Category Archives: limbic system

March 25, 2009 · 4:54 pm

Hayfever

When our younger daughter went out to Southern California for college, she and her East Coast classmates learned to check the daily UV-ray Index like a horoscope, and to plan their sun exposure accordingly. Back here, many consult the daily Pollen Count, to predict how much Kleenex (or antihistamine) will be needed. Likewise, using the “What’s likely to get up my nose today?” model of Anger Management, it often pays to be forewarned.

Having lived in the D.C. area several times in my life, I have come to expect that driving the Capital Beltway will provoke my anger. Obviously, I know I’m not unique in this. Just observe your fellow motorists on any badly-engineered, heavily-traveled road, and you will sense barely-controlled rage. But the irritant is not the same for every driver. For some it is the intrusion of all the other cars clogging up the artery–“Is your journey really necessary?” For others it is the humiliation of being cut off by that Beemer-driver-with-a-sense-of-entitlement. Some are enduring the pain & suffering of having skipped that pre-journey trip to the bathroom. For me, I came to realize, it was fear. Not the most confident driver, myself, I imagined the Beltway as a nightmarish rink of Bumper Cars, with everyone hellbent on bending fenders. With my amygdala in alarm mode, I would ping among the “F-triad” of not-so-great responses (flee, fight, or freeze). It’s a wonder I never had a Beltway accident, isn’t it?

So, now, armed with insight and foresight, just as I approach the ramp to the ringroad, I say (out loud, so my whole brain can hear me), “Fear!” This gets the wolf in my head to quit howling, thus enabling my pre-frontal cortex to inhibit sudden braking or swerving, and my hippocampus to reality-test about just how homicidal/suicidal my fellow motorists seem to be. (Usually, not very. Not since they caught the Beltway snipers.) I also play raucus rock music, to which I sing along, thus allowing a harmless discharge of excess adrenaline. That’s how the model works.

So, next time you’re facing a heinous car journey, try asking yourself, “What could possibly get up my nose?” It might be any one–or a combination– of the Big Four irritants; but by calling them out, you could keep the wolf from howling (amygdalar arousal) and the werewolf from prowling (going ballistic with road rage).

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Filed under aggression happens, gets right up my nose, limbic system

March 27, 2009 · 10:10 pm

Take a Walk on the Wild Side


Just back from our (almost) daily trek on the high school’s Cross-Country course through the local woods, to teach Lili who’s pack leader. A rough start, as we passed by the fenced-in Girls’ Lacrosse field, and someone’s bored little brother rattled his sabre (well, Lacrosse stick) at Lili, dragging it along the chain-link like a film noir rabble-rouser, and roused her. A 2-second burst of Japanese “redirection” on my part brought her to heel, and we were off into the forest. On the path back out we encountered a couple with two barking Dachshunds and a Lab, so I leashed Lili up and we passed by without any display of aggression (not one raised hackle) on Lili’s part, while the guy shouted to the yapping dog in his arms, “Oh, just shut up, Lily!” (What are the odds?)

During my 6 enchanted years living in Manhattan–one in the Village, 5 on the Upper West Side–similar power negotiations played out several times a day, mostly involving two-legged parties (although a very cool Sociology prof at Columbia sometimes walked his two pet wolves, Romulus & Remus, down Broadway). I loved Lou Reed’s ode to the more colorful performance artists among us. The Sugarplum Fairy was sometimes spotted roller-skating in and out of the deli on 72nd Street (before [s]he made it big at the Apollo). Countless trips on the not-so-velvet-underground from grad school Uptown, to the VA hospital on East 23rd Street, to acting school in Midtown, and back home after midnight, gave me The Knowledge (a cognitive map) of the city, as well as priceless insights into how to avoid (or lessen the odds of) becoming the target of aggressive assault by strangers. My acting school girlfriends & I would swap stories and tips for how to project the most useful power subtext in confrontations with dodgy dudes in tight places: “I am not your enemy, but I am not your victim.”

Common street hassle of the day: “Gimme a cigarette!” [His power subtext: “Are you my victim?”] Savvy response: “You know, I don’t smoke, and neither should you. I can give you the name of a great stop-smoking clinic. Would you be interested in that?” [Your power subtext: “Not your victim, not your enemy. My amygdala is not aroused by your sabre rattling, so my hippocampus can make up as much of this do-gooder spiel as it takes to bore you, until you lose interest in me as a mark, and move on.”] The preparation my friends & I did for such verbal skirmishes included telling each other what “got up our nose(s)” about street hasslers: intrusion and/or fear. After awhile, we reckoned that our power subtext was so “I am not threatened by you,” that even to be auditioned for the victim role was a source of humiliation.

In the playing field, Lili let the little boy “drive her wild.” So I reined her in (verbally) and we did an hour of close-order drill on our walk through the woods. [My subtext: “I am your master. I trump your amygdala. Unless I give you the attack word, stay cool.” The payoff came when we encountered the three canine street hasslers on the path, and Lili, following my lead, just walked on by.

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Filed under gets right up my nose, leading a pack, limbic system, secret code, semiotics

April 17, 2009 · 12:19 am

"If a thing’s worth doing…"


“…it’s worth doing badly,” is a quotation attributed to the late Lord Louis Mountbatten, which I heard on holiday in the UK in the 1990s, and which changed my life. Initially, it gave me the courage to pursue the exacting sport of Dressage (imperfectly), despite having ridden horses since the age of 7. It allowed me to endure the humiliation of scathing criticism from riding instructors decades my junior, without feeling like such a loser that I gave up on the enterprise. (I even won the Reserve Championship during the year I showed.)

Today, I performed the role of Pack Leader for Lili badly. A women and her dog, whom we have encountered several times before [always with Lili bristling at the sight of her dog], appeared from over-the-hill, out-of-nowhere, at the beginning of our walk through the school playing fields to get to the woods; and before I could stop her, Lili transgressed again. The owner (correctly) rebuked me for my poor dog handling, and declared, “Your dog is vicious! ‘He’ should never be off the leash!” The good news in this anecdote is that I managed to avoid acting out my own humiliation (that I had failed to control my animal), fear (that the angry woman would take legal action against me or my dog), and intrusion: (Where did they materialized from? The field was absolutely clear when I unleashed Lili.) But the failure was that I assumed that we would be alone, and therefore free to do our own thing in the field. Needless to say, the rest of the trek was on-leash.

Since Lili clearly needs a reassertion of the message, “I’m in charge here” from me, it will be leashed walks for quite some time to come. Since I continue to believe that what gets up Lili’s nose is more intrusion than fear (of this smaller dog), I will vary the venue of our walks, so that she does not come to regard any one of them as “her” property, from which she feels entitled to exclude other dogs.

Like Freud, the prospect of being deprived of my beloved dog’s companionship [because of her misconduct or my mismanagement] causes me such pain & suffering, that I am prepared to do whatever it takes, to keep her–and others–safe from her amygdalar arousal. At least, for once, I had my own limbic system under control.

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Filed under aggression happens, leading a pack, limbic system

April 23, 2009 · 2:17 pm

Backgammon (Bear Off)


While both backgammon and chess are war-games, the former is way older [3000 B.C. vs. 600 A.D.] and–in Geneva Conventions terms–way more soldier-friendly. In chess you can sacrifice all your troops, except the King, in the name of victory; whereas in backgammon you cannot win until you rescue all your troops from their captivity [on the Bar], and bear off every last one of them to safety.

Without getting too name-droppy about it, I was lucky enough to meet [separately] with two of Freud’s analysands [his patients], who went on to become noted psychoanalysts [both now dead–this was in the 70s]; and one of them [can’t remember which] told me that Freud preferred the metaphor of backgammon to chess, for the Game of Life. As we slog through the vicissitudes [Freud’s oh-so-prissy translator, Lytton Strachey, chose this term, instead of ups & downs, or snakes & ladders, or swings & roundabouts] of life, we get stuck in some boggy patches. [If A.A. Milne had been Freud’s translator, more people would have gotten the benefit of the useful bits.] These have to do with tricky dilemmas discussed in previous posts [such as “To be smothered with attention, or to be left utterly alone?” and “To be a Goody-Two-Shoes, or to be a Black Sheep?”]. In our earliest struggles, grown-ups represent the opposing side [the Giants, Freud said, because these battles took place When We Were Very Young, therefore, small].

In each of these skirmishes, we lose a few soldiers; but we carry on with our remaining troops, to face the next dust-up. For some people, these encounters are not so bad, and only a few soldiers are lost. For others, it’s a hard-knocks life; and the Bar is crowded with their captive troops. Freud thought of troop strength as the Vital Force [or psychic energy] needed to confront life’s challenges. Let us think of it as blood to the hippocampus, shall we? Not enough of it, and the hippocampus shrivels up, leaving us unable to remember important stuff or to problem-solve. We lose traction. We are in danger of being gammoned or even backgammoned [losing the Game of Life very badly].

So we need to make like the Red Cross [Crescent, whatever], and negotiate for the release of these PoWs. In backgammon, it’s a roll of the dice–if a useful number comes up, a soldier can be liberated and head for home. In real life, we need to go back–to revisit the hard-knock event–and see if we can reframe it in such a way that we get the captive soldier back. The most current treatment for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder encourages the individual to recollect the traumatic event: to write about it, or to talk about it into a taperecorder and listen to it repeatedly, until it loses its power to arouse the amygdala. Then the “wolf-work” can begin. “What got up your nose, about the event?” “Are you bummed because you lost a buddy, or do you blame yourself for his/her loss?”

As in all real wars, we may never recover all the fallen or captive soldiers, but it is vitally important that we try. Those who say that we should simply “Move on,” from traumatic events, without any attempt to understand what really happened–what we were thinking, what got up our nose–are ignoring human nature and brain physiology. What we have not acknowledged and understood, we are likely to act out–against ourselves and others. Before we can truly move on, we need to look back.

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Filed under Freud meant..., gets right up my nose, limbic system, post-traumatic stress

May 11, 2009 · 2:11 pm

"Hearthrug!"


Jus’ like ol’ Rhymin’ Simon says, “Detroit, Detroit got a hell of a hockey team.” In honor of whom, today’s post will use a sports metaphor. Our dog trainer left two commands to the discretion of the dog owner. The first, today’s topic, was to be in English [not Japanese], so that visitors to one’s home could easily use it [without consulting the cue card of Japanese commands we hand all who enter here]. We were to designate an area in the home as the Penalty Box, to which the dog would be sent, briefly, for incidents of “unnecessary roughness” [to borrow a sports term]. No G-water would be served there, however. In our household, typical infractions include: too vigorous herding of our 3 cats, too emphatic barking at intruding neighborhood dogs on our property, and–most egregiously–challenging guests who have been designated by the Management as “Welcome.” A second guest-challenge results in being tethered, by a longish leash, to the hearthrug area, and commanded to “Fuse” [pronounced Foo-say, lie down]; and a third challenge results in being sent off to the “locker room” [her downstairs dogroom, which is larger and more comfortably furnished than either of my kids’ college dorm rooms].

The hockey metaphor is apt, because no one in this household is kidding themselves that Lili subscribes to a policy of absolute non-violence. There is presumed in hockey to be a certain degree of “necessary roughness” [euphemized as “checking”] that is part of the game. I grew up hearing droll Midshipmen at Dahlgren Hall hockey matches chant, “Impede him! Impede him! Make him relinquish the puck!” Likewise, another old chestnut from Coronation Street is “Why keep a dog and bark, yourself?” The English telly dog trainer, Victoria Stillwell, advises that when one’s dog first barks to announce the approach to one’s home of a non-resident, one should say “Thank you!” [in our case, “Arigato!”], since that is what dogs were bred to do. Only if the dog carries on barking after being thanked, should s/he be corrected.

Let us apply this principle to the barking dog in our head [the amygdala]. It was “bred” to warn us of potential danger. [It’s just trying to keep us alive. Give it a break, already…and maybe some G-water.] Upon first noticing our hackles rise, we should be grateful. It means we’re alive and taking notice of our surroundings. Now, let’s assess the threat: pain & suffering, or just fear, or an annoying intrusion, or our old nemesis, humiliation? At this point, the barking dog should “belt up,” so we can start dealing with the situation.

But, what if it doesn’t “belt up”? What if it winds itself up into a frenzy of over-the-top, adrenaline-fuelled fury? Well, then, we need our own personal command to send it to the Penalty Box. [Coincidentally, in Cognitive Therapy, this is often called “Thought Checking.”] Here’s where the Emotive Speech Function can help. Back in the day, well-brought-up English boys were trained to say “Rats!” [as opposed to an actual oscenity or profanity], whereas girls were encouraged to say “Crumbs!” These quaint bowdlerisms are fun to collect: “Crikey!” “Gor blimey!” “Gordon Bennet!” Whatever the outcry, the meaning–to others and to oneself–is clear: “rush of blood to the head” [amygdala]…”am about to flee, fight, or freeze”…”need to chill.” Interestingly, although being told by another person to “chill” or “relax” [melded these days into “chillax”], only increases one’s sense of humiliation, telling oneself “You must chill!” is often just the ticket, to drain the adrenaline, stop flailing around, and start dealing.

Personally, these days I tell myself “Hearthrug!” [Incidentally, I have never had G-water. It might be vile. I just notice it’s what the Red Wings drink, while chillaxing in the Penalty Box.]

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Filed under aggression happens, leading a pack, limbic system, pragmatics

June 10, 2009 · 3:05 pm

Don’t Look Now


“Good eye contact” is entirely overrated. “Look at me when I’m talkin’ to you!” Why? What if I’m one of the 50% of people who process information auditorially, rather than visually, and looking at you just distracts me from what you’re saying? What if I grew up in another culture, where staring directly at my interlocutor [particularly one higher in the pecking order] is the height of bad manners? Even in our own military, when standing to Attention, one is taught to stare “into middle distance,” not into the eyes of the Big Wig addressing one, even when answering questions. In the Navy, it is called “keeping one’s eyes in the boat.” [One is also taught to speak in the third–not second–person: “Would the Admiral care for…?”]

And don’t get me started on prey animals–such as horses–one is handling. Direct eye contact is an amygdalar trigger, provoking “highly inconvenient” reactions, ranging from bolting away to charging the handler. [Remember the Spanish Riding School scenario? Probably started with a stare.] Seasoned stable lads [a unisex term], equine vets, and farriers know to avert their gaze when approaching a horse, as if it were a Roman Senator. [Trivia question: Which emperor was deposed for appointing his horse, Incitatus, a Consul?]

Predators know the fierce power of a direct stare, and use it strategically. Dog spies rabbit; fixes it with a stare; and rabbit [most likely] freezes, at least momentarily. Think back to the dog fights in Top Gun, where the prey jet is “painted” with the laser of the predator, indicating “I’ve got you in my sights now. You’re toast.” Back in the 1920s, before eye contact was considered an Altogether Good Thing, there was a New Yorker cartoon, with two women walking past a man in the street: “He gave me such a look!” The joke is that she is feigning indignation, while secretly enjoying being “in his sights.”

Let’s consider the hard-done-by black & white dog in Dr. Range’s experiment on Inequity Aversion. We know he is angry at the injustice of his pal [Black & Tan] continuing to receive a reward for giving a paw, while he gets bupkes, nowt, Nichts! He demonstrates his displeasure by going on strike [no longer giving his paw], and by averting his gaze–not just from Black & Tan, but also from the experimenter. What’s up with that? Here’s my theory. Like Conrad in the Santa Rita jail, he knows he is “just a number here,” and Black & Tan is “just a number here.” It is not really Black & Tan’s fault that The Man [a unisex term] is being arbitrary and unfair. His beef is actually with The Man, who is the established Pack Leader. [Remember, this is the Clever Dog Lab–ain’t no slow learners here.] Back in the world [as GIs used to say in ‘Nam], he would be able express his anger in a number of ways: attacking The Man [fight], high-tailing it out of there [flight], or going into the “suspended animation” state which Object Relations Theorists call Somnolent Detachment. Here, his options are limited. Attacking The Man is not a clever move, since the Pack Leader is the source of basic rations, not just treats. So, to lessen his temptation to do so, he avoids “fixing The Man in his sights.” If his amygdala is really ramped up, he may actually go into Somnolent Detachment. When human infants do this, they “stare right past” their caregiver, as if she weren’t even there.

This is Crazy-Like-a-Fox behavior: the lesser of two evils. “If you slight me, I’ll ignore you. You have more power than me, but you don’t own my spirit [soul, what have you].” It is a gutsy move, whether you are a clever dog at the University of Vienna, or a PoW near the River Kwai. One has to do it with enough dignity and Stoicism, NOT to be mistaken for a Lame Gazelle. This little dog’s sit-down strike and averted gaze carries the subtext message: “I am not your victim, but I am not your enemy.”

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Filed under Epictetus said..., ethology, lesser of two evils, limbic system, semiotics

June 24, 2009 · 9:19 pm

"A Highly Trained Individual"


Ever since the Regrettable Incident(s) at the Playing Fields, Lili is on-leash in that area, except for a brief “Ally-Oop” session, where she responds either to that command or to my 3-note whistle, to jump back & forth over an athletic bench or a blue barrel a few times. Now that school is out, a no-nonsense, gruff-looking man has been preparing part of the field we traverse, for a football training camp for Fall Freshmen. Of course, we skirt their playing field; but the boys are always intrigued by the “wolf-dog” as we pass by, offering her catcalls and wolf whistles, trying to get her attention.

I got the vibe that the coach was not amused, so Lili & I just “keep our eyes in the boat” and quick-march by, on our way to and from the woods. Yesterday, as the boys were doing an exercise involving jumping in and out of tractor tires laid on the ground, some of them were again distracted by Lili. So, here’s what the coach told them: “Just let that big dog alone. ‘He’s’ working. That is a highly trained individual.”

How cool is that?

Stand by for the metaphor. Doing daily “wolf-work” [trying to gain mastery over one’s amygdalar arousal, by asking, “Now, what just got up my nose?” then pausing, and redirecting that angry energy into more useful actions] pays off, in the long run. When I first encountered this guy painting stripes on the field, I thought, “Oh, man! Just when school’s out and the fields become “community property” [like on weekends], this grumpy dude [body language, facial expression & failure to respond to my greeting] is making me feel like the trespasser (humiliation, intrusion, and the ever-present fear of consequences for Lili). I considered avoiding the fields altogether, by taking the back path to the woods; but since the last storm, a too-big-to-move-without-a-Bobcat tree [with bayonet-like broken branches] completely blocks the way. [Actually, I was just able to clamber over it, but Lili nearly impaled herself on it; and I got poison ivy on my arm for my efforts, anyway–pain & suffering all around.] So, through the fields we strode on our appointed rounds, shoulders back, eyes front, no Lame Gazelle subtext here: we were neither the “grumpy” dude’s enemy, nor his victim.

I felt not only proud, that the dude had affirmed Lili’s progress, but also sheepish, that I had mistaken his aloof manner for disapproval. What a rookie cognitive distortion on my part, especially given all my years in and around military settings!

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Filed under gets right up my nose, limbic system, power subtext, semiotics

August 16, 2009 · 8:22 pm

"Why don’t you come with me, little girl…?"


How long did you think it was gonna take, for me to quote a Steppenwolf song in this blog? For those of you born yesterday, this is the tag line to “Magic Carpet Ride.” Cynics will insist the invitation is to take a drug trip; but a close examination of the lyrics will reveal it to be a perfect trance induction–an invitation to go into Alpha, because “…you don’t know what we can find.”

We’re off on our own not-quite-magic-carpet-ride (on Southwest Airlines) this week, to visit the offspring, so Lili and the Cats are off to the Ashram, where they will be lovingly looked after (and perhaps shown the way to Enlightenment). I think they spend most of the time in Alpha–especially the cats. Lili stands down from her mission to guard us (since we’re not there) and “her” property (since she’s not there…she’s offsight); and it is reported that she becomes a carefree, gregarious pack member under those circumstances.

Meanwhile, a couple of pointers for how to use Alpha, once you reach the destination of your choice. To lessen your perception of various kinds of pain, you might want to think in terms of dreamwork, and construct a plotline that “accounts” for the unpleasant sensation, but tones it way down. Thus, instead of the “ravening wolf” of a root canal procedure, I transform the experience into a brisk canter on Owen the Hanoverian, on a cool Michigan morning, where sucking in the cold air creates a mild tingling sensation in all my teeth. Seriously. A magic carpet ride on my beloved horse is what I “take,” instead of whatever anesthetic the dentist is offering. I’ve had to convince all my dentists since 1978, that I will be just fine, they need not worry…but they can’t seem to stop themselves from blurting out, “Boy, that’s gotta hurt! Doesn’t it?”

But, what about the lads in Keele, and our friend Herb Malinoff, who insist that the pain center’s message must be acknowledged, or it will just “turn up the volume”? I haven’t found this to be a problem, personally; but I would be prepared to say a mental “Roger that,” (or “F&#* that!”)–to “thank my amygdalar dog” for warning me of danger–and then I’m going to “climb aboard Owen,” and take that “magic carpet ride.”

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Filed under altered states, limbic system, pain reduction

September 10, 2009 · 3:30 pm

Lili the Rorschach


This morning’s walk through the woods was a harbinger of Fall: cool, blustery, intermittently overcast, with a forecast of rain. I put on a waterproof, fawn-colored riding jacket, and off we set. At the midway point of the trail through the woods, I heard my least favorite sound: gunshots, very close. I happen to know that deer hunting season is weeks off, so neither Lili nor I were wearing our day-glow safety vests. In fact, obscured by the leafy trees, we might have been mistaken for a wolf and a deer. Spurred on by fear, not to mention the intrusion of [let’s just hope] hunters jumping the gun, we picked up the pace and headed for the relative safety [because of our higher visibility] of the playing fields. But just as we approached the turn off, we heard police sirens near the school, and decided to stay on the lower-viz, wooded path. By the time we reached the paved road that leads back to where the car was parked, both the gunshots and the sirens had stopped, so we relaxed the pace to a brisk, dog-show trot.

When we reached the car, it was blocked by two county utility vans. “Oh, swell!” I thought. “Having dodged bullets in the woods, now we’re going to get hassled on the open road.” The driver of one truck rolled down his window and asked, “Where’d you get that dog?” “In Virginia,” I said with a smile [projecting my best not-your-victim-not-your-enemy subtext]. “I’ve never seen anything like it! What’s ‘he’ weigh?” Going into my Lili-is-not-your-enemy mode, I said, “She’s a girl, and she only weighs 71 pounds, under all that fur. Soaking wet, she looks like a greyhound.”

To which he replied, “It looks like a bat! Never seen anything like it! Have a nice day!”

And the point of this little vignette? Scary is in the eyes [and ears] of the beholder [listener]. Unless I hear on the news about a gun battle in my local woods [which is not unprecedented], my amygdalar arousal was as much of a false alarm as was the initial reaction of our new friend, “Bat man.”

But I think we’ll start wearing those safety vests again, in any case.

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Filed under attribution theory, limbic system, semiotics

September 28, 2009 · 8:15 pm

The Sandman Cometh


Here is Solipsistic Seamus Sleeping Supine on a Chicago Sofa. [Say that 3 times, fast.] The topic is Getting Enough Shuteye (without further enriching the fat cats @ Big Pharma). He is your role model, not I. My expertise on this subject comes as much from personal experience, as from all the Sleep Hygiene lectures & literature I have absorbed over the decades, since I inherited the tendency for insomnia from the gent who also brought me Non-linear Thinking: my father.

Thus, I know that “better lifestyle choices,” while helpful, are not the complete solution. Unlike my father [for large parts of his life], I neither drink distilled spirits, nor smoke tobacco–both of which interfere with the brain’s natural circadian rhythm. Where I can control my nighttime environment [at home, not in hotels], I go for dark, cool & quiet. If quiet isn’t an option, I go for white noise [like a fan]. After you live in a big city for awhile, though, you become so used to the soundtrack of “the lullaby of Broadway” [emergency vehicle sirens, mostly], that it becomes the white noise; whereas those suburban or rural crickets make an infernal, sleep disturbing, racket. My family moved to Tarrytown, NY in 1953, just as the Tappan Zee Bridge was being built; and our white noise was the bang-bang-bang of steam pile drivers. On the rare days when work was suspended, “the silence was deafening,” and nobody could get to sleep.

But now for a little myth-busting. Contrary to what sleep-aid vendors would have you believe, mankind was not meant to sleep “8 uninterrupted hours.” There is meant to be a brief intermission in the middle of the night, for a bit of a walkabout: to do the needful (see to the children, visit the loo, stoke the fire, ward off ravening beasts). It is not so much this interval, but the sleeper’s negative response to it, that leads to most of the inconvenient [not awful] amygdalar arousal [known in the Sleep Hygiene biz as Subjective Insomnia]. We got fear: “Oh no! I’ll never be able to get back to sleep, and I’ll be useless tomorrow!” [Notice that this line of thinking occurs most often on a week night?] We got intrusion: “Gordon Bennet! Your snoring/that commotion in the street/my hypervigilant-not-to-say-paranoid dog just woke me up from a sound sleep!” [But your own alarm clock? Not always…] And we got the pain & suffering of just lying there [or prowling around in the dark, stubbing your toe, or worse], feeling all alone [even in a crowded house], and trying not to dwell on Dark Thoughts.

Well, here’s what I do about the Dark Thoughts. I have someone read me a bedtime story. Low-fidelity cassette tape players cost about $20 tops these days; and the public library is full of Books on Tape. I try to choose a narrator whose voice is pleasant, and a story that is distracting enough to derail my train of Dark Thoughts [but not so riveting that it keeps me up nights, ya know?]. I made a big mistake with a this week’s selection: the late Frank McCourt reading his own last book, Teacher Man. It’s wonderful [yet triste] to hear his voice again, but it’s too compelling; and I fought falling back to sleep [even though I knew I had the option of rewinding the tape in the morning and listening to it again in daylight]. This is rather ironic, since the main point of the book is McCourt’s career-long quest to hold the interest of his public high school students. [Well, he got mine.] I got about 3 hours’ sleep the night of Teacher Man; but, lo! I was still able to drive adequately, to scamper through the woods with Lili, to do hours of clinical paperwork, and [tra-la] to write this blog. [I loaded up a duller Book on Tape for the next night, though.]

More on sleep anon. Meanwhile, try out Seamus’ new yoga position: Flaked-Out Ginger Cat.

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Filed under altered states, limbic system