Happy Trials, Day 3, 4 & 5

Heya - Sorry for slow update, I was with family.

Day 3-

I slept very little this night, and found sleep to be a crucial component of the happiness trials. I woke in a groggy, foggy mess and attempting my morning smile was met by conscious sarcasm. It took very much forcing to get the smile on my face. On my daily route to work I kept trying to remain positive, but the tiredness was over powering, and the grin would fade within a few seconds and I would find myself blankly staring at the road. During the work day I felt as if I perhaps had pushed myself too far the day before, and that this was in fact a by product of too much happiness. I decided, however, that it wasn't and was simply due to my lack of sleep. The day went very slowly, and little was to be celebrated. It seems it rubbed off on my boss as well, and we both had a somewhat unproductive and uninteresting day. Finally, coming home I was able to crank out a bit more euphoria. I had a solid few minutes of warmth and happiness, but quickly found my pillow to start the next day.

Day 4- Not motivated in the least. Although I slept much better, I felt again as if I may be forcing this too much. As the day progressed, I did find myself receiving small artifacts from my experiment. Whenever I thought of ANYTHING about negative or positive emotion, my mind quickly remembered the trials and I found myself smiling and enjoying the positive feedback I had created. "Maybe there is something to this after all!" ran across my mind many times. Although not blissfully or euphorically manic, I was most certainly rewarded by my new found experience perhaps hourly. Over all I had benefited on this day, but still found the general happiness in all things to be a bit forced.

Day 5- Artifacts of the experiment continue to stream in during my daily life. I was driving and thought of a depressing scenario (can't remember what) but instantly the thought of something sad made me consider other thoughts to make me happy. I found that it was incredibly easy to transition myself from a bad mood or sad thoughts into a good general well-being. During the day I had often forgot about the experiment and was more focused on being with friends and family, and am planning to continue this experiment through this coming week.

I will update again on the happy trials one week from today, with some other posts to come in between.

Good luck, have fun, and feel free to contact me!

Happy Trials: Day 1

Hello great friends and internet ninjas,

I am about half way through my first day of happy trials. So far it is very interesting indeed, but not as productive as I had hoped. I did not go into work today because I needed to go remove a ticket from my record (expired tabs, I'm a bad-ass).

During my trip to the court hearing office I was smiling most of the time and taking delight in the ride. The people on the bus were quite smiley too, as it is a beautiful day outside; sunny, warm, blue skies - lovely indeed. I couldn't help imagine what other people were thinking about as I saw their smiles come and go - who knows, maybe they were doing the same thing as I!

My attempts to see very small things, and take joy in the details is difficult for me. I'm not a very detailed person (except for my drawings), I'm more of an abstract-concept person, so taking joy in a small blade of grass just didn't seem like it was going to happen. However, long-ranging blue skies, birds chirping, and happy people sure set me up for an easy happy trial today!

As I entered the courthouse my spirits went null and I found it very difficult to find any pleasure in any of the people or the surroundings. People seemed to be frustrated, and my hearing officer did not want to make eye contact with me, which I thought was very odd indeed. I got my ticket dropped, though, but monetary gains aren't very invigorating to me - I'd rather have had the man shake my hand and give me a hug. It was definitely obvious, however, that blank walls, off-white buildings, and paved roads were very hard to appreciate for me. Perhaps I am too close to nature by nurture (see what I did there?) that I simply cannot take joy in cement and brick, or perhaps cement and pavement are inherently joyless, I have not pondered it and cannot say for certain. Needless to say, keeping a smile in an urban landscape with no friends, or actions to initiate it wasn't happening - but I was certainly not unhappy.

Coming home I decided to walk the 5 miles back. I enjoyed most of the way; I am a fan of graffiti and saw a very incredible placement of a "piece" get painted over (see: http://www.flickr.com/photos/59840111@N05/6980457713/in/photostream/lightbox/). I love graffiti, but the entire struggle of city versus vandal is incredibly interesting as well and personally believe it makes graffiti all the more worth while. But I digress - near to the graffiti is a large river, which I walked over, taking delight in the sun rays through the water. Seeing the bottom of the river bed was peculiar - I waited for a while to see if a fish would appear, but no such luck.

Coming home I have spent some time reading outside and bicycling around my neighborhood, nothing extraordinary and very little was needed to boost happiness. As I write this I can giggle a little - simply a small grin cascades into a large smile and a slight giggle escapes me.

The most interesting consequence so far, however, is whenever I think of any deep idea or philosophy, this topic of the happy trials manifests itself in my mind, and I find myself immediately smiling! An incredible delight to be reminded of over and over.

I have much, much more to do today and my update tomorrow will hopefully be just as, if not more, rewarding to you and me!

Good luck, have fun and feel free to contact me.

The psychology of panic attacks

Hellllllllllllllllooooooo!

Here I want to discuss what I believe to be the source, propagation and cure for panic attacks and anxiety in general.

Panic attacks often materialize from what we can only imagine as spontaneously. We are going to work, watching TV or getting ready for bed, and suddenly a wash of anxiety pours over us. We may even been talking to someone when suddenly panic is unavoidable. If you've ever experienced something like this, it may be due to what I call "seed notions".

These seed notions are simply small fragmented thoughts that pass by quickly through our minds. They are deeply embedded memories of ideas, subjects, or perspectives that are really not enjoyable. Such things may be from the nightly news (please - if you watch the nightly news, stop!) as there are often murders, shootings, killings, deaths, etc plastered all over the media. There is a good quote: "The nightly news is usually started by 'good evening' and followed by exactly why it isn't." These seed notions may also be from painful past experiences, such as car accidents, or other traumatic experiences, or, as in my case, they may simply be from depressing thoughts.

It isn't trivial to erase memories, and thus most of us will carry some throughout our entire lives which we have rather never gained. They are there, and repressing them is never a good idea. But here is my explanation on how they play a role in panic attacks and anxiety in general:

The brain is a funny thing. If something is wrong, but unidentifiable, it will SEARCH for something to pinpoint what is wrong. Seed notions are a source of this searching. Here is an example of what I'm talking about:

Perhaps you were talking to a friend, when they mentioned they bought a new car, and "car" is inevitably tied to your "car" accident you had 4 years ago that was traumatic. Yet the idea and memory of your car accident may have gone by so quick you did not notice while talking on the phone - the seed notion has cascaded a negative effect on the mind. It may take a few seconds, or perhaps a few minutes before the negativity is felt, but here your mind, unable to identify what exactly caused the negative idea, will begin to search for what is wrong. You will end your conversation with your friend, hang up, and suddenly notice you are feeling anxious - "But why?" In your mind's inability to pin point what is wrong, the negativity will amplify, and you will find yourself quickly becoming consumed by anxiety - But nothing is wrong!

For years I was plagued by this, and could never find a cure. I attempted to suppress and ignore the feeling, with little effect. I attempted to counteract it - by smiling and thinking of happy thoughts also with little effect. I attempted to "accept" and embrace the anxiety, with some effect, but still not what I would call a cure. Then suddenly I had a glimpse of it. I was riding on a bus, listening to a song on my iPod. The song was tied to an experience I had a few years ago that caused me great stress, but quickly the bus made a wrong turn and I became distracted. I forgot about the stressful incident and became fixated on my current predicament on the bus. The bus corrected itself (well, the driver did) and I sat back in my seat - but a great dealing of grief rushed over me. It took a few seconds before I could identify the problem, and hence my idea of seed notions was born.

Ever since that day, when a sense of panic comes over me, I take a step back and distance myself from the emotion. I retrace my mind's steps a few minutes back and see if anything I have thought of caused the anxiety - and with 100% accuracy I have found a seed notion.

What this does is it allows the mind to work efficiently in identifying the problem. Without knowing what is wrong, the mind will inevitably amplify a feeling of fear until the notion is resolved or we feel safe (Which, in the worst cases can end in the hospital!).

I suggest to you, too, that if you have anxiety or panic attacks, please practice this.

Here is another helpful tip to reduce the amount of anxiety in the day:

Take some time every day to worry about all of your unknowns and problems. Set aside 15 minutes each day to dwell on things. People in northern Europe centuries ago would do this. It was called the brooding time. The women of the household would stay at home for 30 minutes or an hour every day and simply "brood" - thinking about how awful things are or the how awful their lives are (SHEESH!) and then get on with things after that.

The mind must be balanced - if you do not do it yourself, consciously, there can be some nasty side-effects.

Have fun, good luck, and feel free to contact me!

Genesis

Hello!

Welcome to "Learning as an Art" - My name is Jonathan Helander and this will be my absolutely 100% first blog post ever.

First I want to get myself & you acquainted with my blog. I am a psychonaut; that is I study the consciousness and subconsciousness of my every day life to an extreme degree, hence I feel the need to spread the word onto you, as well as save it for myself. I am fully committed to understanding how we think, why we think, and what exactly we think about. Of course, I am not a psychiatrist, nor does my educational background disguise myself as one - I am a chemist by training with a B.S. in Chemistry. Yet my true curiosity resides with the workings of the mind.

Here is some background to give you an idea of how I cam to be who I am which inevitably is the reason why you are reading this!

As a young child I was very fond of nature. I would play from dawn till dusk in the woods adjacent to my house. If I didn't have friends to play with I would create my own games, and as every young child exhibits a great imagination, I was no different. However, residing behind my normal childhood there was an increasingly growing urge to understand why I existed. "Why am I here" is one of the age-old questions most of face at one point or another. In my elementary school days, specifically 3rd through 6th grade, I became unsettled by painful emotions, sadness, and became slumped into what I would call a melancholy. I struggled nearly every night to get to bed as a sadness of pain crept over me, but as time went by I realized that being sad accomplished nothing about the wrongs that I had experienced, nor those that I was aware of across the globe and my pessimism vanished to pacifism. I became neither euphoric nor depressed, but attempted to gain an omnipotent view of my reality and existence!

Entering High school I became more concerned with my present life, philosophy and existential questions went to the back burner and soon I found myself incredibly interested in psychology and more or less unrelated, physics and biology. The teachers I had during my H.S. days were incredible, they opened my eyes to what I had never realized before - they broke down walls in my understanding and were able to thrust me into a phase of absolute learning. I became enthralled by chemistry, biology, and mathematics and set to understand some of the harder principles of physics like quantum mechanics and relativity. But, in my Junior year of high school I was introduced to psychedelics, specifically Psilocybin. It would be an event that would change my life for the better, but would take years for the realizations to crystallize into some type of meaningful form - but it was exactly this day that eventually lead to what I now am so proud of; my ability to understand psychology and sociology.

It is a clever saying that "Curiosity killed the cat", and that is one of the phrases that would enter my mind on a fateful night filled with pretty colors, dancing images, and profound revelations within my head. However, it was incredibly horrifying. Absolute terror coursed through my head for a solid six hours of time as I thought I was leaving reality never to return. "I will never be able to function again" was a common thought - and dread ebbed and flowed. The night progressed, and as I became more sober from the experience I realized I would be alright, and that everything was going to be just fine, but most of all the epiphanies were here to stay.

My experience did not end there. For the intense stress that the psychoactive had put on my mind would be carried over to use of THC and even caffeine (more on this later). No longer could I enjoy a morning coffee without entering a cyclical though process of whether or not I was truly sane or if reality even existed. Where exactly was my consciousness, and how could it be altered to such an extreme degree?

For nearly 2 years I dealt with weekly or even daily panic attacks, depression and anxiety. During my times of peace and happiness, however, I was able to understand that these feelings were separate from 'me'. An incredibly hard idea to describe, but paramount in my ability to come out of the event with a positive outlook: These attacks of anxiety were not actually created by my consciousness, but were fragments of my experience. Essentially my mind had created a defense mechanism (somewhat self-defeating!) on nearly any psychoactive substance. If my mind were to be altered by nearly anything, I would be placed back in the exact same head space that brought me such great terror and grief!

Not one to throw in the towel and simply ask a Doc for some medication, I began reading. A book that perhaps saved my functioning life was "The Brain that Changes Itself." Although not extremely analytical nor academic - the book enlightened me. The brain is essentially "plastic" - that is malleable - to events in our life. We have the ability to radically change our brain's chemistry and its neuronal connections. What was once thought of to be fearful can be made into euphoria (one of the harder changes to the mind, of course!) and vice-versa. I began to study my panic attacks and my anxiety and realized such a great deal of information about how I function I believe it to be helpful for others, which will ultimately be the reason for my blog posts.

I am now 22 years old, and enjoy my life immensely. I have expanded my creative abilities, increased my enjoyment of life, and ultimately found my true calling; the mind. Learning, knowledge, and creativity are the ultimate paths to greatness.