WHEN YOU HAVE TOO MUCH TIME TO THINK, WHERE DOES YOUR MIND GO?

  Hi. Y'all.  I was just thinking. Which can often lead to trouble. Which got me thinking about thought. I have barely started and I've already confused myself.

  Well, only because I know I'm going to have to hit the psych. books again to look up what they have to say about thinking. It's not like I don't know, exactly, but I tend to use my words loosely and due to the lack of precision on my part, I do not always say what I thought (ha ha) I said and meant.

  It's communicating with others that I get into trouble with that sort of thing. I don't think I do it when I'm thinking to myself. But then how would I know?
  Just another of life's mysteries.

  Just a small digression. I have been a member of Al-Anon for quite some time. We aren't supposed to use the name because of outside controversy and anonymity. I don't care about my own anonymity. However, anything I may say about or quote from is strictly my view, my interpretation so please do not think that in any way I represent their views or philosophy.  That said, it was the place that I heard "not to take a walk alone in your head because it's a dangerous neighborhood."

  To me, that means that we can go into our minds, especially if they have lots of dark places,  as we have no one there to remind us, that what we are experiencing there, are just thoughts. And thoughts are not necessarily based in reality.  Nor did they originate in us. For example, if you start to think that you are worthless, I doubt that you woke up one day, when your brain/mind had matured, looked at the facts of your life and came to a rational conclusion that you were in fact, worthless.

  More likely, it was from hearing it beginning at a very young age when you were naught but a sponge, soaking up all the information around you. Yet, not having the cognitive maturity to evaluate its truth.  And so many of the thoughts we have bouncing around in our brains are just that. The dark places are filled with random thoughts about all sorts of things based on what we may have heard, or been told or misremember or, if we're psychotic, believe were planted by aliens, God, Son of Sam's dog or a host of other possibilities.

WHAT IS THOUGHT?

   What do the experts say about thought?  To start with, they prefer the use of the word Cognition. This is defined as " mental processes involved in acquiring, processing and storing knowledge."

   Knowledge is distinct from instinct. Just ask Adam or Eve. How do we get to "know" something? Please don't tell me because you ate an apple.
  Psychologists refer to it as" mental processing which involves acquiring, processing and storing knowledge."   I.E.  How people think, learn, remember and perceive.  

   I noticed that thinking was included, but not exclusive in the definition.
Another question could be, are thought always verbal? I don't believe so. You can have a visual thought. Or a visceral one but then I start to get confused between thoughts and feelings. I don't think I'm the only one. Psychologists had asked for years which came first. It's our version of the chicken or the egg.  I've recently heard that the feeling follows the thought. I'm not sure I buy that.  Do we label our feelings with words or do we experience them as physical sensations?  I think, (there is that word again) that not all people are alike and we have many variations on this theme. That led me to ask, 

WHERE ARE MY THOUGHTS STORED?
  The scientists and researches can't say exactly. For some reason that makes me happy.  As they said, even with the most updated brain imaging technology, they can't see inside the brain as it conjures up an image or comes up with a solution to a problem. Imaging measures blood flow which suggests brain activity. Where this actually begins or is stored is still under investigation.
To throw in another monkey wrench, if you know about holograms, there are people who believe that we are holograms which would suggest that our thoughts take place in every cell of our body, as does everything else. Now what?

SINCE THEY CAN'T ANSWER THIS, THEY PROPOSE, (THEIR WORD)  (My word), HYPOTHESIZE, WHAT THOUGHTS ARE.

  They propose that we represent ideas, knowledge or memories as mental representations, which they refer to as a structure in our minds. That doesn't sound right.  I think what they mean is that thoughts are representations of our experiences. For example, the word apple represents what we know is an apple. The word apple itself, is just some letters that make sounds (when spoke) based on a system someone devised to help us communicate.They have a lot more to say, but I think, we have enough to work with. Now if I could remember what I was thinking, I could get on with it. That is one of the difficulties of the kind of mind I have. It tends to run ahead of me and when I think I've caught up, I haven't.

BACK TO THE TITLE
  It may be my only help in remembering why I started this. It's pretty much the same phenomenon as when you go to another room to get something, but get there and don't remember what you went to get.

   It is probable that I was wondering about trains of thought. As you can see, mine are often derailed. It's like the switching station keeps moving the tracks. I have a recollection that the hippocampus, which is involved in memory, has a sort of switching stations that directs information where it should go. The closest text I had on hand didn't refer to it in those terms and if I keep on searching, I'll be here all night. Well, actually I have a block party to go to soon, so I will be leaving, but you all know that I always come back. Eventually.

  Do you all have similar thought processes?  I'm not talking about the forgetting and jumping bean thing I have. I'm talking more about the chain or thoughts where one leads to another, then another and by the end you are completely somewhere else.

  I have on occasion followed my patterns. Of course I can't think of one now, so I'll have to use my imagination which is not nearly so good as you might imagine.         

  Let's say I start thinking about ....... packing for a trip. I start with a list of clothes, then I start thinking about the weather. Then I might start wondering about the humidity and if my hair will frizz. Then I have to think about how long I'll be gone and whether I need to bring my hair iron or if I've having my hair straightened, I need to try to calculate when the last time was, and how many months it will be and if the time away coincides with my trip and do I have enough money for it now, or if I wait to long what will I do in the meantime and should I call Kyle and ask him, because I don't want him to think I've stopped coming and then what about the color? Do I do that?  And that's how packing
becomes about getting my hair done.

  So that is my question. Does your mind do that too? And. Does it do it so often you can't keep track of things. Not that I don't keep track of things. I most certainly do.

    Fortunately, my memory isn't totally shot and I have a tracker in there that pulls me back when I'm needed.  Being retired, means not being needed like I used to be.

    Structure is good for people with monkey minds. When I worked and was single, I was glad to have the week end, but if I hadn't made plans, I'd go nuts because I couldn't decide what to do, therefore ending up doing nothing and being bored and eating too much.

    I'm finding in some ways that's happening now. I have quite a few interests.  I love reading, I have an anagram game on my old kindle I still play, I have my painting, crafts, photography, yoga, blogging, keeping up with my email, watching certain TV shows, lying in the sun by the pool, listening to music and dancing (if my knees aren't acting up), shopping, seeing some friends, getting back to studying Hebrew (which I seem to have dropped somewhere along the line),  decorating the house, gardening and I'm sure things that aren't on the tip of my tongue.

  Yet, I'm best in the mornings. I can get up, and get started on something. I can , if you will, use the word "accomplish" any number of things by one or two pm.  then I run out of steam. (I often start at 7 or 8 am).  I take a nap and get up and that's it. I still may want to do more activity, only I generally end up reading of watching TV. Sometimes at 9 PM I can get back to a project, but it's that time in the middle that befuddles me.

  I want to learn something new. I want to pull weeds. I want to exercise. I think about all these things and then don't.

  Sometimes I think I'm lazy. Sometimes I think I'm overwhelmed. Sometimes I think like I have some deadline hanging over me and I'm not getting there fast enough. I don't even know where, where, is.

   This has gotten very philosophical. Or off topic. Both? Neither? One of those days? I don't know.

CONCLUSION
    Thinking can be very complicated. It can be very confusing. For me, it is very verbal and very ever present. I'm assuming that everyone's thought processes are similar, but also different. Some people's thoughts are very organized. (I suppose). Others are slow and easy. Some people can sit without thinking. Some people overthink everything. Some people look to other people like they don't think at all.

    To leave you with this final thought.  I think this has been my most disorganized, discombobulated post ever. And I have no idea why I started it, but since I always feel obligated to start what I finished, I'm going to post it anyway.  So there.

WHAT'S YOUR BLIND SPOT? EVERY MAMMAL HAS ONE.

   Science and Psychology often merge. In order to understand perception, the psychologist looks to the sciences of the senses. For this one, I'm looking at the eye. Not a shock considering it's been the focus  (haha) of my life the past couple of weeks. 

   I used to have fun with this lesson. I'll put in two of the pictures I found in my text books, but you may need to find some on line to find the proper distance, so that it works.

  A blind spot is known as a Scotoma.  The WIKI definition is below.  I'll sum it up and if you want the whole skinny, you can read more.

   Basically, each of us have a dead or empty spot in our eye where there are no photoreceptor cells. If you do one of the tests, you will indeed see that there is a spot where you can't see out of.  You have a hole in your vision field and you can only "see" it if you do one of these type of tests. They work. It's eerie. You move the page back and forth and suddenly, a big piece of what you're looking at goes missing. 

the pic I edited is one I couldn't find. you get the idea.

A scotoma (Greek σκότος/skótos, darkness; plural: scotomas or scotomata) is an area of partial alteration in the field of vision consisting of a partially diminished or entirely degenerated visual acuity that is surrounded by a field of normal – or relatively well-preserved – vision.

Every normal mammal eye has a scotoma in its field of vision, usually termed its blind spot.  It is only a problem when you develop more than one and it interferes with your vision.

   This is a location with no photoreceptor cells, where the retinal ganglion cell axons that compose the optic nerve exit the retina. This location is called the optic disc. There is no direct conscious awareness of visual scotomas. They are simply regions of reduced information within the visual field. Rather than recognizing an incomplete image, patients with scotomas report that things "disappear" on them.^[1]
The presence of the blind spot scotoma can be demonstrated subjectively by covering one eye, carefully holding fixation with the open eye, and placing an object (such as one's thumb) in the lateral and horizontal visual field, about 15 degrees from fixation (see the blind spot article). The size of the monocular scotoma is 5×7 degrees of visual angle. Wiki.

not sure if something got cut off.

  In any event, what is so truly cool about this spot is ----- we don't notice it.
Our brain takes over and fills in what it expects or wants to be there.

  How cool is that?  You're looking at a picture of your favorite, well, you fill in the blank. What you are actually seeing, is a picture with a hole in it. Like maybe the face is missing an eyeball. Or the woman's body is missing a breast.

  Your brain is so trained to see what should be there, that you actually believe that it is really there. Of course, we could probably say that about lots of things, which is why I thought this might be of interest.

   HYPOSTHESIS:
  The brain is so well trained at seeing what you expect or desire, that it can trick you into seeing what is not actually there. Therefore, your expectation is more powerful than the reality.


CAN I THINK OF SOME EXAMPLES?

  I'll start with a very common phenomenon.  After someone you know has died, you walk around and you often think you are seeing the person who has passed.
   I don't want to get into an argument with people who will say that this is possible.(actually seeing the "ghost" of who passed).  I believe it too. Only, not on a large scale. Like every day several times a day for several weeks, you keep "seeing" the person but upon closer inspection, you know it isn't them.

  It's what we want or expect to be there.  It's natural after a loss.  But can we do it with other things as well?


  Personally I think we can and do all the time. Not at all consciously. 

 Oh. Here's another one. You think your spouse is angry at you. You aren't sure why, but you're sure you're right. (we are always sure we're right).  So, when you see your spouse, you notice a tone in the voice, a look in the eye, a tightness around the mouth.  You respond in a way that you would (defensively)  if your spouse were angry. This may trigger anger that wasn't there. It does however, reinforce your belief that you were right.  You could of course be projecting your own anger onto your spouse and not wanting to be the one to start the argument, put it on him/her.

  There are lots of situations people do this in. Not projection. Looking for something in the other person.
   I just thought of adolescents. I don't know if they still do what I did, but if they do, you remember how that goes.
  You want to know if he/she likes you. You sit with your friend for hours, dissecting every move, every word, every expression the person said and did in a particular exchange.  It's kind of like reading tea leaves. You pick out the information that supports your theory. Oh. Is that what I'm doing now? You tell me. I'm not impartial.  

   OBSERVATION:

  Like the old adage, "Love is blind", in many cases, so are we. It can be a helpful defense in situations where you learn how to "overlook" faults in family and friends. In that case, you usually are aware of your actions which is fine. We all have flaws and faults and if we expect our loved ones not to have them we will be sorely disappointed and we will become quite disagreeable.

  Then there are the faults we really don't see. Someone conning us. We want so much to believe what that person is selling us, that, well, we do.

   We also con ourselves. It's so much more fun being blind to our own shit. If we don't see it, we don't have to take responsibility for it and then can go along our merry way, blaming anyone, anything, everyone and everything but ourselves. It may work, but you may find yourself to be rather unhappy, and if not alone, at least in rather contentious relationships. If that's what you're used to, that's what you'll find.


   SO WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED?
  Every mammal has a scotoma. What's my blind spot that I fill in with my desires rather than the reality? Is it a positive or a negative?
  He loves me. He loves me not.

  It's okay to have a blind spot as long as it isn't too big and doesn't interfere with reality.  Although I could argue that we all create our reality. I'll save that one for another post.



ARE WE CLEAR?

cataract surgery

see you in a couple of days.

this was last week. the shoe is on the other foot, so to speak.

LOL. At least I think I'll be able to see.

ABANDONMENT ISSUES AND RELATED FEARS, IE. IF I DON'T POST EVERY DAY, YOU'LL LEAVE ME

   Wow. I started this yesterday in the a.m. and wrote the title because it was what I was thinking about. I never got back to it until 24 hours later.  And...

   I was shocked that I hadn't written anything but the title. Woe is me.

What brought this to mind yesterday? 
   Never mind. This was going to be about abandonment. At least from my own experience combined with my wondrous textbook and clinical knowledge. That was meant to be facetious. Well maybe a little.

   It took me many years of therapy to understand that my really bad anxiety attacks were in fact abandonment anxiety. Are there different kinds of anxiety?
  Yeah. Pretty much. there are quite a few.

  Anxiety is generally defined as a diffused, unidentifiable fear. Fears are usually specific. I am afraid to make a mistake in front of people. I am afraid I have spinach stuck between my teeth. In my mind a very legitimate reason to not eat spinach.
  You get the idea. If a specific fear is extreme and out of the realm of your reality, it is termed a phobia. Fear of heights, being enclosed, driving over a bridge and the things you've all heard of. If I lived in a desert that was crawling with spiders and I had a fear of spiders, it might not be a phobia. If I live in my house in Florida, where the exterminator comes every three months, and in ten years I've only seen two really big spiders, AND I had to do a complete house check every morning and every night, I'd have a phobia.


  I surely have/had ?  generalized anxiety disorder because I came from a very fear based place. I had a couple of phobias that thankfully passed. I couldn't ride in elevators unless they were somewhat large and no one else was in it. I still don't like heights.

  I can't say I like crowded elevators but if my life takes me to one, I go.

  Since I was 14, right before my sister died, I started to get physical symptoms of nausea and vomiting. Only certain situations cause it. Like going on a school trip. Or later, going to school. What caused it? Was that anxiety?Or was that activity making me anxious. Anxiety can be a symptom or a cause. Sweet thing anxiety.  It's a multitasker.

  So, I would get nauseous and vomit. It was quite effective in stopping me from going out of my comfort zone. However, when it interfered with my school life and would have made me drop out and lose a year, I decided enough was enough. I pushed through it and came out on the other side.

  I surely didn't get rid of all of my anxiety. I had just decided that there were some things that were too important to allow myself the luxury of self-sabotage.
 
 Life went on. I did lots of things. Sometimes I was anxious, sometimes I wasn't. Since this isn't a complete biography, we'll leave it at that.

  I believe it was around 18 years ago, when I was finally able to fine tune the origin of a certain type of anxiety.  It was the one with  the feeling that was so bad I didn't know what to do. I felt empty. I felt like I'd crawl out of my skin. I felt I was on the verge of panic. I felt rooted to the floor. I felt unable to do anything. I thought it would never pass and it was absolutely intolerable.  

  I had a really awful fight with my fiancé. We weren't married yet and he left the apartment. I was flooded with those feelings. I felt helpless, lost and there was only one thing I could do to make it go away.  Take a valium and go to sleep for the night. The next morning would usually find me feeling better and some conflict resolution would have to take place.  i.e.. we'd talk.


   This night, instead of hitting the valium I decided to try to ride it out and think about the cause. I recall asking myself what preceded this response? It was an overwhelming fear of being abandoned and I was responding like a little child who was unable to take care of herself. I feared for my life.

  I was in my late 40s and I was responding to something as if I were 4, or 6?  That was an eye opener.

  I know a lot more now than I did, even back then. But I knew that I never felt safe or secure. I also knew that I had never been taught skills on how to soothe myself when I got hit with anxiety. At least not anything particularly effective.  Sorry folks, eating a gallon of ice cream may be soothing, but the byproduct isn't helpful, is it?

  How on earth do you learn to soothe yourself? For me, part of the process was understanding why I felt the way I did. I was able to use self-talk. Like remind myself that I was a grown woman and did not depend on anyone to take care of me. I also realized that after a certain age, the only one who could abandon me, was ME!

  Once I learned how to recognize the particular feelings for the abandonment issue  I could start soothing myself before they got out of control.

  Those of you with anxiety and panic know the metaphor. It's like a little snowball that rolls down the hill and keeps collecting more snow as it rolls faster and faster. It just keeps getting bigger and bigger until it rolls you over and you attack yourself. Or hit the wall and knock yourself out.

 Since that time, I have had only one episode that I was unable to talk myself down from, and I think that's a damned good success rate.

PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY ON SEPARATION:
DR. G.'S INTERPRETATION

   This was of particular interest  back in graduate school. I knew I had issues related to separation and attachment , so I read the books and wrote some papers. 

    Back in those days, before it was all about neurology and physiology, there were actual theories and ideas about children's emotional development and how they become attached to the significant people in their lives. I'm using the term mother, because it's easier than listing all the possible care givers. The "who" doesn't matter, as research found. The fact that the baby bonds is what is important.

  There were infants during WW II who were orphaned. You've seen some of the photos of the nurseries in England. Rows of cribs and one nurse, feeding and changing them all. There were infants who died for no apparent reason. It was referred to as the Merganser effect, if memory serves. Later it was found that that infants also need love and tactile affection to survive, if not thrive.

  John Bowlby was a British physiatrist who first studied infants and their attachments' to their mothers. He wrote three seminal books on the process.

 I can't go into too much of the theory. Three books and all, well that' a lot of material to try to condense.  Hell, even if I did, you'd all leave me because I'd be boring you to death and fear of that is keeping me from writing too much.

  YES !!! That's why I thought about it yesterday.  I saw a video about one's presence on their blog. The person said you have to be consistent. If you post every day and you cease that pattern, people will stop looking after a couple of "no post days". If you post weekly, then keep to that schedule.  That got my abandonment anxiety cued up. I post sort of every other day, or sometimes more, so if thought if you didn't see me for a few days, you'd leave me. Nuts right? But so true.  Anyhow,

   Mary Ainsworth also conducted research and found three forms of attachment. Secure, Insecure, and Ambivalent.

  A secure child, well when mummy comes back, the child is glad to see her and goes to her, and then is able to go back to playing. The insecure child, ignores mummy when she returns and makes mummy really pissed off.  The ambivalent child (guess who), is relieved that mummy came back,(oh thank God she didn't just leave me here)  but is also pissed off that she left at all. This child waffles, looks at mummy, looks away, looks back and can't decide what to do.

  These types of children become who they are because  of the nature /nurture situation. Unfortunately, in this case, nurture has influenced things a bit more. The children who are ambivalent usually have inconsistent mothering as compared to the insecure who have poor mothering. These kids know they can't count on her. At least they know where they stand. See, being consistent is so dammed important in so many things. I used to say that the only thing I'm consistent about is my inconsistency. Does that mean I'm doomed?

  I expect that many of us who fall into the ambivalent style, form codependent relationships. Can't live with them. Can't live without them.

THEORY ABOUT ABANDONMENT:
  It's pretty much a known and accepted theory. This isn't one of my ridiculous ones. At least I haven't made it into that yet.

   Not everyone is fortunate to have had a good enough mother. If they were lucky, they had enough people around so they could form solid attachments and go through life with a usual amount of anxiety and fear. Some were constitutionally fortunate and although they may not have gotten what they needed, they had the internal strength to give it to themselves.

  For those us of who did not get what we needed, have a few more struggles than others. Of course everything is in varying degrees. You can use a continuum or a scale of one to ten. Some got it worse than others or perceive it that way. That's just the way it is.

CONCLUSION: 

Never, ever lose hope. I believe that you must be brave and be able to look into your self. You can't blame other people. My mother did the best she could. It wasn't her fault that it wasn't good enough. If I accept that, and then after I understand it, well, that's on me if I still want to be hurt and angry.  Do I still blame my parents? Of course I do. It's so much fun. As long as I keep it on the light side, it's okay. Holding onto the heaviness, it's  not healthy nor does it make you better. If you want to get past your anxiety and fear, you'll have to do the work. It's not easy, but anything of value requires work. Even if you were told over and over that you're worthless, they were wrong.
   You are valuable and you are worth working on.