A lot of the "maladaptive" attitudes and behaviours that get pinned on serious mental illness, circumstances, or a negative outlook are actually the direct result of the medication itself.
Decimating dopamine has never been a recipe for passion, motivation and drive, and being a slob and getting wasted isn't the self-indulgence of nihilism and futility, it's the predictable response to medication-induced numbness.
Just today I was talking to my neighbour, who also happens to be the girlfriend of someone I've been friends with since I was 15.
He had told her what I was like before I was medicated to the gills. She didnt believe him. It not only sounded like a different person, but a different species!
I've only been off that crap for 19 months. But the difference is so radical she believes my friend's account now of my former existence.
So it kind of annoys me when people point the finger at people with serious mental illness and accuse them of being bloodless muppets with a fetish for learned helplessness. Being legally and algorithmically shitfaced is a neurochemical trance that's not for the fainthearted.
Terrific piece, Hannah. It all tracks for me. Very insightful.
I have been considering starting an online group called - Sketches & Notes - A Metabolic Memoir Group.
It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words. And, I have to say as an artist, that well considered words can conjure up a thousand pictures too. You are so good at that. With an active imagination our individual vision, on even the smallest of things, is worth playing around with, and possibly sharing with others.
Observing our past, present, and future selves can be such an artful process. There is richness and wisdom to be found in remembering and in recording our experiences and epiphanies! Looking back at our lives matters, and making notes on a page, or a canvas, or with molded clay, within a dance, carved wood, music, any creative act - is often about courting pain, acceptance and even gratitude. An unapologetic expression of it, is also a reach for meaning and potentially, hope. Tenderly right-sizing our struggles through creative expression can help us heal, even if we just doodle an honest thought.
This is not WooWoo stuff. Art and writing readies us to look at things more deeply. Readiness to observe our lives is such a private, artful act, and then having the courage to change something is really super brave.
The initial path for a change we've made may have been creativity. Maybe creativity is best facilitated when inspired in community. Not sure. However, I am convinced that chronicling our experiences with sketches and notes is helpful. Polish is generally not the goal, as much as is the search for meaning. Keen observations, curiosity and play tend to produce the best fragments of understanding for healing, for fledgeling artists, writers, musicians, scientists, comedians, care-givers and good leaders of all kinds.
Love this idea, Craig! I hope you will start this group through the Metabolic Collective community. As you probably know, we are trying to encourage exciting new groups like this that give individuals an opportunity to connect with likeminded people, but don't need to follow a typical support group structure. So exciting! I would definitely enjoy dropping into this group whenever my schedule allows. Here is the Community Group Toolkit: https://metaboliccollective.org/advocate-toolkit/ You may have already seen it. I hope it will be helpful as you plan to launch this group.
Shoot Hannah, now you got me going - I am just so very curious and enlivened these days about discovering more metabolic keys to my own kingdom of wellness. Not yet true for my adult daughter, but hope is on the move. Key word - movement. For me the journey has been significant, and I am seeing that I am not alone! It's as if a new kind of creative freedom occurs for all of us, when we rediscover our "energy" potential. Something special is unleashed. It's like the enthusiasm I see in small children at play at recess. Unapologetically, they take their energy to the fence line. So fun! In addition to scientific scholarship, I can only imagine what is possible for people if they experiment with applying a creative, searching practice of some kind for simply getting on the metabolic runway. This could be about initial movements toward understanding through creative movement. It's taking flight, despite the brewing storm, not being passive by waiting on the tarmac for permission. Kind of dangerous stuff to be exposed in our uncertain moments, but can we make it safe to try, to be exposed, by adding a creative lens? I love Dom D'Agostino and Martin Picard's work so much, but their content is so refined at this point. It can be daunting for us creative types. Oddly, I think of them as artists too just super duper, crazy smart and deep into the efficacy of precise inquiry. They do not need to be incentived any longer to participate. But I suspect it was not always so clear to them early on. Being a mere pedestrian, "readiness" to make an initial approach to considering the metabolic runway has become my particular area of interest. I am convinced there are many like me. Maybe we can incentivize and prompt moments of "play", creative failure, curiosity, and wonder so as to eventually get people on the runway, possibly even facilitate an exploratory care-free flight? It's so much easier to spectate, rather than participate. I guess I'd like to witness more cannonball splashing in overall in this community. Seems Dr Ede and Dr Palmer did just that 10 years ago. "Resistance" to learning wins out much to often for us, and I'd like to expose the part I most understand - fear of expression (and change). Can we also make this fun and less intimidating? Experientially, this would not just be refined and edited stories of remission and recovery but about the messy bits too (you should see my studio!). The secret power and practice of an active imagination also fits here. Maybe if a small creative expression of the Art and Science of metabolism becomes a thing, might it just make people tune in differently, take note, peer in more deeply - even down to the mitochondria, possibly even relax the carbs just a teensy bit? Is this too convoluted and strange to consider ? I will take a good look at your Metabolic Collective ToolKit.
Dyane, Thanks for your interest! Have you ever been in a group like this? The purpose could be a little less cognitive, and possibly also include emotional sensing - as if the goal is to express something hidden, with creative action of some kind, not just to explain it scientifically, but artfully too. I am a chronic sketches and notes person and I have been delighted with my discoveries when I apply it to my metabolic health questions. I can often "connect the dots" in ways that I typically cannot by reading scientific papers and books.
Hello again! I've never been in a group like yours; it sounds amazing and unique. I love how your applying your sketches and notes strength to metabolic health questions!
Gosh, for me, sketches and notes is a practice, not so much a strength. But thank you, Dayne. May I ask if you have a particular creative interest or contemplative practice of some kind?
Mr Google - "Shinrin-yoku, or forest bathing, is a Japanese, evidence-based practice of spending mindful, leisurely time in nature to boost health and reduce stress. Developed in the 1980s, it involves immersing oneself in a forest atmosphere using all five senses to lower cortisol, blood pressure, and heart rate. No hiking is required; it is a gentle, therapeutic, and sensory-focused activity."
Thank you Hannah for sharing the 'desire beneath desire' insight! I'm looking forward to testing it out for myself, as I've been finding myself facing many impulses recently (including purchases) which I do feel reflect genuine needs neglected over the years. Your method of looking inwards and reflecting on those needs seems valuable and promising. So thanks again 🙂
Your words about gratitude really resonate with me. In the before times, 10 years ago, someone made a comment about how ungrateful I was. Although the person who told me this had their own issues, the words stuck with me. Even wisdom can come from a foolish place sometimes. It made me pause and reflect...Am I ungrateful?
Over the next few years, as I began to heal and turn the inside outwards, peeling apart the layers, I realized I often paid lip service to gratitude rather than feeling it from the heart. With the passing of difficult years, I received the clarity given by treatment, metabolic therapies, and gentle self-care. As trite as it sounds, I learned the value of true gratitude, even when it's difficult sometimes to settle for a silver lining.
The observations you mentioned resonated with me deeply. Your writing is so lyrical, poetic, and vivid.
I love the term/concept of "clutter fasting" and how you provide us with alternative ways we can exchange our yearning on material objects for experiential things instead.
I'm a huge believer in neuroplasticity, so those sections spoke to me in a big way.
The image you chose to accompany this piece is spectacularly beautiful.
Also, it's awesome that you recorded the piece as well in your own voice.
Apart from music, I listen to podcasts and audiobooks while doing a lot of driving around here, so I truly appreciate that option. I look forward to reading "3 Ways to Leverage Hedonic Adaption"!
Thanks so much, Dyane. Your kind words mean a lot to me!
I also listen to a ton of podcasts and audiobooks, so I thought it was important to offer that to others. I am so glad you appreciate it! :) I hope all is well with you.
A lot of the "maladaptive" attitudes and behaviours that get pinned on serious mental illness, circumstances, or a negative outlook are actually the direct result of the medication itself.
Decimating dopamine has never been a recipe for passion, motivation and drive, and being a slob and getting wasted isn't the self-indulgence of nihilism and futility, it's the predictable response to medication-induced numbness.
Just today I was talking to my neighbour, who also happens to be the girlfriend of someone I've been friends with since I was 15.
He had told her what I was like before I was medicated to the gills. She didnt believe him. It not only sounded like a different person, but a different species!
I've only been off that crap for 19 months. But the difference is so radical she believes my friend's account now of my former existence.
So it kind of annoys me when people point the finger at people with serious mental illness and accuse them of being bloodless muppets with a fetish for learned helplessness. Being legally and algorithmically shitfaced is a neurochemical trance that's not for the fainthearted.
Terrific piece, Hannah. It all tracks for me. Very insightful.
I have been considering starting an online group called - Sketches & Notes - A Metabolic Memoir Group.
It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words. And, I have to say as an artist, that well considered words can conjure up a thousand pictures too. You are so good at that. With an active imagination our individual vision, on even the smallest of things, is worth playing around with, and possibly sharing with others.
Observing our past, present, and future selves can be such an artful process. There is richness and wisdom to be found in remembering and in recording our experiences and epiphanies! Looking back at our lives matters, and making notes on a page, or a canvas, or with molded clay, within a dance, carved wood, music, any creative act - is often about courting pain, acceptance and even gratitude. An unapologetic expression of it, is also a reach for meaning and potentially, hope. Tenderly right-sizing our struggles through creative expression can help us heal, even if we just doodle an honest thought.
This is not WooWoo stuff. Art and writing readies us to look at things more deeply. Readiness to observe our lives is such a private, artful act, and then having the courage to change something is really super brave.
The initial path for a change we've made may have been creativity. Maybe creativity is best facilitated when inspired in community. Not sure. However, I am convinced that chronicling our experiences with sketches and notes is helpful. Polish is generally not the goal, as much as is the search for meaning. Keen observations, curiosity and play tend to produce the best fragments of understanding for healing, for fledgeling artists, writers, musicians, scientists, comedians, care-givers and good leaders of all kinds.
Thanks for prompting me again with your post.
Love this idea, Craig! I hope you will start this group through the Metabolic Collective community. As you probably know, we are trying to encourage exciting new groups like this that give individuals an opportunity to connect with likeminded people, but don't need to follow a typical support group structure. So exciting! I would definitely enjoy dropping into this group whenever my schedule allows. Here is the Community Group Toolkit: https://metaboliccollective.org/advocate-toolkit/ You may have already seen it. I hope it will be helpful as you plan to launch this group.
Shoot Hannah, now you got me going - I am just so very curious and enlivened these days about discovering more metabolic keys to my own kingdom of wellness. Not yet true for my adult daughter, but hope is on the move. Key word - movement. For me the journey has been significant, and I am seeing that I am not alone! It's as if a new kind of creative freedom occurs for all of us, when we rediscover our "energy" potential. Something special is unleashed. It's like the enthusiasm I see in small children at play at recess. Unapologetically, they take their energy to the fence line. So fun! In addition to scientific scholarship, I can only imagine what is possible for people if they experiment with applying a creative, searching practice of some kind for simply getting on the metabolic runway. This could be about initial movements toward understanding through creative movement. It's taking flight, despite the brewing storm, not being passive by waiting on the tarmac for permission. Kind of dangerous stuff to be exposed in our uncertain moments, but can we make it safe to try, to be exposed, by adding a creative lens? I love Dom D'Agostino and Martin Picard's work so much, but their content is so refined at this point. It can be daunting for us creative types. Oddly, I think of them as artists too just super duper, crazy smart and deep into the efficacy of precise inquiry. They do not need to be incentived any longer to participate. But I suspect it was not always so clear to them early on. Being a mere pedestrian, "readiness" to make an initial approach to considering the metabolic runway has become my particular area of interest. I am convinced there are many like me. Maybe we can incentivize and prompt moments of "play", creative failure, curiosity, and wonder so as to eventually get people on the runway, possibly even facilitate an exploratory care-free flight? It's so much easier to spectate, rather than participate. I guess I'd like to witness more cannonball splashing in overall in this community. Seems Dr Ede and Dr Palmer did just that 10 years ago. "Resistance" to learning wins out much to often for us, and I'd like to expose the part I most understand - fear of expression (and change). Can we also make this fun and less intimidating? Experientially, this would not just be refined and edited stories of remission and recovery but about the messy bits too (you should see my studio!). The secret power and practice of an active imagination also fits here. Maybe if a small creative expression of the Art and Science of metabolism becomes a thing, might it just make people tune in differently, take note, peer in more deeply - even down to the mitochondria, possibly even relax the carbs just a teensy bit? Is this too convoluted and strange to consider ? I will take a good look at your Metabolic Collective ToolKit.
Craig, I'd be interested in joining your online group if you decide to create it!
Dyane, Thanks for your interest! Have you ever been in a group like this? The purpose could be a little less cognitive, and possibly also include emotional sensing - as if the goal is to express something hidden, with creative action of some kind, not just to explain it scientifically, but artfully too. I am a chronic sketches and notes person and I have been delighted with my discoveries when I apply it to my metabolic health questions. I can often "connect the dots" in ways that I typically cannot by reading scientific papers and books.
Hello again! I've never been in a group like yours; it sounds amazing and unique. I love how your applying your sketches and notes strength to metabolic health questions!
Dayne,
Gosh, for me, sketches and notes is a practice, not so much a strength. But thank you, Dayne. May I ask if you have a particular creative interest or contemplative practice of some kind?
You're very welcome, Craig! Shinrin-yoku/forest bathing and writing are my favorites!
Dyane, I did not know it had a name!
Mr Google - "Shinrin-yoku, or forest bathing, is a Japanese, evidence-based practice of spending mindful, leisurely time in nature to boost health and reduce stress. Developed in the 1980s, it involves immersing oneself in a forest atmosphere using all five senses to lower cortisol, blood pressure, and heart rate. No hiking is required; it is a gentle, therapeutic, and sensory-focused activity."
I love that! Perfect.
Shinrin-yoku/forest bathing - OK, I'm going to have to look that one up!
A rich, rewarding, and inspiring read, as always, Hannah. Thank you for sharing.
Thank you, Julie. I am so glad you enjoyed it!
Thank you Hannah for sharing the 'desire beneath desire' insight! I'm looking forward to testing it out for myself, as I've been finding myself facing many impulses recently (including purchases) which I do feel reflect genuine needs neglected over the years. Your method of looking inwards and reflecting on those needs seems valuable and promising. So thanks again 🙂
Your words about gratitude really resonate with me. In the before times, 10 years ago, someone made a comment about how ungrateful I was. Although the person who told me this had their own issues, the words stuck with me. Even wisdom can come from a foolish place sometimes. It made me pause and reflect...Am I ungrateful?
Over the next few years, as I began to heal and turn the inside outwards, peeling apart the layers, I realized I often paid lip service to gratitude rather than feeling it from the heart. With the passing of difficult years, I received the clarity given by treatment, metabolic therapies, and gentle self-care. As trite as it sounds, I learned the value of true gratitude, even when it's difficult sometimes to settle for a silver lining.
So many things that sound trite are actually profound truths. Heartfelt gratitude is powerful. Thanks for sharing your experience, Julianne!
I love what you wrote, Hannah. (As usual!!!)
The observations you mentioned resonated with me deeply. Your writing is so lyrical, poetic, and vivid.
I love the term/concept of "clutter fasting" and how you provide us with alternative ways we can exchange our yearning on material objects for experiential things instead.
I'm a huge believer in neuroplasticity, so those sections spoke to me in a big way.
The image you chose to accompany this piece is spectacularly beautiful.
Also, it's awesome that you recorded the piece as well in your own voice.
Apart from music, I listen to podcasts and audiobooks while doing a lot of driving around here, so I truly appreciate that option. I look forward to reading "3 Ways to Leverage Hedonic Adaption"!
Thanks so much, Dyane. Your kind words mean a lot to me!
I also listen to a ton of podcasts and audiobooks, so I thought it was important to offer that to others. I am so glad you appreciate it! :) I hope all is well with you.
So excited to see this pop up, Hannah! I’m on the road and look forward to savoring the read tonight!
Thanks, Dyane! I would love to hear any reflections you have once you find the time to read it.