Reverse Thinking

How the brain mirrors other people

The discovery of mirror neurons in the brain 15 or so years ago has transformed our understanding of how children learn and how adults 'read' other people.

Mirror neurons are groups of nerve cells in the brain that fire if either the person sees someone else doing something and if that person does the same thing. For example, if you observe someone else smile then the mirror neurons will signal; if you smile yourself then those same neurons will also fire. Which implies that your brain is set up to 'mirror' other peoples' behavour so that you can adopt it, understand it, or implement it yourself.

Which tells us a number of other interesting things:

• Firstly, the brain is set up so that it can temporarily adopt the point of view of another person and extract information about what that person is trying and to do and why they are doing it.
• Secondly we now know more about how humans learn. As everybody knows very young children learn by imitation. What we now know is that when children copy adult behaviour their brains automatically encode that behaviour so that they can mimic it within seconds. One reason why children learn so fast. And, also, why new cultural fads - slang, dress styles and gestures like the 'high five' - spread so rapidly amongst adults. 
• Thirdly, it has now become a lot easier to understand how most human beings can read other people so fast. If the brain contains neurons that simulate other peoples' activities: their facial expressions, speech, gestures, movements and emotions then it will only take a split second for the brain to 'read' someone, even when you don't know, consciously, that you are doing it. For example, your Headmind might, superficially, assume that someone you meet for the first time is nice, charming and interested in your welfare. Meanwhile Bodymind, using it's mirror neurons, is taking a deeper assessment. It might notice, for example, that the eyes flicker elsewhere while you are talking, take in that slightly dismissive wave of the hand, that his smile fades away a split-second too short. Within moments your body is coming up with uncomfortable feelings while the conscious mind is carrying on with the conversation in the belief that all is well. 

One weakness of traditional psychology is that it tries to explain how people learnt about other peoples' intentions in terms of logic. Meaning that if the people you meet obeyed social conventions in terms of saying the right things, smiling in the right places, putting their arm around your shoulders, etc, then they might be ok. But Bodymind may know different. Which leads to a conflict between your 'feel' about other people compared  to what you think you may know about them. But because Bodymind uses intuitions rather than words to communicate to you those insights may be over-ridden by Headmind as 'illogical'. To your lasting cost.

This is the first in a short series about mirror neurons. Next up I will be writing about what mirror neurons have to tell us about empathy and love. And, after that, why the inability to access mirror neuron information generates psychopaths.

 

Image by  SashaW 

Is Cancer man-made?

A fascinating new study on cancer delivers the view that it is unnatural.

A research team at the University of Manchester has been examining mummy remains from Ancient Egypt and, from thousands of samples, can find only one case of (rectal) cancer.

It also notes that mention of cancer-like illnesses is extremely rare in Ancient Egypt, Greece and Palestine. Descriptions of cancerous diseases only start to become common over the past three hundred years or so.

I have often wondered whether Bodymind can be all that clever if its cells were programmed to develop cancerous cells. Now it appears that Bodymind may be cleverer than we think. The origins of cancer are still not clear but the current thinking is that the causes are likely to be environmental pollution, toxic diets, addictions and stress. If this is true then short-sighted Headmind thinking is likely to be the culprit.

Which raises the interesting thought that, thousands of years ago, our ancestors were far more attuned to Bodymind than we are.

Thanks to Mark McGuinness for bringing this item to my attention.

Banishing pain with awareness

This will be the first (and probably) the only time I review a book on this blog.

That book is: Teach Us To Sit Still by Tim Parks.

Not only is this book written with great power and emotion (I came close to tears at some points; it also echoes most of the work we are doing in Reverse Therapy.

Tim Parks is an award-winning English novelist who lives in Verona. But this book is not a novel. It is a personal story with the subtitle: 'A sceptic's search for health and healing'.

Tim Parks suffered excruciating pain in the pelvis, as well as a urinary disorder, for twenty years, for a problem which none of his doctors were able to diagnose accurately, or to provide a cure. Sometimes his problem was called Prostatitis; at other times Pelvic Floor Pain Syndrome. Whatever it was, Tim Parks spent years in pain and embarrassment, slowly getting more and more frustrated and demoralised by the failure of medical science to solve the problem. At one point he was offered drastic surgery for removal of the prostate gland: an option he wisely refused since, as it turned out, this would have achieved absolutely nothing except mutilation and the loss of his sex drive.

Tim Parks is funny, sad, highly intelligent, and ruthlessly honest. He describes himself as something of a Headmind-dominated person: 'a worrisome, dissatisfied individual': intellectual, sceptical and a control-freak, living most of his life spinning around words in his head.

After years of pain and useless advice (two doctors advised him to masturbate twice a day in order to relieve congestion in the prostate gland) Tim Parks turned to alternative medicine. He consulted an Ayurvedic practitioner in Delhi who shocked him:

    'This is a problem you will never get over, Mr Parks, until you confront the profound contradictions in your character.'

This is the clue which leads him to seek a non-medical solution. Interestingly, he describes how he resisted what he saw as a 'psychosomatic' explanation for his pain before coming to realise that the term 'psychosomatic' is nonsensical; the mind is not separate from the body and people can suffer from real, painful, symptoms (as in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, M.E, and Fibromyalgia) simply because the connection between the conscious mind and Bodymind has broken down. Or, to use my terminology, because Bodymind is at war with Headmind.

Incidentally, it is high time that we replaced the term 'psychosomatic' with the phrase 'HPA Disorder' (or something similar), as I have written before in other articles and in some of my books.

The solution Tim Parks discovered came from reading A Headache in your Pelvis, by David Wise and Rodney Anderson, in which he learnt how to use Paradoxical Relaxation. In this technique he learned not to resist the pain but to exercise Awareness on it. Simply, to let the pain be, without trying to interfere with it. Doing this twice a day he discovered that the pain simply disappeared. As Bodymind noticed that he was paying attention the pain switched off. Within months he was 'cured'. 

I have written about Awareness elsewhere on this blog and in Reverse Therapy we have long noticed the effect of exercising awareness, not resisting them, just letting them be, and simply 'listening to them'. It is surprising, in this respect, how many of my clients have told me that just doing this can banish fatigue, pain, tension, and many other symptoms besides.

Zen things

Whenever I study Zen I am reminded of the saying (invented by me) that 'Life is so ridiculously simple that a child of five could get it.'

And the fundamental point of Zen, it seems to me, is that Headmind over-complicates life. With worries, self-pity, guilt, unsatisfied expectations, perfectionism, inertia, over-analysis, as well as a variety of bananas. And, in doing so, it creates unhappiness and prevents us from seeing things as they really are, in the moment.

In the sermon on the Four Noble Truths, the Buddha (Gautama) refers to the human tendency to view reality as 'Dukka'. In the original Pali (the language spoken by Gautama) 'dukka' means a bent, or incomplete, wheel (see the Buddhist picture on the right). In English 'dukka; is usually translated as suffering, but it doesn't really mean that. What it means is the way in which Headmind is constantly looking for the perfect wheel: but disastified, discontented, worried and oppressed by actual experience. That is is always looking for things to be 'just right': contented, happy, and at peace. But never finding peace of mind because - even when glimpsed - Headmind always looks for something more.

There is a story told by the Buddha (Gautama) meant as an analogy for the human condition. It concerns a man who is shot by an arrow who, instead of seeing his pain and doing something about it in the moment, insists on talking about the arrow – where it came from, who shot it, why it had to be him of all people, etc etc. Thinking doesn’t make you aware and it sometimes just makes you stupid. In the Four Noble Truths, the Buddha encourages us to release Dukka by seeing through this Headmind tendency.

Zen Buddhism is a systematic attempt to get back to the original teachings of the Buddha, using a variety of exercises and meditational forms on the path to enlightenment. One such form is to meditate on a koan. A koan is an impossible question; one that can never be answered by ordinary ways of thinking. For example:

"The master placed a vase of water on the ground and asked: 'Who can show what this is without saying it's name?'

(The correct answer: The Zen monk kicks over the vase with his foot and walks out).

Zen koans are designed to help people bypass Headmind. When you see that there is no answer to the absurd question ‘What is the sound of one hand clapping’ you are enlightened in that moment because you have seen through the tricks that language (and Headmind) plays on you. You have realised that stupid thoughts get you nowhere. By implication, you may also realise that Headmind perceptions are not reality. And, if you get that, you sometimes also get a glimpse of what reality looks like when you are not thinking about it. 

I once, briefly, had such an experience a few years ago while I was looking at my back garden on a glorious sunny day. Maybe because I was surprised by the beauty of what I saw, my intellectual mind stopped chattering for a couple of minutes. And I caught a glimpse of just how ok the world was when left to itself: without words, without worries, and without instant judgments about the way things 'ought' to look like. Absent of dukka, in fact.

Because Reverse Therapy favours Bodymind over Headmind (because that is the route through which the person begins to understand the meaning of symptoms instead of resisting them) we spend quite a bit of time teaching our clients what Zen teachers call 'zazen' (mindfulness) - just sitting quietly, focusing attention on what goes on in the hera and now, in the body. And, on the way, letting Headmind chatter die down. 

In my next article I will be writing about how this exercise of Awareness can eliminate pain.

 

How to crush perfectionism

Perfectionism is a great example of the way in which Headmind can push us into anxiety and illness. And it also reveals a lot about the way Headmind is set up. Namely, that it doesn't belong to us and does not have our personal interests at heart. That it works through a 'pushy', inner voice that acts like an impersonal control freak. Always compelling us to spend more time on tasks than is really warranted.

My readers will understand that, for these reasons, I kept putting off and putting off writing this article in case I got it all wrong and made myself look like an idiot.......

But seriously, perfectionism can get at people in different ways. And these styles are closely related to what I have called bananas elsewhere in this blog.

1. Bananas about failure
2. Bananas about approval
3. Bananas about weight/appearance
4. Bananas about power
5. Bananas about being sexy

And many other things besides.

The first thing to get clear about is that Perfectionism is a type of obsession. An obsession comes about because Headmind is worried about something. In the case of perfectionism the worry is that the person can never get it right and will therefore be criticised, rejected and hurt. The basis for this problem is conditioning. Somewhere along the way the child’s Headmind picked up the script ‘No matter how hard you try you will never be good enough’. 

Incidentally, 'perfectionism' is a common problem with people who score high for the One Type on the Enneagram.

A lot of people blame Parents for scripts like these although, in my experience, Teachers and Priests are often the usual culprits. The pity of it all is that there is absolutely no need for anyone to worry about having to get it all right. If you are out of your depth on something then Bodymind will trigger the fear signal to tell you to go and ask a few questions or get some help. 

But this move is is disallowed by Headmind – the Perfectionist cannot ask for help because that would be to admit failure – imperfection. So he has to do it all by himself. In later life Headmind keeps playing these scripts every time a new challenge comes up. So each time the person settles down to do some work Headmind triggers the worry first, and then the obsession with ‘getting it all right’. With the sub-script – ‘work harder, you miserable failure’. That can get very scary. But each time Fear is created to remind us to get some help that is interpreted by Headmind as fresh evidence that the person is ‘imperfect’ triggering the script all over again. 

Now, if you spend too long doing the same thing over and over again then Bodymind is going to create the emotion known as frustration. That will be prompting you to give yourself a break. But when Headmind notices frustration coming up, it misinterprets that as fresh evidence of failure. So the script gets triggered again, and again and again. I will write more about the solution to perfectionism and other obsessional states in a later blog. But the first step towards breaking free of the trap is to disobey the script, own up to being ‘a failure’ and go and have some fun instead.

How to regain control over your mind

Here is a fascinating article sent to me by the Guru of Creative Thinking Mark McGuinness.

Here is that article. You might wish to read it first before you read the rest of my comments.

That misery called meditation - What seven days of silence did to my head

It's about a journalist who goes on a 7-day Buddhist silent meditation retreat which does his head in. After just one day he thought he was going insane. Symptoms: intense boredom, aching, agitation, restlessness, escapism. All the signs, in fact, of a Headmind that was about to explode with frustration.

Interestingly, his Headmind adopted a very familiar tactic in such situations: which was to chatter about what other people on the retreat might be doing: making up fantasies about who was sleeping with who on the retreat. Everything you would expect, in fact, from a Headmind which would do anything at all to escape from living in the now.

But after the fourth day Bodymind takes over once more and he ends up in a much better place.

Reminds me a lot of the Teachings of Gurdjieff, on which I have written before in this blog. That, in turn, advocated that we human beings need to do a lot of work on escaping our enslavement to Headmind. But that can be difficult to do because Headmind is crafty in feeding the idea that what it thinks is 'reality'. And then feeding the further idea that escape from that is impossible...

To remind you, Headmind hates:

Silence

Living in the present moment

Being ignored

Raw emotion

The desert (nothing to worry about or do there! - which is why Christ so frequently visited it).

But, as the article demonstrates, when you force Headmind to give up what it habitually likes to do: watch TV, read newspapers, crawl the internet, worry, fantasize, make up stories about the past, chatter about the future, then eventually it just shuts the fuck up.

And then you end up in a very nice place indeed, a place of 'mindless salvation', on which I have also described before, right here. A place of overwhelming peace, happiness and fascination with the world we live in; just as if you were seeing it (again) for the very first time.

How the body 'thinks'

Since the Greeks started writing about it intelligence has generally been assumed to be in the head. But one of the great advances last century - thanks to MRI scanners which enable us to look inside the Brain, as well as the neuro-endocrine systems, we have a much more informed picture. Which tells us that intelligence is distributed over the whole body. In fact we are now able to identify several 'brains' throughout the body:

1 The solar plexus (often called the 'second brain') controls the Autonomic nervous system. Which, in turn, governs, heart rate, digestion, muscular function, as well as creating the physical sensations that form the basis of emotion.

2 The endocrine system - which includes the pituitary, pineal, thyroid, pancreas, thymus, adrenal and sexual glands - is controlled by the Hypothalamus. Since each of the glands use hormones to control such diverse functions as energy transfer, metabolism, sleep, growth, protection against infection, and temperature control, we can see that the Hypothalamus is a brain inside the Brain

3 The Immune system itself is another centre of intelligence. There are approximately 2 trillion immune cells in the body. Some of these track invading cells and 'remember' what they look like. Others hunt them down, while others kill them. Meanwhile other cells keep a watchful eye on rogue cells which split away from the rest and become cancerous. Still more cells float up and down to the brain and provide updates on the current state of play.

4. Candace Pert - one of our best writers on this subject - tells us that each and every cell in the body is not only intelligent, but conscious too, in the sense that it can independently make decisions on the communications it sends to other cells. There are approximately 10 trillion cells in the body. Yet each of those cells signals, on average, to at least 10,000 other cells every day. Which means that your body created 10,000,000,000 messages today (that's one hundred thousand trillion pieces of information).

So what does the main brain actually do if most of the 'thinking' is going on either elsewhere in the body or in response to decisions taken by the cells. Mostly it is Headmind stuff. Making up stories about what happened to you after Bodymind took the decision for you. Or analyzing, checking, worrying, doing guilt while living as if Bodymind didn't exist!

But, as I have written before, it is possible to conceive of a headless state of being in which people live, serene, Zen-like existences centred totally on Bodymind intelligence.

Here are some examples of the way in which Bodymind thinking works in practice:

• The body can ‘read’ other people and simulate an emotion that person is having so that you or I can empathize with them. In that way a mother can quickly tell what mood her child is in. This is also the basis for the human quality of compassion for others, even animals. Our intuitions about other people work in a similar way. Using sensory information, the brain picks up signals from the other person’s body language and – using a process that works in less than a tenth of a second – pattern-matches those signals against information stored from past experiences. That is why we can have a gut feeling that someone is not trustworthy within two minutes of meeting her without knowing why. The body is using coded signals to alert us to a potential problem.

• In collaboration with the thinking centers the brain can decide what is important or not important. If something is important to us we might get an adrenalin rush. If it is not we will feel nothing at all. Research into people with damage to the frontal areas of the brain (which decode emotion) show that they are unable to make decisions because they don’t have a good or bad feeling that tells them the right decision to make. Knowing what is important also helps Bodymind conserve energy. We can go without sleep if we are trying to achieve something really important. Conversely, if there is little for us to do, Bodymind can send us to sleep early. Or it could turn on the emotion of boredom to signal that it’s time to do something more interesting.

• The body can strengthen a relationship by releasing hormones connected to love. Sometimes this is automatic, as when a a child is born. Sometimes it comes with time as we learn more about the other person. The emotions of love are, as almost all of us know, powerful and sometimes overwhelming.

• The brain uses sleep time to organize memories from the day just gone. It stores what is important and deletes the rest. It also creates dreaming states in order to work through the emotions that come with different experiences. This is one reason why insomniacs have poor concentration – they are overloaded with undigested experiences.

• Bodymind grounds us to life. It does this firstly through our moods. At any given moment the body is monitoring where we are, who we are with and what we are doing, and providing us with a running commentary on our relationship with the environment. Moods aren’t emotions but they are feeling states which work closely with our thoughts. The most well-known mood is the depressed state, which goes with discouragement and sadness. But others include exhilaration, calm, determination, discontent and the feeling of being ‘under pressure’. Most often, moods are hardly noticeable and form a kind of background hum which is constantly shifting as we go through the flow of the day.

Bodymind uses symptoms of various kinds to warn, guide and protect us from harm. This point is more clearly explained by Reverse Therapy.

• Another way the body grounds us to life is through the sense of awe: we are connected to nature, to the divine, and to life itself by the unspeakable sense that we are serving a purpose higher than ourselves. In that way Bodymind intelligently motivates us to make the best we can of our abilities and to serve others. It fosters your Personal Genius.

Recovering from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

This is a reprise of an email session I held with a client two years ago. I have edited some details to preserve anonymity. She had Chronic Fatigue Syndrome for six years and is well now.

The aim is to give anyone with M.E/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome some thoughts on how to get well. And, of course, any of our clients in Reverse Therapy out there can learn from this too.

Client: During my second appointment with you last month I had difficulties in saying what I needed which you helped me to overcome by teaching me how to put things into words. I told you I was confused with what you were telling me and that I did not understand. You told me to establish contact with my Bodymind and I felt relieved. I think there is a lot of fear inside me. Fear of staying ill, fear of not being able to succeed with Reverse Therapy.

My comment: It is important to distinguish between Headmind worry and Bodymind fear. Bodymind sends you a fear emotion when it notices that you are vulnerable in some way – in order to encourage you to express your need for help and support, and take small steps to raise your confidence in that situation. Your Headmind worries about not being able to get well and not being able to do Reverse Therapy. This is natural but unhelpful. It is important not to give any time to these worries. Instead, do something like this:

• Go into your Body
• Remind yourself that you know how to be well
• Spend a little time in your body deciding what feels good to do next about your messages and go and do that straight away

Client: This is all Headmind stuff, I know, but fear is somewhere stuck deep in my cells. One day, soon after my first Reverse Therapy session I was in a meditation group – and we were guided to recall our most important event over the summer. I “went” to my first session with you while I was in a deep state of contemplation and I felt – very strongly and clearly – how something was “melting down inside” as tears were rolling down my face and this was helping my recovery. I was impressed when this “something” that I was feeling so clearly deep inside me came out as “fear”. That fear I felt at that time when I was recalling the first RT session was deep in my body and the whole process of retrieving that RT session while in a meditative state was helping a lot in letting it go.

My comment: This is good work! You may indeed have become vulnerable and your Body created fear to remind you to be gentle on yourself and take good care. There is no need to let go of fear – just honour it and act on it.

Client: Is this fear – which I’m not generally aware of – a fear that my Bodymind developed when I was under a lot of stress, specially when I had glandular fever and I kept working under stress, without resting? Is this fear misinterpreted by Headmind and leads me to be afraid of not being able to recover?

My comment: See above. But Headmind stuff will be worry rather than fear.

Client: One of my concerns is my need – I guess a Headmind demand to “understand”. Which probably comes from a need to control. So I spend too much time in my Head. Although I am learning that when I am living in the moment, in Bodymind, I feel at peace. But the thing is that I live in a world that is run by Headminds!

My comment: Yes – it is about ‘unlearning’ the Headmind habits and conditioning you received through unbalanced education. Reverse Therapy is a discipline (like meditation) which needs to be practiced every day until it becomes more natural to stay in the moment and let go of Headmind’s need to explain, worry and control. We have to acknowledge that the world is mostly run by ‘Headminds’ but that doesn’t mean we have to play that game any more

Client: Getting onto the more practical aspects of doing Reverse Therapy, I am not keeping the journal up to date. Nor am I planning activities. I have never been good at organizing my time. And having spent 4 years without working has not helped me much in that.

My comment: OK – let’s not make the Journal into a burden for you. It is only used to help you remember the discipline of noticing your symptoms, acting on the messages, and noticing what happens to the symptoms. But if it has become another Headmind chore for you then let’s drop it for now.

Client: I am now trying to do more things I enjoy – like visiting friends, arranging dinner-parties, shopping, and the like. And I have had fun, and people who knew me before the illness have mentioned to me how much more energy I have. It shows in the way I talk, in how I am with people, and in the joy I have in doing things. Just as an illustration, the other day, over a dinner with a group of friends, I told a joke – a long one! And I realized when I was about to start that it was the first time I had done that for more than 4 years! 

My comment: Very good! Please do more of this as your Body clearly enjoys being with your friends. Interestingly, it has been established that laughter is a sure way to enable Bodymind to release endorphins, which both reduce symptoms and confirm that you are on the right path towards recovery.

Client: Yet a couple of hours before we all met for dinner I had symptoms. My energy level was very low, I was feeling sick and I just wanted to lie down. There was kind of a “fight” inside me and finally I won through the faith I have in you. My Headmind could not get that something other than lying down could help me in that situation. But I trusted Reverse Therapy and I did what I was told to do in these situations. I regained confidence and energy started to come back. The problem was my partner was late getting back from work and we were going to be late for dinner. After getting into Bodymind and reading the message I started to act with serenity and coped with the situation. The dinner went great!

My comment: Excellent! You really let go of that Headmind trap there!

Client: Next day, we had a lunch at home with a friend. I woke up very tired and thinking I could not be able to manage it. I was feeling sick again. Headmind telling me it was because I had done too much the day before (although I didn’t believe it). We normally do things at the last minute and my Body was probably telling me to slow down. After reading my message I calmed down and I decided to take it easy and got on with other things. It was like I was expressing my needs to myself. It worked well. We both enjoyed having lunch with our friend and we had a wonderful time.

My comment. Hmmmm. Might be an idea to get together with your partner and look at some ways for you both to have more time to get ready.

Client: One of the things that concerns me a lot is my sleep. I seem to need to sleep forever. As a student, I always stayed up until late during exams and woke up late in the morning. When I was working, I always tended to stay late to do tasks that required more concentration. What is happening now is that, in the absence of any activity that requires me to be somewhere early, I tend to wake up very late in the morning, which gets me very restful but feeling quite useless.

My comment: I am afraid it does take time for your Body clock to get back to normal. It is important not to stay in bed too long but get on with activities you have planned for that day. Please also ensure that each week has a balance of early nights and late nights. Remember, your Body might be using morning fatigue to warn you that there is not much enjoyment available. Finally, watch out for Headmind and its yada-yada-yada about your being ‘useless’ because you have symptoms.

Client: The other main concern is about my poor skills in planning and organizing. As I told you, I have never been good at that, but now it’s even worse. Over the week I have few fixed activities, but I still struggle to get to them in time. And I have not yet learnt how to fill the gaps in between, unless I improve, which does not take me very far. I simply do not know how to design an activity schedule. I feel quite frustrated and helpless about that, especially now that I realized how important it is for my recovery,

My comment: Can you not get your partner or a friend to help you do this? Otherwise we can work on it together when you next see me.

Client: Something else I wish to tell you is that I have put my hopes in Reverse Therapy and that I trust you. I think you are a very talented person and I feel very thankful to be able to get Reverse Therapy from you. I also get lots of confidence from reading the testimonials of people who have undertaken Reverse Therapy and have recovered. But my Headmind –here it is again – keeps damaging my hopes with doubts. One of them has to do with the apparent simplicity of the method. If Reverse Therapy is so simple then I think that what I have suffered during these years was “only in my mind”. I fought a lot during these years against the doctors who had no idea about this illness and who have even told me that I had nothing wrong with me. And when I asked them why I was feeling so ill they would shrug.

My comment. Your symptoms were certainly not all in your mind! Reverse Therapy is simple (although not always easy) but Headmind always wants it to be more complicated because it demands ‘explanations’ and intellectual control.

Client. Am I fearing recovery? Am I fearing that this is an underlying process that I cannot understand? I trust you, and I just want to be very honest with myself and to you, so I can help you to help me.

My comment. No – this is your Headmind daring not to believe that you can be totally well. Because all it has ever known for the last six years is pain, exhaustion and worry. The more days you have when your energy comes back and your symptoms go, then the easier it will be for Headmind to let go of the idea that you cannot get well.

Client: I feel good that I can share with you my inner concerns, and what I believe is Headmind resistance to the process. It is like if my Head wants to know “the secret of RT”. Also, I think there is some reasoning going on like “if it is so easy to overcome the symptoms that have got me to a completely disabled life, I must be an idiot”.

My comment: This is something many of our clients tell us. We always say to them: ‘It is not your fault that you became ill.’ As for the simplicity of the method, it is only ‘easy’ once someone has shown you the solution. Like one of those psychological puzzles when people can’t ‘see’ the face of the old woman/young girl in the drawing. But once someone shows you it is easy to see it. Surely, the real idiots are the people in the medical and psychological professions who have spent years studying the illness without coming up with any answers?

Client: It is not easy for me to write down what I have just said but I know you are not judging me, so I should not judge myself and I should feel confident in expressing my thoughts, no matter how distorted they might seem, even to me. So, being honest to you, John, it has been because I have faith and confidence in you and in Reverse Therapy that I do the assignments, not because I understand what I am doing. And this brings humility – the realization that the answers come from somewhere that is far beyond my head, and far deeper inside me.

Is your Personality based on your Blood Group?

Fans of this Blog will know that I am sceptical about theories of personality. I really don't believe people either have, or need to have, a fixed personality. Nor do I believe that standard personality tests are that accurate. And even if they are accurate at this moment in time they may not be so next year.

You will also know from me that you are better off losing your Ego and your Personality (if you have one) because they limit your possibilities, intensify your bananas, keep you in your comfort zone, and stifle your Personal Genius.

However a Japanese friend of mind asks whether I have heard of the concept of ketsu-eki-gata, in which temperament is said to be influenced by the individual''s blood group. Since there are only 4 groups:  A, O, B and AB it would seem that there are four basic types - as shown in the table below (click on it to enlarge):

  

She goes on to say:

'If this idea has some truth in it then in we have more evidence that Bodymind - working through the blood-group - has an influence on our preferences, our moods, the way we express emotions, our behaviors, our attitude towards other people, and our career choices.'

It could be that she has a point if we consider that blood group types might influence temperament (emotional make-up) rather than personality. But nobody has yet been able to show whether there is a link, and how it works, although theories like this are at least 2500 years old.

She tells me that in Japan and Korea, blood groups are widely used by dating agencies to match people up, and by employers in order to assess whether applicants are 'right' for the job.

Apparently my own blood group - B - has a bad reputation in Korea and Japan as we are widely viewed as mad, bad, and dangerous to know.

A few years ago Dr Peter D'Adamo published a book in which he argued that people could more easily lose weight by following the right diet for their blood type. So Blood Group O should avoid wheat and dairy; Group A should follow a mostly vegetarian diet; Group AB the same as A, but with occasional meat and fish; while Group B should avoid nuts (one of my favorites!) and processed foods like white bread. If this is the case (and this is still a controversial theory) then it suggests that blood groups can influence taste as well as metabolism. So why not temperament?

I ran the description of the 'B' personality past my wife and a few friends and they all agree that it is fairly accurate of me. That doesn't make it true though!

What do you think? Do you - and those close to you - believe that these descriptions fit you?

And - for you readers who know me personally - do you think that Type B is accurate?

I promise to publish all replies - appreciative or sceptical, and flattering or non-flattering!

Emotional Intelligence classes for our children, please

Last week, my article arguing that schools ought to provide lessons in emotional intelligence was published in a new book: Shaping a New Educational Landscape, now available from Amazon.

The book has stimulating articles by well-known educationalists, teachers, consultants and government advisors - and me. I urge those of you who can afford it to buy it anyway as it is all in a good cause. We writers are donating all our royalties to the building of a new school in Juba in the Sudan.

The point of my article is that children who aren't taught emotional intelligence aren't likely to make good students. Instead they may be handicapped by low-self-esteem, difficulty in getting along with others, stress, problems in handling setbacks (i.e. giving up too easily), and communicational problems. They will also be battling with rage, and unresolved emotions such as anger, frustration and fear. Which, in turn, leads to disruptive behavior, defiance, exclusion, expulsion and academic failure. Even if the child is an academic success, failures in emotional intelligence can lead later on to a deadening Headmind approach to life. People who score high on IQ (meaning they know how to do quizzes) but low on emotional intelligence may lack warmth, common-sense, empathy, and the ability to relate to ordinary people (a problem I notice, that is widespread amongst medical doctors, academics and lawyers).

I am passionate about this issue because every week, in Reverse Therapy, I work with children and adolescents who are suffering from Chronic Fatigue syndrome, ME, and anxiety problems simply because they have never been taught how to work with their emotions.

Do you agree with me that teaching emotional intelligence to choldren in schools ought to be a priority?

Below are the opening few paragraphs in my article, as published in the book, so that you can get the flavour. Please contribute.

Rousseau revisited: formal and personal learning

‘It takes a village to raise a child.’

African Proverb

 

Introduction 

In this article I want to argue that if formal education is not complemented by methods that elicit social and emotional intelligence from the child then a variety of problems will result that may mean that formal education never gets started. And should it get started it may never be completed if the child does not know how to make use of the ‘learning’ she has been offered. And that even if it is ‘finished’ it may make little difference to her quality of life.

To take my own case: I possess a PhD in Psychology, a Masters in Psychotherapy and a BA in Philosophy. I have lectured in these matters at every grade from A level, through to professional seminars and up to University Undergraduate level. An educational success? Perhaps so. And yet I left school at 15.

After a long period of poor behaviour, indiscipline and dire exam grades at the Grammar school I attended in the UK during the 1970s, my teachers made it clear to me that there was little point in my continuing. That if I did I would very soon be expelled. My working class father was delighted. He saw formal education as a pointless diversion from the real business of learning a trade and making money. So he found me an apprenticeship and it was another 4 (wasted) years before I found the courage to go back into education on another footing.

Although the potential for academic achievement at the Grammar school was present, in my case it was vitiated by immaturity in social relations and self-management; a defect that may have been remediable.

My key difficulty was that I was often overcome by inchoate states of frustration, despondency and rage. These states were hard for me to name, let alone identify. They typically came up after I had been bullied, or punished for what I saw as minor offences, or ridiculed by a teacher, or sitting through lessons in subjects for which I had little interest.

Looking back, I can see clearly that my bad behaviour was promoted by rebelliousness, attention-seeking and revenge. Naturally these responses merely compounded the problem and set the scene for more interactional problems. Another key problem was that the school: its rules, its ethos, and its teaching style seemed both alien and nonsensical to me. Partly this was due to my being one of the very few working-class children at the school. But, more profoundly, I lacked an enlightened tutor – or mentor – who could ‘interpret’ for me. I really needed to be taught how to work the system, as well as recognize both the sources for, and the solution to, my own despair......