A SIMPLE WAY TO REDUCE ANXIETY

Give yourself time | Photo by Kalen Emsley on Unsplash

I would like to introduce you to Time Decompression; or Time Expansion, if you prefer.  It is a technique I developed while researching counselling psychology, and studying the way time seems to work in therapy sessions.

If you have ever watched yourself when you were anxious, or reflected on it afterwards, you may have noticed that anxiety often has at its root an impatience for things to be otherwise, and quickly.  Perhaps you are anxious because you have an exam next week, and you do not feel that you know enough.  This kind of anxiety has four components:

1. You feel that something in your life needs to change

2. You feel that it is difficult or fearful for you to effect that change

3. You (consciously or unconsciously) conceptualise a time limit for that change

4. You (consciously or unconsciously) feel that the time limit is too short

WHAT I NOTICED IN COUNSELLING SESSIONS

Therapy sessions are often set at 50 minutes.  Some therapists try to offer convoluted reasons for this, but the main reason is that an hour is western humans' go-to time for meetings, and therapists need to wee, and make notes (10 minutes therefore deducted).  The strictness is so that therapists can appear very professional.  I mean, really, what would therapists have to denote ther professionalism if they did not control the time, and pathologise anyone else who wanted to control it?!

What I noticed was that anxious clients often felt the need to cut meetings short, and certainly were out of the door quicker than depressed clients.  It was as though anxious clients lived in accordance with an invisible rule: get home as quickly as possible.  Home, whatever it was conceived to be, was a place of safety.  Time pressure was evident pretty much all the time, even in micro-behaviours.  Such clients tended to be watchful of other people's movements, and keen to detect when it might be time to move on.  It was as though they were alarm clocks, set with a hair-trigger mechanism, liable to panic at the least provocation.

Time felt compressed.  As a counsellor, I often rely on absorbing a sense of where a client is in the moment.  Internalising into myself what was going on for them, I became aware of a kind of impatience, and over-watchfulness, together with a sense of personal inadequacy - a feeling, in short, that, as above, (1) something was wrong, (2) it was difficult to confront, (3) it felt urgent or pressing, and (4) waiting was not an option.  Thus the body became a kind of pressure cooker, boiling up with urgent need, perhaps the skin flushing, panic symptoms arising... all in a kind of impatience with the world.

I don't want to pathologise my clients.  I experience the same thing too.  Most of my human knowledge is gained from self-observation.  I am at least as guilty of anxiety as the next person.  But I am outlining what I think I saw.

HOW THIS APPLIES TO EVERYDAY SITUATIONS

This, to me, is to do with our experience of time.

We all, consciously or unconsciously, apply time frames to our lives.  You might feel you should be married by the time you are a certain age, or out of bed by a certain time, or have disposed of a lost loved one's possessions by a certain month... we are often full of self-imposed requirements that our worlds change by a certain time.

In my research, I took this thought, and tried to apply an opposite.  If anxiety is often characterised by time compression (i.e. wishing things could quickly be otherwise for us), then perhaps anxiety could be reduced by time-expansion (or time decompression), by lowering the pressure to change our world in a short time.

TIME-EXPANDING TASKS

I began to ask myself: what tasks do we perform which might be time-expanding, and anxiety-reducing?

A CLUE IN BOREDOM

In my ponderings, I noticed that boredom was a kind of opposite of anxiety.  I noticed that, when bored, individuals' adrenal systems closed down, and they started to fall asleep.  They no longer needed to be alert and hyper-sensitive.  Now, I bet you have never heard a doctor prescribe boredom as a medicine for patients!  But perhaps it is not such a silly idea.

Boring situations have certain characteristics, which are in many ways the opposite of the anxious characteristics:

1. We feel that our challenge or extreme action is not necessary

2. We feel that it is all too easy to assimilate and experience

3. There seems to be no time limit to things (such as an interminably boring lecture!)

4. There seems to be no urgency (perhaps everything is flat, routine, predictable)

DESIGNING YOUR OWN TIME-EXPANDING ACTIVITIES

I am not suggesting we live our lives permanently bored!  But I am suggesting that we apply to anxiety an opposite context, in order to balance it out and calm it.

If you are anxious, I suggest you design for yourself an activity which consists of the following:

1. A manageable, minimal level of challenge

2. A fairly easy thing to get your head around

3. A time guide which is much longer than the activity needs

4. Something that is not urgent

An example for me: if I wish to calm down easily, I pick up my boots, and polish them.  I know how to do it; it's easy; I give myself half an hour, much longer than I need; it's not urgent (my life won't end if I can't polish my boots!).

For you, it may be something else.  But try to choose something easy, and give yourself a longer time than necessary to do it.

THE BENEFITS OF TIME-EXPANDING ACTIVITIES

There are several benefits to this approach.  I have used it a lot myself (I am my biggest experimental guinea pig!); and friends and clients have seemed to find it helpful.  A few classic benefits are:

1. It reduces adrenaline levels.  We all need to use our adrenaline systems, but not all the time, and not on overdrive!

2. It makes you feel more peaceful.  Your friends will appreciate your chilled-out manner :)

3. It broadens your attentional bias (when anxious, your world compresses; when peaceful, you can see more)

4. It gets something useful done! (Even Formula 1 drivers need their cars cleaned... you are giving yourself a 'pit stop'.)

5. It teaches your mind, conscious and unconscious, that everything is not urgent.  And it really isn't.  The universe has billions of years available.

Think of your diary as an elastic band.  When your appointments are constricting and urgent, you will feel your flow constricted and strangled by urgency.  Your body will tell you that it is tired, but your adrenaline system will tell you that things are urgent.  This is the formula for adrenal fatigue.

Time-expanding activities relax the elastic band a little.  Your life is still held together by a little structure, but you have room to move, to breathe, to be yourself.

SUMMARY

When anxiety is getting the better of you, try to find a simple activity that you enjoy, and give yourself a nice long time to complete it, much longer than you need.  You will find your adrenal system relaxes, your attentional system expands, and you become more peaceful.  What more could you want?

If you are interested in practicing this or other forms of relaxing activity in your life, do get in touch, and I'd be happy to work with you, and learn from you, in developing helpful techniques.  Everyone is different, and I welcome the opportunity to meet others who want to join together and find practical ways to be peaceful.

YOU ARE SO NOT ORIGINAL

Once we admit that we are, to a great extent, queue-ers-up in an existential queue, learning to be what others already are, waiting to be initiated, then we can begin to have a purchase on our existence.  Without this admission, we are deceiving ourselves about our own originality. Photo by Julie Johnson on Unsplash

One of the most underestimated ways to develop is simple copying.  Which is strange, because humans are very good at copying.  Our genetic foundation is based upon an ability, in principle, to replicate large chunks of our functioning between generations.  And our cultures are founded on rituals and processes which replicate, in principle, traditions, thereby passing them on.

You'll notice I said 'in principle' when talking about human replication.  In actual fact, no replication is perfect.  Nevertheless, we are, more than we know, biological and cultural photocopiers, perpetuating ways of life and being easily and naturally.

THE UNDERESTIMATED SKILL

Why do I describe copying as an underestimated skill?  Well, centres of learning, for instance, often pride themselves on being centres of critical thinking.  But many qualifications can be obtained simply by copying of the factual and cultural practices of the institution awarding them.  At worst, we have a hypocritical situation where schools and universities say that they are encouraging creativity and critical thought; but in practice they reward replication of what they expect to see.

So copying is underestimated in that we pretend it has little role; we kind of ignore it, as though it is not worth thinking about.  Instead, we celebrate how innovative we are being, how new, how groundbreaking... while continuing, in practice, to replicate.

IS COPYING BAD?

You might notice an ambivalence in this article about copying.  On the one hand, I seem to be saying it is a good thing, that we cannot do without it.  On the other, though, I seem to be suggesting it is a hidden sin, a symptom of hypocrisy.

I guess I feel that it is both.  On the one hand, it is a foundation of art, craft and science.  Tradition enables the building of knowledge bases which can inform the education of students, who can then get a head start, incorporating into their practice generations of awareness without having to suffer for it.  And replicability enables the building of scientific libraries, predictive in nature, offering models of being which can be assented to because consistently and methodically attained.

On the other hand, there comes a time when simple replication feeds those who replicate, but creates nothing new.  If institutions reward replication too much, they will become blind to the new.  Members of those institutions will have to escape in order to create.  Hence, I suppose, dissidence, where citizens move from the trammels of a self-replicating culture, towards one which offers more breathing space.

OUR DEVELOPMENT AS CHILDREN

When young, we are, in a sense, built to investigate... but also to copy rapaciously.  For instance, we passionately seek out first experiences - we want to know what new sensations feel like, what new places have to offer, what happens to things when we drop them, throw them, put them in our mouth.  Thus investigation is embedded in our being from the start.

But, allied to this, and in some ways keeping us safe, is a complementary urge to copy.  We feel safe when we do what others are doing.  We compare, and feel it acutely when we feel too different; we often seek to buy what others buy, to join the groups that others join.

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT COPYING

So I am certainly not suggesting that copying is inherently bad.  We need it in order not only to assimilate others' practices, but to extend and communicate any experience by association.  The replication of grammatical rules and understood vocabulary enables language to bear meaningful discussion.  Without it, we would have to reinvent the world every day; we would have the cultural equivalent of Alzheimer's.

However.  And it is a big however.  We need, I think, to be more open about what copying we are asking for.  Enough of education which pretends to be high-proportion critical thinking, but is in fact high-proportion regurgitation.  Let's be honest.  Let's say clearly 'Yes, much of our education is in fact a practice which rewards the replication of a set knowledge base.'  Let's not pretend to be more creative than we are.

And when we vote, let's be aware how much we are copying the cultural practices of our friends, or our heroes.  Let's not pretend that we have thought our way, personally, to our own views about everything.

THE RELEVANCE TO THE SOCIAL MEDIA DEBATE

The public and media have reacted with something approaching horror to revelations that some companies make it their business to manipulate our views, and control the knowledge we access.  Well, if we are copying beings, what do we expect?  If we pretend we live in a critical nirvana, where our thoughts are pure and individually-made, then yes, we will react with horror to the thought that our perfection might be tainted.  However, if we admit that our whole lives are soaked in copying; that we copied our language, our politics, our style, our material existences, from others, with only limited modification by us... if we admit this, then we have a chance of better allowing for companies that manipulate.

The social media debate just makes more obvious something that happens all the time: we copy others.  A large part of us is built to swallow what people say wholesale.  That's why and how we can enter the world of a film or a book - we are built that way.  Even Stockholm syndrome is not a surprise when we think about it this way - we are so easily manipulated because we are constantly looking for world-views to assimilate and swallow pretty much whole.

A CONTEXT

I have focused on copying.  But there are plenty of other ways of thinking.  In particular, there is critical thinking, in which we learn to take apart, and stand at a distance from, what we see.  There is also strategic thinking, in which we begin to choose exactly what we copy, and how.

But let's, at first, start where we are: the human race is a race of flagrant copiers, swallowing pretty much whole each other's ways of life, words, languages, styles, practices.  Let's stop pretending we are so original.

Once we admit that we are, to a great extent, queue-ers-up in an existential queue, learning to be what others already are, waiting to be initiated, then we can begin to have a purchase on our existence.  Without this admission, we are deceiving ourselves about our own originality.

A WORD ABOUT CREATIVITY

All this is not to say originality and creativity do not exist.  But I am arguing that, unless we stop and realise exactly how much we are uncreative and unoriginal... unless we do that every day... then we will not begin to be truly original and creative.  We will simply think we are, and go about regurgitating the same things, applauded by those who think the same things, not realising that we are just repeating, repeating.

When was the last time you rewarded someone for doing something different?  Honestly, are you more likely to reward your friends if they take you into new territory, or if they simply reassure you about a copied truth you don't want to let go of.

I remember a tutor once telling her class to think critically at all costs.  I remember that same tutor, the following week, telling a student that their critical thinking was simply resistance to the traditional truth.  You can't have it both ways.

WHAT CAN WE DO?

I'm not suggesting we do anything differently.  Only that, perhaps, we could become more aware of exactly how much of a role copying plays, even in adult life.  Then we might better understand group-think, politics, social media, and many other aspects of behaviour.  In my psychology training, copying was, as I see it, vastly underplayed.  It was as though the tutors and textbooks were ashamed that things could be that simple.  After all, it's creativity that makes us human... isn't it?  I wonder.  I really wonder.

A SUMMARY

Humans are natural copiers.  But we pretend we are not.  We pretend that we have reasons for everything we do, when often we have simply copied what others do.  Recent interactions between politics and social media have presented us with a frightening truth about how manipulable we are.  And yet we can't quite accept that this is how we function.  Perhaps we should be more honest with ourselves, and admit that most of our lives are copied.  Perhaps, only then, can we engage our critical and strategic brains effectively.  First, we need to realise exactly how far our urge to copy extends.

So I challenge you.  I say you are not original.  And if you think you are... how are you going to prove me wrong?

KEEPING THE PEACE

It takes a strong person, and a lot of integrity, to remain steadfastly connected to a calm perspective when everyone around you wants you to take sides.

Recently there has been a lot of fuss about Russia.  I don't mean to demean the fuss, but to put it into context, international relations have always had their ups and downs, and at times of great political heat, populations tend to get caught up in the bias.  I was thinking how it relates to the fuss that goes on in families - the same accusations, the same misinformation, the same provocations, the same reactiveness.  I was wondering what could be learned.

There are a few characteristics of these times.  Remember, perhaps, the Iraq war(s), and how various pieces of 'information' were assembled into dossiers and presented as fact.  In particular, chemical and biological weapons, it was implied, existed, and were quite possibly to be used.  Wording was found that pushed the known truth to its boundaries and slightly beyond, to maximise acceptance of the desired political stance.  The public and Members of Parliament were made to feel disloyal if they did not join the lying (or twisting of the truth); if they did not, they were accused of being traitorous in some way.

What are the main things that change when things get intense?

SWEEPING STATEMENTS ARE MADE

Think of the last argument you had with a loved one.  I bet it was hard to avoid statements like 'You always...'  When we're annoyed, and in the heat of the moment, our angry selves take over, and make the truth subservient to our personal needs. We are inclined to borrow from the truth to support our own perspective.  It's not how it should be, but we do it because we think we are under attack.

Currently, politicians are lining up to show their loyalty to the UK by inventing new phrases about 'Russian Oligarchs' and 'Putin's henchmen'.  The implication is that Russia (we don't really know what we mean by this) is somehow irredeemably bad, and will always do bad things.  The only option, apparently, is to stand up to Russia, to ostracise it, reduce its influence, and starve it of resources, until it comes to its senses and gives in.  Life is not that simple, but we don't care; we just want a clear enemy.

STANDARDS OF EVIDENCE ARE REDUCED

Governments have an advantage here.  Logically, they must keep a part of government private, to do investigations.  Politicians have access to such investigations before the public.  Therefore, politicians are in a position to imply anything they like, and to hint that someone, somewhere, in the private realm, has disclosed evidence to them.  No member of the public can challenge that.

In this way, at times of threat and haste, no one has time to wait for conclusions.  Politicians have great power, in that they can assert what they like, and loyal staff will not contradict them, for fear of being disloyal.

The temptation to manipulate public opinion is so great, that politicians use it en masse, and then cannot turn back, because they might seem to be supporting 'the other side', whatever that other side, that enemy, might currently be.

Again, think of the last time you got upset with a loved one.  During an argument, or an intense situation, we can be tempted to speak first, and check our facts later.  It is almost impossible for us to restrain this urge to pretend we know more than we do.   We are desperate to gain control of the story, and so we assert what we can, especially when no one can prove us wrong.  Religion can be misused in this way.  Who can argue if someone says that God has inspired their point of view?  

IF YOU'RE NOT FOR US, YOU'RE AGAINST US

Suddenly, when politics gets intense, a 'for or against' mentality applies.  In personal relationships, too, we make the same distinctions.  Watch a couple splitting, and you will often see a great wariness about the 'story' that gets put out.  Friends' loyalties are tested, as each ex-partner tries to ascertain who is 'on their side'.  Families often divide on biological lines, and one or other party can lose a lot of friends overnight.

In the current frenzy about 'Russia', Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the opposition, has been accused several times of being somehow allied with the enemy, when he simply calls for restraint, and patience, in waiting for evidence to come through about the truth of a situation.  It takes a strong person, and a lot of integrity, to remain steadfastly connected to a calm perspective when everyone around you wants you to take sides.  But it's how wars start, and we'd do well to look at Mr Corbyn's example, whatever our political perspective.  Waiting is unfashionable, but it often pays off in the modern intense political arena.  A lot can change in a few days or hours.

TO SUMMARISE WHAT CAN GO WRONG

So, in families, or among friends, or in politics, three things in particular can go wrong:

1. We start making sweeping statements about our enemies

2. We stop waiting for evidence, and pretend we know things we don't

3. We start trying to alienate those who disagree with us

In personal lives, the kind of things we say include:

'John was always difficult.  I think he's got a psychological disorder.  I saw him with Jane the other day.  He's such a nasty piece of work.  I don't know what she's thinking.'

In political lives, the kinds of things we say include:

'Jeremy has always had links to socialist governments.  He's unelectable.  He's now trying to defend Putin.  I don't trust him.'

THE MIX OF FACT AND FICTION

In all our lives, all the time, fact and fiction are linked.  That's why we read books, return to life, read more, live more... fact and fiction are fused in an alliance which helps us learn about life.  In a right relation with each other (when our intentions are compassionate), they help us.  In a wrong relation with each other (when our intentions are malicious), they turn our minds upside down.

WHAT CAN WE DO?

So what's a better way to be?  Well, remember that famous poem 'If' by Rudyard Kipling:

'If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you...'

That poem advocates maintaining a peaceful calm and a clear perspective whatever the circumstances.  It's worth a re-read.

In the meantime, maybe, to protect yourself against all the truth-bending:

1. Stop talking so much, and just listen.

2. Wait and see.

3. Be compassionate towards everybody.

There may be a time when you need to take sides and fight.  But just make sure you're not being manipulated in the moment.  Make sure you're not accidentally fighting someone else's battle.  Make sure your intentions are free of bias.

SUMMARY

Modern politics is increasingly 'in the moment' and frantic.  To protect ourselves, and the truth, we need to get better at listening, waiting, and being compassionate.  That way, we can't be manipulated into fighting other people's battles.  We can stay free to make peace.

EVIDENCE VERSUS FAITH

Photo by Stephen Mayes on Unsplash

There is a great movement at the moment towards evidence-based practice, in all walks of life.  Ironically, it has arisen as a political reaction.  In the UK, there has been an evidence-based response to two events in particular.  Firstly, the election of Donald Trump as president of the US.  And secondly, the election of exit from the European Union as the UK's chosen path.

Donald Trump has not been afraid to make statements of fact which are open to being disproved.  A famous example was his implication about the size of the crowd at his inauguration.  Many media miles were travelled performing fact checks on this and other claims.  It has become a bit of a game to wait for a claim, check it for evidence, report the evidence, and debunk the claim.  Donald Trump humself doesn't seem to mind too much.  Once the statement has been made, he is on to something else, getting interested in a new thing.  His is not a mind that wants to dissect the past with a fine toothcomb.  I can't imagine him as an archeologist.

Politicians arguing the case for or against the UK's exit from the EU, too, have put claims out there which have later been the object of controversy and challenge.  Here, the most famous message was 'We send the EU £350 million a week.  Let's fund our NHS instead.'  Again, it has been a favourite game to check this for evidence, and challenge the claim.  Again, the producers of such slogans are often on to new projects, and find themselves somewhat hampered by the political archeologists who insist on digging up evidential controversy.

LIFE IS NOT A LABORATORY

However, I suggest that those on the side of evidence are missing a trick.  They are using typical laboratory techniques for assessing statements which are made out there in the field, outside the laboratory, where events can often overtake our controlled thinking.  There is a danger that they will be found, still in their white coats, debunking myths, when life on Earth has ended.  If so, they will have failed to convince.

The evidence-gatherers have been part of a generation of passive citizens who have taken part in funded experiments.  Their nurturing has been done in a safe school environment, where the system is as follows:

1. You get funded for research

2. You do research in accordance with the rules

3. You publish your results

4. You are evaluated by your peers

5. You are given your reward

There is little to do in this environment but perpetuate the same evidence-based systems.  There is no army to apply factual claims.  There is not even any funding unless you are seen to be useful by someone, whether is be a business wanting to further its aims, or a student wanting to further their career.

The fact-producing arena, in short, has no talons.  It waits at the bird table, and feeds on whatever seeds are thrown at it.

HOW STATESMEN DIFFER

This is not the world of the statesman.  (It's a gendered word.  I'd rather say statesperson.  But statesman is the familiar word.)  The statesman does not live in the laboratory.  A good statesman will be familiar with the produce of scientific research, certainly, and will take it into account.  But, primarily, the role of the statesman is to lead.

Statemen thrive on myth.  Don't get me wrong, I don't mean myth in the sense of lies.  I mean myth in terms of engaging stories which tell a truth.  And the truth here is different from laboratory truth.  The truth of myth is a story which holds all the world together with what I call a 'felicity' - in other words, a good producer of myth happily joins together all the complexity of the world in an inspiring moment of simplicity.  This inspiring moment of simplicity is what is experienced as truth, but it is not so well understood by current journalists.

Religious leaders are statesmen of a sort (although much of the honing of speeches is done by others after the event).  They are held up as examples of how life can be simplified into something inspiring.  This kind of truth frees us up to act in simple ways without being hampered by the complexity of everything.

The system for statesmen is different:

1. You experience a challenging life

2. You build up enormous reserves of inner strength

3. You share what you have learned

4. You gain a body of support

5. You are simplified into an ideal, an example to follow

Statesmen are more resilient.  They have an ability to reinvent themselves in response to complexity.  They are like sculptures sculpting themselves with their environment, seeking out new relationships with their surroundings.

THE BATTLE

So we have two versions of truth. 

• One collects data, in a well-behaved manner, according to established rules, and then publishes results.
• The other collects experience, often going against pre-established rules of conduct, and then shares learnings, gaining a body of support.

We can see this battle, for instance, in arguments between science and religion.  Representatives of science have methods, and only state things in accordance with those methods, however complex.  Many religious statespeople have learned to simplify life - that is their special truth - into wise sayings that are felicitous and transformative.

Adherents of religions who have learned to gain solace from the truth in its simplicity... they do not need the complexities of science to practise their religion.  Equally, adherents of science who have built careers from applying method... they do not need the simplicity of religion to help their lives to cohere.

There are two different functions happening here.  The truth that clarifies with simplification, and the truth that clarifies with method.

THE ATTRACTION

Look at the election battle between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.  Donald represented the truth that clarifies with simplification; and Hillary the truth that clarifies with method.

Perhaps a number of voters, in their evaluation, sought a presented truth that simplified the world into something they could handle.  Perhaps, in Hillary, a number of people saw someone who was a practised applier of method, comfortable and cold in her dealings.  Perhaps a number of people saw, in Donald, someone who eschewed method, but spoke with simplicity, based on experience.

I am not taking sides.  I am just looking at what might be happening in terms of the history of ideas.

MINGLING EVIDENCE AND FAITH

Evidence and faith can be complementary.  Statesmen do come along who are able to blend method and simplicity.

But often, political leaders come across as either unbearably methodical (with the public starting to use robot analogies); or unbearably simplistic (with the public starting to use madness analogies).

Perhaps change starts from within.  Perhaps we can start by learning two things:

1. Life is not all method.  However scientific you think you are being, lend a thought to our human need to simplify, to find a truth, a myth, a story, that felicitously holds the world together in a view we can assent to.

2. Life is not all simplicity.  Just when you think you have the simple truth in your hand, something will happen to wake you up out of your complacency, and you will have to modify your view in order to survive.

SUMMARY

Political events can polarise the public into representatives of scientific truth, and representatives of simple truth.  Leaders can seem firmly in one camp or the other.  We might benefit from learning that neither evidence, nor faith, need encompass everything.  Perhaps the science-y people could accept that many humans feel comforted by simple truths; and the faith-y people could accept that many humans feel comforted by facts. Perhaps a well-rounded politician appreciates the influence of both. 

LANGUAGE IS A SENSE

I'd like to make the case for language being a sense.

I know that sounds ridiculous.  But perhaps I could take you to a place where I had the thought.

I was writing a poem that was partly about our sense of smell.  How it was a very old sense in evolutionary terms, possibly deriving from when simpler organisms responded to changing chemical environments.  And I wanted to write the line:

Smell is an ancient sense,

older than words

I thought: I am, in part, treating language as a sense.  It seems perfectly natural, but why?

And I started to think about what that was all about.

PUTTING OUT AND GETTING BACK

The thing about senses is they are active.  They are not just a question of receiving signals.  That's a misunderstanding.  Without putting out tentacles, you don't feel.  Without putting out assumptions about sound, you don't hear, not clearly.

Here's an example of what I mean.  Your hearing system is not just passive; it is constantly adjusting itself, testing the world and acting on feedback.  I remember reading the story of someone who was deaf and was cured by an operation.  At first, the world was a mess of sound.  What their brain had to do was learn to calibrate itself until the world's signals were manageable.

Vision, too, works on these principles of putting out feelers and assumptions, and receiving feedback.  If you want proof, check out the concept of 'afterimage'.  When we look at something, we apply to it a barrage of assumptions; in the to-and-fro, we develop a way of adjusting our assumptions until they are sculpted, if you like, to the shape of the object we are witnessing.  When the object is suddenly withdrawn, the evidence of the assumptions we are 'putting out' is betrayed in the afterimage, which is an imprint of active assumptions against a now-neutral background. 

HOW WE PUT OUT AND GET BACK WITH LANGUAGE

Sensory adaptation is, in this sense, the act of putting out, getting back, and developing a network of residual assumptions which assist us in understanding the world.  When we learn to speak, we start by putting out noises.  (Actually we don't, we already have a set of assumptions ready from the womb; also words are not just noises, they are signs... but let's simplify things for the moment.)  We put out a noise, which is a word in its most basic form; a meaningful sound unit.  We get a response.  Maybe an echo, maybe a smile.  We spend our childhoods calibrating this 'sense of how to hear and what to say' until our word communications build in maturity.

ISN'T LANGUAGE A CONCEPTUAL NETWORK RATHER THAN A SENSE IN ITSELF?

Some would say that language is conceptual, and operates via hearing, seeing, touch etc as appropriate.  In these terms, language belongs in the general realm of 'thought', rather than sensory input and output.

But I wonder.  What if we turned the whole thing on its head, and considered thought itself the original sense.  The idea would be that organisms learned to interact in sensitive and selective ways long before the development of mammalian sense organs as we know them.  This redefinition of 'sense' would place the conceptual field right at the centre of sensing, with the five traditional senses redefined as mere sense-organs.

A TRIAL DEFINITION OF SENSE

A sense, then, might be defined as a system of knowing made up of putting out, getting back, and modifying.  It does not matter how this happens, only that it happens.

Armed with this definition, one might see how language can be a sense.  We put out words; we get them back; we interactively modify our language network until our world makes more sense to us and is manageable by us.

AN APPLICATION TO THERAPY

Applied to counselling and psychotherapy, this way of conceptualising language brings into sharp focus how the process works.  After all, they are fond of naming themselves the talking therapies, without attempting to deal, in depth, with how therapeutic change happens via language.  All sorts of concepts such as empathy are evaluated and tested; but we are substantially missing an explanation in terms of language itself.  Or rather, our explanations never really put language at the centre of things.

Here is an example of how talking therapy could be understood in linguistic terms:

1. A client suffers because their language network cannot explain their world to them.  They are frustrated, and often tell themselves stories which catch some of what is going on.  But these stories are often partial, both in the sense of part-explanatory, and in the sense of biased.

2. A client exposes themselves to an external foil, a therapist who can work with them to develop their narrative powers.  They learn to express their experience using new language which gives them a better explanation of the world around them.  'Better', in this sense, means 'more manageable', just as the deaf person who can suddenly hear quickly develops 'better' hearing assumptions and filters.

3. A client leaves therapy with a better linguistic sense of their world.  In other words, the words they put out, the words they get back, and their adapted linguistic structure, are more in harmony with each other.

4. This has an effect both on a person's relationship with themselves (their self-talk is better); and also on a person's relationship with others (they negotiate with others better).

HOW THESE IDEAS CAME ABOUT

I developed these ideas as part of my post-graduate studies.  It seemed to me that therapeutic literature didn't deal very well with language in therapy.  It put it on the periphery, and didn't make it central.  This was OK for some clients - existing concepts were sufficient to explain the process reasonably.  But there seemed to be a more general underlying process, in terms of the client's narrative ability, which cut across many therapeutic sects.  It seemed to me to give a better explanation of the improvements people make.  It is not that empathy and love etc don't exist.  Of course they do, and they are important.  But it is perhaps our linguistic sense, in the widest understanding of the word (including signs, symbols, gestures, furniture positioning etc) that is central to the process by which we find healing through understanding.

Writing that poem...

Smell is an ancient sense,

older than words

...reminded me of that research.  It wasn't very well received at the time.  I was told to ground my work in existing counselling theory.  I was told that a narrative approach was all very well, but it wasn't consistent with person-centred counselling.  I disagreed.   I think that person-centred counselling is the use of language, in its widest sense, to come to a new interactive understanding of the self and others.  And, the more I think about it, the more I see language as a sense in itself.

USING WORDS

So, next time you use words, imagine yourself emitting sensory signals, with the expectation of receiving signals back.  Don't think of it as a logical venture, but as an exploration, a building of a better picture of your world.  Let yourself build a language for yourself, a way of understanding, that works for you.  You will know when it works because, like that deaf person calibrating their new hearing sense, your linguistic sense will better comprehend the world you live in.

SUMMARY

Think of a sense as being a means of putting out signals, getting back signals, and modifying your understanding.  Through your life, you learn to tell stories, and you hear stories back.  You can judge how well these stories meld into a clear understanding, by noticing how much you suffer.  The less clear your understanding is, the more you will suffer.  Talking therapy can help you to negotiate a new story, one which better explains, and is better calibrated to, your world.  Your relationship with yourself and others might improve.

How you use symbols, whether they be words, or signs, matters.  I hope I have argued a case, even, for your language being a sixth sense!

THE PROBLEM OF ECONOMY

If your car is driving at a steady 60mph, do you design all car engines to run only at 60mph? Photo by nik radzi on Unsplash

There is a persistent problem, recurring and recurring, that is to do with an underlying illusion, and an assumption based on it.  The illusion is that a thought or action can be comprehensive; and the accompanying assumption is that there can be a story or method which resolves everything.  I call it a problem of economy, because, once we realise that all resolution is only partial, then we have to admit that, because we cannot comprehend everything, we are only offering ourselves economical sketches of the truth.

Put simply, our brains are not big enough to wrap up everything, and we had better therefore be humble about the systems we rely on.

THE MATERIAL ECONOMY

One example of how this works is out in our material economy - the economy that the news reports on regularly.  An economy is an invention of man, a word, to describe what happens when individual relationships spiral into systematic relationships.  The word business simply means 'doing things', and correspondingly an economy is simply 'a mass of things being done'.  When we describe an economy as growing, we are guessing, in aggregate, how much doing has been done this year.

In other words, the economy, as we describe it, is literally that - a shorthand description to simplify all our business relationships into something we understand.  Humans love summaries: so we invent one number, the Gross Domestic Product, to codify our simplified understanding.  And suddenly we have moved from perceiving several relationships, to perceiving only one number.

WHAT'S THE PROBLEM?

One may well ask, what is the problem with this summarising, this being economical with the truth.  Whom does it harm? 

To answer that, I'd like to refer to what happens when recession strikes a modern economy.  When an economy is efficient and happy, everyone simplifies their thinking about it.  Valuing businesses becomes a simple question of profit multiples, for instance.  When life is good, there is no need to delve in, to make things complex.  We do the same in our personal lives.  Sometimes it takes a crisis to understand how complex relationships are.

Things, in fact, get so simple in the good times, that businesses start making profits on simple assumptions.  They mistake a temporary truth for an eternal one.  National lending companies operate on simple growth models.  Banks lend on simple formulae.

In short, humans become economical with the truth when there is no need to justify the truth.

Chains of business interactions start to depend on these simple assumptions, and on narrower and narrower margins.  If you feel that growth is going to be 5% for ever, then you can have 5,000 business sectors, each making easy money on 0.005% of that growth.

THE EFFICIENT ENGINE VS THE OPTIMAL ENGINE

The economy becomes like an efficient engine.  Honing itself until it can make money on practically nothing.  There grows a pyramid of hangers-on, all assuming one thing: things will go forward as they have been doing.

However, there is a problem.  Imagine that you are driving along a motorway at 60 miles per hour.  Your engine is working so efficiently, that you decide that all car engines should be designed to work only at 60 miles per hour or above.  After all, that seems to be the going speed.  

You can see that this is absurd.  You have simplified life into a few formulae that work for now.  If you redesigned all engines to work at 60mph, what would happen next?  Would you really be surprised when disaster strikes?

THE OPTIMAL ENGINE

When, suddenly, there is a traffic jam ahead, all hell breaks loose.  Your simple car economy is only built to run at 60mph in a straight line, and so your cars have no brakes, and little steering.  Suddenly there is a big pile-up.

You may feel this is silly.  I agree.  But then how we run economies is silly.  We make the same assumptions about efficiency, forgetting optimality.

We all know the optimal car has good brakes.  The optimal car is very steerable.  The optimal car knows how to achieve some efficiency at different levels of output.

In the same way, we need to build more complexity into our economies.  At the moment they are one-trick ponies, only designed to work at growth of a few percent per year.  Anything else, and we can't cope, and all argue with one another.

TRANSLATING THE CAR/ECONOMY ANALOGY TO OUR OWN IDEOLOGIES AND BEHAVIOUR

Psychologically, we are all at it.  We are all playing this game of oversimplifying life, and then getting caught short when things change.

It is how your mind is built.  That's the rule.  You go out and live, and your mind produces for you a simple story to fit what seems to be happening.  You get married, and your mind accepts a story that tomorrow will be much like today, and you will stay together.  But the complexity of experience doesn't fit our over-simplifying, and sooner or later, you will experience a crisis.

A DEFINITION OF CRISIS

From the point of view of cognitive economy, a crisis is the inevitable result of experiencing an event or change that throws into doubt your simplified model of life.  Your mind has necessarily simplified life, because you cannot possibly think all the thoughts that need to be thought in order to understand everything.  Simple you meets complex life.  And you see it as a disaster.

ANXIETY AND DEPRESSION RE-EVALUATED

How do anxiety and depresssion look from this angle?

Well, anxiety is the response of the mind to pressure beyond its ability to cope.  Something happens which calls into doubt our ability to control our world, and we throw an enormous panic, because we are suddenly reminded that everything is in doubt.  Call it existential angst if you like.  It is existential because we are simple beings, much simpler than experience.  So experience haunts and surprises us all the time.

Depression is the response of the mind to long-term pressure beyond its ability to cope.  In terms of support, it is a response to long-term neglect.  Something happens, and lasts, which calls into doubt our ability to control our world, and our constant panics haven't worked,  so instead of fluctuating in uncertainty, we slump into a kind of certainty that everything is terrible.  Call it existential depression if you like.  It is existential because we are arrogant beings, much prouder than experience.  So experience disappoints us all the time.  Depression is perhaps more realistic than anxiety - at least it has a world view that allows for a vast range of experience.  Even though, when we are depressed, we forget the positive side of life.  So it is still a simplification.

HOW CAN WE DEAL WITH ECONOMY AND ECONOMIES IN A DIFFERENT WAY?

We know our current methods are unsustainable.  Our simple models of the world, whether ideologies, or operating methods... they are just that, simple.  Our simple view of economies forgets the complexity of our environment, and the fact that it will be ruined soon if we carry on prioritising consumerism.  In our private lives, our cognitive economy manifests in our assumptions about others, our assumption that tomorrow will be like today, our desperate reliance on contracts to make life more predictable.

But you can't agree a contract with nature.  It refuses to allocate any being to sign on its behalf.

The only solution is to begin to operate with more wisdom, because wisdom is the ability to see beyond the simple models everyone is using in the present; it is the ability to accept that tomorrow we may wake up in a flood, or a fire, or a war, and everything will change.  If you like, if life is a journey, wisdom is our rucksack.  Our store of wisdom is there to help us when times vary, when economies break, when the complexity of life bursts through.

LIVING WITH WISDOM

Material wisdom may involve knowing that, sooner or later, everything is taken away from us.  It may involve questioning our reliance on simple economic growth models.  Ideological wisdom may involve allowing for the fact that our ideologies are all wrong by definition - too simple.  Psychological wisdom may involve recognising, consistently, that nothing we think now will ever be enough preparation for what happens next.  That our minds, and our bodies, are organised around simplifications of life, and those simplifications are not life itself.

SUMMARY

Our brains are built to simplify our experience into assumptions.  When the going is good, because there is no need to analyse, so we simplify even more, and take things for granted - habits, money, relationships, natural resources.  We become extremely efficient in our habits, and live in a blinkered world.  Then along comes a crisis, to remind us that life is more complex than our assumptions.  We fold in anxiety and depression.  Perhaps wisdom is knowing, in our bones, that tomorrow may not be like today.  Perhaps wisdom is being humble enough to understand that we are wrong before we start; that everything is in that sense an illusion; that we are always oversimplifying, economising, with our minds and bodies.  If we are lucky, that wisdom may make us better equipped to live in a universe that often doesn't do what we think it should.

DISCIPLINE OR ENVIRONMENT?

There is an age-old debate that has been travelling through the centuries, without often enough being explicitly laid out.  This is the argument between internal discipline and external environment, and deals with the issue of which should predominate in self-development.

This dilemma is hidden in other debates, such as the nature-nurture debate.  Is our character innate, or does our environment somehow imprint our character on us?  This is probably the most common modern version of the argument, but perhaps we can take a step back, and remove the politics from it.  The nature-nurture dilemma often has behind it a wish to influence the political debate around social care.  Those who favour nature might prefer to hold individuals responsible for their own internal discipline, a right wing view.  Those who favour nurture might prefer to hold the state responsible, a left wing view.

But standing back from it all and distilling the debate into a more individualistic dilemma, what is the question we are left with?  Maybe it's this:

In a given situation, when is it right to rely on our own inner discipline and resources; and when is it right to rely on external influences such as a good environment, and externally-imposed discipline?

ASCETICISM

Perhaps the ascetic approach is the one that favours self-discipline.  The argument goes that it is usually best to improve ourselves as a stand-alone unit, to the point where our powers of endurance make us as independent as possible from circumstance.  Only then, the argument would go, can we truly stand up for ourselves.

INTERDEPENDENCE

And maybe the opposite corner of the battle is represented by interdependence.  The argument here is that we cannot escape from our interdependence; that we were born into a web of interrelated activity that never ends.  We have no choice but to learn to work with our surroundings.  Our welfare depends on putting ourselves in favourable environments, and keeping away from unfavourable places.

A BALANCE

A quick answer to the dilemma is to take a view that to be wise, is to know when to stand alone, and when to rely on others or your environment.  In that sense, perhaps a best answer is to take a contextualist stance.  To say: I can't say whether internal self-discipline or a positive external environment is most healthy.  I will have to evaluate every single situation I find myself in, and make a choice depending on that.

AN EXAMPLE

To take an extreme example, a person in the last minute of their life would be silly to continue to develop their self-discipline.  They don't need it for anything more, and so might choose to be with friends in their last moments, enjoying the positive influence they bring.

At the other end of the scale, before a long journey, a person would be wise to build up their powers of endurance, as they do not know what environments will come to pressurise them along the way.

SUMMARY

This is a short article, but it covers an important dilemma we all face.  Whether, in self-development, to build up our internal resources (resilience), or to build up our external environment (support).  The suggested answer is that wisdom is the ability to contextualise the debate, and to match the choice to the situation.  If resilience is unnecessary, don't build it.  If it is necessary, in order to do good, then build it.