Sep8

Self-Compassion by Kristin Neff, Ph.D.

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Self-Compassion by Kristin Neff, Ph.D.

There is an interesting and welcome change in self-help and brain biology books these days. “The Social Animal” by David Brooks strings recent scientific discoveries about social behavior on a framework of storyline about several intersecting fictional lives. Kristin Neff interleaves her academic study of self-forgiveness and self-compassion with stories from her own life. The books intersect on the brain studies of Buddhist monks during meditation, but her stories are non-fiction and much more compelling.

Reading examples of how self-compassion works in her life brings it into sharp focus, especially the stories about her autistic son. The best is at the end of the book… a compelling story of the journey to Mongolia with her husband, son, and a film crew to have the revered shaman, reached by horseback in the high steppes, cast out the spirits that were causing the son’s autism. What happened next is amazing and worth the read.


This posting on Facebook exemplifies Dr. Neff’s message of accepting one’s mistakes as part of being human, and of calling up the memory of a loving caregiver who could be counted on to soothe the emotional pain. All the more interesting because the Mom and Dad that she misses are both dead. The mother, of a drug overdose and the father (my first cousin) of chronic alcohol abuse. Yet they continue to be a source of comfort to their young adult daughter.

Dr. Neff’s mantra to remind herself to practice compassion is:

May I be safe
May I be peaceful
May I be kind to myself
May I accept myself as I am
May I accept my life as it is

She recommends distracting oneself from dwelling on the bad feelings by taking a walk or plunging into a physical chore like cleaning or gardening while practicing the mantra and self-compassion. She points out that “Forgiveness does not mean condoning bad behavior or that we need to interact with people who have hurt us.” Other notes:

P. 156. People who invest their self worth in feeling superior and infallible tent to get angry and defensive when their status is threatened. People who compassionately accept their imperfections however, no longer need to engage in such unhealthy behavior to protect their egos.

Not only is High self-esteem is linked to narcissism but, in contrast, high self-compassion is not linked to narcissism.

Love allows us to feel confident and secure (oxytocin) while fear sends our amygdala into overdrive and floods our systems with cortisol.

p. 170 Failure is less likely to damage the self-efficacy beliefs of self-compassionate people.

P. 45 John Bowlby argues that early attachment with parents created the “internal working model” of self in relation to others. Betrayed and abused children become insecurely attaches, tend to feel unworthy and unlovable and that other people cannot be trusted. This creates pervasive feelings of insecurity, long-terms emotional distress and impairs the formation of close, stable relationships. Not surprisingly, they turn out to have low self-compassion. These internal working models can be changed through healthy romantic partnerships and skilled therapy. (also compassion meditation) and consistently giving ourselves nurturance and understanding we come to feel worthy of care and acceptance.

Self-criticism is associated with activity in the lateral prefrontal cortex and dorsal anterior cingulate (error processing and problem solving) Kindness and self-reassurance is associated with the left temporal pole (left pre-frontal cortex) and insula activation.

Physical touch releases oxytocin, provides a sense of security and soothes cardiovascular stress. Hug yourself.

p. 119 There are four elements to self-compassion mindfulness.
This is a moment of suffering (mindfulness of emotions)
Suffering is part of life.
May I be kind to myself in this moment (be in the present)
May I give myself the compassion I need. (set the intention to be self-compassionate)

Christopher Germer (The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion) observes that his client typically go through several distinct stages during therapy. People who feel worthless can experience a backdraft, like when a door is opened on a fire and the rush of fresh air suddenly fuels an oxygen-starved fire causing flames to blast through the newly open door. Through mindfulness, the backdraft may be experienced with compassion. Then, sometimes, infatuation follows and the self-critical person is suddenly tender towards oneself.

p. 225 Rather than relying on your partner to give you exactly what you need, try meeting your own needs first. Identify what you’re craving (validation, care, support, etc.) and see if self-compassion can help give it to you. This will help take the pressure off your partner. As you learn to rely more on self-healing, your would, given the care and attention they need, can heal.

Dr. Neff also refers to John Gottman, famous for identifying the four horseman of divorce: criticism, contempt, defensiveness and stonewalling. Her insights into her own failed first marriage in light of her father’s abandonment of her family, and her stresses with her second husband illuminate the academic information. A useful and readable book. I recommend it.

Aug21

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

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Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Planet Apes
Howard and I both recommend “Rise of the Planet of the Apes.” — exciting and well made. Muir Woods is a location and the Golden Gate Bridge and its fog is practically a character. Don’t be late — it gets off to a fast start and packs in a lot of back story in the first few minutes. Don’t leave when the end credits start to roll… The set-up for the sequel starts after the first few credits. The nasty neighbor (played by Stargate’s neurotic nerd Rodney) goes back to work after his chimp-inflicted injury. Keep in mind that earlier in the movie we saw the lift-off for the manned Mars mission in the background. I predict that Charleston Heston was one of the astronauts on that mission. LOL!

Aug18

Whacking the Volvo

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Whacking the Volvo

As I left the gym today, I heard the sound of a Volvo in distress. Someone was cranking the engine of a 1983 Volvo wagon but the engine wasn’t catching. I kept walking, “Don’t meddle. No one wants car advice from a girl…” but the faded maroon wagon kept cranking loudly. I walked back.

      “Hi, I have a Volvo wagon and it sounds like your fuel pump…”
      “Yeah,” a young man grinned up from the driver’s seat. “I just replaced the relay, but… ”
      “There are two fuel pumps. One in the gas tank and the other under the driver’s seat. It’s different in every model, I don’t know exactly where yours is.”

He knew where the fuel pump was and he had tools. He had recently purchased this elderly Volvo, Eleanor, for $250 and had been working on it with great enthusiasm and affection. I offered to crank the engine while he applied “percussive maintenance” to the fuel pump. He crawled under his car and yelled, “Ready!”

I cranked, he whacked, the Volvo started right up. He whooped and jumped to his feet. Brandishing his ratchet handle, he showed me his tattooed forearm. “And I’m the one with the Volvo tattoo! My name is Bryce.”

I smiled, shook his hand and walked away. He will never know if I, too, have a Volvo tattoo.

Jul12

Waking The Tiger – Healing Trauma

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Waking The Tiger – Healing Trauma
Waking The Tiger – Healing Trauma

This 1997 book subtitled “The Innate Capacity to Transform Overwhelming Experiences” is by Peter A. Levine, Ph.D. I read this book quickly over three days and agree that it is ground-breaking. I now have a better understanding that effects of unresolved trauma include constant hyper-vigilance and the gnawing expectation of the worst possible outcome. This produces a constant flow of adrenaline (epinephrine) which leads to the clean-up hitter cortisol, two stress hormones chronically generated by the remnants of unresolved trauma.

Dr. Levine points out that there are THREE things on the menu: fight, flight and freeze. Many trauma-sufferers are frozen in “freeze,” never completely coming out of the unresolved trauma. This unresolved trauma might be an underlying factor in depression which is associated with chronic over-production of cortisol. Movement, particularly shaking, shivering, quaking, are ways to blow off the trauma. Dr. Levine says,

“Post-traumatic symptoms are, fundamentally, incomplete physiological responses suspended in fear. Reactions to life-threatening situations remain symptomatic until they are completed. Post-Traumatic stress is one example.”

In his TED talk below, Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman says that what defines memories/stories are:

  1. changes
  2. emotionally significant moments
  3. endings

with endings being the most important factor in what constitutes memory. Happy endings typically yield happy memories, even if the event was difficult leading up to the happy ending. In “Waking the Tiger,” Dr. Levine’s therapy leverages this in his therapeutic practice which involves re-enacting the traumatic memory with the patient but changing the ending to a better outcome. You might notice in Dr. Kahneman’s TED talk about the difference between the left-brain “remembering self” and the right-brain “experiencing self.” This is the fundamental distinction made by Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor’s in her “Stroke of Insight.”

Jul5

PTSD Breakthrough – Dr. Frank Lawlis

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PTSD Breakthrough – Dr. Frank Lawlis

This 2011 book is a quick read and a timely update to PTSD recovery research. Dr. Lawlis describes PTSD well, and with great sympathy he outlines his strategy to recovery. Not surprisingly, it parallels Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor’s path to recovery from the traumatic brain injury of her stroke.

  1. Surround yourself with loving people who cheer your every positive step toward healing
  2. Get LOTS of sleep
  3. Get clean physically. Fresh food, clean water, no toxins. De-tox if necessary (directions included)
  4. Get clean mentally. Interrupt rumination. Learn to choose positive thoughts.
  5. Actively learn how to cope with terrifying memories. (Dr. Lawlis has a “machine”)
  6. and healthy goals

Dr. Lawlis is a fan of supplements, blue lights and his auditory invention (BAUDenergetics.com) that uses sound waves to break the fear cycle. I’m not sure about the machines, but I think he is right about how to heal a damaged brain.

Jun5

Attention > Dopamine > Detailed Memory

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Attention > Dopamine > Detailed Memory

Joyfulness seems factory-installed in the young, but can slip away as people get older. Young people easily remember specific times they were happy, and can recall enthusiastic, unconditional love. As we get older, many of us start to ruminate broadly. “I never get a break,” for example. That over-general “tape loop” leads to feeling bad.

Detailed Memories of Happiness

Spanish researchers have reported that aging patients showed fewer symptoms of depression and hopelessness after they practiced techniques for retrieving detailed memories, according an a May 10, 2011 article in the NYTimes Science News. Teaching people to focus on moment-to-moment experiences and to accept their negative thoughts may make them more tolerant of negative memories. The Mindfulness Meditation technique he teaches short-circuits the over-generalization habit that people often develop as a way of dampening emotional effects, according to Dr. Hermans.

Over-generality creates a risk factor for PTSD. “Some people tend to ruminate at a very categorical, general level about how unsafe life is or how weak I am, or how guilty I am,” says Richard Bryant. “If I do that habitually, that sets me up for developing PTSD after a trauma.”

“If you’re unhappy and you want to be happy, it’s helpful to have memories that you can navigate to come up with specific solutions,” Dr. Williams said. “It’s like a safety net.”

The formation of detailed memories is impaired by screensucking according to Nicholas Carr in “The Shallows: what the Internet is doing to our brains.” On page 193 he points out that the key to memory consolidation is attentiveness. Storing explicit memories and forming connections between the requires strong mental concentration, amplified by repetition or by intense intellectual or emotional engagement. The sharper the attention, the sharper the memory. This is why arousal is important. When you are afraid or very excited, the memory formation is sharper and more likely to become permanent.

The Web is a Technology of Forgetfuless

Because web browsing fills up short term working memory but does not leave time for deep memory formation, Carr says, “The Web is a technology of forgetfulness.”

Nobel prize winning biologist Dr. Eric Kandel says, “For a memory to persist, the incoming information must be thoroughly and deeply processed. this is accomplished by attending to the information and associating it meaningfully and systematically with knowledge already well established in memory.”

The influx of competing messages that we receive online overloads our working memory; making it much harder for us to concentrate on any one thing. The process of memory consolidation can’t even get started. And, thanks, to the plasticity of the brain, the more we train our brain to be distracted, the harder it becomes to concentrate even when we’re away from our computers. Our use of the web makes it harder to lock information into our biological memory, and we’re forced to rely more and more on the Internet. It makes us shallower thinkers.

Attentiveness Produces Dopamine

Leaning to think includes learning to exercise some control over how and what you think, over where we focus our attention. The establishment of attention lead the neurons of the cortex to send signals to neurons in the midbrain that produce the powerful neurotransmitter dopamine. The axons of these neurons reach all the way into the hippocampus, where the dopamine jumpstarts the consolidation of explicit memory.

You need dopamine to learn, and learning is pleasurable. Is this why dopamine sensitive people love new learning experiences? Attentiveness and the dopamine it produces help create specific memories that can be accessed with sufficient granularity to ward off depression.

We can choose where our attention goes and where our energy flows. We can practice mindfulness meditation and choose to remember pleasant experiences rather than ruminating on over-general fears.

May24

Is Google Making Us Stupid?

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Is Google Making Us Stupid?

This question is posed by Nicholas Carr in this book, “The Shallows: What The Internet Is
Doing to Our Brains.” The best chapter in the book is “Search, Memory” which details the biology of how short term memories are turned into long term memories that create a fabric of knowledge that we call wisdom. As people learn more, and their brains make physical connections with the information, the person develops a point of view on life. Long term memories are called up to be used in working memory, and more connections made.

When people begin to rely on Google search for information rather than actually learning things, this fabric of knowledge remains shallow. The deep learning that creates warp and woof of culture diminishes. The culture that surrounds us influences the content and character of a person’s memory. My memories of peace marches protesting the Vietnam war are different from the memories of Egyptian students in Tahir Square. Each memory reflects the culture of our time. When learning is superficial, memories become more like infotainment than a symphony. Playwright Richard Foreman frets that we are becoming “pancake people — spread wide and thin as we connect with that vast network of information accessed by the mere touch of a button.” Carr goes on to say:

Those who celebrate “outsourcing” of memory to the Web have been misled by a metaphor. They overlook the fundamental organic nature of biological memory. What gives real memory its richness and its character, not to mention its mystery and fragility, is its contingency. It exists in time, changing as the body changes. Indeed, the very act of recalling a memory appears to restart the entire process of consolidation, including the generation of proteins to form new synaptic terminals.

Biological memory is in a constant state of renewal. Computer memory is static — you can copy the file, but the file remains the same. It doesn’t learn, it doesn’t update, it doesn’t develop a new way of looking at the old information. We can pretend that search engines are better than actually having to remember things, but for knowledge to become part of our experience, we have to physically assimilate it in our brains. A computer disk can become full, but our brains never become full. There is always room for more learning. Carr says:

We don’t constrain our mental powers when we store new long-term memories. We strengthen them, with each expansion of our memory comes an enlargement of our intelligence. The Web provides a convenient and compelling supplement to personal memory, but when we start using the Web as a substitute for personal memory, bypassing the inner processes of consolidation, we risk emptying our minds of their riches.

The crux of the book is summed up on page 196. “The offloading of memory to external data banks doesn’t just threaten the depth and distinctiveness of the self. It threatens the depth and distinctiveness of the culture we all share.”