As Elmo would say, "Everybodeee panic!"

Apparently Covid is not quite gone yet, so this month's blog will again discuss it from a psychological perspective. 

Dr. Low, what do you mean, "not quite gone?" It's an epidemic.  Well, about that. I follow several statistical websites whose authors are much better at analyzing data than I. I do NOT follow government proclamations, however. I stay as  close as I can to the facts. And the facts say that this thing is a seasonal virus related to the common cold rather than the flu. It favors as its victims the elderly and the infirm and, unlike the flu, largely avoids children. The facts say that it is not spread casually, that it is rarely passed by children, unlike most viruses, and that it is not often spread by asymptomatic carriers. Contrary to the early scare stories, it is also not spread on fomites (inanimate objects like your groceries and shopping cart) or by flushing a toilet , it does not spread "exponentially," and masks do little if anything to stop it. The facts clearly show that, regardless of massive increases in positive tests documented everywhere PCR testing is done (PCR tests are not meant to be used in diagnosis; they are a screening tool which ought to be followed by a test more inclined to false negatives, and they have been being misused by running at a greater number of cycles than recommended (27-30 is normal--people are using up to 40 and each cycle doubles the chance of a scrap of NON-INFECTIOUS viral RNA to be found--AND the test is meant to be used on people who are feeling ill, not an entire populace)), the virus is killing a very small number of people, nearly all of whom are elderly and/or have pre-existing conditions. A "surge" of positive tests is not  spike in illness nor in deaths.  This virus is still doing what a seasonal virus does; it has passed through many of the weakest victims, killed an unfortunate number, and is resuming its course through the less vulnerable, killing very few, making most immune, and becoming "endemic" --part of the environment like the common cold. If it mutates, it mutates to be less deadly and more contagious so that it can spread more. So currently in the US and most of the northern hemisphere, there is no epidemic; there is a surge in positive tests as the less vulnerable gain immunity.

Citations for each of those statements can be found below. 

I am not a conspiracy theorist, and I continue to prefer this blog to be apolitical. I will refrain from  offering theories about what is going on worldwide with this virus and extreme government responses to it. Instead, let's focus on the psychological effects of all of that. 

 

Remember when we were supposed to stay home to "flatten the curve" to prevent hospital overwhelm? Remember all the crises over ventilators and ICU beds?  Well, it turned out that most patients ought not to be put on ventilators and most of those extra beds in hotels and naval vessels went unused. So we flattened the curve and flattened the health care business as well by forbidding "elective" medicine (which  means, stuff you won't imminently die of, even if eventually you might). Do you also remember being told that the area UNDER the curve was pretty much a constant? Not many do. But that is the case, because, as stated above, a seasonal virus just works its way through, and if you hide from it, it gets you later.

So the curve got flattened, the ICU shortage emergency that never was went away, and we were all told to keep staying locked up and keep not working because we would kill granny if we went out. Some people complied while others tried to go back about their lives. Thus was born the mask mandate. If you won't stay home, we will make you wear a face cover. The stated reason was to prevent the spread of COVID, but as we know, it is a seasonal virus and it is going to move through the population of the planet. Also, much research shows that a mask does not stop a virus. Really. Surgical masks stop a bacterium and they stop globs of fluid. They do not stop the breath. But we wanted to get back outside and back to work and back to living, so masks were mandated, mostly as a feel-good measure in the name of "protecting others." (Which is insane on its face--cloth masks are not one-way.)

How does all of this affect YOU in your daily life? Are your activities limited? Is your financial situation constrained? How are your kids doing, if you have some? Are you positively or negatively affected by masks or lack of them? Are you experiencing shortages of needed goods? 

All of these questions represent issues that people all over the world are facing. And these problems are mostly not due to the virus itself, but to government and public responses to the virus.

For some, having their kids at home is a blessing. For others, it means they cannot get back to work. For some professions, it is business as usual once again; for others, waiting continues while bankruptcy threatens. Some people appreciate masks as a way to protect society at large. Others, knowing that basic cloth and surgical masks are not meant to stop viral transmission, feel rather put out.  Still others worry about the societal consequences of not seeing human smiles and of children missing the all-important facial expressions that help them navigate social reality. Some people feel phobic behind a mask, others cannot understand speech without visual cues, still others have trouble recognizing familiar faces when most of the cues are missing. For many, goods and services to which they are accustomed have become difficult or impossible to obtain, and prices have skyrocketed.

Then there is entertainment. What entertainment? you ask. And that is the point. Modern society is stressful and the variety of entertainment and relief from reality provided by sporting events, theater, film, amusement parks, beaches, bars and restaurants is necessary. We wonder why cities have become powder kegs of anger and resentment. Is it racism or is it confinement and deprivation of all the trappings of normal life? 

Right now, all over the world, depression is up, unemployment is raging, and people are angry and afraid.  Their lives are being controlled by authority figures whose plans change weekly with no evidence that the new plan is safer than the old one or even than no plan. 

As an individual, how do you feel when you are told that a pandemic is threatening millions of lives and you need to use every precaution to avoid getting or sharing it? Do you feel better when you take precautions or angry that your life is being so disrupted? How can you know if what you are told is true? Or even, which part of what you are told? 

And here comes the very rushed set of vaccines which we are told shall save the day. One wonders, however, how safe a vaccine is when the manufacturers have been freed from liability and testing has been rushed.  One wonders how logical a vaccine is when the virus is said to mutate rapidly. One wonders if long-term side effects are being missed in the rush to production. One also wonders who is profiting from all of this!

Each of us has many decisions to make. How close to normal will we behave? Will we mask up or not? Will we shop in person or online? Will we comply with masking? Will we celebrate holidays with family or not?  What do our older relatives need from us; sanitation or hugs? These are not simple choices--each has ramifications. So each of us must use our intellect as well as our emotions and our conscience to do the best we can. And no one is immune from the psychological strain of the constant state of fear the media and the politicos are pushing upon us. 

Stress is bad for your health and mine. Is it worse to die of a virus or of stress? Is it worse to die alone, or of a virus but with loved ones? Can society recover from this year of forced isolation and deprivation? I know that we as a society will never be the same. I hope we learn valuable lessons for our future as a free people.

Exaggerated risk of transmission of COVID-19 by fomites  

Study claiming new coronavirus can be transmitted by people without symptoms was flawed | Science | AAAS

 Lawyers prepare to sue over damages inflicted by COVID-19 lockdowns | News | LifeSite  

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10221657996853726&set=pcb.230321794810337&type=3&theater&ifg=1

 Oxford epidemiologists: suppression strategy is not viable - YouTube

 The Science is Conclusive: Masks and Respirators do NOT Prevent Transmission of Viruses -- Science & Technology -- Sott.net

Masks Don’t Work: A Review of Science Relevant to COVID-19 Social Policy | River Cities' Reader  

https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/332293/WHO-2019-nCov-IPC_Masks-2020.4-eng.pdf?fbclid=IwAR250bYGEgRJBm0srvmDRvT1x_Egq2CxIpVqve5iSA2SU1l78mg3Iv8TA64

LOCKDOWN LUNACY 3.0: It's over — j.b. handley blog

(PDF) All-cause mortality during COVID-19: No plague and a likely signature of mass homicide by government response  

Second wave? Not even close. – OffGuardian  

Lies, Damned Lies and Covid19 – OffGuardian

There Is No Evidence Lockdowns Saved Lives. It Is Indisputable They Caused Great Harm – William M. Briggs  

 

Is It REALLY an Emergency? The Power of Resiliency to Keep You Sane.

The news media are difficult to avoid. I know; I tried for years. I had no TV, received no morning paper, but the news would find me--mostly on my car radio on my all-music-except-during-rush-hour station. Now I live with someone who fancies his morning news and, worse, likes to tell me what he has found out. Guess what? It is NEVER good news.

You already knew that, right? If you have been paying attention, you did. The various news media these days have more competition for your attention, and they have long known that to get your attention, they have to produce an emotion in you. They get more attention by producing a negative emotion. So the news is no longer JUST THE NEWS. It is a concoction of events developed into a story in language carefully crafted to get your attention. Even the weather is no longer just "here's what to expect." Today's weather reporters are also competing for your attention. So rather than, "We are expecting 5" of snow before 6PM ," now it is, "This is shaping up to the the worst snow in 52.5 years, so be very scared."

We know that most of what has changed is competition for your attention. But something more subtle has changed along with that. The news is no longer "just the facts, m'am." Today's reporters want to grab you with negative emotions: fear, anger, outrage. But we tend to assume that the news and weather types are still reporting facts, so we respond as they have guided us. This affects our lives in very real ways.

What is the difference between "Today the temperature will be -13" and "today there is a wind-chill advisory in effect and you are advised to dress warmly"? One aspect is the assumption that we are all too stupid to wear warm clothes; that we do not know what -13 means, that we need it to be painted in scarier terms so we pay attention. I don't know about you, but I am insulted by weather reporters on a daily basis. Yep, -13 is cold. Yep, I need a coat. Yep, I will cover my face and hands. This barrage of insults is bad enough for me to have stopped paying attention to them altogether. I want the facts, and I will decide how to behave, thanks.  

But the more sinister aspect is that when people are continually subjected to such emergency tactics, they tend to feel fear. It comes on gradually as we are inundated daily with this and that emergency. From weather to climate to politics to foreign affairs, there is a reported emergency around every corner. Thus, my attempt to avoid all forms of media reporting.

Out with the Old, In with the New

It's a new year, and we are always looking for resolutions to start our year; ways in which we can commit to self-improvement in the year to come. It has struck me through various interactions in this very early year, that the best thing to do in a new year is often to let go of stuff from the last one and the ones before.

As humans, we have long memories. Our memories vary in their accuracy, but to us, memory is a big part of who and what we are. Each of us is largely the product of the many experiences that we have had and the many people we have known.

The problem with being formed of memories is that it is easy to get stuck in regrets. What if I had not done this or that? What if he or she had not died, left, said that? What if........  And, of course, there is no answer.

When we have erred, hurt someone, suffered a loss, or missed an opportunity, there is an opportunity for growth and learning, but there is rarely a do-over.
It turns out that such difficulties are motivators to change, and are overall a good thing. If nothing ever goes wrong, we are never driven to grow.

Hello, Ashland

Goodbye to Bend and all the great people, clients, professionals, and friends and acquaintances, I met and helped or was helped by. It is time to move on, though. While we felt as if, after 3 growing seasons, we had finally mastered small greenhouse gardening in an  inhospitable climate with no soil,  what we really wanted was a place to grow food and watch nature thrive.

Hello Ashland! Up here in the woods, amazingly only 15 minutes from town, clients will be invited to see me in a private space, with the sounds of nature to add to the ambiance. It was gratifying to see our garden immediately begin to thrive as it never had in Bend, and I know the beautiful environment will enhance the healing that occurs for my clients. In-person sessions will begin Sept. 1 in this new space.

I also welcome intensive clients starting Sept. 1: Medford is 30 minutes away and Ashland less than 15, and both have a variety of hotels, motels, B&Bs, and hostels, as well as a fine selection of eateries and groceries. We are 30 minutes from the Medford airport. While a therapy intensive is hardly a vacation, traveling to a beautiful spot far from your daily environment offers a unique opportunity to break old patterns and create new ones. Follow-up in person or via video-chat assists you in maintaining your new learnings in your home environment. 

It has been stressful to move many miles for the second time in 2 years, and perhaps I have learned some new things about managing stress and the ways in which change affects me and others as well. Stress is always both good and bad: it forces new ways of seeing things and behaving, but it can cause strain on the system. Moving changes one's relationship to others, to resources, and to oneself. Out with the old, in with the new, to coin a phrase!

The new incarnation of the Center for Conscious Living will offer individual and family therapy, Rational Emotive Therapy, which is the elegant, effective precursor to CBT,  Sensorimotor Trauma Therapy, and clinical hypnosis. I will continue to focus on physical symptoms that bridge the mind-body gap such as gut issues (irritable bowel, cyclic vomiting), headache (migraine, cluster headache), and chronic pain (RSD, CRPS 1, fibromyalgia); those difficult-to-treat issues that often defy medical treatment. Call for a free phone consultation.

Meanwhile, I shall be learning about my new environment and preparing a new space for seeing clients.

Is Mental Illness a Myth?

Have I piqued your interest or accidentally insulted you? I did not make this question up. Thinkers and physicians for many years have wondered the same thing. Mental illness is confusing. It is not diagnosed as is physical illness via tests for microbes, probing for damaged or diseased tissue, nor compiling a list of objectively measurable symptoms. Mental illness is diagnosed via a system of symptom clusters published in one or another manual, the contents of which are agreed upon by scholars in the field. The problems arise when the contents of those manuals change over time, because mental issues are not clear-cut diseases as are physical illnesses. Things are added and subtracted over time--but we could not imagine a time when influenza would stop being called a disease!

Science tries, year after year, to isolate specific markers for mental illness. Tests come and go, but the construct remains elusive. We can objectively test for the flu or cancer or diabetes or a broken leg, but we cannot test in a way that never changes, for depression, schizophrenia, or anxiety. This does not mean that you are not suffering with your problem. It only means in this context, that your problem is mislabeled by being lumped in with physical illness. This is important for many reasons. I hope you are still with me as I elucidate why I, and others like me, believe calling mental problems "diseases" hurts those who suffer with them.

When should you see a psychologist for a physical illness?

I have been writing on the topic of mind/body medicine for over 20 years, and I continue to learn and be amazed by the human mind/brain. Long years ago, a brilliant scholar named Ernest Rossi began to write about hypnosis and neuroplasticity. He was, of course, not alone in this, but he was my first formal contact with the fascinating world of brain changing body. Despite my psychological training, I began to see the mindbody connection everywhere. A client with diabetes who suffered from severe psychological distress after an amputation presented with uncontrollable vomiting and raging fevers rather than diagnosible psychological problems. People with intransigent chronic pain ran from doctor to doctor and were accused of faking or drug-seeking, but with good psychological exploration and insight, their trauma could be found and they could heal themselves. Clients with autoimmune disorders such as rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis found improvement, often dramatic, with the application of psychological techniques. A client who had attempted suicide with a .38 to the head showed NO brain damage on MRI, demonstrated no physical disabilities from the shot, but had significant amnesia for his entire life prior to the incident! The amnesia remitted with psychological treatment.

These extreme examples of the intricate mindbody connection led me to view my clients with a much more open mind. Things I had diligently learned in graduate school held less sway versus the real experiences of my clients. Medications did not appear to work miracles despite being used in ways even our textbooks said were dangerous. Diagnostic criteria and diagnosible disorders from the _DSM_ changed over time, which confused me if those listed problems were diseases. Does the definition of influenza or diabetes change with each new edition of a manual? Do they sometimes disappear from the text? And despite modern times labeling many problems as diseases in what appeared to be both an attempt to put them in the bailiwick of physicians and to remove the stigma of causality from patients and their families, suffering seemed to be getting worse, not better, and reliance on medications increasing as well. Additionally, the number of clients coming to me already taking three or more psychoactive medications appalled me. Why, after all, were they still suffering if these medications work? I began to wonder about many things I had been taught and to question common treatment practices of people seeking mental health treatment as well as physical medical treatment.

How Worry is like a Hamster Wheel........

Sometimes you just have to worry, right? Wrong! Worrying about something that might go wrong, is going wrong, or has already gone wrong is not going to change things, right? Right. So all the energy you expend worrying is not being spent productively on problem-solving. What it is doing is using energy and preventing you from focusing on the real problem. If your daughter is out too late, worrying about her is not going to get her home safely. If your boss is on a tear, and you fear for you job, worrying about his erratic behavior is not going to save your job. If a tornado is bearing down on your neighborhood, worrying is not going to save it.

Worry is a distraction--we take up mental space worrying, and we feel occupied, so we are less focused on hunting for that elusive solution or doing something else productive. But the worry itself is exactly like running in a hamster wheel--you are moving, you are active, but you are still in the same place. You might expend some calories, but you will not get any closer to solving the problem.

Worry is a uniquely human activity. And as with other activities in which humans engage, we tend to defend this one. After all, if it were not important, it would not worry me, right? I ought to worry about my daughter/job/house, right? The truth is that it is not the worry that is going to help you resolve the issue. Worry represents thinking things you have already thought rather than arriving at new ideas. Worry stresses your system, causes you to lose sleep, and generally moves you away from creativity into a rut. The issue at hand may indeed be serious, but worrying is not the answer.

Take that daughter--she is late, and you are rightly concerned that something has gone awry. You can actively search for her if you have some leads; you can call the authorities if it has been a seriously long wait and she is not answering her phone, or, if it is really the usual Saturday night teenager misbehaving, you can get some sleep and let her worry all night over the consequence her well-rested parents will impose. The point is that the actual process of worrying is not what gets her safe nor you closer to a resolution.

Your job is on the line; you have a moody boss, and today is one of those days. Recognize this for what it is and get to work--the hours you spend worrying that you are next for his wrath will not help you to avoid it. In fact, there is some chance that your worry makes you flustered and ineffectual that day and indeed puts you right in the spotlight you had hoped to avoid. Yes, your job is important. The point is not that it is no cause for concern if your boss is unpredictable, just that the actual process of worrying is not what is going to resolve the issue.

A tornado is reported in your area. Batten down the hatches and find the safest place to wait it out. Worrying and fretting will not keep you safe without action. Alternatively, it is tornado weather and you sit frantically by the radio listening to the reports--you lose a day of productivity, and nothing comes of it. Better to have a preparation plan for this season and know how to implement it, then have your ducks in a row come the actual threat.

The thing about worry is that we do it all the time. We worry about our kids. We worry about our jobs, our houses, our health, the economy, our weight, and whatever else we can find to fret over. This is a bad habit. It wastes resources, stresses our immune system, and achieves nothing. Humans get attached to the thoughts that run around in our brains. We hear that subliminal chatter and assume it is meaningful and important. In reality, our minds tend to run in the same ruts they always run in, and this limits creative problem solving. The problem is that we become so accustomed to the chatter in our heads, we never question its validity.

Time to get off the hamster wheel. Learn new habits of thought and reduce your stress instantly. Yes, it sounds easy, and with practice, it is. And the new habits you learn will help you for a lifetime.