political

Crazy is Contagious

Ron Johnson communication, emotional maturity, Feelings, mindfulness, political, relationships, Self-Awareness

I heard the statement, “crazy is contagious” from a colleague of mine when I told him about an experience I had recently had with a patient. It got me thinking. “Crazy” is not by any means a part of my vocabulary, nor are other typical terms when we think of the challenges that people have like, “issues,” “problems,” and even “diagnoses.” If you have followed me in my blogging, you have noticed that I do the very best I can to avoid diagnosing someone and finding the diagnosis of much benefit. People use the terms depressed, nervous, bipolar disorder, ADHD, and PTSD way too easily and very often without much knowledge of these conditions. There are, for instance very few people, who suffer from a true bipolar disorder, perhaps one in 1000, maybe less. Bipolar disorder, by the way, is a delusional disorder when someone truly experiences such a severe depression as to truly not want to live for one more day, and that followed by times when the person feels like s/he could fly off a building successfully with arms as wings. I was bemused by a person reported that her husband was “very bipolar.” She actually meant that he swung from happy to sad. But this is not bipolar disorder. Nor is being sad depression, being worried anxiety, being distracted ADHD, or having bad memories PTSD. PTSD and the like are all real disorders, but they are not as common as people think. Enough of my grandstanding on the theme that psychiatric terms are used excessively. Let me get to the point.

The point is this: some kind of “crazy” is contagious. This means that if you around a person who feels delusional, speaks her delusions with firm conviction, and is fully convinced of these delusions, you will absorb some of the “crazy” thinking. This happened to me the other day with a patient who, indeed, espoused a series of delusional-like statements. This was a young man, a man of good integrity as well as high intelligence, but someone who has been suffering from some time with a significant amount of anxiety. I have written about anxiety before noting that it is clearly the most difficult phenomenon to overcome because it is caused by the brain (not the mind, mind you) believes that there is lethal danger just around the corner and keeps you in a state of perpetual hypervigilance in preparation for the danger that the brain believes to exist. I will not restate what I have previously written about this mind-brain interaction except to say that you mind knows everything but your brain knows only safety and pleasure, or lack thereof. You brain doesn’t know that when you are “worried” about passing an exam tomorrow that this is, actually tomorrow, because the brain (not the mind) does not have a sense of time. For the brain everything is in the present. So when your mind thinks about the danger of failing an exam, you brain goes into action to protect you. Unfortunately, you brain does not distinguish some future danger from a present danger. Furthermore, you brain does not distinguish serious danger from minor danger. Hence, anxiety is very difficult to conquer. It is only conquered by sadness. But that is another discussion unless you want to read our books. So, let me tell you about how I “caught” the delusion I heard the other day.

Delusions

I must alter the words and circumstances to protect my patient’s identify but the phenomenon is the same: delusion spoken. Jack (I’ll call him Jack) suggested there was a conspiracy operating in Washington having to do with a certain political figure. He expressed how he had concluded that there was some immediate danger to him, to his family, and to America at large due to this individual and his colleagues. At first, he told me that an important senator had been “kidnapped” and another one “arrested” for unknown offenses and by unknown individuals. He told me more and more about what he was quite certain was about to happen in America and advised me that I should prepare myself for some kind of political, cultural, or military storm that was about to happen. When I first heard about the “arrest” of a senator, I was quite distressed because I had not heard about it, but then as Jack continued his story and beliefs in what I should call a conspiracy theory, I became increasingly concerned that I was listening to a person who was either truly delusional or “feeling” delusional for some reason. Jack finalized his statements of concern with a suggestion that there was a true danger of the water in Madison being contaminated with some kind of mind-altering drug. I was advised to keep from drinking tap water.

Now, I know that the water is not contaminated in Madison and I most certainly know that there is no conspiracy to take over the world, but after listening to this long story of conspiracy, I was affected emotionally, and then I was affected cognitively. I actually thought that maybe…just maybe…the water had somehow been contaminated. I knew better, but I found myself actually thinking this “crazy” notion. Why would I do that? I know better. Part of the reason I actually considered that there might be some truth in these stories was because I value Jack, namely his intelligence and his integrity. This is an important factor when you consider what you hear, from whom you hear it, and the content of what you hear. But this is not enough. You have to attend to how you feel because “crazy is contagious.”

Crazy is contagious

There are a lot of things that are contagious. These days, of course, we are all thinking of how Covid is contagious. We hear this all the time with suggestions of social distancing, masking, and all the rest. Then we also hear that social distancing and masking is not enough from some people and that it is harmful from other people. It is hard to know what to believe, but what most people do is trust their feelings: wear a mask, don’t wear a mask, social distance or don’t social distance, have parties or don’t have parties. Watching out for a viral contagion is difficult but you can find your way and do your best. Not so with emotional contagion and intellectual contagion.

Conspiratorial ideas, whether truly delusional or not, create a strong emotion. Witness the recent events in the Capital where people truly believed that it was possible to storm the Capital building and somehow change the course of democracy as it has operated for 250 years. These were not crazy people. They were, in my estimation, “true believers,” namely people who believe so heartily in President Trump, that they could take his words, his suggestion, and then broaden it into action. It is debatable whether Trump really wanted the crows to invade the Capital as it happened, something like the French revolution when outraged Frenchmen stormed to gates of the aristocracy. I doubt that these people were delusional although it is possible that some of them might have been. What happened, at least in my mind, was that there was a crowd effect, largely driven by powerful emotion and belief. The same crowd effect occurred during some Black Lives Matter marches when a few people, obviously overcome with emotion, did physical damage to property, and in some circumstances damage to people. Crazy, if we call it that, is contagious because it is profoundly emotional, which then filters into one’s cognition to justify the emotionally-based delusion. There is actually a formal diagnosis, rarely used, but quite real, called “shared psychotic experience.” I have encountered it only a couple times in my career.

It is not only “crazy” that is contagious. All things are contagious. Specifically, both depression and anxiety are contagious. This means that if you are around someone who suffers from depression or anxiety, you will most certainly feel the symptoms of these disorders. We therapists need to be quite aware of the contagion effect as we deal with people who might, indeed, be profoundly depressed or anxious. But this awareness is not limited to therapists. I suggest you be aware of the people around you who are, for instance, depressed, anxious, moody, or even delusional because too much exposure to such things will rub off on you.

Interestingly, you can also “catch” good feeling, like hope, faith, trust, love, and joy. Note how you feel when you are around someone who has one or more of these feelings in their nature or their presentation. Sadly, there are not many people who feel these things with our current deluge of politically motivated statements from all quarters. It behooves us to find people who feel good about life if we are to feel good about life. This can be a challenge especially if you are in some difficult situation, or your family or friend is in some difficult situation, because you would normally want to talk about the situation. Indeed, you need to talk but not with joining in with delusional, depressing, or anxiety-driven conversation, nor with conversation with false hope and simple answers. It is no small task.

Avoid the crazy

You can deal with delusional thoughts by noting how you feel emotionally. You will feel afraid. If you are around depression, you will feel depressed, and when you’re around anxiety, you will feel anxious. Not so bad to feel these things for a few moments, maybe minutes, but not more. Note when you start to absorb the “crazy” and quickly find a way out of the conversation. This may not always be easy. I needed to stay with my patient for a half hour as he talked to me about his delusions. I am not even sure that he really believes these conspiracy theories. Perhaps, he just absorbed them from a good friend. It doesn’t matter where he came to believe such things, nor does it matter how deeply he believes them. It doesn’t even matter whether some of what he says is actually true. What matters is that crazy incites crazy. Likewise, depression incites depression, anxiety incites anxiety, anger incites anger, and so on. You don’t need someone else’s crazy. You have enough of your own. You need to keep your distance.

Keeping you distance means trusting your feelings, namely when you begin to feel things that are not good for you, like anger or fear. If you are with someone and hearing their stories but begin to feel such things, you need to first be aware of your feelings, realize that you have “caught” someone else’s feeling, and then get away as soon as you can. This might take some socially delicate maneuver, but you need not feel what someone else feels if it is bad for you.

Feeling what someone else feels, whether joyful or sad, is not always a bad thing. It can be very good to feel sad with someone who has had a loss or feel truly joyful with someone when they tell you about their success in life. My concern is not to keep your social distance from any and all emotion but to be aware of the emotion that people bring to you because all emotion is contagious. Emotion is wonderful, and there are rare times when it is valuable to be afraid and to be angry. Rare times. There are more times when it is valuable to be joyful or sad because these emotions have to do with love, not defense

Intention and Production

Ron Johnson communication, Personality, political, relationships, Self-Awareness, Spiritual

It is important to produce. It is equally important to intend to produce. But these two ways of engaging the world are profoundly different, a difference we might call spiritual. I conceive of these elements of psychological life on a spectrum with purpose in the center of the spectrum, something like this:

Intention…………..……….……Purpose…………………………..Production

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This might seem unduly abstract and theoretical, but all ow me to suggest how this paradigm might be helpful in understanding how you engage the world, and perhaps better understand how other people engage the world. In fact, unless you are one of the rare people who reside somewhere in the middle, you are probably largely on one side of this spectrum. Furthermore, you probably have some trouble with people who are on the other side of the spectrum. Roughly, people who favor intention need to have a direction to where they go compared to people who favor production who just go. Both “intenders” and “producers” have a purpose in what they are doing and where they are going, but their perspectives of how to get to this purpose are quite different.

Deb and I are on different sides of this spectrum, Deb being distinctly on the intention side whereas I am distinctly on the productive side of the spectrum. We share many elements of psychology and agree on most things that have to do with thinking and feeling, but where we differ is in the third element of life: how we go about engaging life with a purpose. I am sure this is yet too abstract for many of you, perhaps especially people who tend to be “producers.” Furthermore, even the terminology that I am using is less than distinct and less easily useful. Deb has brought this matter of “intention” to me recently as we look into this year and the days or years that we might have yet to live. We have found ourselves frequently musing, often talking, sometimes reading, and sometimes writing about what the future might bring. Talk about intension has intensified with Deb recently as she has made some changes in her work schedule and work place. Let me first discuss the nature of the American world in specific and the world at large in general in regards to the intention-production phenomenon. Then I will suggest ways in which you might understand how you go about life, and hopefully do a bit better engaging the other people in your life who might share your perspective or have a different perspective.

America is primarily productive

This is an important place to start because the very basic flavor of America is and has always been production, much more than intention, this despite the fact that the founders of the United States were actually people of intention. A careful look at the Constitution, but much more so, the Declaration of Independence, will show you that it was the intention of the founders to establish a democratic republic much more than their having an idea of how that intention would work out in producing a democratic republic. Washington, Jefferson, Adams (both of them), Hamilton, and Franklin were certainly intenders more than producers. Many later Presidents, particularly Jackson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Grant were more producers. In between we find Lincoln, who most certainly was an intender but eventually became perhaps the most important producer President we have ever had. I will leave this thought for your reading and musing and turn to the functional nature of America as it unfolded.

Despite the fact that the founders were largely intenders, almost to the person, the country was young, incredibly capable of expansion with resources beyond comprehension, became a country dominated by production and all that goes with it. I will not belabor the point, but the very fabric of America is doing, producing, and having things.  It is not why we do, produce and have. It is not much about how we might effectively use such things. Look at what is said from most of our political leaders, and you will hear of doing, producing and having. You will not hear of intention except by inference. It seems to me that our current President is thoroughly a producer, not an intender. We will discuss the challenges that Trump has and other people like him have later.

Compare America to any other developed country in the world, particularly China and Japan in the East and most of Europe in the West. We could also look at native cultures in the Americas, Africa, and Asia, but we must delay that discussion. It is likely that the relative youth of America and the relative longer life of China, Japan, and Europe might be part of the reason America is so production oriented compared to the philosophies of China, Japan, and Europe to say nothing of the philosophies of the Middle East (Christianity, Islam, and Judaism).

So, if you’re more of a producer, like I am, life has probably been easier for you in America than your spouse, friend, daughter, or father who might be intenders. In my own family my brother was very significantly an intender, as was my mother while my father was almost completely a producer with my sister somewhere in between. My brother struggled heartily in this family dominated by my father’s production-orientation, and truly never recovered from the debates he had with our father, nor did he succeed in the world of work that is heavily production-based. It was much easier for me. I just did things. Bill considered doing things. This made life more challenging for Bill than it was for me, but we producers also have our challenges

The challenges of intention and production

Part of the challenge of understanding this intention-production paradigm is in the very words that we use. Words, at least normally used words, tend to fall into the producing side of the spectrum of paradigm of purpose. In fact, a case could be made for suggesting that words themselves are more inclined to value production over intention. This is one of the challenges that intenders have when they engage the (American) world: there isn’t a (normal English) vocabulary for intenders Consider what you might hear from someone you talk to someone:

  • What’s happening?
  • What’s going on in your life?
  • What are you doing?
  • What’s new in your life?
  • How has the problem being solved?

The operative words here are how and what. These are not particularly words of intention. They are words of doing or producing. You would rarely hear from your friend questions that are more of intention, like:

  • What have you been thinking lately?
  • What have you been feeling lately?
  • What have you been musing about lately?
  • What is your intention for the day?
  • Much less:
    • What is your intention for life?
    • What is your purpose in life?
    • What is important to you?
    • Why did you do this or that?

People just don’t talk this way for the most part. Note the difference between the “what” questions for intenders compared to the “what” questions for the producers. What questions for intenders are those of thought or feeling, not so much of actual doing.

Challenges are not so basic for producers living in America, but there are challenges nevertheless. Their challenges have to do with the result of being tired of all the things they do, doing something in a hurry to just get it done, doing something so perfectly that it never seems to get done, and other difficulties that come with a person who is always doing. The value system here is ultimately the same for intenders and producers, namely purpose, but the ways of getting there are substantially different. When I go about a purpose, like writing this blog, I “just start” with no particular intention other than to write something that might be of value to one or two people who might read this blog. I don’t sit back and see how I might go about writing, consider it more, write a bit, muse about it, correct it, and then perhaps set it aside until my passion builds to go back to writing. I just write. You might see the occasional unfortunate results of my “just writing,” namely in the spelling errors that I so often make. People who write from an intentional persuasion often think ten times more than they write, and many fine writers never finish anything because they get lost in the intention but fail to produce. I have a cousin who has been writing a screenplay for 10 or 15 years, and he seems quite satisfied with this way of going about writing, but his sister, much the producers of the family, can’t see the value of his intending to write the screenplay of the century. I think that it doesn’t matter to him whether he will every finish the screenplay because his intention is to write it, not to produce it.

I will leave you to consider that President Trump is very much the doer/producer. You simply don’t hear anything about intention. It bemuses me to read commentators trying to understand what his intention is in what he says or does. I would suggest that he has no intention. He just does things. Much different is President Obama who was clearly much more the intender than the doer. Admitting to the extreme nature of the following, I might say that Obama had great intention but didn’t really do much. Trump has done all kinds of things, most of them wrong. Choose your poison. I think, but I’m not sure, that Biden might be somewhere in between.

So, roughly, the challenge of the intenders of the world is to actually do something, produce something, create something, whereas the challenge for producers is to stand back and see what might be the intention of what they want to do and then move slowly towards accomplishing it. Doing is good, but not good enough; you need to do something of value, perhaps lasting value. Dreaming is good but also not good enough; you need to do something that might also have lasting value. Good luck intending and producing.

It’s The War

Ron Johnson appreciation, emotional maturity, Feelings, mindfulness, political, Self-Awareness, Spiritual

Deb and I really enjoy Masterpiece Theater, which comes on PBS pretty regularly. Actually, we don’t watch any other channels aside from the three PBS channels we get over the air. We’ve had “air only” TV forever. Occasionally, however, when we happen to be in a motel where there are 600 cable channels, we waste a few minutes channel flipping only to find nothing that suits our fancy and immediately note how intolerable commercials are for us to watch. The Masterpiece mysteries are generally a mix of one or more unsolved murders, usually a predominant police inspector, a subordinate police officer, and several intertwining stories, some of which are red herrings. One of the things we like about the mysteries, as well as much of BBC television is that the characters are all flawed in some way: maybe grumpy (Lewis), alcoholic (Tennison) theologically questioning (Hathaway), or some other minor or major malady. So, they all appear to be quite “human” with these warts of life. One of our favorite mysteries is Foyle’s War, which has the main inspector as a wonderfully introverted thinking man assisted by an equally wonderfully extraverted feeling woman. Foyle’s War is set in southern England throughout the six years of World War II. Among the interesting things about this series, as is true with most Masterpiece mysteries, is that Inspector Foyle is often presented with dilemmas that have legal, ethical, moral, and personal implications, all within the context of the war that goes on in the background. So, it’s not possible for Foyle to simply go about doing police work without frequently encountering challenges that have more to do with the war than with local crime. In general then, we have someone trying heartily to settle criminal matters faithful to the laws of England while being in a situation of war, which by its very nature could be conceived as “criminal,” namely killing people. An interesting expression that Foyle’s assistant (Sam = Samantha) says when they encounter one of these dilemmas is, “It’s the War.” So, “It’s the War” means that things are not so clean and clear when there is a war going on. Foyle’s son, who is a pilot in the Royal Air Force and Sam are an item for a while but then he finds another woman and writes Sam a “Dear John” letter. Sam’s response was, “It’s the War,” as she frequently says when other dilemmas occur, like the military protecting a Nazi war criminal because he is “useful” for information about the Nazi machine. Now what does “It’s the War” have to do with things psychological? Lots.

Our current “war”

We’re in a “war” as we speak. The current war is three-fold: biological, political, and cultural. Specifically, the war against the Covid virus, the war against perceived dangerous political forces, and the war against cultural forces. I don’t have to elaborate on the nature of this current manifold war but to note that this war affects us every day, for many of us, daily, and for many of us hourly. There is never a newspaper nor a new broadcast that doesn’t include comments on one or more of these three elements of this “war.” We are deluged with information, mostly on the negative side of things, with these three elements, e.g. the virus is spreading, the Black Lives protests turn violent, or some hateful comment about President Trump or former Vice President Biden. “It’s a war” has the right ring to it as I try to compare what it might have been like for mothers and fathers of fighting men and women in World War II, or in any other war for that matter, to think that their children, husbands, brothers and sisters, sons, and daughters might be killed on any day. What must it have been like to hear stories daily of bombings and other dangerous activities that were going on during those terrible days of 1939-1945. I can only imagine. My proposition is that the “war” we are currently in is much the same as this previous war mostly because of the daily/hourly reports of one or more of the elements of this war. Consider what effect this deluge of information, almost always dangerous and otherwise difficult to hear, has on us. I content that we need to be cognizant of the war that is currently going on as we deal with the day-to-day events, stresses, opportunities, and disappointments that occur to all of us in one day. My contention is that we need to consider that the “war” affects how we think, how we feel, and what we do as we encounter or otherwise normal daily events, choices, and dilemmas because when there is a war, “all bets are off” and “nothing is the way it used to be”. Hard enough to think about doing the right thing, feel about doing the right thing, and then doing the right thing when we can think, feel, and act somewhat clearly. No so in a war.

Engaging daily events, decisions, and actions when you’re in a war

Simply stated, you cannot go about business as you have been doing before the war. You cannot think, feel, or act as you have felt, thought, and acted before the war because the war is always with you and affects all thoughts, feelings, and actions. Most importantly, you need to take great caution with the “acting” part of that threesome more than the thinking and feeling. Yet, it is also important to note that much of your time will be spent in the “feeling” part, and then this feeling part will drift into your “thinking.” Let me explain:

  • Let’s say that you and your life’s partner are not doing well, and maybe you have been in therapy with someone, maybe me, who has been working on such things as personality structure, gender differences, communication, and the whole matter of feeling as I do with most everyone I see. Previous to the war, you and I could perhaps discuss the differences you and your partner have in personality and gender. Maybe we’ve made some progress in communication, like maybe she’s an “analyst” and you are a “lover” in temperament. Now, however, you two are dealing with one or more elements of the war:
    • She thinks you should wear a mask all the time; you disagree
    • She is a Trump lover and you are most certainly not
    • You tend to value the cultural challenges that are occurring in America; she thinks that protests are all riots.
    • So it is hard for you two to deal with other things in your life together and your lives separately because of the war intruding on almost every aspect of your life
  • Or, you may be that individual who came to see someone, like me perhaps, because you wanted to get over your life-long tendency to be angry. You are a businessman but also someone who wants to make some social impact on the world but:
    • Your kids are being inundated by “liberal” education like when you seventh grader and her classmates were asked “what pronoun do you prefer in reference to yourself.” You think this is premature and perhaps harmful.
    • You would really like to hire some people in great need and thought about contacting some agency that deals with Blacks who are out of work. You think that you could offer some good wages. But you are afraid of what you might get and trouble you might have because you have never had a Black work for you
    • You find yourself angry at the protests-turn-riots and don’t know how to consider hiring Blacks who might riot on your property
    • You have never been afraid to walk the streets, but now you are
  • Or, maybe you’re a pastor who came to see someone, maybe like me, because you were looking to improve in your self-understanding and serve your congregation better, but now:
    • You admit to be left-of-center…maybe pretty far left…but also have some good people in your congregation who are quite different
    • You want to make your church more effective in all ways but can’t have regular in-house meetings
    • You have a lot of time on your hands, something that you have always wanted, but now it feels a bit “lazy” not to be doing your normal pastoral duties like visiting nursing homes and the like
    • You also might, say, have three young children who demand a kind of 24/7 attention and you certainly want to protect them from Covid.
  • Or, maybe, you’re just a guy who wants to have fun in life, like going swimming in a pool, going to a concert, or going out to dinner, all of which have significant restrictions and challenges

So, how do you manage your life that is now in the midst of a war when you have things that used to be the most important things in your life, like work, children, play, and eating, when it seems things like biological agents, political agents, and cultural agents are always in your face?

Facing life’s challenges in a war

  1. Remember that “It’s the war.” Just remember the “war” part of this, not necessarily the cultural, political, and biological elements. This means that the “war” is always in the background, always present in your thoughts and feelings, always going on whether you remember it or not.
  2. This remembering that the war is going on does not really mean that “all bets are off.” You can still think, emote, and act being responsible to all these representations of how you feel, noting that “feeling” includes how you feel physically, emotionally, cognitively, and actively. You have to feel as clearly as you can despite the fact that the war is always in the background, you have to think clearly, and feel emotionally, and eventually do some things. The “war” is not an excuse for irresponsibility.
  3. Giving “the war” due diligence means that you acknowledge that there is always a certain unnatural flavor to what you feel, think, and do. Allowing this “bad flavor” is akin to allowing you to eat some peas that have had a bit too much salt in their cooking. You get used to think and feel with this bad flavor, the war won’t be the predominant factor in your deciding on a courses of action. You eat the peas despite the undue salt.
  4. Admit to you colleagues, friends, and intimates the obvious: It’s the war. Once you do that, you will take the larger part of the war out of what you actually decide to do. Tell other people that “it’s the war” and explain the perspective. I have been surprised at the number of people who have profited from this perspective.
  5. Be aware of everyone around you also being in “the war” and give them a wide berth of their thoughts and statements, if not perhaps all of their actions. Let them shoot their mouths off about Trump or whatever. It’s the war does not mean you have to let go of kindness and compassion for people in distress…which is everyone.
  6. Know that anything you do may be done because of the war. Some things just have to be done, like breathing, eating, playing, working, and voting. You may not do these things with the best of spirit or even the best of thought, but you must do these things. Like breathing: this is the first thing that stops when you are afraid, like when you are startled: you stop breathing. Mindfulness and the like can be very useful during times of stress when you feel a lot, think a lot, and don’t know what to do. Breathe more deeply.
  7. Remember the war will be over. My best guess is a year from now, but I have no better idea than anyone else and certainly less than true scientists. The 30 Years War ended, so did the 100 Years War, as did the Civil War, and all the other wars.
  8. Remember that this is a time of uncertainty because of the war. Allow for “not knowing” but don’t let your “not knowing” be an excuse for inaction.
  9. Govern your fear. I would like suggest that you give up entirely on fear, but that is impossible for most people however desirable it is to be completely free of fear.
  10. Do you best to avoid the trap of finding an easy and simple solution to something that needs to be done, a position on the cultural situation, the political situation, and the biological situation. Anything else is posturing. However hard it is, for instance, to admit that Trump is bright and successful in many ways, while simultaneously admitting that he is quite flawed in character development, you will be better off trusting both of these things than only one.