Psych Connect Greenville

“If it’s too good to be true” … guess what? it probably is, not true.
We live in the age of “cons”. They are all around us. At the very minimum “they steal our attention”- I am talking about the internet and social media. You might have hard time believing this but “we are being fed that information which these scammers- I would call them “soft scammers” want us to feed on. They choose their targets well. Many of you would admit that if you search a particular merchandise, the next time you open your browser you would see the same item being advertised. Some of us also start seeing these items even if you were talking to your spouse about it – without becoming paranoid, I would suggest AI – whether it’s Alexa or Google assistant – is eavesdropping. We may not buy these but “we sold our attention”.
Let’s move on to “no ifs and but’s” kind of cons – like Nigerian prince Con or Ponzi schemes.
What I plan to do is, to explore what do the swindlers look for in a victim.
They do feed on the victim’s fear, greed, guilt, concerns, desires, hopes and so on.
I am going to try explaining this with examples from real life.
This lady in her early fifties- let’s call her Martha, lived alone worked in a grocery store making minimum wages. She was divorced and very lonesome. Started using online dating sites and befriended a handsome, rich guy who had “tracks of land in Texas” but was not able to pay taxes. He wanted to sell this property, but the hitch was he had to pay the taxes. He planned to relocate where this lady- my client, lived. “Too good to be true for her” and sure enough it was not true. She finds this hard way after helping him out with the taxes but never hearing from him again. Became despondent, depressed, and was admitted to a psychiatric unit. With proper treatment she was released to her son as she was seen as vulnerable adult and family support was a requirement for her successful discharge.
Thus far it could be seen as an unfortunate story of fraud but,what is hard to understand is that she succumbed to two more very similar cons. When probed deeper- it became apparent that “her desire for a romantic love relationship made her desperate to seek it at any cost” and the fraudsters are scouting for such victims.
Another story focuses on the concerns and fears about the well-being of the family members. A co-worker told me this as I was writing the blog. His 80yrs old mother gets a call from the detention center informing her that her grandson has been arrested and if she wants him to be released, she will have to pay a fine, during this call she can hear some screams in the background. This grandson had had some legal skirmishes in the past. In her anxiety to get her grandson out, she does what she was asked to do. Normal concerns of a grandmother got amplified by grandson’s legal history and the staging of screams in the background.
A cliché “if you want something for nothing”, you might end up getting “nothing for something” but that’s the story of a scam.

We build hope give Hope take Hope wish hope-it’s hope and hope all the way.

Hope for better life

We are taught hope is good – and we hope for things to become better even if everything in our life sucks. What’s the payoff? I guess ability to go on with our life. Question is what’s the price we pay?

Let me tell you a story- 

This hobo is traveling in the train- ticket checker comes and ask him to show his ticket. The guy looks in this pocket and that pocket but skips one pocket in an obvious manner. This doesn’t escape the ticket checker’s keen eyes and he questions him why he won’t look into “that pocket “

The hobo’s response is “I am afraid to find it not being there either”

Well funny it is – but really that is what hope is and not finding it there is akin to hopelessness.

The bottom line we would go to any extent to have hope in our life even if it’s “false hope”

We are willing to live in a deluded world if it offers us hope. It could be in God’s benevolence or the promises of a leader.

Where does Hope takes us?

When we are little, we are powerless, puny, dependent, and we hope one day we would be big, independent and stronger. When we are adults, we hope for the day, when we would be wealthy, powerful and famous. When we are older, we hope we would leave a legacy behind us and when we are close to death we hope for an eternity in heaven.

The problem is “hope” always belongs to “tomorrow” and we can only live in today. Too much “dope”of “hope “and we miss the boat of “today”

Maybe a little Hope could propel us to live on, in the face of the absurdity of life 

It’s a known fact that “hopelessness “goes along with “clinical depression” but psychologists have found enough empirical data that people who are depressed are more realistic whereas normal happy people are little less so.

Reminds me of a two act play by Samuel Beckett in which two characters, engage in a no-nothing kind of ramblings while awaiting a mythical Godot, who never arrives. This waiting game acts as a glue to bind their absurd ramblings.

Just a “sprinkle of hope” in 2022 ,would be good enough, so that we can “wait for Godot” and continue to engage in our shenanigans.

So, I ask for just a sprinkle of hope in 2022-just enough to bind the absurdities of life because a little more would entomb our lives into eternal deadness! 

When I think about “ Eugenics” the very first word which pops up in my mind – helplessly so is Hitler and his megalomaniac pathetic outlook on promoting the “Aryan race”. But, fortunately, his medical experiments of unthinkable horror and cruelty conducted at Auschwitz’s concentration camps died out with him.
Let’s fast forward to happier times of Tinseltown and it’s denizens.
Angelina Jolie going for double mastectomy made the headline for being “bold and beautiful “ few years back when she found she was BRCA1 positive. Of course even if it was possible to detect it on her mother’s prenatal check ups , it would have “been a non-event” and would have not affected “the embryonic life of Angelina in any adverse way. But what if ,John Nash’s mother found out he has 22q11 deletion during her prenatal screening and decided she didn’t want to bring forth a schizophrenic child ? Would that not be considered a “crime against humanity” by depriving the world of “a beautiful mind”?
What if we find a gene for sociopathy ?
What if we find that mild sociopathy helps with a successful career in politics? Hope not!

What about diseases like Sickle cell trait -what if we can find “genetic cure” for sickle cell disease and later find that the same genetic abnormality allows“ yet to discover” “ advantageous trait” – not unlike one bestowed on “the fantastic four” superheroes – but then that belongs to fiction-!(as a matter of fact sickle cell trait does offer advantage to people living in the malaria belt, because malarial parasite causes the blood cells of “sickle cell trait” person to sickle and attacked by body’s immune system)
How about Asperger’s, which, I think at least some of you would concede that ,if not desirable, is at the very least acceptable in the Post Elon Musk era than it ever was?
How about Depression? As some of you might know that,Abraham Lincoln suffered from serious depression but it also allowed him immense patience and deep empathy for the downtrodden- is that a good trait or liability in the current socio-political environment? Is it possible to have more Abraham Lincoln’s or would they be utter failure as politicians in the current environment? What if we swap Lincoln with Trump ? Would we have United States of America as we know it now ?

What I am inviting you to ponder with me is, that with “genetic manipulation” to either find a cure for so called “genetic illnesses” or “find hardy crops – better known as GMO’s” we are swapping known “suffering” with yet to discover “scourge”?

Continuation of my previous post on anxiety…

We established how we can convert “anxiety” into “fear” by our “meditative awareness”

There are many ways to cultivate this. Let’s consider sports and meditation.

While playing a sport, whatever disharmony exist between mind and body becomes “amplified” and this amplification can help us see “how anxiety makes us miss the ball”. While playing tennis, I have noticed umpteen times ,that “when I am thinking about hitting a ball in “this” and not “that way”-in other words when I am “anxious about hitting it right -I always hit it wrong.Contrarily, if I simply “follow the ball”- and let my mind trust my body, I hit it right.

What I am trying to examine here, is how can we operationalize “hand to hand combat” to deal with anxiety in our day-to-day life.

The first and foremost tool we have is our awareness into how we feel. Anxiety is so “painful” that we want to get rid of it as soon as possible- at times we don’t even care about the heavy price we pay for these escapes – drugs, distractions, obsessions, or addictions.

What if we turn it around – rather than “numbing ourselves to this pain” we become aware of this “pain”.

Let’s try to do this exercise- next time we are plagued by anxiety -we try to find out how does it translate into the “body’s discomfort” – like pounding heart, sweaty palms, butterflies in the stomach and so on and the circular thoughts “like a snake chasing its own tail” or in other words “obsessive rumination”.

The “key word is awareness”.

The next step is “acceptance of this state of affairs – both mind’s and body’s without any fight or resistance” Just like in the martial art Judo they teach you to “accept the blow as if you were a soft pillow” – don’t be a rock when the blow of anxiety lands on you – become a pillow

All our life we are programmed to find “solutions” to the “questions” without questioning the questions even if the later are ridiculous.
“Double bind” communications pose such questions which force us to step up to the plate.
If we don’t negate these communications we are left with either “oppression” or “ live in a psychotic world”.
First, I want to elaborate how “double bind” communications are oppressive with examples from our day to day life. The “double bind communications are very effective tools to “control” the employees. Say for example – an ER physician is advised to keep the wait time low but also expected to “prioritize” patient contact time based on the urgency of the clinical situation. It translates to him being penalized if he spends “average” time with all patients without prioritizing or if he spends more time on serious cases and keep less emergent patients waiting longer than the “advertised ER waiting period”. Catch-22
What should he do in this situation?
A very apt example described in Sukaina Hirji’s paper “oppressive double bind” is as follows –
“Imagine you are an untenured professor and the only woman and person of color among the faculty in a philosophy department. You are frequently approached by students, typically women or members of other underrepresented groups, looking for mentorship and emotional support as they navigate their academic experience. While you believe this service work is valuable with a view to increasing the representation of minorities in philosophy, it is also emotionally draining and takes significant time away from your own research. You feel trapped. If you do this sort of mentorship work, you help diversify the field in a way that will be better for you and other members of underrepresented groups. Moreover, if you refuse to do this work, you indirectly help to maintain a status quo in which women and people of color like yourself remain dramatically underrepresented and underserved. But by doing this service work, you compromise your own research and reinforce a system where disproportionate burdens are placed on women and people of color, making them less likely to succeed in the profession.”
Before, we scratch our head to find a solution I want recall the story of the Buddhist monk(from my previous post) who “ snatches the stick from his teacher” – word of caution though “both the problems and their solutions are going to be much more complex to define”
The first step though is “ defining the problem as clearly as possible” and laying out all solutions “even if they seem ridiculous” like in the Buddhist monk example.

The phrase “Catch-22” is picked up from Joseph Heller’s novel with the same name and it alludes to a “problem” whose solution is denied by the restrictions posed by the problem.
A very similar communicative pattern proposed to cause “schizophrenia” in the genetically predisposed individuals per Gregory Bateson is “ double bind”. Double bind theory is about relationships and what happens when important basic relationships are subjected to chronic invalidation through paradoxical communication.
Furthermore, “double bind” technique of communication is also used by the Zen masters to guide their students to a path of “ self enlightenment”
Let’s start with first scenario-unfolding in the setting of WWII. The novel’s main character captain Yossarian’s goal is to stay alive at any cost- to escape from detested sorties, he tries to feign “insanity” but the catch is, that such plea is seen as a sign of “sanity”,since the person is vested in self preservation, whereas those willing to go on high risk sorties are taken to be “somewhat insane”. On one occasion, when he is caught evading his duties he is given two choices by his supervisor “ face court martial or be discharged “after making 80 sorties” – what he is desperately trying to avoid- so again “ catch-22”- his creative solution is “ fleeing to neutral war zone of Sweden” hence freedom.
double bind is used by the Buddhist teachers to challenge their student’s mindset –

a Buddhist teacher holds a stick in his hand and tells his student “ if you say I have a stick in my hand – I will beat you. If you say I don’t have any stick- I will beat you and if you say nothing- I will beat you”. -a perfect double bind -The “self enlightened” student simply takes the stick from his master’s hands and break it into two! Solution is the negation of the problem.
This same technique is sometimes used by insecure mothers to communicate with their children,and in those predisposed to schizophrenia, it may drive them to a psychotic solution, as proposed by George Bateson in his study on schizophrenia.
This communication style is often used in the corporate world to “manage the employees”as captured in Mike Judge’s movie “ the office space”-
Joanna, a restaurant waitress who loathes the management, is required to wear “pieces of flair” (buttons meant to allow employees to “express themselves”). Her boss often hassles her for not wearing more than the required minimum. In the end she “ chooses to express herself by giving him a finger and walking out of the job!

To study a “ new antidepressant” , researchers have to conduct “animal studies”. Since, we are testing a drug which is supposed to lift depression- the question is “how to demonstrate its effectiveness in animals. Quandary is, that except for dogs, who perhaps because of “being man’s best friends” for eons , other creatures are not afflicted by this malady to the best of my knowledge.
So the problem becomes of “inoculating them with the virus of depression”.
This feat is accomplished by coming up what the scientists call an animal model.
One such model is “learned helplessness”. What they do that they create a situation for the animal say a mouse where in it feels helpless and to conserve its energy, which is a biological advantage, it simply gives up. To explain more clearly they would put a mouse in a big container of water from which it cannot escape however hard it tries ,so it keeps swimming but after sometime it just floats realizing it’s futile to swim , thus conserving energy .
A parallel human situation would be someone in a shipwreck swim for a little bit but finding the land is not reachable gives up swimming and just floats.
Coming back to the animal model they repeat the experiment after injecting the animal, in this case a mouse with the new test chemical “purported-to be new antidepressant”. If the antidepressant is effective the animal would swim for a longer time before giving up.
So what an anti-depressant is doing is “buying time” and hoping help is on the way to address what is causing depression -myriad of causes, ranging from socioeconomic to psychological ,unfolding within the genetic makeup.
More of this next time, as for now,I want to focus on how could one address this learned helplessness by other means say for example exercise and biofeedback. One of the common symptoms of depression is that a person does not have much energy left and he’s lethargic.
I will start off with exercise since that’s easy to understand and to practice. There are twofold effects of exercise -one is causing neuro-chemical changes and the other is an indirect communication to the mind that one is not helpless. The helplessness in a “shipwreck” situation is a biological advantage but otherwise it’s like “ barking at the wrong tree”
The mind may start “ retuning to this “normal”level of activity and may in turn feel “better”. In other words if body sends the message “I am not giving up” mind recalibrate into thinking “the situation doesn’t demand “giving up” or in other words be in the “helpless mode”. The neurochemical changes caused by exercise also mitigate depression.

Of course if it doesn’t work the medication’s are available to break this vicious cycle of depression.

“Anxiety is the fear without a cause” – a better way to put it could be “ anxiety is the fear – the cause can’t be felt consciously”
This establishes the axis of fear -anxiety-consciousness.
The hypothesis is that “anxiety” could be reduced to “fear” if one becomes “conscious” of this.
What’s the payoff – “ that which is not conscious can not be dealt with” – we increase the chances of dealing with something which we are conscious of- we are more likely to bring it to the emotional level -feel it – the unpleasant emotion would still be there but our mind is capable of dealing with it – since from birth onward we have dealt with painful emotions of “hunger” “discomfort” “utter helplessness as an infant” and so on – we survived all that if we are reading this blog.
Reminds me of the movie “ Predator” – the villain is this superhuman “entity” which kills everyone who is “armed”and is able to see everyone because of the thermal sensors it’s equipped with – the hero Major “Dutch” Schaefer( played by Arnold Schwarzenegger) realizes it doesn’t kill the unarmed people and when, out of pure serendipity, he is “covered with mud” the entity can’t see him.
The “entity” has to reveal itself for a hand to hand combat and of course is slayed by the hero.
I always wondered, if one could visualize “anxiety” the same way – it plagues us as long as we are “unconscious” of it or in other words, “armed with our psychological defense mechanisms” ,but when we divest ourselves of these – and are in more primal form -akin to being “covered” with the mud, it has to “reveal itself” and we can slay it in hand to hand combat .
To sum up the thoughts , unarmed=defenseless we have better chance of fighting this entity “anxiety- now reduced to fear” by “ hand to hand combat=feeling it meditatively”.
“ the hand to hand combat” can be perfected through other means – that I would talk about next time.

It’s absurd” means “It’s impossible” but also “It’s contradictory.” If I see a man armed only with a sword attack a group of machine guns, I shall consider his act to be absurd.
There are absurd marriages, challenges, rancors, silences, wars, and even peace treaties.
Absurd is not in man (if such a metaphor could have a meaning) nor in the world, but in their presence together.— Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus.
No one has embraced “ the absurd” better than Franz Kafka – he makes it very apparent through his works- he introduces this in his short story“ metamorphosis”and develops further in the novellas “ the trial” and “ the castle”
Metamorphosis is a story about a traveling salesman who is going through the drudgery of his job because of assumed family responsibilities and to pay off family debt. One fine morning he wakes up and find himself turned into a “giant beetle” – what drives the absurdity home is his “ annoyance with this inconvenience because he is getting late for work”- in other words when his whole existence has changed he still is worried about “ catching a train in time”.
In a very concrete manner one could easily relate to this scenario when one is employed in a boring job so that one can “buy the latest gadget and be with jones and smiths” and is totally oblivious of the way it is “ transforming her life”.
This idea is developed further in his work “ the trial” wherein Mr K finds himself “arrested by three officials, “ as soon as he wakes up,clueless about the nature of his crime, and remains so, even after having navigated the “labyrinth of a convoluted legal system”.
Absurd is very succinctly examined by Albert Camus in the “myth of Sisyphus”
“What, then, is that incalculable feeling that deprives the mind of the sleep necessary to life? A world that can be explained even with bad reasons, is a familiar world. But, on the other hand, in a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land. This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity”.
“ this feeling of absurdity causes extreme “nausea towards life” as taken up by Jean Paul Sartre in his work “ Nausea” – it causes despair and is excruciatingly painful.
The remedies, unfortunately, are not listed by these philosophers, but nonetheless, I would like to quote Camus again”We turn toward God only to obtain the impossible. As for the possible, men suffice.”