Hello, fellow residents of our beautiful planet! I am writing this blog post from a cute Danish cafe in London. Here is a photo I took from my seat in the cafe. If you know me at least a bit, and if you look closely at the photo, you may be able to guess my favorite part of it. However, as that detail is rather inconsequential, let me tell you something of greater importance. Let me tell you how I got here.

Oops! How I got here is inconsequential, too. I flew. (That last sentence was a clue, RE the detail in the photo!) It was a long flight—at least for a travelphobe like me. I finished a book. Exciting! I love finishing books. But in the scheme of things, that was not so exciting, really, so let me please get to my point. Let me tell you why I got here.

Four months ago, as I explained in my post from January 25 called Dreams, I had a dream. I dream vividly most nights; but only the rare dream manifests as a sort of lesson-cum-guidepost, express from my unconscious mind.

In the dream, I bought a flight to London. I bought the ticket amidst a group of friends, as part of a special discount rate; but each of us was traveling separately, and I would be traveling alone. Once I arrived in London, I discovered that my family was staying in nearby rooms. However, I decided to ignore them, since they wanted to do things that I didn’t. What I really wanted to do while in London was see a performance at the Paris Opera House; and that’s what I was making plans to do when I woke up.

Strangely enough, this relates to the book I finished on the plane. I’ll be writing previews of that book shortly. This story about my dream and how it influenced my life will perhaps be useful as we try to piece together the central philosophical problem laid out in that book. But I am getting off track again! So here’s what happened next.

Upon waking, I understood that the dream was important, but I wasn’t sure what it meant. In full—that is, partial—disclosure, there was also a segment of the dream that pertained to my love life. I would not like to share the details; I would merely like to note that the dream had multiple significances to me. (A multiple significance, in case you were wondering, is somewhat similar to a multiple orgasm, except that it’s not just for women; but I am getting off track again!) And so, realizing that my unconscious mind may have been trying to tell my conscious mind something, I kept thinking about the dream.

Within a few days, I was astonished to realize that I wanted to take a solo trip to London and Paris. This might not seem like such an astonishing wish to you; lots of people want to go to London and Paris. It was shocking to me, however, because I have always been a travelphobe.

There were so many things about travel that frightened me. I was scared my plane would crash. I was scared I would get irredeemably lost in trying to navigate public transportation. I was scared I would lose my passport or get beaten or harrassed or raped. I was scared I would spend a ridiculous amount of money, only to instantly get homesick for my garden and birds (that was another clue!). I was scared I would be obliged to do something touristy that I didn’t want to do.

But most of all, I was scared that the jostling and angled sunshine and lack of sleep that are inherent to travel would trigger a migraine. As I explained in my post from December 26 called Medical Mysteries (Part 2), I have suffered from periodic migraines for my whole life. They always last exactly ten days. They are debilitating, involving level-10 pain, aversion to light and noise, expulsion of stomach contents, and much moaning and rolling around amidst bedsheets.

As I explained in that post from last December, I had been unexpectedly rescued by magnesium in an easily absorbable form. I had not experienced a ten-day migraine since beginning my vitamin supplement regimen; and that happy streak continues to this day.

A miracle! Was it a god of travel—perhaps Hermes, a.k.a. Mercury—who had come to my aid?! But I will stay on track with this story, I promise.

The point is, my unconscious mind had realized, long before the “I” that I’m better acquainted with did, that my recent deliverance from periodic migraine hell opened up the door for me to travel. It further realized that my dilapidated and largely nonexistent love life would be a boon to me while traveling, for I would not have to compromise on how I would spend my time. Moreover, it realized that London was a perfect destination for doing things I love to do—namely, enjoying literature and music. Finally, it realized that the Paris Opera House is not that far from London, in the global scheme of things; and what, it mused, is the point of middle age, if not to fulfill fantasies you had while 12 or 13 years old?

Yes—in my youth, I had an obsession with The Phantom of the Opera, both the book and the musical. So I am going to go see that old building where some of the events depicted really occurred (and where some, being romantic exaggerations, did not). And I’m going to do many other literary- and musical-type activities in Paris; and I’m going to attempt to say something comprehensible in the language, and to understand something someone says to me. Because my adult, conscious mind has realized that the Paris Opera House is merely a sentimental excuse to force me to venture very far outside of my comfort zone. To experience something that, sure, lots of people experienced at a much younger age, but I have not yet: to be alone in a faraway culture of people who speak a language that’s foreign to me.

Speaking of language—I have been enjoying hearing British accents all around me. This is not a “pigeon” English, but the genuine article. (That was your third and final clue! If you have not solved the puzzle by now, I fear there is no hope for you . . . though perhaps the answer will come to you in a dream.)

But back to the point. The point is that the human brain has both conscious and unconscious parts. Managing the interplay between the two of them, in my experience, is key to living wisely. To be solely led by one or the other is a grievous mistake. In conclusion, here is a view of the interior of the Danish cafe, behind me. There are no hidden secrets in this photo . . . at least not that I know of. Those are elsewhere. Has your unconscious mind spoken to you lately?

The memoir A Mind Unraveled, by Kurt Eichenwald, is astonishing in so many ways.

Anyone can run up against health problems and other major life difficulties, but Eichenwald’s story is uniquely interesting and instructive because of his attitude toward his struggles, as well as his phenomenal ability to analyze situations and make wise and brave decisions in even the worst of them.

His struggles were great. For years, doctors were unable to help him control his epileptic seizures. He could have one anywhere. When he had a seizure, people would often react with fear, ignorance about how to help, or hostility. Some of his college peers did not want to be his friend. Some of his college administrators did not want him to stay enrolled at the university. Some of his employers did not want him to remain working for them. One of his doctors told him that he should avoid stress by giving up on his education and career goals.

Fortunately, Eichenwald had an epiphany one day, while lying in a hospital bed:

“If I faced people who feared me or denied me work, I could control whether I gave up or tried to change their minds. I couldn’t force someone to hire me, but I could work hard, assembling a strong enough résumé to prove that I was a candidate worth considering. I couldn’t make someone love me, but I could be a person worthy of love. . . . I possessed more control than I had believed. Healthy people didn’t always understand the scope of how much could be overcome. I certainly never had before I got sick. As for what I didn’t control—the seizures, how others reacted to me—to hell with it. I could control how I reacted to the uncontrollable.”

Within this section, Eichenwald compares life to someone in an elevator. He notes that you can control whether you push a button, but you can’t control when, or whether, you will arrive. I like this metaphor a lot. I would like to offer another one, though, because life is so much more continuous and complicated than an elevator with its choice of maybe a dozen (or several dozen) buttons.

Life is being the dude or dudette sitting behind the audio mixer (a.k.a. mixing console) at a wild and large musical event. Your job is to control what the audio sounds like when it’s projected from the speakers.

There’s a lot you can control. The vast number of different buttons and levers before you would definitely baffle someone with less experience and intelligence than you. In fact, they baffle and overwhelm you at times. But if you concentrate on your task, you can create a good mix of musical sound.

There’s a lot you can’t control, though. If one of the musicians is playing off key, you can fiddle with the controls for that input, but you can’t change the fact that the musician is playing off key. If someone at that wild, live event knocks over a speaker and breaks it, you can’t control when or whether it will be replaced or fixed; you’ll simply have to proceed in broadcasting from just the working speakers.

I have read and experienced many times the truth, which Eichenwald also states, about the value of enduring hard times. When things are running smoothly, it’s tempting to sit back and enjoy the show, even if it’s not that great. But when things are going haywire? What, half of the musicians are drunk, and half of the speakers are malfunctioning? Then you’re faced with a choice. You can give up; or you can make some serious efforts to refine those controls to try to achieve the best outcome you can.

And, do you know what? Often times, the dude or dudette who’s putting the most, and most prolonged, effort into fiddling with the controls is the one who achieves the most awesome sound, regardless of the number and intensity of obstacles.

Is your life going smoothly? Or is something slightly off key? Or is everything totally haywire? No matter how easy or difficult your life is, you have the power to control many (though certainly not all) things. Are you fiddling with the buttons and levers of your audio mixer to try to maximize the quality of your sound?

Everything in moderation, including moderation.

Heard that before?

Now you have, in any case.

Feel free to attribute that quote to me.

After all, I wrote it.

(Look above, if you don’t believe me.)

Take it and run with it, Internet!

Origin of the Quote

Oh, so you require more persuasion before quoting me on that? You wish to know who said “Everything in moderation, including moderation” before I did?

That’s easy—it was my date the other night. We might have been discussing whether we should order more small-plated food. Upon which he uttered the aforementioned string of words. Or perhaps it was another round of drinks that we were contemplating. Or was it dessert? I can’t remember; I was pretty inebriated at that point.

I’m confident that he said it, though. I remarked that that sounded like good wisdom, and that I should write a blog post about that. He remarked that that sounded like an excellent idea. And we flagged down the waitress and put in another order . . . of whatever it was we were contemplating ordering.

In any case, once I had recovered from that bout of immoderation, I decided to investigate the origins of the saying. If you believe the Internet (and—let’s be honest—who doesn’t??), the first part was said by everyone from Socrates to Aristotle to other illustrious, sandal-wearing dudes; while the latter part was tacked on by everyone from Benjamin Franklin to Oscar Wilde to Julia Child, not to mention several less famous, but surely equally redoubtable, personages.

What difference, I ask, is one more soul in this little parade of elocutionists likely to make?

Analysis of the Quote

Lately, I’ve had Taylor Swift’s album Reputation on repeat. Its first song “…Ready for It?” has a relevant lyric:*

I see two extremes here. Trying too hard to win over a crush seldom works. As for not trying at all . . . at first blush, this seems like a good strategy. Swift’s narrator is certainly captivated by the man in question. She launches into an extended fantasy about captivating his desire as he has captivated hers, and all that will happen as a result.

However, if the narrator’s crush is truly not trying at all, is anything likely to happen between them? Doubtful. Sure, she could throw herself at a man who isn’t trying at all to win her love. But if he’s really that uninterested in her (or uninterested in love with anyone, or cynical about any possibility of love), her dreams about him touching her, while they’re someplace with low lighting on some island, begin to sound more creepy than romantic.

The narrator ends the song by repeating these words:

If he’s not trying at all, then the answer is clearly no, he’s not ready for it. Playing a game with someone who isn’t trying at all is no fun at all. But if he’s only acting like he’s not trying, but actually putting in a highly nuanced effort to win her affection? Now he’s starting to sound pretty cool . . . and like he knows something about the wisdom of moderation.

And maybe, while they’re on the island, he’ll ditch the whole moderation thing and go wild!

And then, being the wise man he is, he’ll give Taylor** a good-bye kiss, fly home, and mow his lawn.

Uses of the Quote

In conclusion, I wrote the saying “Everything in moderation, including moderation.” (See the opening line of this blog post, or, actually, to save time, see the previous sentence.)

You can quote me on that.

For example, you can quote me on your next batch of T-shirts, mugs, coasters, knickknacks, wall hangings, notepad covers, or other trinkets you plan to sell on Etsy.

Feel free to go nuts with it!

Just, after you go nuts, back off for a bit.

Moderation, people.

*For a more complete analysis of the song, see the blog post by Clifford Stumme, a.k.a. the Pop Song Professor, called What does "...Ready For It?" by Taylor Swift mean?

**The name of the song's narrator is (coincidentally!!) Taylor.

One of the great things about the book The Body Keeps the Score, by Bessel van der Kolk, M.D., is that it is written for laypeople and practitioners alike. No matter whether you’re the one lying on the couch, so to speak, or the one with the credentials, the book contains massive amounts of research-based insights.

One point that Dr. van der Kolk makes over and over is that not every strategy works for every patient. The key, whether you are the person in search of healing or the therapist, is to find the strategies that work, and move forward with those. That sounds like wisdom to me! That being said, the doctor explains that an overriding principle applies when people seek to recover from trauma:

“Trauma robs you of the feeling that you are in charge of yourself, of what I will call self-leadership in the chapters to come. The challenge of recovery is to reestablish ownership of your body and your mind—of your self.”

This passage occurs on the first page of the last section of the book, “Paths to Recovery,” which takes up nearly half its pages. In this section, Dr. van der Kolk offers information on a variety of ways that people can move toward self-leadership. These strategies are as diverse as the people they help. Some require a group of people, some require one-on-one sessions, and some require the seeker of relief to be alone. Some require help from a trained professional (in psychology, yoga, theater, choir, or another area), and some require merely a willingness on the part of the seeker of relief to try something new.

Dr. van der Kolk further refines what it means to develop self-leadership. Here is his explanation of what self-leadership entails, no matter which strategies one uses:

“For most people this involves (1) finding a way to become calm and focused, (2) learning to maintain that calm in response to images, thoughts, sounds, or physical sensations that remind you of the past, (3) finding a way to be fully alive in the present and engaged with the people around you, (4) not having to keep secrets from yourself, including secrets about the ways that you have managed to survive.”

All four of these involve taking control over one’s life. Learning to be and remain calm is the same thing as learning to control one’s response to emotions. Learning to stay in the present (and not the past) is the same thing as learning to control one’s experiences. Engaging with other people is the same thing as taking control over one’s ability to receive something essential to all people: human companionship and love. And being honest with oneself is an essential first step in taking control over one’s life—as opposed to letting one’s fears control it.

In writing this post, I suddenly remembered a short story I read in college, “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. At the time, I did not understand why my professor thought the story was so great. I reread it just now, and wow—do I understand now. (Oh, the things I wish I had picked up on at a younger age!)

“The Yellow Wallpaper” is about a woman experiencing “nervous depression.” Her husband and her brother, both physicians, insist that the cure is for her to do as little as possible. She must not do anything she loves, such as writing or visiting with loved ones! No, she must stay isolated at home, mainly in bed, until she recovers. The poor narrator trusts these authoritative men more than she trusts her own intuition. Things do not, needless to say, end well.

If you are hoping to recover from trauma, the last thing you need is for someone to further restrict your agency. And note that Dr. van der Kolk mentions both writing and loving human contact as strategies for developing self-leadership. But also note: the answer is not to stop listening to the advice of loved ones and professionals. Rather, it is to listen to them with a grain of salt. If your gut tells you a recommendation is a bad idea . . . it probably is. Even if the person giving you the recommendation is a doctor, your husband, or both.

Who’s in charge of your life?

Have you ever lived in a home with a fire alarm that was too sensitive?

It creates quite the scene! You’re innocently boiling water on the stovetop, when the merest thread of smoke happens to emanate from the burner. You don’t notice it. You can’t see it. You can’t smell it. Your husband across the room can’t smell it. Not even your dog can smell it.

And then—BLEEEET!!!! Ouch, your ears hurt! and you can’t think and you and your husband are crashing into each other as you lunge for the same towel and the dog is barking and howling and you try to fan the alarm, but it’s too high up and you realize you need to grab a chair and stand on it and meanwhile your ears, ouch! and you finally get the chair in place and stand on it and fan the darn thing, and it stops blaring. Whew! You decide to take out the battery, because this happened three times this week, and you put the chair away. But then you think, “What if there’s a real fire?” So you put the chair back and put the battery back in, and the darn thing starts blaring again because the water is now boiling over the sides of the pot and creating another minuscule emission of smoke so you fan it off again. You shut off the burner, and meanwhile it fails to occur to either you or your husband to notify the landlord, partly because the landlord is annoying to deal with, but mostly because you’re in your 20s . . . which is an excellent excuse for all kinds of mistakes!

I read the most amazing and scholarly and mind-blowing book recently. In it, the author compares a certain structure within the brain—the amygdala—to a smoke detector. This alarm system warns the body of danger and triggers a quick response. Trauma, according to the author, can cause the body’s smoke detector to become too sensitive. This creates an internal state as chaotic as the scene described above.

The Body Keeps the Score, by Bessel van der Kolk, M.D., is one of the best books I have read in the past year. It’s long, but every page is a gem.

The book means a lot to me personally. Trauma can arise in different ways; fighting in a war and being raised by a psychopath are only two of many possible causes. I feel confident in saying that I have experienced trauma. I also feel confident in saying that navigating the U.S. health care system to find the help I needed was a disheartening—and traumatic—experience in itself. That’s why passages from the book like this one mean so much to me:

“Psychologists usually try to help people use insight and understanding to manage their behavior. However, neuroscience research shows that very few psychological problems are the result of defects in understanding; most originate in pressures from deeper regions in the brain that drive our perception and attention. When the alarm bell of the emotional brain keeps signaling that you are in danger, no amount of insight will silence it.”

I tried so hard to heal myself through rational thinking! And others tried so hard to heal me by encouraging me to think rationally! But this failed. Using the logical, conscious part of the brain to try to heal trauma is like waving a towel at an overly sensitive fire alarm. Sure, it works . . . but only if you attend to it continuously and avoid doing anything else in life, for fear the alarm starts blaring again.

When I was in the thick of my struggles, each of these helped me significantly more than talk therapy:

• Yoga
• Neurofeedback and learning to meditate
• Unconditional support from loved ones and professionals, especially those who were empathetic listeners and who urged me to contact them anytime
• Joining a choir
• Attending spiritual services, as well as personal spirituality and prayer
• Medication

Most of these aren’t considered mainstream medical services in the U.S. Thus, most are not covered by health insurance. But as I read The Body Keeps the Score, I was astonished to see every one of these strategies pop up as effective and recommended treatments for trauma. Dr. van der Kolk devotes an entire chapter to yoga, for example, and another to rhythms and theater (which includes a discussion of singing and ceremony). As it turns out, the strategies I gravitated toward in my search for healing, some of which are classified as “alternative medicine”—a term often used pejoratively—are supported by research conducted by leading medical specialists. And yet the U.S. health care system has a long way to go in incorporating this research into practice.

Note that none of the strategies on the list involve rational thought. In metaphorical terms, none of them affect one’s ability to wave a towel. Instead, the strategies work by accessing and repairing (or, in the case of medication, artificially rigging) the smoke alarm itself.

How do you access the unconscious areas of your brain?