‘My Perfect Mind’ Blog
January 26th 2020
Welcome to my second blog for the ‘My Perfect Mind’ website!
DISCLAIMER: To avoid any misunderstanding, please let me make it clear that this blog in no way is
intended to direct, advise, or suggest that anyone should ever discontinue or alter any course of medication prescribed by a registered practitioner! This is REALLY IMPORTANT! If we regularly use any psychotropic substance, then our nervous system gradually sensitises to this substance. To adjust or discontinue this use can cause profound and dangerous changes to how we think and feel.
Any such alterations or changes should only be considered through close dialogue with relevant prescribing practitioners.
The purpose of this blog is to increase accurate KNOWLEDGE, in the view that knowledge is POWER, and that if we are empowered with accurate knowledge, we can then make INFORMED changes to
our lives and habitual practices, if we feel appropriate.
Is Mental Illness A Disease’? Do I Need A ‘Medicine’
What do understand by the term ‘medicine’? Merriam Webster Dictionary definition defines medicine as ‘a substance or preparation used in treating disease’. Wikepedia suggests that ‘a medication (also referred to as medicine, pharmaceutical drug, or simply drug) is a drug used to
diagnose, cure, treat, or prevent disease’.
Okay. So if that’s the case, - what do we understand by the term ‘disease’?
Wikepedia would suggest that ‘in humans, disease is often used more broadly to refer to any condition that causes pain, dysfunction, distress, social problems, or death to the person afflicted’, and Merriam Webster Dictionary would conclude that a disease is a ‘condition ….. that
impairs normal functioning and is typically manifested by distinguishing signs and symptoms’.
You see, - it appears that we currently have TWO distinct views of what is meant by both ‘DISEASE’, and, consequently, what is meant by the term ‘MEDICINE’ that treats it. In the biological – common – NHS - medical – sense of the terms, we commonly understand that a ‘disease’ is an illness with a recognisable pathogen, which can be treated with a ‘medicine’.
As Mary Poppins might say, ‘just a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down, - in the most delightful way!
Is this what we commonly understand? If we have a sickness; illness; disease, - then there is a germ; pathogen; virus; bacteria which can be treated by a ‘medicine’? In the biological sense, an example might be insulin to treat diabetes, or chemotherapy to eradicate cancerous cells. This is indeed ‘medicine’ to treat ‘disease’.
The other view is more relevant to mental illness.
This view considers that while it is commonly understood that depression; anxiety; hyperactivity; sleeplessness; paranoia, etc are ‘diseases’ that need ‘medicine’, in reality there is no pathogen; bacteria; virus involved here. In this case, commonly used ‘medicines’ can only claim this description as being particular substances that may change the way we may think and feel, temporarily, about troubling mental states, without having any actual curative action. They have ‘therapeutic value’ only.
This is a rather important distinction.
I was recently working with a client presenting with PTSD who commented that he had been struggling ‘ever since he had contracted PTSD’. This struck me as curious, - that he had just automatically reasoned that, because he had met the diagnostic criteria for a ‘diseased’ condition (PTSD), that there must, by definition, be some identifiable pathogen that could, presumably, then be treated with a ‘medicine’.
Similarly, when I read the research findings recently of a randomised-controlled trial into the effectiveness of an anti-depressant drug involving some 3000 participants, it occurred to me that this was not actually a single trial into a single anti-depressant drug at all. It was, in reality, 3000 separate trials (using a common drug). Because the anti-depressant drug, will always just be an anti-depressant drug.
It is inert. It is not dynamic. In 10 years’ time, if we leave it to its own devices, it will still just be the same anti-depressant drug.
The 3000 participants, on the other hand were all utterly unique, and each subject to distinct cultural; genetic; societal; pharmacological; psychological and philosophical histories. Each of their nervous systems would have had to sensitise to standard drug dosages in differing ways, and each with distinct side-effect profiles deriving from this, and varying cognitive consequences.
So what can make a prescribed (or recreational) drug dynamic?
It becomes dynamic when it is introduced to a human nervous system. The dynamic bit is how it interacts with each unique user, based on metabolism; drug use history; conditioned thinking style; propensities; cognitive development, and a myriad other factors. Uniquely different for each user.
Let me give you an example.
If I am left alone in a room with various packets of heroin; cocaine; alcohol; tobacco; anti-depressants; anti-psychotics; stimulants, etc, - what is likely to happen? Actually, surprisingly little. Not much danger there, then. Because, of themselves, they are all inert chemicals that only have the potential to affect a human nervous system.
If, on the other hand, I am left alone in a room with a savage Rottweiler dog, then we now have TWO
dynamic agents in the room. The dog might bite me, and I might react to the dog.
If we regularly use psychotropic substances (any substance that affects how we think and feel, - so including prescription drugs to treat mental illnesses and recreational drugs), then what makes that drug active will be:
1. What my body has to do to break down (metabolise) the drug, and
2. What effect the drug then has on my nervous system, and
3. What my nervous system then has to do to sensitise itself to the regular use of this substance.
So, recreational drugs and prescription drugs to treat mental illness have no curative action, of themselves. But they can certainly temporarily change how we think and how we feel.
And this isn’t bad, and may certainly be useful (therapeutic).
Perhaps the drugs aren’t what we need to focus on here (the inert bit)? Perhaps we could rather focus on the basis of our depression; anxiety; PTSD; sleeplessness, etc (the active bit). That is, to change the way we think and routinely process information relevant to our daily lives that results in toxic emotions, feelings and behaviours?
Drugs may affect those active elements, but they can’t ‘cure’ them. That doesn’t mean that they aren’t useful. But it does mean that, when we are no longer being overwhelmed by toxic emotions and feelings, that we can then focus on teaching ourselves new skills and abilities that can dismantle and disempower past life experiences and traumas that can hold us captive through mental illness.
Thanks for reading.
January 19th 2020
This is my first blog under the ‘My Perfect Mind’ banner, and I wanted to use this opportunity to run some thoughts past you around the subject of:
Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) and the experience of DEPRESSION
Seasonal affective disorder (or SAD) is a recurrent major depressive disorder with a seasonal pattern usually experienced during winter months. It has been suggested that people with seasonal affective disorder have “difficulty regulating the neurotransmitter serotonin, a neurotransmitter believed to be responsible for balancing mood”*
However, this description suggests that we may ‘pathologise’ human experience, or turn the experience of being overwhelmed by how we interpret our world at any given time into an “illness” or “disease”.
It’s a kind of chicken and egg scenario.
Does the ‘imbalance in brain chemical’ (serotonin) suggest that we have a biological illness, or do our bodies just respond to how we think and feel about our life circumstances, resulting in consequent changed physiology and neurology? I would suggest, (based on previous posts and research referred to on this website) that the body responds and adapts to our thoughts and feelings ….
And this is all kind of important, because if we think we’re ILL, then this may change how we see ourselves, and indeed how we fear others may see us too. And that buys into the idea that, as human beings, we each may consider ourselves to have “relative worth” which may be eroded if we have to admit that we are struggling to cope?
We may come to feel that there is a societal ‘same page’ that we need to be on with the rest of our relevant social worlds (job; friends; culture; family), to be able to maintain our standing as ‘normal
fully paid-up members’. If this is threatened, then it may risk our being ‘labelled’ or stigmatised in
society. It may threaten our survival in the highly competitive world of social media and “high-expectations-of-happiness-and-wealth-for-all” in which we live.
But stress responses (that, when chronic, can result in SAD or depression) are very real and constant factors of modern life, even though, when we look around, we are routinely asked to soak up the message that:
1. Nothing is wrong or damaging, or intentional.
2. Hardship is avoidable, temporary, my fault.
3. I need to be patient, persistent, responsible.
4. The people in charge will make it all better.
5. My attitude is the problem.
6. If I weren’t so bad or my genes were good, I
would be coping like everyone else **
And these perceived expectations
can then feed into our feelings of hopelessness, disempowerment and depression.
But what if, (as suggested), the effects of chronic stress aren’t an indication of “mental illness” at all, but rather a consequence of how we have learnt to make sense of our lives, and respond to outward societal expectations?
There’s a thing called the “diathesis-stress model” (don’t be put off by the name!), that basically says that your experience of depression (or any other defined mental illness) may be the result of an
interaction between genetic traits; adverse life experiences; social circumstances, and an absence of sufficient “resilience factors” (stuff that can make you feel better!) to enable you to cope and manage the overwhelming emotions that you may experience.
This is basically “the straw that broke the camel’s back”
We all try to make sense of life, every day, and that involves managing all of our daily stressors, and coping with the emotions that can come from those experiences. But that stress can build up, and become overwhelming. And sometimes it can stay overwhelming (now chronic), because we just can’t turn off that “stress button”.
And that isn’t an illness.
It’s how our bodies may have become conditioned to survive all throughout our lives, - gradually then becoming overwhelmed, and unable to get back to a ‘normal baseline’.
As children, if we feel that we are growing up in a war zone,- either literally or metaphorically,- then our bodies have to grow to accommodate that. *** As a result, we all develop a “stress base line”, - the point at which we all turn on our own individually charged ‘fight or flight responses’. Cortisol and adrenaline course through our brains and veins to meet each perceived threat!
When we suffer continued stress, our ‘stress baseline’ adjusts to give us a heightened response to each threatening circumstance. And then we feel every ensuing setback, trauma, discouragement, threat, much more acutely. And this can affect all of our actions, prospects and even relationships with others.
To challenge and change this it may be helpful to recognise:
What this neurological and physiological mechanism looks like, and how it works for each of us.
How we can challenge and dismantle this seemingly uncontrollable “runaway train”.
How we can lower our own “stress baseline”, teaching our brains to ‘switch off’ the stress response when it may be unhelpful or inappropriate.
And this all involves teaching the brain to function in new ways, and learn new skills, which, thankfully, is perfectly possible for all of us, and is the goal of ‘My Perfect Mind’.
Thanks for reading…..
*(Seasonal difference in brain serotonin transporter binding, McMahon B., Andersen S., Madsen M., et al. 2014).
**(Stalked by Stress, Abandoned to Predation, Knutson S. 2020)
***(Behave, Sapolsky R. 2017)