Intentions and the Course of Life

Each Psyche is bio-psycho-social system with a story.  Mood Disorders are recursive traps, which result from certain perceptual distortions.  Depression, Anxiety, and Anger tend to become chronic, because each is based on a thinking error that produces emotional and behavioral consequences that are not only harmful to the self, but reinforce the thinking error.

Meta-cognitive awareness is the technical term for a milestone in personal development, and refers to the appreciation that beliefs and emotions are not expressions of objective truth, but merely passing experiences that are likely to be biased by local conditions.  While essential to unraveling the recursive knots of a Mood Disorder, rational understanding is not sufficient.  This is the great limitation of all abstract modes of communication about experience, including this one.

The text presented here is designed for the Rational Processing System – as if rational understanding would be sufficient to cope with a Mood Disorders.  The fatal flaw of appealing to rationality is the bogus belief that we will have access to this faculty when actually confronted with a provocation in real time. 

It is easy to generate alternative thoughts and beliefs in my office when you are free from the chaos of daily life and have the luxury of sufficient time to think things through.  These luxuries will not be available to you when in the midst of a high-risk situation. 

Real time performance is not based on deliberate rational processing – there is no time for that.  When last you encountered such a situation you probably mindlessly reacted to it the way you usually react to such provocations.  The best predictor of how you will react the next time you encounter such a situation is how you reacted last time.  To change, you will have to over-ride your default reaction and take a different path.  Seymour Epstein’s model of Rational and Experiential Processing Systems is pertinent to this endeavor and is summarized below:

Rational vs. Experiential Processing:

 An Alternative to Conscious vs. Unconscious Motivation

Using this vocabulary, this guide was designed to help your Rational Processing System figure things out.  While epiphanies may come and go, characteristic ways of reacting endure.  Influencing the course of your biography can be accomplished by shaping the Experiential Processing System to perform as intended in real-time.  

Sculpting the Experiential Processing System

Performing a complex action becomes easier with practice.  With sufficient practice it become so easy that it requires no conscious effort at all.  At this point the reaction has become the default path, and now requires conscious effort to inhibit or interrupt.  When a self-injurious reaction has received sufficient practice it becomes autonomous, and changing it requires that you mindful enough to over-ride the automatic reaction - difficult when your cognitive resources are depleted or otherwise occupied.

When face to face with an emotionally provocative situation you will not be the same person you are now.  Events that may seem trivial from your current rational perspective will be viewed differently when you are upset.  When you encounter a high-risk situation in real time, you it will most likely experience it the same way, and exhibit the same reactions you did when last you encountered such a situation. Because this sequence of events produced outcomes that were counter to your interests, you were motivated to read this guide.  Perversely, the text concludes that understanding the text is not sufficient.  Overcoming a Mood Disorder requires more: The Experiential Processing System must be molded according to your taste.

Metaphors for Sculpting Experiential Processing System

• Habit strength, like muscular strength changes gradually.  It grows stronger with exercise, and atrophies with disuse.  It takes about the same length of time to sculpt your body through weight training as it does to sculpt your Experiential Processing System – a lifetime with gradual progress throughout.   
   

• A boxer does not have the luxury of deciding how to react to a right cross.  The reaction must be so well trained that it is autonomous.  To perform successfully the boxer will hire sparring partners so s/he can practice responding to high-risk situations in real time until the desired reactions become “spinal” – automatic, requiring no conscious guidance. 
   

• In the metaphor of an athlete or a dancer, your therapist is your trainer or coach who will observe your reactions and provide technical information, along with suggested exercises in preparation for the competitions that lie ahead.  Each high-risk situation you encounter is a gift, an opportunity to rise to the occasion and perform the way your Rational Processing System judges to be your path of greatest advantage.

You have one precious life to live, and you author your biography by living it.  Mood/Addictive Disorders interfere with the quality of life.   The text was written for your Rational Processing System* to describe how these traps work, and offer some tools to help you extricate yourself.  The information is of course generic.  The task for you and your therapist is to figure out your knot, and to successfully unravel it.

Footnotes:

* The optical illusions and other non-text parts of this guide are intended to be a communication for the Experiential Processing System:  Perception can distort beliefs, and beliefs can distort perception.