Tag: covid-19

Solving the Mental Health Crisis: Taming Our Inner Madness

Posted on by japineda

According to polls, most Americans believe there is a mental health crisis afflicting society. They cite many factors for this calamity. Traditionally, the major sources of stress for a majority of adults have been personal finances, current and political events, and work stressors. Combine this with a rising sense of isolation, fear, and paranoia, especially in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, the opioid/drug outbreak, the war in Ukraine, political upheavals, etc. These unrelenting social concerns exacerbate stressors such as feelings of disconnection to traditional psychosocial and spiritual sources of support. Politicians and malevolent troublemakers stir this stew of discomfort by manipulating valid emotions to weaponise fear in the name of political expediency. When fear becomes crushing, it adds a sense of no place to turn to for honest and wise counsel, as opposed to politicized rhetoric, something once provided by parents, clergy, and counselors. Homelessness and mental illnesses in children, teenagers, and adults are the inevitable results.

Imagine including in this powder-keg of emotions many guns, increased far right activity and racism, gender biases, brief attention spans, impulsiveness, and lack of emotional control. It isn’t difficult to predict the rapid rise in violence. This explosive stew of individual and social ills leads to despair, being on guard, hypersensitivity — issues typically associated with PTSD-associated disorders. We are, in fact, being traumatized by what seems like an out-of-control life. And unfortunately, only about 20% of us seek and receive mental health services. This reluctance to seek solutions for what is obviously overwhelming chaos is blamed on uncomfortable feelings talking to loved ones about issues and concerns about privacy, plus the stigma that still attaches to mental problems.

If there is an answer, it’s going to take a wholistic approach—and a concerted and common desire to solve the problem. People at the individual, community and societal level have to decide they have had enough, reached bottom, and sincerely desire to address the problem seriously. Social solutions require community and communication, assets currently in short supply. Thus, I want to focus more on what can happen at an individual level and what each of us can do to help.

It might be helpful to get a handle on the root of the crisis to consider what psychologists have known for a long time. In order to feel truly human and live fulfilled lives, we have to meet certain undeniable needs. A good starting point is Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of those needs. Maslow argued for at least three major categories: physiological, socio-psychological, and spiritual. Physiological needs (food, shelter, etc.) make up the basement level of our being and must be met first to provide a stepping stone into higher levels of being. Spiritual needs (what he termed self-actualization) might be considered the apex of human nature. Between the two are the socio-psychological (social connections) needs.

From this humanistic perspective, we can imagine the number of factors mentioned previously, which underlie the mental health crisis we are experiencing, working to disconnect us from sources that nourish and promote well-being. Homelessness, malnourishment, alienation, loneliness, and lack of moral structure are conditions that exacerbate the decline in mental health because they produce severe disconnection and do not promote and provide our human needs. From an economic and socio-political perspective these problems appear solvable yet have proven to be intractable.

There is a different way of seeing this calamity and to ask, is there more to life than this? For those lost in the chaos, what I am about to say makes absolutely no sense. Because to appreciate this perspective, one must move outside of the storm. Imagine a raging thunderstorm, tornado, or hurricane. If you are inside, nothing else matters—it is all-encompassing, pervasive, unending. Yet, outside of the region or by taking a plane and flying above the clouds, you can see something different. Likewise, it is paradoxical yet possible to know that underneath the apparent madness of life there is a subtle presence, grace and stillness that can be quite beautiful. We all yearn to touch that. Its grace is available to anyone who dares and cares. And it begins by taming our uncontrolled mind.

This poem comes from the Hua Hu Ching of Lao Tzu, who 2500 years ago knew this truth/solution to our modern problems. He provides the answer (discover the harmony in your own being) in a clear and direct way, or at the very least, points you in the right direction.

Why scurry about looking for the truth? 
It vibrates in every thing and every not-thing, right off the tip of your nose. 
Can you be still and see it in the mountain? The pine tree? Yourself?
Don't imagine that you'll discover it by accumulating more knowledge. 
Knowledge creates doubt, and doubt makes you ravenous for more knowledge. 
You can't get full eating this way. 
The wise person dines on something more subtle: 
He eats the understanding that the named was born from the unnamed,
That all being flows from non-being,
That the describable world emanates from an indescribable source. 
He finds this subtle truth inside his own self and becomes completely content. 
So who can be still and watch the chess game of the world? 
The foolish are always making impulsive moves,
but the wise know that victory and defeat are decided by something more subtle. 
They see that something perfect exists before any move is made. 
This subtle perfection deteriorates when artificial actions are taken, 
So be content not to disturb the peace. Remain quiet. 
Discover the harmony in your own being. Embrace it. 
If you can do this, you will gain everything,
And the world will become healthy again. 
If you can't, you will be lost in the shadows forever.

Injecting Rationality Into Our Discourse

Posted on by japineda

The covid-19 pandemic has brought to light many deficiencies in our democracy, institutions, leaders, and ourselves. The exposure of such fissures in what make up the fundamental pillars of our lives has been crushing and humbling. It has left our minds aimless and searching for answers.  One of the foundational cornerstones exposed as more virtual than actual is our dependence on science and medicine. With no means to combat the coronavirus, no vaccine to inoculate us from its destructive actions, no medicines to withstand the multiple assaults on our body, we have lost confidence. Compounding that is a U.S. leader who rejects or confuses faith in science with faith in magical thinking. To lessen the risk, he advocates using drugs with no efficacy and considered highly dangerous.  His lodestar is not science but misplaced hope in superstition and instinct. But gut feelings untested by rational thinking are worse than ineffective, they can be deadly.

What this lack of trust in education and in the scientific method teaches our children undermines the very basis of contemporary living. How are we to fight these changes to our body politic, the environment, and psychological well-being? There are many answers, but for now I concentrate on what academia can do. As part of that community, I would like to know where the wisdom experts are when we need them the most? Where are the clinicians, investigators, educators, schoolteachers who can make the case for why we need to look to science? Where are the cognitive scientists, psychologists, sociologists, philosophers to steer us through these bleak and uncertain times? The world needs them now more than ever.

My call is for them to leave their ivory towers, commune with common folk, and share their insights. It is time to banish the fiction that science cannot mingle with politics. Science, intellectual thinking, and analytic reasoning must undergird policy. Policy should be receptive to alternative ways of discerning, including faith-based approaches. But science has won the right to take a principal role and help us assimilate what we learn. We must encourage citizen-scientists to present the argument to the public, not just to colleagues and not just in specialized periodicals. Further, we cannot support leaders who disdainfully minimize the hard-won fight over illiteracy and magical thinking without a response to reconfirm what we know. We are better off because we pay attention to, assess, and then conclude rather than acting only from instinct.

This response to the anxiety and ambiguity of the moment can only take place one way. When academics shed their cloak of protection from reality and immerse in the free exchange of information using all channels of communication. There is a striking ignorance of what science is and the benefits it provides. We encounter such ignorance in schools, and more so in the dark corners of the internet. It is time to flash the light of awareness and intelligence into this darkness. Everyone trained in science must step up before it’s too late. It is an invitation to arms. The world needs saving and a massive influx of rationality into our discourse would go a long way towards doing that.

The Need for Heroes

Posted on by japineda

First responders are indeed heroes. But so are second- and third responders. We are all potential heroes. Comparative mythologist Joseph Campbell (1988) concluded that we go through a hero-like journey throughout our ordinary lifespan. Whether it is better and healthier to invest hero-like qualities on others rather than ourselves is the key question?

The yearning to discover someone whom to count on, to speak with integrity, to project our emotions and fears onto, and to guide us out of our troubles is an innate human desire. It is a wish that emerges from a natural response to the ambiguities of existence. This projection of our unpredictability produces a bounded manifestation which we can readily handle. That process is not unlike, and perhaps the same as, when in illness we encounter a constellation of symptoms. But the cluster of symptoms is puzzling and we cannot determine how to address them until the physician gives it a name. The phantom-like quality of what has been plaguing us now bears a name and we feel greater control and capable of handling it.  Thus, part of naming the unknown and creating an identifiable entity is to achieve control of life’s unpredictability. When we extend this expression of our dreads onto someone else, and then that person calms our worries by their efforts, we set up the essential elements of a hero.

A hero, however, does more than mitigate our fears. We attribute virtue and moral goodness to their acts, and they gain iconic status and become inspiring symbols. Something shifts in the shared unconscious that lends authority to the hero’s image. At that stage, even myths about our heroes have a soothing function. Story-telling involving such iconic heroes then turns into an attractive replacement for the original thing. Heroic stories become the social glue that contribute to a group’s cohesiveness. As we meet around the metaphorical hearth, we hear the stories, have a shared experience, enhance the community bonds, and reconfirm our communal identification. In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, and the confusion it has produced, the regular updates by Dr. Anthony Fauci of the coronavirus task force or New York Governor Cuomo become a requisite television moment. For these are contemporary iconic heroes.

Joseph Campbell maintained that heroes go through a personal transformation during their hero journeys. I would assert that the metamorphosis is more in the beholder’s mind; In those who crave a hero with self-confidence, humility, and a sense of their place in the universe. When that self-fulfillment happens, the hero changes. The investment of this goodwill into another individual being makes them a savior-like figure, which may or may not be an appropriate thing. Note that the change is in ourselves and there is no need to project. As some psychologists contend, “heroes turn us into heroes ourselves.”

When internalized, the hero process moves us toward emotional, behavioral and spiritual health. All we require doing is to funnel that energy inwards and turn the mirror onto ourselves.

Walking Is a Miracle

Posted on by japineda

It was a warm sunny spring day. The type that justifies living in California. I was meandering and enjoying a hiking trail around our housing complex when I lost my footing and fell. The injury was sufficient so I cannot partake in this exercise, at least for a while. The sudden pause gave me a chance to reconsider an activity I enjoy while sheltering in place during the covid-19 pandemic. In doing so, it made me appreciate walking more than ever.

Our hominid ancestors, Homo erectus, began ambulating upright over two million years ago. But it is only in the last few decades that researchers have gained insights into how we do it. The action is a complex mechanical engineering accomplishment. Complicated and mysterious enough that some have characterized it as a daily miracle we should not take for granted.

The term walking originates in the Old English word wealcan meaning “to roll.” A 2013 article in the Journal of Experimental Biology by Lipfert and colleagues outlines the unique interaction between ankle, knee, muscles and tendons that summarizes how we go about this roll. Wikipedia describes walking from a physics perspective as the kinetic energy of forward motion being traded dynamically for a rise in potential energy. At another level of definition, the movement results from the body “vaulting” (or rolling) over the leg on the ground. One leg moves forward in a way that maximizes motion while using minimal amounts of energy. This raises the center of mass to its highest point as the leg passes the vertical and dropping it to the lowest as the limbs spread apart.

The 2D inverted pendulum model of walking provides an even more explicit description. During forward motion, the leg that leaves the ground swings forward from the hip. This sweep is the first pendulum. Then the leg strikes the ground with the heel and rolls through to the toe in a motion described as an inverted pendulum. The motion of the two legs synchronize so that one foot is always in contact with the ground.

There are two stages necessary for starting this wealcan, the powerful “push-off” phase. The first stage is an “alleviation” in which the action relieves the trailing leg of the burden of supporting the body mass. Then in a “launching” stage, the knee buckles, allowing the rapid release of stored elastic energy in the ankle tendons, like the triggering of a catapult. The catapult energy from the ankle is used to swing the leg, not add sizeable amounts of energy to the forward motion. This makes it energy-efficient and agile, making the human action different from how robots walk. As the hip rotates 40 degrees in the sagittal plane during a normal stride it becomes a smooth, beautiful movement.

Is walking a simple act?  No. It is a complicated mechanical engineering organization of movements and forces that only recently has shed its mysteries. It is a daily miracle. We perform it so easily and overlook it from among the other physiological miracles, like seeing and hearing. The covid-19 pandemic has been a brutal war on humanity but also an opportunity to pause and recognize the many things we take for granted.

Humanity’s Secret Weapon

Posted on by japineda

Covid-19 is an infectious coronavirus attacking humanity in a world-wide pandemic. Charles Eisenstein, author, essayist, and public speaker, asked a rather interesting question related to this pandemic in his March 2020 article, The Coronation. It is one deserving of consideration: “Why are we able to unify our collective will to stem this virus, but not to address other grave threats to humanity?”  His argument is that other threats paralyze us, but somehow, we got jolted into action by covid-19. And the reason, according to Eisenstein, is we don’t know how to deal with other overwhelming threats. In contrast, we seem to know how to “control” the covid-19 situation. Control involves physical actions, such as social distancing, which are easier to do compared to mental actions necessary in other cases. The argument is interesting but incomplete.

For one, other threats affect specific groups (children, depressed individuals, addicts). Covid-19 is indiscriminate and affects every single person on the planet. Early on, we convinced ourselves that the virus affected mainly the elderly and a few vulnerable populations. While these populations have borne a disproportionate amount of the pain, the stats say everyone is susceptible to infection and can suffer similar consequences. The only comparable threat to covid-19 is climate change, although such a threat isn’t imminent and still too far away to matter. Covid-19 is immediate and in our face. As others have argued, it is the dress rehearsal for the bigger show to come when climate change will affect us all.

The missing ingredient in Eisenstein’s perspective is the recognition that covid-19 affects the core of what makes us human. Homo sapiens evolved as a communal group, favoring close social contact. It is why we have been so successful and literally reigning supreme. However, our strength is also our weakness. Being social makes us susceptible to diseases transmitted from individual to individual. Covid-19 is taking advantage of our evolutionary strength, the social bonding and cohesion of our species. The ruthless assault by this invisible enemy has taken many fellow citizens in agonizing deaths due to respiratory failure. While the attack is ongoing, it has also unmasked what could be humanity’s ultimate secret weapon and the basis for surviving this war: the adaptability of our social cohesion.

Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) coined the phrase “survival of the fittest” in his book Principles of Biology in 1864. Spencer was an English philosopher, biologist, anthropologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist of the Victorian era. He conceptualized the evolutionary process as comprising of two movements – integration and differentiation. For Spencer, the principle of integration provided the unifying dynamic keeping a differentiated population together. When integration weakens, it leads to dissolution or disappearance of the differentiated traits and of the species. Integration describes processes which become the driving force to unite, combine, and integrate parts into a whole. When there is high interactivity among the parts, it produces connected and interdependent organisms with features of social cohesion.  Social cohesion refers to the glue that makes a group a group. The glue of social cohesion emphasizes the connectedness or bonds arising to make individuals in the group meaningfully related to one another. It also enhances the identification with the group, incentives and willingness to cooperate, social and economic balance, and what modulates the interactions among members. In bee, ant, and primate societies, social cohesion is the ultimate expression of the integration drive. And this is what covid-19 is leveraging to attack us—the essence of what makes us social creatures. It is also why our response is so unique.

In humans, social cohesion reaches its zenith when integration of the whole benefits the individual parts. By this I mean when the infrastructure of the society, the institutions of government and politics, provide the guidance and incentive to practice social distancing, for example. In this way, they encourage individuals to go against the grain of evolution to survive. This is the part of the story covid-19 has exposed. It has shown that this most treasured feature of humanity, its social cohesiveness, is adaptable and can be relaxed to bend to the attack we are under. Bend but not break. And in that flexibility to allow for the infectious agent to exhaust itself. What the pandemic has shown is that humanity can respond and adapt as the communal organism it is. It has been fascinating to watch and it portends a new and exciting evolutionary step in the story of humans.

Out of the Many, One

Posted on by japineda

The statistical models used to estimate the number of coronavirus infections, and resulting deaths, assumed that only about half of the U.S. population would follow the physical distancing guidelines. Surprisingly the vast majority of Americans took heed. As a consequence, the predicted number of deaths is projected to be about one-tenth of what the models predicted. The question is why? Why did so many fellow citizens follow what is essentially the opposite tendency that drives human social behavior? Why were Americans who value their independence and freedom so compliant at following the guidelines? How were we able to give up our treasured sports, entertainment, shopping, churches, and other activities that represent the essence of who we are?

One obvious answer is that we faced a life and death situation unlike any we’ve encountered in the recent past. Nothing focuses the mind as much as our imminent demise. A disease that is highly contagious, deadly, essentially everywhere, and for which we have no cure is terrifying. Undoubtedly, the coronavirus pandemic scared the bejesus out of us. A less obvious answer is that we actually learned lessons from other countries. Perhaps not so much from China, where it all started, but from Italy, which is more similar to our culture and was devastated. It was frightening to watch the Italian health system be overwhelmed with covid-19 cases and the accumulating death count.

But the least obvious explanation is that for one brief moment we recognized our shared humanity. In a blink of an eye we realized our true nature, that we are all connected and that what you do affects me and vice versa. While most of the other factors focused our mind on the problem, it was the realization of our common humanity that produced the promising results. And although it is painful to lose so many, in the end we remain focused and committed as one. This singular moment in our history made the traditional motto of the United States come to life: E pluribus unum –”Out of many, one.”

It is my hope this learned experience remains fresh in our minds for a long time. If it does, it has the potential to radically change us for the better.

Embracing Uncertainty Through Trust.

Posted on by japineda

The way my logical mind reacts to the chaos of the coronavirus pandemic reminds me of the trust I place on the Global Positioning System (GPS) on my smart phone. GPS is an amazing navigational program that uses at least 24 satellites, a receiver and algorithms to give location, velocity and time synchronization for air, sea and land travel. That means its navigational database and capabilities are a heck of a lot larger and better than mine. The relationship works well when I trust it to get me around, particularly to unfamiliar places. However, when a glitch occurs and I choose an unexpected wrong turn, I lose trust in the application.  More often than not, my ego interferes and judges that it is smarter and takes over. This leads to complications, getting turned around and lost. In the middle of this confusion, my anxious mind shows up and I start complaining and ranting. My persistence on following ego and not GPS leads to even more serious behaviors, such as arguing with my wife trying to justify my erratic choices. What gets me in trouble, then, is my rational mind, which thinks it is smarter than it really is. This isn’t any different when facing the uncertainty of a pandemic or any other life challenge.

The question is whom do I trust? My answer is to trust your instincts and intuitions. Our obsession with rational, deliberative thinking makes us unable or unwilling to let go and let our instincts and intuition be. Fear of lack of control associated with letting go reduces our trust. The tiny level of control that conscious, rational awareness provides is sufficient for us to cling to it. But I am talking about instincts and intuitions built on preparedness, on life experiences, on growing wisdom. Such trust provides a doorway to negotiate life’s obstacles in the face of enormous demands and uncertainties beyond the capacity of our rational mind. How do I begin? Times of uncertainty are actually good training ground to cultivate our intuitive and instinctual capacities. Here is one way:

EXERCISE:  How to Cultivate an Intuitive Mind

Allow Associative Thinking

Associative processing occurs when you allow your mind to “wander” and “free associate.” It can automatically link up seemingly unrelated ideas, thoughts, observations, sensory input, memory of existing knowledge with your intuitive subconscious or intuitive interface. Associative processing tends not to provide a direction or a goal. Curiosity drives it and is the basis for the good monkey mind.

  • Detach yourself from your thoughts and observe them from a distance
  • Observe without constraint and rationale
  • Permit and allow your mind to roam without purpose
  • Discard nothing that comes up
  • Note interesting ideas, write them
  • Keep roaming without direction and avoid judging those ideas that crop up
  • Increase your tolerance for ambiguity

Reducing Uncertainty in a Chaotic World

Posted on by japineda

In a world where confusion is an unavoidable aspect of being human, the coronavirus pandemic has increased chaos. And changed levels of uncertainty from moderate to extreme. This is a dangerous state from which to live, since high uncertainty inhibits our rational mind. It also dampens other means in our psychological toolbox that we count on—our instinct and intuition. Scientists tell us that instinct and intuition are often the only practical method for assessing uncertainty.  We want to know the future and minimize not-knowing. But our brains have not developed the capabilities or natural means to understand and determine probabilities. This is true of complex events such how this pandemic will affect us; or how our loved one will respond to the needed medical intervention. We don’t waste a lot of time and effort figuring this out because it is beyond our capability. Rather, we decide based on tendencies and beliefs about the likelihood of uncertain events.

Half a century ago, Kahneman and Tversky, two Israeli psychologists, showed that humans evolved strategies called heuristics. These strategies are economical and work well under most cases at predicting the immediate future. We use heuristics to form judgments, decide, and find solutions to complicated problems. They are the best guesses made under the circumstances. And distinct strategies are used to arrive at these judgments. One is focusing on the most important aspect of a problem. Another is basing responses on previous experiences. Heuristics are imperfect means to solve issues or make predictions, but good enough to reach a solution or decision quickly. These convenient and evolved strategies, however, lead to severe and systematic biases and errors. This is because they have a built-in trade-off between accuracy and effort.  Nature designed them to maximize speed of decision making with the least amount of effort. Unfortunately, they suffer in terms of accuracy.

Accuracy, however, is subjective, and what improves reliability is confidence and trust. We need to have confidence in life, God, Buddha nature, the government, anything that is greater than ourself. When uncertainty increases, trust decreases. And vice versa. The more we trust, the less the uncertainty, and the greater the accuracy. The key is to count on something or someone that is reliable. At this moment, trust in government, and maybe even medicine, teeters as the uncertainty grows. But it is important to trust in something. In the next few postings, I plan to share exercises to help cultivate trust in something and reduce uncertainty. Here is one to get started:

EXERCISE:  How to Cultivate an Intuitive Mind

Slow Down and Listen to Your Inner Voice
Learn to recognize “intuition.” Pay attention to your conscience, small inner voice, instincts, insights, and hunches. Before you can recognize your intuition, be able to hear/feel it amid the loudness and distractions of life. To do that, it’s important to first slow down and listen. Take time away from your normal routine. Spend time outdoors, or in an isolated place, with few distractions to practice this exercise.

Take a brief walk in a park, forest, or the beach.  Practice deep breathing and calm down the ongoing chatter of your mind. Imagine that your mind is like listening to noise caused by multiple radio stations playing all at once. You need to turn down the volume; to listen to the one station that is relevant and are searching for—your intuitive channel.

A Sociocultural Singularity?

Posted on by japineda

The coronavirus pandemic is the extraordinary moment we are experiencing in 2020. As I listen to the news of the coronavirus or COVID-19 or SARS-CoV-2 there is anxiety and uncertainty in the air. The slow crawl of the coronavirus, from East to the West, is bringing countries and societies to their knees. Economies are grinding to a halt. The frenzied activities of humanity are slowing to a remarkable crawl. The microorganism is powerful enough to devastate the earth’s population, so we shelter in place and isolate ourselves, hoping it will pass by. Paradoxically, the possibility of devastation is offering us a gift – it has forced us to pause and reflect.

Is it a coincidence that amid human-caused climate change, the ultimate challenge facing the earth, we experience the explosion of a pandemic directed at the ones responsible for climate change? From a religious context, some might view it as God’s response, in the form of a plague, to save the Earth. The punishment released on mankind for forsaking their God recalls the flood of Noah. In the realm of science, the explanation is simpler but equally devastating. From that angle, the interpretation relies more on the notion we have crossed a threshold in the fine biological balance established with other species on the planet. Encroachment by humans on territories inhabited by bats, which carry potential for diseases for which we lack immunity, has opened a Pandora’s box. It is an occasion to reflect.

I wish and pray that we see this pandemic as an opportunity to reconsider and reevaluate what our human activity is imposing on our mother planet.