Category Archives: neurology

Stymied by Fear in an Arkansas Chicken Pen…by a Duck!!!

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When I was a little tyke, living in the sticks of Arkansas, I recall an innocent little moment when fear etched itself deeply into my heart so that I clearly recall the event six decades later.  I was in the chicken pen and apparently alone when suddenly I found one of my fingers inside the open mouth of a furiously squawking duck.  I guess object constancy had not sunk in with me at that early age…I must have been about two-and-a-half years old…for terror overwhelmed me as if this “crisis” was about to be the end of me.  And I don’t know how this “existential” crisis was resolved, but I faintly remember “momma” calling to me from the front porch.  At that point in development, “momma” was the solution of all woes!

This tempest in the young teapot that I was probably lasted all of a second and a half but I clearly recall it as if it happened yesterday.  Experiences at that stage of development when we are only beginning to “come on line” and find the comfort of an ego to protect us from moments like those that are very intense.  For “limits” are a very fleeting phenomenon then; had this “tragedy” presented itself to me in another year or so, I probably would have been grounded enough in reality to realize, “Hey, take your finger out of the damn duck’s mouth!”  But in that second I was immobilized, stymied by fear, without the comfort of what I would later learn to describe as “reality.”

And fear will do that to one.  At any age!  Fear is part of life but we have been given the capability of addressing our fears, even the fear of fear, but only if we have the maturity and humility to acknowledge, “I’m afraid.”  Failure to acknowledge this dimension of our human-ness will leave us crippled with maladaptive emotional and behavioral strategies than can be more deadly than the thing of which we are secretly fearful.

And this brings me to my favorite “whipping boy,” Trumpism and its raucous, shrieking mouth piece in the body of one Donald J. Trump.  The Republican Party is stymied by fear that it will not acknowledge, they have their “finger stuck in the mouth of a duck” and are so overwhelmed with the threat of this darkness that they can’t employ “the purge” that our Constitution offers.  They have dug themselves in over their heads, though they had and still have the levers of governmental process to set limits with Trump; though now it appears too late for them.  They are now trapped by their own inertia, an inertia that all of us has an element of, but one they have allowed to metastasize.   They are now enthralled with Trump and have placed their emotional, spiritual, economic, and political welfare is in his hands.

So often in my “day-to-day” Jesus comes to my mind now that His wisdom is longer mere dogma; and on this occasion it is, “Perfect love casteth out fear.”  I certainly do not, however, have “perfect love” as fear is a daily visitor to this dog-and-pony show that cavorts about in my skull.  But I do have confidence that this “perfect love” is present somewhere in my heart, and always has been…even back in that pen …and this allows me to face fears that I’ve avoided all of my life.  And this “perfect love” abides in all of our hearts, even in that of the Trumpster, though I don’t have any hope that he can find the humility to seek its comfort.  Seeking this Comfort would be tantamount to admitting a need, admitting that he is insufficient in the sense that all of us are, and that he needs forgiveness; he could then find acceptance of his internal haunts and fears and no longer have to lash out at the world.  And, btw, “forgiveness” is today an easy and almost meaningless word.  But I don’t see it as a judicial decree from some “Pillsbury doughboy in the sky” but a gift that is, yes, from “out there” in some sense, but simultaneously woven into the very fabric of our being.  It is something we have to evoke from the depths of our being, an evocation which can only occur with that Pauline “fear and trembling” that comes as we “work out our own salvation.”

Well, I’ve come along way here in this narrative, all the way from an Arkansas chicken pen in the mid-1950’s to the “insane” notion of “perfect love” here as the year 2020 beckons. And it is “insane” in the sense that there is no place for it in the “sane” world that we have allowed to descend into madness, protected from this realization by our preference for an illusory reality.   But this salvific dimension of human experience has been with us from our beginning, and even before, if one will here indulge me here, briefly, with the notion of a pre-existent deity!  And this same maddening fate would devour us all individually, and collectively, if we ever should ever lose the vision and experience of hope.

A CAVEAT HERE ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN FEAR AND ANXIETY— PERHAPS THE FEAR I’VE ADDRESSED ABOVE IS ON A DEEPER LEVEL ANXIETY.  IN FACT, THE FOLLOWING PARAGRAPH FROM Samantha Harvey, in The Guardian a couple of days ago, MAKES ME FEEL THE NEED TO ADDRESS THE ISSUE OF “ANXIETY” RATHER THAN “FEAR.”  PERHAPS ANOTHER TIME!

The flight from Bristol airport passes over in a distant smear of sound. I switch on the light, get my laptop and Google I AM AWAKE. An article explains how fear and anxiety, often conflated, belong to different parts of the amygdala – fear arises in its central nucleus, which is responsible for sending messages to the body to prepare a short-term response – run, freeze, fight – whereas anxiety arises in the area responsible for emotions, a part which affects longer-term behavioural change. Fear is a response to a threat, anxiety a response to a perceived threat – the difference between preparing to escape a saber-toothed tiger that is here and now in front of you (because it’s always saber-toothed tigers in the examples) and preparing to escape the idea of a saber-toothed tiger in case one appears around the next bend. While fear will quickly resolve – you will run away, fight it or be eaten – anxiety has no such resolution. You will need to stand guard in case. Standing guard will make the perceived threat seem more real, which necessitates a more vigilant standing guard. Fear ends when the threat is gone, while anxiety, operating in a hall of mirrors, self-perpetuates.

 

(Link to Samantha Harvey Guardian article— https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/dec/28/its-as-if-im-falling-from-a-50-storey-building-a-novelists-year-without-sleep

Immediate vs. Deferred Gratification

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An image comes to my mind of a frustrated toddler, sitting at the table, wanting more cheerios from his momma.  She does not respond immediately, and he angrily pounds the table with his spoon, screaming, “Now, now, now!” This came to mind this morning in a Politico.com story about Trump’s problems with frustrations in the White House.  On an issue of releasing aid to a foreign country, he insisted that the aid be released immediately though his aides tried to convince him of the need of protocol even in a matter like that.  A White House official noted, “The president doesn’t like to be constrained by past practices and protocols.”

Well, who does?  The limitations of being human and participating in the daily grind of life takes its toll on us all.  Our neurological hard-wiring includes a demand for immediate gratification, a wiring that is usually superseded by a later developmental acceptance of deferred gratification.  This impulse control is very rewarding as the delight of seeing and experiencing the “world as my oyster” is intoxicating but destructive in the long run for the individual and the collective.  It makes me think of another example Trump’s ceding to untoward impulses when he took the liberty to enter the dressing room of teen girls after a beauty pageant, using his power to “sample their wares.”

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/08/13/trump-world-knowledge-diplomatic-774801

Danger of “Thinking Outside of the Box”

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As one who “thinks outside of the box,” I must admit that it is not necessarily a virtue.  I’ve had that aptitude since early youth and since my late teens I’ve been exploring its riches.  So, in a way, it is my “comfy zone” and at times I demonstrate my obnoxiousness and arrogance, those very qualities which I see residing in “box dwellers.”  As one dares to venture “outside of the box,” it is always very tempting to ensconce oneself in still another “box’ and there demonstrate the same arrogance that one is deriding with great contempt from his/her “comfy zone” outside of the box.

For, “the box” that I’m referring to is not merely a conceptual formulation but it is the gut-level orientation to take one’s view of the world as primary to the exclusion of others.  And those of us with “enlightened” and “noble” ideas are often the ones who pose the greatest challenges for civilization, witness The Crusades and Isis.  In each of these instances, they are whole-heartedly intoxicated with their world view and are willing to bring to those who disagree with them great displeasure, even death.  That is because those who are “intoxicated” with this delectable nectar of the gods (even though they are dark gods) cannot see beyond their limited perspective.  They have taken an “idea” and run it into the ground even to the point where they are willing to kill for it and to die for it themselves.  When you have reached this point, you are approaching the dark, demonic depths of being an “ideologue” regardless of how noble your idea might appear to be.

And ideologue always seeks to escape his own emptiness by glomming onto some “idea” which he naively thinks is “the answer.”  Been there, done that.  Now I realize that this obsession, even with an idea as noble as Jesus Christ, was just an escape from reality and an escape from my own spiritual depths just to hang on desperately to my illusion of reality and my illusion of myself.  As Jesus, and many other spiritually enlightened men and women have tried to teach us, there is a “spiritual” dimension to life which lies beyond the grasp of our finite, conscious mind.  But that “finite, conscious mind,” being an ego contrivance, resists this awareness and insists that we hang onto the world of appearance, the shadow world of Plato’s famous cave analogy.  And Jesus provided us a vivid example of just how gut-wrenchingly painful it is to give up this world of illusions and “climb the rugged cross of the moment and let our illusions die.” (Leonard Cohen)

The “God Complex” and Dr. Ben Carson

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When a young man, I stumbled across an evangelical self-help book about “the god-complex” and recognized then that it pertained to me.  To summarize, this term refers to someone who responds to deep-seated feelings of being out of control with the over-compensation of trying to control his world, sometimes by defining his world so narrowly that the remaining tiny fiefdom is easily manageable.. And though I am now four decades further in my life’s journey, that complex remains with me in some residual form.  Without it I must fear the primordial chaos which teases all human hearts would be overwhelming.

This term “god complex” is merely a version of what clinical jargon labels “ego structure.”  And all of us have an ego structure without which chaos would ensue and we would be non-functional, or our functional ability would be marred by glaring demonstrations of subtle pathology.  And, if you happen to be religious and cursed with what neurologists might call an hyper-active “god-spot,” the “god complex” will  be present in you for others to see, though the arrogance that this complex affords you will not allow you to see it yourself.  But the resulting “bad faith” is exquisitely delightful!

And that brings me to Dr. Ben Carson, who is currently in 2nd place in the polls for the Republican nomination for President in my country.  And though he is an accomplished neurosurgeon and, I think,  a very nice human being, he has a history of saying things that demonstrate a radical lack of self-reflection.  And his “flaws” could be described more harshly but I’m going to let someone who went to medical school with him do that:

http://www.salon.com/2015/10/21/ben_carsons_dangerous_god_complex_the_commencement_speech_i_wont_soon_forget_partner/

Now as customary, my “tee-hee” muscle wants to get flexed here!  But really, my first response is sadness to see how that such an intelligent and accomplished man can be so hampered by background, cultural influences that he would deign to take some of the stances he has taken.  And though he is responsible for himself, I want to blame his ultra-conservative religion (Seventh Day Adventist) for his radical inability to use this brilliant mind of his to utilize the self-reflective skill that lies dormant in that neo-cortex that he “knows” so much about.  But the real culprit is even deeper for ideology which threatens all religion often tyrannizes many conservative Christians.

Sublimated Religious Violence

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An image that is indelibly imprinted in my mind from the past year or so vividly illustrates the violence that is present in the religious impulse. A Muslim terrorist in a Saudi Arabia casually walking down the aisle of a shopping mall, nonchalantly gunning down shoppers, but pausing periodically to kneel and pray. I prefer the violence in the religious experience I am familiar with when it has been sublimated into “simple” (cough, cough) manipulation, intimidating and terrorizing into “getting saved.” That is a very violent ritual but admittedly it cannot compare with what we see with today’s Muslim extremists.

Let me focus on the “getting saved” culture that I am familiar with, by experience and by research. I think that “getting saved” can be a meaningful religious ritual that can introduce one into the realm of spirituality. But in my experience I fear that often it only fulfills the “tribal function” of religion, bringing the young person into the tribe and fulfilling a very necessary human need to belong. But too often the value of the experience never goes beyond perfunctory compliance with the letter of the law, just as with many religious traditions.

But in the conservative, fundamentalist Christian denominations the children are often terrorized into “getting saved” with stories of excruciating death-bed conversions…or worse, death-bed failures to be converted and subsequent writhing for eons in the pits of hell. And the social pressure and intimidation is relentless as the young person is pressured into “asking Jesus into his life.” One blogging friend of mine recalled as a teen-ager gaggles of females besetting her and attempting to “gang save me.”! This procedure is intrinsically violent and it is interesting that many parents will subject their young children to this abuse even while the main focus of their faith are offenses like drug and alcohol abuse, sexual misconduct, abortion, and our “Kenyan President leading us down the path to Socialism.” Each of these issues, save the latter, is a legitimate concern. But how can a spiritually discerning adult allow their young children’s spirituality to be warped for the duration of their life while their spiritual fervor is directed on matters that might warrant attention but not as much as the mental, emotional, and spiritual welfare of their own children.  This is overt institutional child abuse that is clothed under the rubric  of “faith.”

Young children exposed to this terror are developmentally immature and the “neurological plasticity” of their brain means they are extremely susceptible to this kind of pressure and whatever they do to “adapt” to the stress, will likely follow them “en toto” to the end of their life. That often means their faith can never mature so that layers of meaning in the religious symbols can be appreciated. To let go of the subjective experiences of that moment of terror and broaden their worldview regarding spiritual life, would subject them to an adult version of the terror they felt as children. So the maistros who orchestrate this violence are creating a captive audience