How Does the Mind Learn? The Neuroscience of the Way of Love

This month I have been posting at Batshit Crazy Preacher instead of Prozac Monologues. It's a series of daily reflections for Advent, the Christian season of preparation for Christmas. Watching and waiting, not so much shopping and decorating. Lots of people are posting images and reflections on social media for #AdventWord. But me, well, you could expect that mine would have a Prozac Monologues flavor, regardless of the venue.

So in case you don't follow both blogs, here is the link to one of my posts in which I explain the neuroscience behind a particular spiritual discipline. Not meditation, mindfulness, breath prayer, those typical crossover exercises that regulate cortisol. No, I'm talking about learning, at the cellular level, complete with my drawing of a neuron.

Blessings, all.

Prozac Monologues Moves to Batshit Crazy Preacher

Advent is the season of spiritual preparation for Christmas. The idea is to slow down, not speed up. Spend some quiet, reflective time. Remember the reason for the season... Honestly, I think about setting up an Advent wreath, that sort of thing. But our candle holders broke. They broke years ago. I guess I'm just not into the candle thing.

Most years, the closest I get to Advent wreaths, calendars, whatever, is a box of twenty-four wee drams of Scotch from Master of Malt. I know, I know, Scotch is not what your psychiatrist recommends for your recovery toolbox. At least it usually take me well past the twelve days of Christmas to finish the thing.

Anyway, this year I found a practice that does spark my imagination, #AdventWord. It is an international community of prayer that you can enter in whatever way appeals to you. There is a daily meditation to read, based on a different word every day. Advent Word, get it? The ones so far this year are tender, deliver, strengthen, earth, rebuild, fellowship, and glory. People post photos on Twitter or Facebook, or scripture passages, or songs inspired by the word. You can get a poster with spaces to color in each day. You can doodle, decorate the word, or draw whatever comes to you. When it's finished, it's supposed to remind you of a stained glass window. The whole project lets you do whatever prayer style works for you.

Gingerbread Houses and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

Thanksgiving is one of my hypomanic seasons. I'm getting better at not taking on projects that worry my wife. In fact, I have given up gingerbread houses altogether. Which is not to discourage you, just to acknowledge that they were once my one great weakness. That woman in the fringed dress down there? - Each bit of fringe was an individually placed sprinkle, separated out from a container of red, green, and white sprinkles. See what I mean?

But I did learn some things from my hypomanic gingerbread houses. And learning is good for the brain. The following post is a repeat from ten years ago, when I was in the throes of it. It explored the relationship between gingerbread and cognitive behavioral therapy. I am one of many who have a love/hate relationship with CBT, which I freely acknowledged to my CBT therapist in our first session. Nevertheless, she persisted, and I persisted, and I do rely on it daily and have written about it from a variety of angles. So here it is again, for those of you who want to explore CBT and also for those of you who want to know how to make a nine patch quilt out of fruit rollups:


Cognitive Behavioral Therapy - Gingerbread Style, 11-25-2010

First Cognitive Therapy Technique -- Distraction

Ritual, Stress, and Surviving a Pandemic Thanksgiving

Human beings are pattern-seeking creatures. Place us in an absurd situation, we feel stress. We respond by ritual behavior, or clinging to biases, or even inventing an explanation. Does this sound like anything happening around you for the last several months?

Some of these responses serve us better than others. Biases preserve energy by saving us the time it takes to make case by case evaluations. But they also can be mistaken and rob us of original insights.

Invented explanations are how we manage the terror of acknowledging any bad thing that is out of our understanding or control. Why did Daddy hit me--again? Who is to blame for all these fires lately? How could my candidate have lost? We tell ourselves a story that makes sense of the event, relieving the pain of uncertainty, and thus gaining control over our emotions.

Between Stimulus and Response

I went searching for a Viktor Frankl quote. Mental health pro-tip: When desperate, Google "Viktor Frankl quotes." I mean, how does even the most desperate, darkest depression argue with a Holocaust survivor?

Here is what I found:


Okay, I confess, when you put an inspirational quote on top of a beautiful peaceful scene, it loses its inspirational value for me. That's just the way my brain works.

So I'd make my own image if I were inclined to that sort of thing, like if I were having a hypomanic episode. It would be three boxes, left to right.

On the left would be a screenshot of a webpage saying something like, Cannot open page because search timed out. Maybe, Cannot find printer. I saw those images on my laptop a lot last week.

Sanity, the Serenity Prayer, and the Way of Love


Last week I just couldn't. Well, my laptop was dying. And then my printer wouldn't install. But all that within the context of everything that well, you know... So last week there was no new post.

This week, I still can't, not really. I can't find any new research that intrigues me. I can't bear the thought of yet another rant. I am determined not to spread any more pain.

But there's pain out there. There's pain in here. And this blog is about the things I can change. So this I will do.

I have a spiritual discipline that I am using to walk through these days. I am a Christian, and this is a Christian discipline, or series of ancient practices - though my guess is that nonChristians can find something of value here. I will do my best to do some translation.

It's called the Way of Love.

Confessions of the Good Suicide Survivor Story

I was suicidal. I nearly killed myself. I am glad I didn't do it. Because I got better.

Moral of the story: You will, too.

That's it. That's the good survivor story. Hopeful. Virtuous. I have told that story, and when I do, I get all kinds of strokes, including publication of my writing on other websites.

Some of it is true. It did get better. For me. For now.

For now.

There is more to the story. When I tell the more, I do not get publication. I don't even get acknowledgement that my submitted piece was received. I guess I am submitting to the wrong websites, to places that have one story they want to tell, the good survivor story.

And like I said, it's true, some of it. According to David Conroy, there are 50 million people alive today who have struggled, are struggling, or will struggle with suicide. 45 million of them will die of... something else. That's success, right? 90% of us will find another way.

But that's not the same as the good survivor story. Because for the 45,000,000 of us who survive, we have all kinds of stories.

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