Life-Altering Elixir

Life-Altering Elixir

I’ve been writing in this blog about Open Focus, Attention Training Therapy, Metacognitive Therapy ( MCT ), Ki Breathing, and life-altering ellixirs. Though I have a master’s degree in psychology, I am not posting as an academic, and certainly not from the point of view of a therapist.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Dr Jekyll & Mr. Hyde

For most of my life I have been severely mentally ill. I lived a life of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. As a teacher, psychologist, and counselor, I was the mild-mannered, compassionate, and rational Dr. Jekyll. But those misfortunate enough to know me intimately, witnessed the psychotic, violently out of control, Mr. Hyde.

When I am Dr. Jekyll, I am quiet and rational. When the dark Mr. Hyde takes charge, I am more animal than human. All of the years of therapy to work through early psychological trauma did nothing to prevent these episodes. Once I slip, I am overpowered and wildly transformed. Not the police at my door, not the spouse abuse program effected change. I don’t know why I have never been imprisoned or institutionalized. It got so out of control, I felt that I should not be allowed to live.

I published in professional journals and wrote a best-selling psychology book with a Japanese co-author during my stay in Japan. In a parallel life, I destroyed furniture, punched holes in walls, and other things I don’t care to share. Monster Man, victim of child abuse, and abuser. A volatile cocktail with a sometimes violent, brutal, outwardly inexplicable finale.

Journey from Hell

Nothing eased the mental torture — not years of psychotherapy, litany of drugs, or shock treatments. Everything in my life has been dedicated to survival. As an undergraduate and then graduate, it was my self-centered psychology major. During my undergraduate years, I sat in the library searching through volumes of Sigmund Freud’s works. If anyone, surely he had answers — but none of the reading or classes helped one iota.

The journey from hell began in the dojo in Japan with aikido and ki breathing mediation. With this solid foundation, I created a blend of Metacognitive Therapy, attention training therapy, open-focus, and flow. Prior to this, I had been practicing and writing about cognitive therapy for years. But it only took hold in conjunction within this blend of therapies.

I climbed out from the infamous “pit of despair.” It might have taken a compassionate, intelligent, and creative therapist to get me to this malleable, upward, infinitely branching path of growth and development. But I am 80 and have never found that therapist. I have never found a therapist that helped at all.

Crazy Illness

Freud said,

“Certainly, this is a crazy illness. The most extravagant psychiatric imagination would not, I think, have succeeded in constructing anything like it . . . Do not suppose, however, that you will help the patient in the least by calling on him to take a new line, to cease to occupy himself with such foolish thoughts and to do something more sensible instead of his childish pranks. He would like to do so himself, for he is completely clear in the head, shares your opinion of his obsessional symptoms and even puts it forward to you spontaneously. Only he cannot help himself.”

Measure of Success

If you want to measure a person’s success, you had better go back a ways to get a baseline. What were the conditions early on? What was his/her perception of these conditions? What is his/her outlook now? How far have he/she come? What is his/her definition of success?

For much of my life my goal was survival. I had serious doubts that I would survive. In my late seventies I am thriving, not financially, but I am feeling more energized, completely alive, and am enjoying each day of a mostly sane life. It would be a A gross understatement to say it was not easy getting here.

Join me here and I will share the life-altering exlixir of therapies with you that altered the course of my life. I welcome feedback to know how you are doing. What gets you through the day/ this life? Can you take anything that I’m sharing and run with it?

Open Focus

Most of our formal education encourages a narrow focus of attention. But constant narrow focus leads to gradual accumulation of physical and mental stress, distress, even burnout. If you are narrowly focused on a book you are reading, in open focus mode you take in the the space all around.

Attention Training Therapy

Attention Training Therapy involves attending to sounds individually and in combinations. After practicing a few times with an mp3, you practice on your own in natural soundscapes, (such as the classroom if you are teaching as I was), or in the office cubical if that is where you work.

Metacognitive Therapy

Rather than focusing on the thought, Metacognitive Therapy steps back to look at the thinking process. Is this an old repeated thought pattern? Repetitive patterns of worry, rumination, fixation of attention on threat, and coping behaviors feed the monster and keep emotional problems alive and well.

Ki Breathing Meditation

Ki as defined by Koichi Tohei, founder of the Ki Society and aikido with mind and body, is “the infinite gatherings of infinitely small particles.” Everything in the universe is born of Ki. Four principles to unify mind and body will facilitate both Attention Training Therapy and Ki Breathing Meditation.

Self-help books that help:

Total Self-Renewal through Attention Therapies and Open Focus

The Open-Focus Brain: Harnessing the Power of Attention to Heal Mind and Body