The Reason For Now The Reason For Now By DrTheo

After a lecture by my son's headmaster wherein children are regarded by the Catholic Church as divine we say that wonderfully influences expectations of our kids which moulds behaviour and self esteem which is one of the main determinants of success in life. Andy my co presenter related this to his own experiences with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. We then segway onto social media which destroys self esteem, social skills , causes depression and dissolves concentration in its frenzy of instant gratification and dopamine hits making us all ADHD. We look at how trauma and behavioural shifts can be passed across generations by epigenetics. We discuss one of the fundamental differences in the thought processes between adults and children. Whereas children combine reality with their imagination and inner self so that anything may seem possible , adults close their minds to reality and stay with their limited set of beliefs and dreams. We summarise that true clarity of mind only exists at two points in life: once when you are born and after you have had good therapy. Enjoy .

Responsibility:



Progress in any system is by trial and error. This is how nature works in evolution and how our children grow up through experiences and teaching. Models only work for specific unique situations. Eg laws of gravity , motion etc. in fact many scientific concepts. In fact even those only stay valid until they are disproven or someone comes up with a better concept.

The idea that models can be produced for complex systems is not realistic. Yet this is what ‘experts’ are constantly doing in the search for certainty about future predictions of risk or growth. They are almost always invariably wrong. In order to make progress with trial and error there must be room for and consideration of disparate views in order to reach a consensus for going forwards to see if the idea worked or not . Trial and error.

It has been known for a long time in the business world that large companies stop being creative. The reason is that they get so large that centralised control from head office is all about homogeneity within the company to maintain its identity and integrity. Anything challenging that is expelled rapidly. At this point the only way they can do more business without new products is to increase market share by monopolisation and by marketing.

This is why all companies have a sine wave life. A slow start, an exponential rise , a tailing off and sudden decline as the ‘new idea’ company takes off.  Coca cola , Amazon , Tesla, Apple have no new ideas but are experts at monopolisation and marketing.

They also lobby to suppress competition for  new ideas.

There has been research looking at the decline of civilisations in the past and all of them collapse after they reach a point of maximal communication within the empire. Ie at their equivalent of globalisation.

Wherever there is no progress and suppression of new and or better ideas there is always regress.

Now we have social media where the crowd narrative expels, vilifies and suppresses anything that disagrees with that narrative. Unfortunately social media is often manipulated by the powers that be to create a crowd narrative . Additionally, fake news, which is usually more shocking  and more likely to spike the pleasure hormone dopamine, travels through social media six times more rapidly than real news.

Humans are hard wired to respond to structure hierarchy and leadership and crowd opinion and to respond to fear stimuli automatically without thinking. Therefore any tool of mass manipulation such as social media in the wrong hands can and has had disastrous consequences .

Indeed the psych ops teams used by individual governments to get their citizens to comply with useless and at worst highly damaging measures during the  ‘covid epidemic’  have been legally termed a military weapon. In other words governments used a military weapon against their own people. This was only necessary as the measures used were dictatorial, illogical, inconsistent and dangerous. 

Wherever you hear the term ‘we are following the science’ combined with suppression of alternative views -especially suppression of the truth- you know its a scam. For sure. 

Of course this is also an example of our leaders not taking any responsibility at all. 


Political correctness is another mass media crowd narrative driven by the powers that be to destroy structure within society. It demands compliance no matter how illogical the requirement. It demands equal outcome for all which is often damaging as we are not all the same. We have the same rights but all of us are different. 

Compliance is usually effortless and gains approval of the mass media and carries with it no responsibility. This is called virtue signalling. Eg I am wearing a mask. Aren’t I a good citizen? Worse than that is virtue signalling of the minorities...

All the great minds including religion tell us that if we are to progress in life we need to shoulder responsibility which involves hard work and pain. They don't make life sound too appetising with the partial exception of religion in which faith is innate . We argue that they miss out one of the key secrets of life which is self esteem. Thanks to Angela who made this a lovely Podcast touching on many issues affecting our lives including narcissism , the universal wage, Dave Mustaine and Socrates.

PTSD first defined in soldiers returning from the Vietnam War and officially recognised since 1980.


The distilled essence which you won't find anywhere else is as follows:

Similar to phobias there is a processing block causing an emotion logic gap: I know I should not feel like this but I can't help it. This is because we are hard wired to avoid or reduce anxiety so the brain actively suppresses anything causing anxiety so you can't think about it long enough to bring the emotion down to the logic. No amount of sense or education helps here which is in contrast to a real danger where you need tools and education without which just thinking about it will not help at all.

There can be minor and major processing blocks. There can also be a processing block from a misperception of an event so here the processing needs to overcome the discomfort of having got it wrong and the consequences of that. It's easy to see how we all have various degrees of emotion logic gap. For instance have you found that no matter how well you explain something to someone they won't change their minds? Even if you know they have understood the logic? It is because it is too painful to do so and they have no reason to go through that pain. Or how many times have you done something knowing it is wrong just because you want to for various reasons? Here again there is a type of processing I teach bit it needs self awareness and motivation.

Yet the harm from chronically raised cortisol from even mild processing gaps can be measured by improvement in all aspects of mental and physical health when it is dealt with.

It is why I say you only have clarity of mind at two points in your life: 1 when you are borne, 2 after you have had good therapy by a true expert which you pay for. (The payment indicates your motivation versus just turning up).


Life time prevalence of PTSD 8% of the population, about 90% are exposed to trauma including unexpected death of a loved one, equating to a lifetime occurrence of 5 separate traumas in men and 4 in females.

Women are less likely to be exposed to traumas than men but the traumas they are exposed to are more likely to cause PTSD such as rape and sexual molestation where as males are more likely to be exposed to combat and witnessing trauma to others.

About 30% of women view their child birth as traumatic with 30% of those developing PTSD hence about 10% of all mothers have PTSD.

About 25% of acute medical problems including ITU have PTSD.


Psycholgical sequalae of PTSD: Clinical depression , alchol and drug abuse.

Predisoping factor: Clinical depression.


Self report questionnaire: PCL-5 Post traumatic stress disorder Check List for DSM 5 20 questions scored 0-4 relating to the previous month.


DSM 5:  SIACAD

Stressor

Intrusion

Avoidance

Cognition

Arousal

Distress

More than 1 month


Can specify whether dissociation or delayed onset.

Routine debriefing re living trauma may make it worse


CBT 4-5 sessions, EMDR, Reprocessing


Live Exposure


SSRI SNRI


Psychedelics FDA approval pending


Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation


Atypical Antipsychotic , ECT




Important nuances:

Chronic loss of control eg bullying or lock-down = Prolonged Duress Stress Disorder

Minor trauma still causes processing blocks or impaired processing which needs to be properly processed either with self journaling or with reprocessing therapy. In fact Professor Pennebaker showed that in Yale University students self journaling difficult events reduced cortisol and improved mental and physical health and exam...

Stutz Dr Theo





I would be fine if I knew what direction to go in I would fly instead I become lazy




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We also discussed the first step in therapy which is connecting with your internal energy

You do that in 3 steps:

1: Diet exercise and sleep 

2: Connecting with others as we are tribal

3: Connecting with yourself your underlying feelings which is self awareness most effectively done by self journaling.





The Part X is  that part of you stopping forward progress which could include the Shadow self or the Maze or the Snap Shot or simply the judgmental antisocial part of you. Eg you’ll never be good at that, or who wants to do that , or you are wasting your time trying this. Radical acceptance is a tool to help you get over something bad. Grateful Flow helps deal with negative thoughts and Loss processing deals with loss


The key is to understand that for forward progress  and overcome Part X you need to go through a life time of:

Uncertainty pain and constant work. It is this process you need to enjoy ie the journey rather than the destination.It is overcoming Part X that leads to growth.

Failure pain embarrassment connects you to the universe you are saying I need your help I cannot do this without you.


Stutz says confidence is an appetite for uncertainty . I say this is not true because confidence is knowing how to do something which by definition is being certain.

Rather self esteem is an appetite for uncertainty because  self esteem is the degree of positivity with which you view yourself and therefore an expectation of positive outcome . If things do not go well self esteem protects you from the negative effects and instead helps you learn and move on and  apply those lessons in your next steps.


I am the one who gets to decide and take the next step. It will almost certainly be imperfect but progress is made by taking the steps  aka string of pearls each with a turd in them


Indeed research shows that dopamine hits come from achievement and reward in general but it is much greater if the reward is unexpected. Hence watching sport has an element of unpredictability which is why so many people enjoy it.  . Indeed when Formula 1 became too predictable the audience ratings fell so they changed the rules to make it more unpredictable. It is a positive expectation of an outcome that raises dopamine rather than the known outcome itself. The positive outcome will raise dopamine only if is unexpected. This explains how you can enjoy the journey of uncertainty pain and constant work. Your self esteem gives you an expectation of a positive outcome. It is the positive anticipation raising dopamine that makes this process enjoyable. This is especially important because it helps with sense of achievement and growth. The greater the effort the more meaningful the achievement. This then enables the parallel step of balance : Effort and reward must be balanced. Since more of life is effort rather than the result then the mechanism of being able to tolerate the effort is a  positive expectation of success. Once you put in the effort the sense of achievement is fulfilling and makes you grow. Positive self esteem also helps us use failure as a growing opportunity and simply includes  lessons learnt as part of the effort to  the next step all under the umbrella of positive expectation of overall outcome.


Snap Shot relates to setting of a goal  eg the perfect wife, the perfect success , the perfect amount of money in the bank which is static concept and has  no depth and does not allow for ongoing progress with pain uncertainty and constant work. There is no perfect nirvana. Goals are illusionary needs and living life like this is one of the worst inventions...

"Where are you from" is considered a micro aggression. Of course in a harmonious society this is a reasonable question indicative of genuine interest. Indeed in a harmonious society to suggest any other motive would be nonsense. However it has become a problem for two reasons in this age of societal collapse where political correctness has been the latest disintegration stage.
The first is people are easily offended because they are unhappy and are insecure about their own identity and feel they have no control apart from the politically correct right to offence for which there is no cost and no responsibility. Of course people should be proud of who they are and pride inspires respect and interest and education. Indeed who you are is simply reality and that is the healthiest thing to deal with. Not edging anxiously round political correctness.
The second is that the indigenous population is also feeling unhappy and insecure about their identity as they see it collapsing around them manifested by discussions over whether Christmas should be cancelled or summer school exams moved due to Ramadan.
As usual we are all too blinded by the symptom to really address the real problem which is something far more sinister.
The real fault lies with our leaders. It is their responsibility to provide leadership including national identity. If someone wants to move to any country it should be clear to them that they will be respected for who they are and where they come from but the priority is to integrate and take on the identity of that country and it's customs. In evolutionary terms if something is familiar it's probably good as it has not already eaten you. If it's not familiar it could be a danger. Hence we dont like people who are different. Studies back this up by showing certain of our brain cells which respond to social queues -mirror neurones- either don't respond or respond less when observing someone of a different skin colour. It can be remedied by education. Hence the phenomenon of racism is a natural phenomenon but the fact it happens is a sign of a badly run society. People don't feel integrated and instead stay close to those they identify with which is why cities become mosaics of different cultures and religions with limited mixing. For instance we all know which cultural groups live in China town, Finchley, Hownslow, Walthamstow, Lambeth -or even large swathes of Birmingham.... Once you have coalescing of cultures each rubbing shoulders with each other then you have friction and strife. Add into that increased immigration recently with no effort or requirement of integration then you have a dry tinder box where small incidents can act as kindling for the underlying problem. For instance the UK is a Christian country. The King of England is the head of the Church of England. At citizenship ceremonies you have to swear allegiance to the King of England. Saudi Arabia is much clearer. It has strict requirements for cohesion to its own culture and religion and forbids public display of other religions. Do you think they would consider moving Ramadan to allow foreign students to study for exams? Who is the stronger more harmonious society? The problem with our leaders is that being a democracy they have to get elected hence they have to please the vast majority of the population who make decisions emotionally on top of which they are misinformed by the media. Therefore logical well infirmed voting is not only a pipe dream but those seeking election just make promises that sound good emotively for quick votes. This is nothing to do with firm fair leadership which will displease the politically correct mass media. Try enforcing British culture, identity, values let alone the Church of England. This general collapse is seeping into every fibre of our society including health, social services police. Everyone avoids responsibility behaves obstructively and destructively rather than constructively and takes...