Passion

Here’s a question for the depressed, the trapped, or the merely unmotivated.

What drives us?

Hunger? Fear? Passion?

For now, let’s forget hunger and fear. They’re pretty basic. Solid. They can be shifted, a little, but mostly you have them or you don’t; as solid and ancient and immobile as time and tide.

But passion…ephemeral, exquisite, entrancing passion. It drives us and tears us down. An inside force that pulls like an outside force, a force that can build, or destroy us. Humanity speaks of the drive that comes from passion as an outside influence. We speak of the muses as gods that bestow passion to the lucky few. We speak of those with passion as being blessed.

Perhaps they are, or perhaps they aren’t. They used to kill men, letting them be dragged to death by wild horses. Pure need seems to have pretty much the same effect. Look at van Gogh.

But is that worse than a life lived without passion?

There are some things all humans just know. When a baby is upset, or really hurt. When someone is angry. And being different. Even the challenged kids know when every one else has something that they just don’t seem to possess. They don’t like it either.

I think I lived my whole life wondering what drive looked like from the inside. Pressed up against the storefront glass, watching the way the driven people moved, how they ate, how they spoke. And mostly I played a pretty good game, pretending; I’m not untalented, just uninvolved. But what I saw as I watched, was enticing. You can see what it is…you just can’t touch it. That’s maddening.

[Side note: Is this what television does to us? Does it show us the things we are not, creating an ever-spiralling circle of unfulfilled hunger? Some may disagree, but I don't think we are bright enough or sufficiently in control of our base selves to truly know, on every level, that it ain't real.]

Yet none of us are completely devoid of passion, they ebb and flow – and the one thing that always made it possible for me to continue was people. They’re lovely, endlessly fascinating, and when someone around you has passion and drive, it’s almost like you have some yourself. But, in the end, it’s just an act. It burns away and on to the next…you end up skipping across the surface of your life, never really digging in. You never succeed the way you should, and lets’s face it – you never really live.

Perhaps humans are built this way; some leaders, some followers. Perhaps without a sensible ratio, the human race bobs around in billions of tiny boats, bumping hulls, stealing fish and singing “My Way” at the top of our collective lungs.

Whatever the genetic necessity however, it REALLY wasn’t working for me. Clearly a leader, trapped in a follower’s body, like some sort of motivational transvestite. [Yup, I already regret that simile. Too late now, though.]

My cure? Sit on my ass and wait for passion to come. Occasionally do something fun or scary. Against all odds, this worked. Naturally it backfired immediately, but hey, it’s not all pool parties in the Hamptons, is it.

Gods willing, the neuro will help with the rest of it or reduce the level of distraction that forces me to keep finding new sources of passion.

So, if neuro does help…

Is passion the natural human state, absenting sadness and distraction? Can we just reawaken it with technical wizardry? Must we wait for outside forces to provide inspiration or can we, without an ember or a spark to warm, ignite the fire by rubbing sticks?

Does anyone have a match?

PS. Next time I promise to write about something more upbeat. Like brain injury.

Neurotherapy – Day 11 – Wave Goodbye, Say Hello…

It could just be the neurotherapy talking but, man what a great bunch of people. I’ve been in classes and conferences where you were wondering why the exit door seemed to be moving in slow motion, dreading that someone would catch up with you. I can honestly say that there was not a single person that I met with whom I wouldn’t cheerfully spend a day. Interesting, dedicated, open and open-minded. A good few will be friends, collaborative partners and potentially colleagues for years, I’m quite sure.

So I say goodbye cheerfully, warm in the knowledge that goodbyes and beginnings are two sides of the same coin. Bye, all. LA…well, I’ll see you soon. And San Diego. And Portland…

Clinicians Course – Last Day

Today was the last day of what has to be one of the hardest short courses I have ever encountered.  Honestly, I was boggled by the level, depth and sheer volume of information. Under the general rule of you get as good as you give, this was also one of the most rewarding courses I have ever taken.

Normally there are little spots where you can take a bit of a breather. You know. A quick glaze over and no one will really notice if your head starts to roll a bit. Not such a good plan here. I think I did that once, thinking about something or other, only to snap back into focus hearing a bunch of words that made absolutely no sense whatsoever. None. Like the babel fish just fell out of my ear and breathed its last, leaving me merciless at the hands of a completely incomprehensible Vogon. No one expects their aliens on the smallish side with glasses and a little vest. That’s how they infiltrate.

Anyway, the other 31 hours, 58 minutes were spent in rapt attention. I think I was down to alternating eyes for blinking, just in case. The one exercise where we actually closed them was nearly sinfully lovely.

And let’s use that as a segue into the real heart of the matter:

Did Neurotherapy Work?

Well, let’s look at it from a few angles. Random bursts of excitement and Deus Ex Machining aside, I’ve seen a lot of evidence from a number of sources over the last two weeks:

ME

1. There is no way in hell that I would have been able to devote that kind of focus and attention to anything two weeks ago. No way. In hell. Period. (note – admit to this potentially being in LA doing cool stuff, learning cool things, meeting cool people – see in the long run)
2. I was both focused and engaged. I felt upbeat, excited and happy to be there pretty much every minute. (as per note above)
3. I am actively seeking plans for the future, with some solid, or at least excitingly ephemeral results.
4. I am now hungry three times a day. I increasingly bow to the common understanding that this may be a good thing, although it’s largely a moot point.
5. Although I am hungry, I seem to know when I am full. I worry that the unfinished food may suffer self esteem issues.
6. I just don’t seem to want sugar much anymore. This is ok, but confusing.
7. I am now drunk on one beer. This causes me shame.
8. I have a more general thirst for life that I haven’t seen in far longer than I really want to think about.
9. I haven’t had a migraine in 2 weeks. This is a while, but by no means a record. Bears watching but not conclusive.
10. I seem to be surprisingly sensitive to blood glucose level changes. Minor (minor! – still strange) headache today after big carb lunch, same a s I used to get from beer in the afternoon. This is not a good thing but is clearly a change from my previous last one to the box ‘o cookies is a rotten egg system. Significant negative effect still equals effect. And it’s probably fixable.

OTHERS

1. The other members of the class were not dummies or rubes. There were clear effects using the machines for even the few hours of demonstration time we had.
2. The effects are sufficiently powerful that when people made mistakes during class, the person doing the training clearly felt the effects. Headaches, tight chest, rapid mood swings, clenched jaws, instant grogginess and many other symptoms showed up in the light of our inexperience. Needless to say people learned fast.
3. Also clearly, when the settings were right, the person felt a sense of immense well-being. This would sometimes happen when they didn’t know the settings had been changed.
4. Occasionally settings were changed with a stray elbow or arm. Neither the tester nor the subject knew this. The effects were still extremely obvious and had to be corrected quickly.

FACTS AND FIGURES

1. There is solid, published research behind it, on lots of test subjects but no where near the numbers that exist in pharmacuetical studies – the cash just ain’t there.
2. The Othmers have compiled data on several thousand cases the clinic has dealt with. These numbers seem solid and in several cases really, really impressive.

Looking at it skeptically, there are still many areas where I want more knowledge, more facts, more understanding of what’s happening and why. Then again, I also don’t know how an MRI works, or even that Blizzard machine at Dairy Queen. They still do the job.

I never take statistics as proof of anything. Spent too many years making them dance to believe them in isolation. Once they start to get confirmed by real world test subjects (or as I like to think of the class, my fellow guinea pigs), I start to think hmmmm…maybe.

And once I feel them myself, I hope.

I truly believe that this has had a significant effect on me. I feel like a new man, utterly and completely. As I continue to work with Sue from Victoria, we will see how these effects settle, build, change and last. Once I know all that, well… I will find a good avenue to do this for other people. No question about that. It’s a gift.

Stay Tuned,

Same Bat-channel, Same Bat-place (that one’s for you, Darla)

Neurotherapy Day 6 – Upsy-Downsy, Notes and Quotes from the Clinic

I felt more unsettled and distracted yesterday and last night than I had the day before. This was both unsettling and reassuring (sorta).

I’m only down here for a limited course of treatment and then back to Victoria (Canada) to complete, with the occasional consult from Sue. Judging from my colourful array of symptoms and the rather criss-crossed map I have of my head now, a full course of treatment is going to run to 30-40 neurofeedback sessions (but that’s just a guess – it’s pretty messy in there).

I’ve had eight so far and it’s clear that there is a really positive effect. As I mentioned on Sunday, I’ve been trying to read a complex neurotherapy text for the last six months, bust couldn’t make the rubber hit the road, brain-wise. Read the vast majority of the thing in a single day. I’m horribly disorganized normally and even starting out, I could see the four types of questions that were forming in my head, so I went out and got a whack of post-its in different colours. This is all very strange – it’s like there was a really really organized person hiding in my head, all ready to go post-it-al. Freaky.

The hyper-organized effect started to drop off Monday morning. I forgot a few things I needed to check (like the timetable of the museum I wanted to see – it was closed as it turned out) and my reading was nowhere near as vigorous. In general,  I just felt more scattered. Now, after two sessions this morning, I feel very clear. In terns of physical sensation, there was a lot of tightening and tingling sensations across my scalp during the sessions. We were working on several electrode (more in a bit about electrodes) placements, including one for focus and organization, one for headaches and auditory processing enhancement, one for the body issues (became hungry halfway through the session) and . The auditory processing is because I have a hard time picking out what people are saying if there is much (or any) background noise. Occasionally it’s so bad I just nod and smile – bars are brutal, I might as well be a bobblehead. Apparently this is just one more in a monster list of clues as to what is happening inside your head. Fixable, apparently.

Questions people ask the clinic staff about Neurotherapy

“Will it Last?”

“Can I do it? I’m not very good at video games you know – my son can do them.” (from adults)

“Will it hurt? They think that we are going to put electricity into their heads.” [editor's note - they don't]

And last thing, a quote from a Vet in the waiting room…

“First started doing it – I thought it was a hoax – thought it was a lot of bullshit. Now I really think people should try it…I was in Vietnam and I had terrible nightmares – I don’t get those anymore.” – “Max”

Thank you, I’m sorry and a big list

I started this blog as a way to see if my process couldn’t perhaps help more people than just myself. I’ve have quite a few people say, “hey I see parts of myself there”, and I have to say I’m really gratified and pleased. But there’s no doubt it’s a two way street. The process of writing for all of you is a serious gut check every single time I put fingers to keyboard. What should I put in, what is too personal? Well, turns out that the best way to help people connect with the process is to just be me, not too edit-y and pretty honest about what going on. I normally hide a lot about myself, and that’s a strange and scary feeling. I feel like I’m up on the edge of a cliff (I hate heights too)…but the audience, the confessional I suppose, is making me feel better about myself, stronger and clearer.

So thank you.

In that vein….They say that the first thing a person who is choking will try to do is leave the room, as if dying in front of people were a terrible, shameful inconvenience for the other diners. In the same way I suppose, whether it’s ADD or the tendency to depression, the stuff I’m looking at now in neurotherapy…well, I’m ashamed of it. I’ve kept it all well hidden from the world, or even myself, for my entire life. I haven’t known I was ADD until I started looking at neurotherapy for depression (which is harder to miss – dark curtains and a fetal position are a dead giveaway).  In the course of looking at what neurotherapy does, I came across some clear descriptions of what ADD looks like. It looks like me apparently.

I also don’t have a lot of ability to complete complex tasks that require a lot of forward planning. I’m a bright guy, I can bumble along getting day to day stuff done, and I have lucid times when I can look ahead and see past my toes for a bit. I can even be a total star. But all people really see is a guy who can think pretty quickly in conversation. So they are really really disappointed in me when stuff gets dropped or just don’t git done. “Jeez Tim, if you can do it then, you can do it now. You must just be lazy.” And I’m disappointed in me too.

I’ve spent me whole life not understanding that there are good reasons for that; that being broken isn’t really a badge of shame so much as a sign of being human.

The thing that really brings that home (strangely) is some of the technical manuals on how to do neurotherapy. One of them is a very matter-of-fact list of what to do with certain symptoms and syndromes. Quite frankly I’m staggered by the list of things that can be changed, or improved. I get that it’s a really powerful technique. The brain has an amazing ability to be flexible, to find a way to change itself and adapt to it’s environment. Neurotherapy takes the adaptation systems the brain has developed to keep us alive, and channels them toward repairing the things that are holding us back. That’s an amazing tool, but even knowing that, I look at the list and see a whole bunch of people, myself included, that I had kind of written off as never going to get better or be more. For all of you, myself included, I’m sorry.

Here’s an partial version of the list, in no particular order:

• Migraines
• Seizures
• Asthma
• Mood swings
• Depression and motivation challenges
• ADD/ADHD and difficulties focusing or ability to plan ahead
• Emotional and impulse control and anger/fear management, dangerous thrill seeking and self-injuring
• Attachment disorder
• Autism Spectrum Disorder and Asbergers
• Anxiety challenges, including OCD, Tourettes, panic attacks, paranoia
• Flashbacks and fears stemming from past incidents, including Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and childhood abuse
• Body issues, including Anorexia, Bulimia, over or under eating and sugar cravings
• Inability to plan
• Control over ones body/clumsiness.
• Addictions
• Nightmares
• Physical tension, including Bruxism (tight jaw and teeth grinding)
• Sleep challenges
• Pain and pain management, including Fibromyalgia, low pain threshold, Sciatica and chronic nerve pain
• Poor math or language ability

This list seems ridiculous, even to me. Like a travelling salesman with his fancy wagon, selling snakeoil to the local hicks. Hence the “I’ll try it first and you can see what you think” approach. We tend to single out the diseases, illneses and broken bits, putting them up against a wall and shining a narrow spotlight on them. We don’t tend to think in terms of larger, interacting systems, and we certainly don’t think about what a healthy human looks like, or how to create that. It’s how our medical system operates, and it’s how we’ve come to think of ourselves and our bodies. It’s clear, however, that the brain can command an amazing number of resources, can touch an incredible number of things within us. By harnessing that, we have a hell of a tool.

Solid Science – Neurotherapy shown to improve ADHD

I was going to save this discussion for another day, but am just so overjoyed that some real research is being done, I had to share.

Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry

Is neurofeedback an efficacious treatment for
ADHD? A randomised controlled clinical trial

The first proper randomized, controlled study of the effects of Neurotherapy on ADHD are in…they’re good and they’re from a great source…

A few quotes from the study…

“Conclusions: Superiority of the combined NF training indicates clinical efficacy of NF in children with ADHD” (in other words, it works)

“…improvements in inattention and hyperactivity/impulsivity of about 25–30% in the NF group were significantly larger compared to about 10% in the AST group”

“Positive effects do not appear to be restricted to core ADHD symptoms, but also affected accompanying problems of social adaptation…” (it works and also improves other behaviours such as Oppositional/ defiance, and peer interaction)

The study also shows positive benefits for participants in family situations and classrooms.

Great News! and fantastic to see the hard science catching up with what we all could see on the ground…

Thanks to @betterbrains for the link – follow her on twitter!

Challenges – Motivation

While I’m looking at the walls, waiting for Neurotherapy to roll around, I’ll talk a bit about some of the things that bother me about me, and that I’ll be trying to deal with.

Motivation - this one is a real bitch for me. I’m great on deadline, or in an emergency, or when someone else needs something. I can coordinate the communications for thousands of people, as long as there is some sort of major disaster looming (forest fires are the best – emergency, helping others, and, quite literally, deadlines) (floods good too).

But unless I can convince myself it’s one of those things (and I usually know when I’m lying), NOTHING happens. ON the plus side, I have perfected the thousand yard, thinking about the universe stare. And I now have a lot of deep thoughts that make people think I’m more focused and concentrated than I really am.

I would love, LOVE, to wake up in the morning and be driven from my bed by a hunger to do something just for me. I have never been that person really. Partially, I think, because I don’t really dream about the future. I don’t plan and am very much in the moment. The more I look at this by writing this blog, the more I’m seeing interconnections. Interesting.

Feeling – past few days

Procrastination – 8 – Brutal

Depression – 3 – great chats with friends.

ADHD – 5, and at times 8. Was nicely focused down in work and then got thrown off by some strong emotional junk. This too shall pass.

Dogsitter extraordinaire

So, I’m dog-sitting my sister’s older lab this weekend. This is a required duty for less-successful brothers who may not be able to jet off on ski vacations every other weekend. (I’m not as bitter as I sound. My sister is lovely).

What I notice is: I actually resent having to walk a dog. This is how far I’ll go to avoid being locked into a work schedule, working up actual anger at something as mundane as a dog walk. It’s not a challenge, therefore I hate it. Yet if it is a challenge, I fear it…for lords sake there has to be a middle ground.

On the plus side, blogging is providing huge new vistas in the area of procrastination, while allowing me to pretend I am getting on with a useful Neurotherapy-related project. Bonus.

On the whole…(lower numbers are better)

Procrastination – 7

Attention Deficits – 7 (Facebook doesn’t count)

Depression – 5 (money is stressing me out no end at the moment, but generally an upbeat sort of day)

Forward planning – 7 (didn’t manage to set up playdates w/ neighbours even though they happened anyway)

Follow the Yellow Brick Road

Hey. I’m Tim.

I’ve got some stuff wrong with me and I’m going to try using neurotherapy to fix it.

Thing is, I don’t really know what’s wrong. I come off as all right, bright even. I just don’t seem to get ahead. Lots of skill, just never quite accomplish the the things I want to complete.

I’ve talked to professionals who told me I was fine…Fact is my greatest fear is that they are right. Maybe I’m just lazy.

And yet, I don’t feel lazy. I feel trapped. Trapped and I don’t know how, or how to escape from it.

I procrastinate, crunch into myself, get depressed, can’t concentrate, forget stuff…maybe it’s all part of being human. Or maybe there really is something going on. Maybe that can’t be changed. Maybe it’s something that can be fixed so I can reach my real potential. Maybe I just don’t have any greater potential than I have already reached.

Maybe I’m completely delusional, thinking there is something greater within me.

Or maybe I have generalized prefrontal cortex difficulties that affect a whole bunch of areas in my life. Could be anything from minor brain damage due to birth trauma (Those gosh darn forceps) to mild ADHD, to heritable depression or some interesting cocktail of any and all those.

Whatever…I’m done with not knowing how to deal with it. Or being less than I need to be.

So I’m going to have a good long look, using neurotherapy. They are going to do a full scan of my brainwaves and hopefully pinpoint what the hell’s going on. Then they might be able to fix it. Neurotherapy works pretty well for some of that stuff, from what I’ve seen. I’m leaving for California in a month to assess and maybe re-train my brain, to learn how EEG training works, and to bring back an EEG machine that will make it all happen.

Wish me luck.

PS. This is me, except I don’t actually get the shopping done either. Procrastination. Lunch of Champions

PPS. I’m going to try and keep track of how I’m feeling over this month. Obviously it’s not really a scientific process, more the blind leading the doubly-blind. See how it goes.