 

Gabor Mate is a retired physician, writer and speaker. His analysis in this book is, according to his own words, an attempt to synthesize the findings of neuroscience, developmental psychology, family systems theory, genetics and medical science, cultural and social trends and his own personal experience as a husband, parent and successful and respected family doctor, who was diagnosed with ADD in his fifties.  His three children have also received the diagnosis.  Before I go on I’d like to say that I think that the book could also be read as an example of how to avoid simplistic explanations and how to apply a more holistic biological and psychosocial approach to analyze and explore many facets of human experience.

A great part of the book is an exploration of the contributory factors. In the introduction Mate states that he believes that it is not, as often stated, a matter of genes or bad parenting; however,  both genes and parenting play a role. He believes that there is in ADD a predisposition [making it more likely depending on circumstances], not a genetic predetermination. He states that as many other things genes can be activated or turned on in the environment, but there can also be protective factors in the environment. He explains that although diabetes is considered to have a heredity component this cannot account for the pandemic among Canada’s native people and North American populations, for instance.  He also discusses problematic aspects of research findings in twin studies. He writes: “Neuroscience has established that the human brain is not programmed by biological heredity alone, that its circuits are shaped by what happens after the infant enters the world, and even while it is in the uterus. The emotional states of the parents and how they live their lives have a major impact on the formation of their children’s brains, though parents cannot know or control subtle unconscious influences.”

Broadly speaking the major features of ADD are poor attention skills, deficient impulse control and hyperactivity.  Mate describes how this higher level of distractibility can foster chaos and lack of order both in our lives and physical spaces. However, he clarifies that absentmindedness [and all other manifestations of ADD] are on the continuum of normal human traits and life would not be possible without our being able to shut out a large number of stimuli. Also, ADD can be situational, which is interesting and important to consider, especially, for students in educational contexts. Distractibility may not be consistent in all areas or subjects and one can have a hyper concentrated attention when it comes to subjects and activities they’re interested in or when the environment is conducive to learning.

In chapter 14, distractibility is discussed in relation to natural defenses and responses like fight- fight-freeze and dissociation and what happens when an infant through chronic distress and non optimal experiences needs to resort to these too often. Mate writes the infant cannot exist in a state of chronic negative arousal with adrenaline and other stress hormones pumping through its veins all the time, it needs to block it out, but the survival value of these psychological defenses are short lived. If this happens too often it becomes the default setting in the cerebral apparatus of awareness. Mate writes that nobody is born with “attention” and that being attentive is a skill like language or locomotion that children acquire through their relationship with the environment.

Hyperactivity is unregulated high arousal, appropriate in the young toddler. However, it is meant to be a stage and not a state that the child gets stuck in.  Mate claims that throughout our life it continues to be a human response during times of high anxiety, but again it’s not meant to be a constant state. It is usually expressed by difficulty keeping physically still, but can also take forms that are not obvious to the observer,  and it is not a requirement for diagnosis. He claims that it may be absent in a minority of cases, especially in girls. He writes that people with ADD experience their mind as a perpetual motion machine. They may have an intense aversion to boredom and higher levels of procrastination. Other manifestations of ADD might be rapid speaking, hopping from one topic to the other, and difficulty being succinct and brief when expressing an idea.

In chapter 5 Mate explores another feature that might be present, which is time illiteracy or what others have termed as time blindness and which can be a source of distress for people with ADD. This could involve always being late and rushing, believing one has all the time in the world and not being able to calculate the time required for an activity or living as if only the present exists and nothing else needs to be taken into account, often neglecting to consider the consequences of actions. The chapter also focuses on poor emotional regulation and impulse control and presents the neuroscience behind impaired ability in these areas. For instance, a major task of our prefrontal cortex is inhibition – the evaluation and selection or inhibition of the myriads of sensations and impulses reaching it from the environment, our body and lower brain centers.

Mate asserts that in ADD the cortex is functioning at a semidormant level, which explains the use of stimulant medications. He also clarifies that a complex condition like ADD cannot be traced in one part of the brain and in a later chapter he discusses the implication of specific areas like the orbital prefrontal cortex (OPC), which among other things is the centre of the brain’s reward and motivation apparatus and is also connected with the vision centers of the cortex that play a role in visual spatial orientation mentioned above.  He describes his own difficulty conceptualizing in three dimensions or divining the spatial relationship of things. The OPC also stores the emotional effects of experiences, and first and foremost, the infant’s interaction with primary caregivers, which become an unconscious model for all our later emotional interactions, for better or for worse, until we can become aware of and disrupt the patterns.

Mate uses vignettes from patients, friends and his own experience to describe what living with ADD might feel or look like for different people. As I read through the book I could not help thinking that there was an overlap between what was described and discussed here and other diagnoses like post traumatic stress or other clusters of symptoms / experiences, and that maybe ultimately, our priority should be the healing, resolving or managing of whatever experience or cluster of characteristics people present with that are causing them problems, discomfort or difficulty in living more optimally, especially, in our contemporary societies. As I mentioned above,  I felt that a lot of what is discussed in the book goes beyond ADD and provides a holistic perspective of examining or viewing our human experience.

Early on in the book Mate critiques the DSM for defining ADD for its external features,  which are referred to as symptoms,  not the emotional meaning in the lives of those that experience it because as he notes “The DSM is concerned with categories not with pain” (Dan Siegel). He also writes that what begins as a problem of society and human development has become almost exclusively defined as a medical ailment. He points out that even if in many cases medication can help, especially for a certain period, the healing that the ADD experience calls for is not a process of recovery from some illness. He suggests that “ADD defies categories of normality and abnormality. If anyone who exhibits any trait of it were to be diagnosed with ADD, we might as well put Ritalin in the drinking water…” and that learning about the psychological and biological mechanisms of ADD only gives a map to the self, but the map is not to be confused with the journey.  Our aim should be once we recognize this map to support the child, for instance, to fulfill its potential.

In chapter 3 Mate refers to the skepticism about ADD and the actual prevalence of ADD because all features of ADD are found to one degree or another in the non ADD population, and that lumping a group of personality features in a psychiatric manual  does not establish pathology. He quotes L.J. Davis who writes in relation to current psychiatric diagnostics and manuals that “every aspect of human life (excepting of course the practice of psychiatry) can be read as pathology.” In relation to “the spreading like wildfire fire” diagnosis of ADD mostly in countries like Canada, Northern America and the UK, Mate asks the question: Are children being drugged to suit the convenience of adults?

He writes; “Even for those, such as myself, who recognize the existence of the neurophysiological and psychological impairments conjointly named Attention Deficit Disorder / ADD, there are legitimate questions to be asked about the way it is diagnosed, how it should be understood and about its treatment, as well as, the tendency to bury many problems under tons of medications, preferring to ignore the social and cultural causes of people’s  stressed mental states, and the blaming of shortcomings or problematic experiences on biology and chemical imbalances. Therefore, it is important to wonder about the reasons there is so much emphasis on biological explanations and oversimplification of complex processes, and also, to realize that we need to tease apart layers of causality and dig below the presenting neurochemistry, for instance.  Mate quotes Dan Siegel who has remarked “We hear it said everywhere these days that the experience of human beings comes from their chemicals.”

As I said a big part of the book is devoted to exploring the causes that can contribute to or turn on any inherited predisposition for ADD. Through his personal narrative Mate points to the environmental roots of attention deficits and to the fact that love is not enough when parenting. In chapter 4 he writes about how unexpressed emotional conflict and unresolved grief and ignorance can result in unintentionally passing down from generation to generation less than optimal experience. He is candid about his own workaholic tendency, distractedness, feeling of duty towards the whole world, intense need to be liked, all of which provided him with a constant adrenalin rush, but had a negative impact on his family. He situates himself in relation to dynamics in his own marriage and family life, to show how despite the love  unresolved traumas and conflict of parents can have a less than optimal impact on their children, and also, how through a lot of hard work and new awareness his family was able to navigate this and be at a different place today.

Also a significant perspective presented by Mate in the book is the importance of viewing the ADD experience through developmental lens because as he claims once we recognize ADD as a problem of development (arrested in younger modes of functioning) rather than pathology, we are taken to a different direction from the illness model. For instance, hyperactivity is a normal stage of maturation of a child, but in ADD stages become states. When we recognize that time sense, self regulation and self motivation, for instance, are nature driven developmental tasks we can ask more appropriate questions like:

What conditions are needed for human psychological and physiological maturation and what conditions could inhibit or interfere with this growth process?

Mate cites child psychiatrist Stanley Greenspan who says “So few children grow up in truly optimal circumstances that we have no idea of what the parameters of development really are.”  The concentration of developmental problems may be both due to circumstances and to the fact that people are affected differently by similar conditions depending on their sensitivity level and temperament. Also, he reminds us that no two siblings grow up in the same environment since circumstances and parents change. In addition, we need to take into account that often parents have different unconscious attitudes towards each of their children and that siblings experience their parents differently.

There’s a chapter in the book on sensitivity, in which Mate explains that what is transmitted genetically is not ADD, but sensitivity and that the existence of sensitive people is an advantage to humankind because it is this group that best expresses humanity’s creative urges and needs. Mate claims that there would be valid and powerful evolutionary reasons for the survival of genetic material coding for sensitivity, and therefore, it is not a weakness or disease that is being inherited but a trait for intrinsic survival value to human beings. Furthermore, it has been observed that people on the continuum of ADD can have strengths like creativity, curiosity, conversational skills, high energy, hyper focus, spontaneity, nonconformity and resilience. They can be imaginative, inventive and resourceful.

In chapter 8 Mate analyses how basically the microcircuitry of the brain is formed by influences during our early years and that even the brains of identical twins will differ in terms of the shape of their nerve cells or the numbers and configurations of their synapses. He explains how our genetic potential for brain development can find its full expression only if circumstances are favorable. He describes what a favorable environmental for an infant might require. Apart from nutritional needs and shelter requirements, a secure safe and not too stressed emotional atmosphere is also necessary [which he notes is most likely to be disrupted in Western / industrialized societies] in order for the maturation of the human brain and nervous system to take place. He writes that one significant reason for the disturbingly high prevalence of ADD conditions in Western countries, especially, in North America, is the gradual destruction of family by economic and social pressures. He quotes Hallowell and Ratey to suggest that culture can feed and reinforce ADD and make ADD driven behaviours seem desirable and rewarding.

This chapter leads on to the next on attunement, which is the component of a larger process called attachment, which is essential for survival. The drive for attachment is part of the very nature of warm blooded animals in infancy, especially of mammals. Mate interestingly notes that ADD may equally stand for Attunement Deficit Disorder and that “attachment promotes attention, anxiety undermines it.” He highlights the fact that one-to-one attuned parenting is the ideal situation for child development in the early years, something which is not supported in most industrialized (Western) societies. He clarifies that the need of the young child for close parental contact does not mean the ghettoization of women at home. He also describes how he has made sense of his ADD traits in the light of his own early years and how being separated from his own mother for a short period of time as a newborn during the World War II impacted him and his mother. He adds that we don’t need a war and genocide for mothers to be stressed out and fathers to be absent or for women to be burdened with the full responsibility for the family’s emotional well being or for trauma to have occurred.

“The generations are boxes within boxes…”

Chapter twelve delves into intergenerational dynamics and how both positive and negative experience is passed down from one generation to another. He writes: The family as an institution has been put under enormous strain by vastly powerful forces in our society and culture. If we want to find the source of ADD that is where we need to look, but the family is the most immediate environment to act on us….  He concludes that in order to understand ourselves and our childhoods, we need to consider the positive and negative effects that our grandparents’ unconscious processes, attitudes, behaviours and circumstances had on our parents. When we do this we eventually realize that blame becomes meaningless and what is more important is the making sense of our experiences and the disruption of patterns.

To conclude, the second part of the book is focused on the possibilities of healing or growing out of ADD. However, I will end the post because it has evolved into a lengthy narrative.

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Post election thoughts and unlearning anxiety                                 Edited

“Worrying does not take away tomorrow’s troubles. It takes away today’s peace.”
Judson Brewer, MD, PhD

“You see, anxiety hides in people’s habits. It hides in their bodies as they learn to disconnect from these feelings through myriad different behaviors.”  Judson Brewer

“Watch your thoughts. They become words. Watch your words. They become actions. Watch your actions. They become habits. Watch your habits. They become character.” Judson Brewer

I started writing this post on anxiety in the echo of the second round of the general elections in Greece on June 25th.  So, I’ve included a few thoughts on this. Abstention in these elections set a historical record, as almost half of those registered in the electoral rolls did not go to the polls, resulting in the highest abstention rate recorded, at least in the post junta period. There were regions in Greece where abstention reached almost 67%. Interestingly, the voters with the lowest abstention rate were the Greeks abroad. I felt that people before us have had to fight and even risk imprisonment and other consequences in order for us to be able to take voting for granted, and also, that this right is not even in place in some places in the world. If we cherish democracy, however imperfect it may be, exercising rights is important. There was more abstention the second time round which meant that maybe some people chose to visit the beach rather than go to the polls. One of the results is that many candidates from the smaller parties were left out, thus, decreasing the diversity of voices and opinions in parliament. It all saddened me, but I also pondered on whether through not voting people were making a point and that maybe this level of abstention reflected not only passivity and indifference, but also disappointment. The gifted Portuguese writer and recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, Jose Saramago, writes: “Abstention means you stayed at home or went to the beach. By casting a blank vote, you’re saying you have a political conscience but you don’t agree with any of the existing parties.”

However, today’s post is about anxiety, inspired by two recent podcasts I listened  to related to Judson Brewer’s work and new book on unwinding anxiety.  However, before I go on, I’d like to add something that I didn’t clarify in the previous post concerning all the different meanings of the word home in English because in Greek the word home does not include so many meanings. So, this paragraph is more relevant to the translation of the last post. The Cambridge dictionary firstly defines home as a house or apartment, where one lives, especially, with family, but home can signify the type of family we come from, a happy or a broken home, for instance. A home is also a place where people can live and be taken care of like a children’s home or an old people’s home. Home additionally means one’s place of origin or place that one might feel a sense of belonging. Home also means one’s country. In Greek we tend to use different words to express these different uses of the word home.

Speaking of home and belonging I’d like to share two old traditional songs that move me to tears sometimes. I’ve recently been listening to some traditional music as I’ve been reading and writing about home, belonging and identity. Some of these seem to connect me to my own sense of Greekness. The first is titled Ξενιτεμένο μου Πουλί / My bird in a foreign land. I recently came across a contemporary rendition by Alkyone, a young musician with an amazing voice [https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=alkyoni+jenitememno+moy+pouli#fpstate……… ]. It talks about someone missing a loved one that has migrated to a foreign land. The second song is titled Neratzoula  / Little Sour Orange Tree. An amazing rendition by the actress Eleni Kokkidou at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ozAJhTab5I\

I’ve written about anxiety before, but not from the viewpoint of anxiety being a habit that we can learn to unlearn. In his new book Rick Hanson writes: “Anxiety can become chronic, a kind of habit, and hard to budge. People can even be anxious about not being anxious, since then they might lower their guard, and get hurt again. It’s important to realize that you can be alert and strong about potential threats while not feeling anxious.” As I mentioned I listened to two recent podcasts [on Tara Brach’s website or on YouTube], in which she and Judson Brewer, MD, PhD, discuss how anxiety is a habit that can be unlearned as we cultivate a curious and kind mindful presence. Dr Brewer offers the scientific grounds for this “unwinding”, drawing on his experience as a leading researcher in the field of mindfulness and addiction.  He treats anxiety similarly to addiction.  They talked about the genesis of worrying, how it perpetuates anxiety and ways we can become disenchanted with this habit, and also, explored particular mindfulness-based strategies like noting what is happening, recognizing our habit loops, arousing our curiosity and cultivating self-care.

Anxiety and fear are common human experiences. Brach comments that worry comes from the word strangle and that anxiety is also the waters we’re swimming in collectively. They discern between adaptive fear and non-adaptive fear and they introduce the idea of treating anxiety and worrying as a habit. Some of the many things people often do to soothe their anxiety, like: drinking alcohol, smoking, turning to chocolate or stress eating, checking phones compulsively, and so on, simply reinforce anxiety because the reward system in our brain is activated. For instance, instead of this hunger signal coming from our stomach, this emotional signal – feeling sad, anxious, etc – triggers the urge to eat. So, practically, every time we use something that momentarily provides pleasure or distraction from our anxiety or fear and triggers the reward system in our brains, negative reinforcement takes place creating a vicious cycle.

There’s a 10 minute video of a TED Talk on YouTube [24 February 2016] by Judson Brewer with the title: A simple way to break a habit, in which this process is briefly explained.

Both Brach and Brewer describe some of their own experiences related to anxiety. Brewer described his experience of panic attacks in his sleep during medical school and  Brach refers to anxiety rising during mediation, experienced as an existential clutch. I think anyone meditating for a while is likely to come into contact with this deeper layer of anxiety, which is present in all of us, to some extent or other, due to many causes, which we may be aware of or not [Gabor Mate writes that “People can be affected by unconscious anxieties and stresses they have no conscious knowledge of whatsoever.”], but also the mere fact that we are aware of our own and our loved ones’ mortality.

They also offer ways to unwind anxiety with awareness. This practically requires our becoming aware or mindful of the habit loop itself and of the quality of the reward, and then, finding the Bigger Better Offer (BBO),We need to notice our spiraling moments and become curious about our anxiety, to see where it is located and how it feels in our body.

One practice they go through is the RAIN practice, which has been more expanded upon by Tara Brach.  I have written about it in previous posts. The R stands for initially recognizing, in this case, the anxiety. The A for accepting what is and that it is here. John Pendergast further notes that when something might be too difficult to accept we might start with an open welcoming acceptance.  Also, I’d like to note that when engaging with exercises and activities it is important to remember that we need to let the pain stay for a while, allow it to transform and teach us, but not allow it to overstay and overwhelm us. We need to titrate the process. The I stands for inquiry, the investigation of bodily experiences and sensations, related core beliefs and thoughts, a getting in touch with the hurt or discomfort.  We might ask ourselves: What’s this anxiety about? What am I getting from this worry? Finally, the N stands for non-identification, which Tara Brach combines with nurture and kindness towards the self, which might involve nurturing ourselves through kind and compassionate words and soothing touch.  Brewer includes a noting process, which is a naming at a deeper level, and in John Pendergast’s adaptation the N is replaced by L, which involves a letting in of a deeper knowing and felt insight. Finally, Rick Hanson’s version of RAIN includes working with the mind after the 4 RAIN steps to build up more inner resources.