Enter Label: In pursuit of Father Rebecca

I’ve got all kinds of things going on. Most of it, matters of the spirit. Beliefs. How to control my mood in the face of this, how to calm my nervous system, how to remain optimistic, how to decide what of me remains, what of me goes, how to ignore things people say I’m sensitive to, like a festering wound under the black hole Sun. I used to run like a leopard on controversy. Now I’m more like a lemur.

I was doing a meditation that required me to give up to a higher power, and I could not envision that exactly, except for when I was more religious in my youth. So I bought a prayer book, a siddur, on Amazon.

I have a few people online that I follow religiously. I’ve never had an attachment to online personalities, not even celebrities with whom I work. But this group of people I follow have become like my triage center. One after the other, daily, reviving me.

Do you have anyone like that which you can share whether literature, music, or social media?

In a way, I show up and pray every day. From a belief perspective perhaps the most difficult aspect of the journey is…

1) to believe that indeed I will recover

2) to reframe the pain issue into something that is acceptable or something I can become indifferent toward

Addressing the second point today, if the idea is that the pain is being generated by the brain because it perceives danger, then becoming indifferent to those signals over time tells the brain that there is nothing to fear, so it stops sending those signals.

The scientific examples of this are put best by Lorimer Moseley in his Ted talk below. When he was once walking through the Outback of Australia and stepping on something, he figured it was merely a twig as it was hundreds of times before, and continued walking. An hour or so later he was near dead from a poisonous snake bite. The next time he walked in that bush and felt something brush up against his leg, he jumped from extreme pain. Except that time, it was a twig. And yet his brain perceived danger, and reacted accordingly to protect him, even though in reality nothing was happening.

You probably know examples yourselves, like the very real pain in the phantom limb of amputees. And it does not need to be just physical threats that cause the pain, it can be emotional threats as well. The brain senses danger nearly the same in both those situations.

Starting this practice of belief is damn near the most difficult thing I’ve ever done. Being a SANE person, I believe in my mind. And here I have to build if not distrust, then an ambivalence toward it. An ambivalence towards my thoughts! Moreover my thoughts that are manifesting physical symptoms! Are you kidding me? I’m an America Russian Jew. We had multiple thermometers out before I even exceeded baseline temperature. Of course, that learned state of hyper vigilance does not help the whole kerfuffle.

In any event, here are some strategies worth mentioning that I think can apply to more than just pain situations, but to all circuitous thoughts one might want to break whether compulsive, anxiety prone, etc.

1. A cardinal rule. Stop referring to the pain. No more use of the p word. If it is required to reference then is to be called sensations. So, Mr. So and So, the sensations aren’t great today. By changing that word,  it lends itself to turning down the fear level. After all, how bad can sensations get?

2. Language continues to matter. Instead of saying I’m in pain, or I am a pain sufferer, say things like, the pain is moving through me. That tells the mind that this is all temporary thing, a temporary sensation.

3. Visualize success. Meditating on this with all the sensations swirling about is tough, tougher than breath work where I can concentrate on my exhaust pipe rather than the radio fizz playing. But the mind can hardly tell the difference between visualization and actuality, which means you are creating neural pathways just by thinking of doing something positive.

4. Interrupting neural pathways using AIR technique. Awareness, Interruption, Replacement. To alter a pattern, you need to see what the pattern is to begin with. So whether it’s catastrophic thoughts, or focusing on the pain, or self-judgement, bring awareness to those thoughts. So catch yourself at the moment the thought pops up, and get excited you noticed it like you are on a treasure hunt. Celebrate, get up dance, sing, throw up your hands, because your mind loves to be rewarded. Then interrupt the thought with another input whether it’s a physical movement or another thought, to disrupt the old pattern and replace it with a new pattern. Maybe I can introduce The Floss dance?

5. Graded exposure. Start introducing things that cause flares surely but slowly, just enough to prove to the mind its safe, but not too far that there is a huge reverberation that sends you back down in a fear/symptom spiral. And slowly build up resilience. I want to go to Montauk for example, but I’ve been rather scared to do that. It’s a long drive, prone to traffic, and the last time I was there I had COVID where this all kicked off. For graded exposure, I could get in the car for 30 minutes and go somewhere close instead to build confidence. The other important thing is not to exceed the goalpost. Even if I feel great after the 30 minutes, plan to get out of the car and stop the experiment.

6. Be outcome independent. Don’t worry if things cause issues or setbacks. Accept that they might, and don’t judge the outcome. When sensations boil over, look at them indifferently and trod on.

At this point, I’ve probably incorporated these learnings about 15% of the time. Which corresponds with the overall functional improvement.

But I just imagine, if I can continue to grow and apply this list, if I can achieve it, then the Monk Transformation is complete, and you can refer to me as Father Rebecca.