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Pharmacological Sanity

     When I was originally diagnosed with ADD, it was called Minimal Brain Dysfunction. This diagnosis was designed to address children who seemed to function poorly in school and other social settings, but could not be clinically diagnosed as mentally retarded. For a time, this worked, but then someone noticed a discrepancy between these children’s school performance and their IQ scores. While their IQ’s tested in the normal to high range, their performance was abysmal. Researchers realized children with this diagnosis seemed to struggle in focusing long enough to take in information in a way that allowed them to retain it. This new theory lead to different types of treatment. I underwent testing for food allergies, adhered to a strict diet with mineral and vitamin additives, biofeedback sessions, and was even in a trial study for Prozac. My father claims I would have blackouts while on Prozac and even began having suicidal thoughts at the age of 8. I received therapy from several immanent psychiatrists and psychologists, one of whom was Dr. Hunt who still runs the Center for Attention and Hyperactivity in Tennessee. My father had his masters in counseling and when Dr. Hunt suggested that my parents check me into a mental institution, forget they ever had a son, and focus their time and energy into their “healthy” daughter, my Father asked Dr. Hunt, “Why can’t you just admit that you can’t help my son?” Needless to say, this concluded our sessions with Dr. Hunt.

     My entire family worked hard to stay with me throughout my years of rebellion and boundary testing. Through the overdoses. Through the depression. Through the denial and rage. They showed me, through modeling and through actions, what it means to truly love someone. But that’s not what this post is about. This post is about the benefits and risks of medication vs alternative/holistic means of treating ADD/ADHD.  
   
     While I have ADD, I am also a marriage and family therapist who has worked with many families and individuals who’s lives have been impacted by this disorder. Some articles claim exercise reduces symptoms of ADD and it is difficult for me to think of a reason why, after consulting a physician, anyone would not incorporate exercise into their daily routine. For me, this has not been enough. Despite diet changes, added vitamins and minerals, and lots of other attempted fixes, what has worked for me is medication. I still exercise, and I should probably eat better, and at this time in my life and for the past 16 years, medication has helped control the symptoms of my ADD. It has helped me maintain my marriage and provide me with a greater amount of impulse control and levels of tolerance.

        This post is being written in reference to a twitter conversation I recently had. My decision to take medication to help with the symptoms of a neurological disorder was fairly quickly disparaged. The reply asked if I had every tried taking an art class rather than simply using medication to treat my symptoms. While my illustrations are evidence I did not pay attention, I have taken art classes. What got to me about the tweet is this: If I were taking medication for depression, would the same person have been as quick to ask if I had tried alternative means of treatment?  
     
         No doubt about it; ADD is over diagnosed and over treated. Many children are over medicated for a variety of reasons. However, this does not mean medication is not necessarily effective when used appropriately. To that extent, I would suggest more research be done in the area of diagnosing. Finding out if ADD/ADHD has a trauma or relationship attachment component to it vs. it being organic and purely physical. More accurate diagnosing for many disorders may play a key role in allowing doctors to target treatment and medication in order to treat the person rather than just treating symptoms while having very little etiological understanding.

        In the meantime, let me tell you a story about a friend of mine who was in high school with me and had been diagnosed with ADD and refused to take medication. When I asked why he chose not to, he stated that he didn’t want to and it felt weird. I asked my friend why he wore glasses. He said he was near sighted and without his glasses probably wouldn’t have been able to function day-to-day. I reflected back to him the incongruence that he chose to wear glasses to correct his vision but refused to take medication to correct his neurology. He laughed me off and said it was different and complained that I didn’t understand. The truth was, I deeply understood, and wanted him to experience the same form of freedom I had.

        Medication isn’t the answer. No pill will ever make someone perfect; and if it could, it would be at the expense of their own humanity. However, unless it’s doing more damage than good, please be careful not to disparage a persons means of maintaining sanity.

Pharmacological Sanity
(C) Nathan D. Croy, 2014
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Optional Vision.

     Short post, and I’ll let Brian Regan present most of the content (thanks Brian!), but this is something to reflect on. My wife has horrible vision. It’s true. I asked her the other day if the two colors I had on matched. She said she didn’t have her glasses on so she couldn’t tell. This means her vision is so bad she can’t see colors without contacts or glasses. Colors, people! Sometimes she will complain about her current prescription not keeping up with the degradation of her eyesight. She will still wait 9 months to a year before she ever calls someone to make an eye appointment, but who cares? It’s just vision!
     The truth is, we all do this. We put on hold the truly important and critical things in our life because of the busy-ness of day to day tasks. I am just as culpable of this as everyone else. The trash needs to get taken out on Thursday night. The bills have to be paid. My children’s diapers need to get change. These things need to get done. Because we all have responsibilities to the world that will not wait, we must make times for the things that cannot be denied. Time to relax, to be with family and friends, to get out of our comfort zone, to regain our existential sight. To remind ourselves who we are, why we do what we do, and what is important in life. When we make time to do this, the little things of life will be recharged with meaning instead of being burdensome chores. We will take out the trash so someone else doesn’t have to. We will be grateful we have money to pay the bills (or we will reevaluate what is important to spend money on if we are unable to pay our bills). We will change diapers and be reminded of how our children are truly dependent on us for their safety in this world. We will remember falling in love with our spouse, our first real success in school or work, or that there is someone else in the world that loves us, possibly more than we love ourselves. And that is how we can make optional vision become optimal vision.

Myopic
(C) 2014 Nathan D. Croy
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The Ukraine and Kansas University

*This post contains quotes which have strong language. Just thought you should know.*

     Recently, KCUR (Kansas Public Radio) did a story on a professor that was fired from Kansas University for expressing a view that was in conflict with the views of KU. Please click HERE for that story. Leading up to that story, KCUR asked people to chime in on their own opinion concerning firing people for expressing views that are not compatible with the views of the employer. It was surprising to see how many people felt it was fine for schools or corporations to maintain a “media policy” that prevents their employees from expressing dissident voices; even on personal or private pages.
     It would be unfair to compare the firing of one professor to the current struggle and protests in the Ukraine. While the issues are very different, what interested me is the response of those in power to the protests of others. The Ukrainian president recently passed laws outlawing the gathering of people in order to protest. If a protester did register for one of these events, they received a text stating they were in violation of the recently passed law. Bypassing the Orwellian implications of receiving electronic notifications on something you haven’t even done yet, does anyone else see a similarity between what happened to this KU professor and what is happening to the Ukrainian people?
     Being kept quiet can happen through various means. In the Ukraine it is happening through threats, imprisonment, violence, and electronic tracking. In other countries, like North Korea, the control is more overt and the media is clearly a mouthpiece for the government. It can also be more subtle. In countries where advertising and media are prevalent, the fight can be so subtle we are unaware we are losing.
     In the 2011 movie, Detachment, Adrien Brody plays a teacher (who probably plays the piano). Speaking to his class he says this about the “Marketing Holocaust”:

     “Examples of lies in society: I need to be pretty to be happy. I need surgery to be pretty. I need to be thin, famous, fashionable. Our young men, today, are being told that women are whores. Bitches. Things to be screwed. Beaten. Shit on. Shamed. This is a marketing holocaust. Twenty-four hours a day for the rest of our lives, ‘the powers that be’ are hard at work dumbing us to death. So, to defend ourselves and fight against assimilating this dullness into our thought processes, we must learn to read. To stimulate our own imagination. To cultivate our own consciousness. Our own belief systems. We all need these skills to defend…to preserve our minds.”

This message is not new. Fight Club expressed a similar message, albeit with a slightly darker and nihilistic response. The Matrix is an allegory for this message that “the powers that be” want us to remain docile, calm, quiet, and forever pursuing the status quo which “they” conveniently create. If this is beginning to sound a bit paranoid, go to the Ukraine and enjoy a quiet and peaceful protest. For a less dramatic approach, why not try going shopping while asking yourself why you like the clothes you like.
     This is not a blanket excuse to be an unmitigated argumentative pain in the neck. Part of being mature and learning to exercise love is to be sensitive and appropriate. However, that does not allow institutions, in any form they may take, to silence our voices. An offense even worse than trying to silence a voice is trying to replace it. To require others say, through their actions or their voice, that everything is fine, when everything is not fine, is to deny them their humanity for our own comfort. If we are honest with ourselves, the reason we seek uniformity and conformity is to avoid the discomfort that comes with difference.
     As I tweeted to KCUR, firing someone for expressing a dissident voice is tantamount to eradicating autonomy in the name of peace; it is self-defeating. When we ask people not to disagree with our beliefs, our policies, or our motives, we deny ourselves opportunities for growth. When our insistence on being right outstrips our desire for relationship, our rightness no longer matters.

*UPDATE* I was informed by KCUR via Twitter that the professor from KU has not been fired and instead is on administrative leave. Here is an article from the Huff Post about his supension.

Everything Is Great No Mouth
Everything Is Great
(C) Nathan D. Croy, 2014

    

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Guilt, Shame, & Personal Accountability

“Fight against yourself, recover yourself to decency, to modesty, to freedom. …And, in the first place, condemn your actions; but when you have condemned them, do not despair of yourself.

“For both ruin and recovery are from within.”

~Epictetus, Discourses, Ch. 9


     People can feel shame without taking accountability. This also means people can take accountability without feeling shame. Shame and guilt should not be confused. Guilt has restorative properties and always contains a means of penance; of ways to make right our wrong doing and seek forgiveness. Guilt is inherently external: Focused on what we have done; not on who we are.
     Shame, on the other hand, does not call us to restoration or community. Instead, it calls us to isolation and focuses on who we are rather than what we have done. This is a terrific topic and a great book on the topic is called “Guilt and Shame”. There is a link to it in the Book List, and I recommend it. However, for now, what is important is knowing the distinction between guilt (healthy response to a wrong doing) and shame (unhealthy judgment about our personhood).
     Though shame and guilt are very different, they do have one thing in common: personal accountability. The quote from Epictetus should not be read to mean that success or failure lies within us. “Both ruin and recovery are from within.” The decision to take responsibility for our actions, and thereby have the power to do something about them, lies within us. If we feel guilt, if we feel shame, yet believe there is nothing we can do, that circumstances were in control of our lives, well then we are utterly powerless and we may as well fall into despair. Some believe this is a freeing concept, that if our fate lies in the stars instead of ourselves, we are free of condemnation. Yet this idea does not explain away our guilt or shame.
     Passing the buck and blaming others for your situation, even if it is an accurate perception, does little to empower us, change the situation, or help heal relationships. However, taking an earnest look at ourselves, allowing trusted friends and advisers to reflect back to us who we are, begins the process of personal accountability. This is one way shame can be converted to proper guilt. That we can begin distinguishing between who we are and what we do. When this happens, we can begin personally being accountable for our actions without allowing those actions to define us.
     Leave a comment about a time you wrestled with shame or guilt. How did you handle it? Were you able to take personal responsibility?

Hear no, See no, They did it.

(C) Nathan D. Croy
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My Distracting… Oh look, a bird!

Like a gold ring in a pig’s snout is a beautiful face on an empty head. (Proverbs 11:22 MSG)
     I get distracted. Easily. At times, that means I see the flowers other people miss. At other times, that means I’m looking at flowers while every other person is running away from a swarm of bees. I recently downloaded a background on my phone that mimics the conditions outside in real time. This morning, as I picked up the phone to check a notification, I noticed the sun was rising on my screen. I’d never seen this transition before and was fascinated by how it was animated. Then I realized; I’m standing next to a window. I could just open the curtains and watch the sun actually rising instead of watching a 99 cent imitation.
     There is nothing inherently wrong with distractions. Often times they are unavoidable and foisted on us by external factors. Where we fall into trouble is when the distractions become the goal. When the peripheral becomes the focus and the imitation becomes the real we begin losing our connections to life. The world becomes our world. This is the egocentricity that leads to falling in love with a pig because there’s a gold ring in its snout. This is the egocentricity that leads to falling in love with a beautiful face on an empty head. This is the egocentricity that misses the point and is consumed with self to the exclusion of the other.

(C) Nathan D. Croy, 2013