Jumping in the Shower: Dad jokes, dead words, and a different kind of attention

Person One: "I'm just gonna jump in the shower real quick."

‍ ‍

Person Two: "Probably best if you just stand there and let the water fall on you, no need to jump."

Why do we like dad jokes (and hate them at the same time)? Because they re-open something closed. For a second dead language is alive again, without changing a word. That's your brain catching a metaphor in the act.

Today's post is a little different. It's more psychology and philosophy than therapeutic application. I have personally found these frameworks helpful for my own emotional wellbeing though, which is why I'm sharing them today. And it all starts with metaphor.

Psychiatrist and neuroscientist Iain McGilchrist says metaphor is not decoration or an add on to language. He says it is "the bedrock of language." Metaphor means carrying over. It carries over truth from experience into a form we can notice and do something with. Sensations, feelings, thoughts, movements, and of course words are all forms we can notice.

McGilchrist goes on to say that whenever we use language at all, we are using metaphor. Which means every time we speak. A metaphor can be dead or alive though. Ricoeur said a metaphor is alive while it's new and still saying something, and dies once it settles into the dictionary. We notice the alive ones in songs and poetry, or a compelling talk or speaker. But over time what once felt novel and intriguing becomes rote and just functional. Think of a two year old learning to talk. They reveal the wonder of language as they begin to communicate at a higher level. They repeat words and tell you about words that to most of us feel too common to even notice in day to day life.

When someone says don't jump, just stand there and let the water fall on you, your attention gets jarred into hearing the literal words, jumping inside a shower, and how silly they sound, maybe for the first time. Which is why it's funny.

Metaphors come in more forms than just words though. Thomas Kinkade paints light coming from a house in the woods and it registers as a flat fairytale. Comforting, maybe, but not alive, because it isn't carrying anything over from lived experience. Van Gogh's self portraits, however, stir us because of how he attended to his own face and the metaphor it created visually. That attention is in the paint, and it still reaches us.

So why does this matter? I am about to tell you, but first let me explain a little more background. McGilchrist says the left hemisphere handles cliché, the worn and familiar and known. When words stop feeling new they become cogs in the wheel of communication (notice the metaphor I just used!?). Live metaphor is the right hemisphere's territory. It works out the hidden meaning in the novel. It is not bothered by the non-literal meaning and even likes the tickle of the absurdity it notices. The left then takes a reduced form of that information so it can make functional use of the symbol.

So the difference between cliché and live metaphor is not in the words. It's in how they are attended to.

Which leads, somewhat surprisingly, to three things: attention comes before all other cognitive functions, attention is a creative act, and not all attention is the same. As McGilchrist said, "The kind of attention we bring to bear on the world changes the nature of the world we attend to."

Which means the feeling of cliché or deadness is not a property of a painting or a song or a sentence. It's a property of the attention brought to it.

What does that actually look like? This question deals with the two main sides of our brains, the left hemisphere and the right. They aren't doing different jobs so much as attending to experience in different ways. It isn't that one takes care of feelings while the other takes care of rational thought. The left cannot experience life first hand. It can only deal with what the right hemisphere tells it about the experience of life. The left provides narrow attention to what we are dealing with. It grasps something specific, holds it still, takes it apart, categorizes it, and gets it ready for use. The right has direct access to lived experience, and its attention stays wide. It holds the whole field, the context, the thing as it is rather than as a type of thing. McGilchrist sums it up as the left helping us apprehend the world in order to manipulate it, and the right helping us comprehend it, to see it for what it is.

Both are needed. McGilchrist's classic example of why is a bird on the ground: a narrow beam to pick the seed out of the gritty dirt, and at the same moment a broad vigilance for the hawk on the prowl. Lose the narrow one and you starve. Lose the wide one and something eats you. Even so, the argument I am making here is for an increase in right hemisphere attending.

Attending with right hemisphere qualities means widening. Staying with the whole instead of the useful part. Letting a thing be itself before it becomes defined. Tolerating that you don't have it pinned down yet. Less doing and more being. Tending to a moment with a right hemisphere bias gives you a better chance of being present to what is. That said, with the dialectic of the left and right hemispheres intact, how present any of us can get to full reality is debatable.

Almost nothing you handled today was the thing itself. The word chair is not a chair. Your name is not you. The story you tell about your marriage is not your marriage. "Anxious" is a sound standing in for something happening in your chest that has no sounds in it at all, which is itself standing in for an experience you lived before you had a word for it. McGilchrist says it flatly: we live "no longer in the presence of the world, but rather in a re-presentation of it."

The French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan gave this a name. He called it the symbolic order, and we live inside it. All symbols (and he would say the entire world we perceive is made of symbols) are what he called signifiers. For Lacan, signifiers don't point to some true version like Plato talked about. Instead they confusingly just point at other signifiers. There is no way to use the symbolic to point at anything other than the symbolic. He says there is experience outside the symbolic. He calls that the Real. Again, don't hear that as Platonic, as though the Real were a truer world sitting behind this one. Hear it as the problem with symbols. Experience arrives formless, and forcing it into a shareable form leaves you holding a signal of something that was more complete before it got reduced. The Real is all that resists being named and formed and put into a symbol.

So we don't get to experience the Real. But Lacan says trauma is a symptom of it intruding into the reality we have built inside the symbolic order. We get disorganized by something our faculties cannot define. He calls that an encounter with the Real. Jokes, when they gently alert us to an absurdity standing alongside a rational concept, are perhaps a light version of that encounter. Or at least a glitch in the matrix, a moment where we get to recognize the order we are inside.

Lacan's point was that the order of symbols was here before you were. You were born into a form, and that form sits inside a world of words, names, rules and relations already in motion. Somebody named you before you could object. He suggests that to be human is to carry an internal unsolvable wound, the felt loss of a wholeness that Lacan says we never even really had. The felt loss is real. Assuming we were once whole and that that’s what we grieve is a retroactive contruction we make in effort to make sense of our pain.

Here is where I think Lacan and McGilchrist are not saying the same thing. Lacan gives us a theory for the structure of our reality, and tells us the wound that structure causes does not heal. McGilchrist gives us a mechanism, and a mechanism has a dial on it. So the gap does not close. But it has a width, and how we attend sets the width. I'm not suggesting we can escape the symbolic order. Some yogis claim experiences of an all unifying reality, so the jury is still out, but it is safe to say it is very unlikely for most of us. I am suggesting that right hemispheric attention is the difference between living in a thin description of your life and living in a wider one. Which is most of what I watch happen in a therapy room. Nobody gets out of the symbolic order. Some people get more room inside it.

Symbols also help us connect. Metaphors allow us to communicate. They solve for isolation in this life. We can translate what is inside of us to others and feel seen and known, at least in part.

So the symbols were never the problem. Forgetting they are symbols is, because that's when we stop being present. We start living in a description of life instead of life itself. That's what over-leaning on the left hemisphere does. This is much of McGilchrist's warning, that we are allowing our cultures to become homogenized toward a left hemisphere way of attending to the world.

So it's up to us to resist. Start small. Listen to what you said today. You caught a flight. You killed time. You ran an idea past someone. You were going to jump in the shower.

None of it is literally true. Every one is a bridge, but what if you could stop mid bridge and look around?

Nothing in that list is permanently dead. A shift out of rote and back into experience is still possible. The deadness was never in the words, so it can't be sealed in there. It sits in the attention, which means it's reversible, by you, today, by tracing the language you already have back toward the experience it came from, the part that is less defined symbol and more full picture mystery.

Which makes attending a skill. Something you practice, and the practice is widening. Noticing what you feel before you name it. Staying with a sensation instead of explaining it. Hearing what someone actually said rather than the category you filed it under. Narrow the attention and the world gets smaller. Open it and there's more there than there was a minute ago.

‍ ‍

References

Channel McGilchrist. (2022, May 16). Understanding the matter with things dialogues episode 6: Chapter 6 emotional & social intelligence [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZViXjsYjY4

Lacan, J. (1988). The seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book I: Freud's papers on technique, 1953–1954 (J.-A. Miller, Ed.; J. Forrester, Trans.). W. W. Norton. (Original work published 1975)

Lacan, J. (1998). The seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XI: The four fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis (J.-A. Miller, Ed.; A. Sheridan, Trans.). W. W. Norton. (Original work published 1973)

McGilchrist, I. (2009). The master and his emissary: The divided brain and the making of the Western world. Yale University Press.

McGilchrist, I. (2021). The matter with things: Our brains, our delusions, and the unmaking of the world. Perspectiva Press.

Ricoeur, P. (1977). The rule of metaphor: Multi-disciplinary studies of the creation of meaning in language (R. Czerny, K. McLaughlin, & J. Costello, Trans.). University of Toronto Press. (Original work published 1975)

The Power of Noticing: Understanding Mindfulness in Daily Life

We often hear about mindfulness in wellness circles, self-help books, and therapy sessions. It's become something of a buzzword in recent years, but beneath the hype lies a profound and transformative practice that's both simpler and more powerful than many realize.

What Is Mindfulness, Really?

At its core, mindfulness is the practice of being aware of our internal experience without immediately trying to change it. Think of it as becoming an observer of your own mind – watching your thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, and memories as they arise and pass, much like watching clouds move across the sky.

The key element that distinguishes mindfulness from regular thinking is this quality of observation without interference. When you're mindful, you're not trying to fix, change, or judge your experience – you're simply noticing it.

The Magic of the Meta-Experience

Here's where things get interesting: mindfulness creates what we might call a "meta-experience" – an awareness of our awareness. When you're caught in a burst of anger, you're simply angry. But when you're mindful of your anger, something subtle yet profound happens. You're not just angry; you're aware that you're angry. This small shift creates a psychological space that can make all the difference.

This space allows for what psychologists call "response flexibility" – the ability to choose how we react rather than being carried away by automatic responses. It's like stepping back from being caught in the current of a river to standing on the bank, where you can see the flow and make conscious choices about how to proceed.

The Non-Judgmental Paradox

A common misconception about mindfulness is that you need to achieve some state of perfect, non-judgmental awareness. The reality is both simpler and more forgiving: even when you find yourself judging your experience (which is entirely natural), you can be mindful of that judgment too. In fact, noticing that you're being judgmental is itself an act of mindfulness!

Practical Applications

The beauty of mindfulness lies in its practical applications in daily life. When you're:

• Stuck in traffic and feeling frustrated

• Having a difficult conversation with a loved one

• Dealing with anxiety before a presentation

• Experiencing physical pain or discomfort

In each of these situations, the simple act of noticing your experience creates a subtle but significant shift. Instead of being completely identified with the experience, you gain a degree of freedom – the freedom to respond rather than react.

Getting Started

While mindfulness is simple in concept, developing it as a skill takes practice. Many find it helpful to use guided resources, and one particularly noteworthy option is Sam Harris's Waking Up app. Harris offers a unique and secular approach to mindfulness, stripping away unnecessary mysticism while preserving the profound core of the practice.

The Invitation

Mindfulness isn't about achieving a particular state or becoming a different person. It's about developing a different relationship with your own experience. The invitation is simple: in your next challenging moment, try just noticing what's happening in your mind and body. No need to change anything – just observe.

Remember, every moment of awareness is a moment of mindfulness. And in that simple act of noticing, you might find more freedom than you expected.

This post is part of our ongoing exploration of mental health and well-being. For more insights and practical tools, explore our other articles on the Anablog.

Navigating Emotions: Understanding, Reacting, and Healing

It's a common tale: folks beating themselves up over their emotions and casting judgment on others for theirs. But here are two key points that could really help tackle this issue:

First off, feelings aren't a menu we pick from; they're automatic responses to our experiences. We can't choose what we feel, but we can choose how we react to those emotions. That's a lifelong skill, one that takes practice every day.

Secondly, what we feel isn't just about the present; it's also influenced by our past experiences. Our brains are wired to be efficient, always referencing past situations to inform our current feelings. But sometimes, especially in cases of trauma, what we remember isn't a solution, it's a coping mechanism. Coping doesn't let safety responses complete; it bypasses them, potentially causing more issues down the line.

So, how do we deal with all this? Well, judgment isn't the answer; it only makes things worse. Instead, we need empathy, compassion, and a mindfulness practice (and maybe some trauma therapy) to help us understand our emotions better and decide if our responses are the ones we want.

From Conflict to Clarity: Uncovering and Transforming Insecure Beliefs with Mindful Awareness

It can be challenging to recognize the insecurities and self-doubts that surface during moments of conflict. These underlying beliefs often remain unnoticed, yet they trigger our body's fight, flight, or freeze response. Gaining awareness of these beliefs is akin to discovering who is behind the wheel, driving our reactions. This awareness opens up the possibility to move away from instinctual survival tactics, rooted in fight, flight or freeze that may not be truly adaptive, allowing us to make choices that are more mindful, socially constructive, and genuinely beneficial.

Our self-perceptions (which are contextual and automatic - not choice based, they just happen and are based in past experiences) are frequently mirrored in our views of others. For instance, thinking of oneself as "weak, small, and helpless" while perceiving others as "powerful, uncaring, and threatening" can lead to a heightened sense of vulnerability and activate those defensive survival responses.

However, reacting in this way often exacerbates the conflict rather than resolving it. The question then becomes, how can we pause, become aware, and realign ourselves? There are numerous techniques to help us become present. One approach I find particularly effective is called "Orienting," a concept from Somatic Experiencing. For a deeper understanding, I recommend watching the video below.

The three pillars of mental health change

Memory, Completion & Mindfulness are the three pillars for deep and lasting change in mental health and the thing that ties them all together is emotions.

Memory

Our brains love to automate tasks to save energy. But sometimes, in tough situations like trauma, the solutions we learn aren't really solutions at all. Instead, we cope to get through. While coping helps us survive, it doesn't fix things. Our brains then remember this coping as the solution. So, when similar situations arise, our brains automatically activate this coping mechanism. This means we feel and react the same way we did during the trauma. Luckily, memories can change. By recalling and feeling them, they change back into a form where we can alter how they affect us*. This is crucial for changing trauma reactions, whether from past hurts or sudden shocks.

Completion

When we feel threatened, our instincts kick in with fight, flight, or freeze responses. But often, these responses don't get a chance to finish. All that energy gets stuck in our bodies, waiting to be released. Releasing this pent-up energy is essential for our nervous system to regain its balance. This can lead to improvements in anxiety and depression.

Mindfulness

Mindfulness helps us distinguish between the present and the past. It allows us to observe tension without reacting impulsively. By practicing mindfulness, we can slow down and become our best selves. This skill improves with practice and repetition.

Emotions tie all these elements together. They start as physical sensations and evolve into conscious feelings like fear, joy, or anger. Emotions tell us how important a moment is for survival and give us insight into our current state of being.

In conclusion, memory, completion, and mindfulness are vital for deep and lasting change in mental health. By understanding and working with our emotions, we can unlock new levels of well-being and resilience.

*This process is called Memory Reconsolidation and it became known widely from the lab of the famous neuroscientist Joseph Le Doux It was his student Karim Nader who discovered this.

The Triad of Change: Memory, Completion, and Mindfulness in Mental Health

Achieving profound and lasting change in our mental health and emotional well-being requires addressing three fundamental elements: memory, the completion of initiated responses, and mindfulness. These components serve as the cornerstone for transforming our automatic emotional and behavioral patterns and paving the way for new beginnings.

• Memory: Our memories, both short-term and long-term, play a pivotal role in shaping our perceptions and responses to various situations. Long-term memories form the basis of our predictive models, guiding our behaviors and emotions based on past experiences. When we encounter familiar situations, often unconsciously, we default to automatic mode, relying on learned coping mechanisms to navigate through challenges.

However, the problem arises when these coping mechanisms are rooted in survival rather than true resolution. For instance, if as children, we learned to cope with unmet needs by numbing our emotions or shutting down, these patterns can persist into adulthood. Despite having greater agency as adults, our automatic responses remain stuck in survival mode, leading to feelings of panic, clinginess, rage, or withdrawal when triggered by similar situations.

To instigate real change, we must address these ingrained memories and disrupt the automated responses they trigger. This involves discharging emotional distress associated with past experiences and creating space for new adaptive strategies to emerge.

• Completion of Initiated Responses: Many times, when faced with threatening situations, our bodies initiate fight, flight, or freeze responses as a means of self-protection. However, if these responses are not completed, they can linger within us, manifesting as chronic stress or unresolved tension.

Completing these initiated responses involves allowing our bodies to release the stored energy from past traumas, thereby freeing ourselves from the grip of unresolved stress. Through somatic practices and therapeutic interventions, we can facilitate the discharge of pent-up emotional energy and restore a sense of balance and resilience.

• Mindfulness: Mindfulness serves as the bridge between past experiences and present awareness, offering us the opportunity to observe our thoughts, emotions, and bodily sensations without judgment. By cultivating mindfulness, we can develop greater self-awareness and discernment, allowing us to recognize and interrupt automatic patterns of behavior.

Rather than simply reacting to stimuli based on past conditioning, mindfulness empowers us to respond consciously and compassionately to the present moment. It opens the door to new possibilities, enabling us to break free from the constraints of past memories and embrace fresh perspectives on our lives.

In conclusion, while there may be countless tools and techniques for enhancing emotional intelligence and behavioral regulation, true transformation begins by addressing the core issues of memory, completion, and mindfulness. By delving into the depths of our past experiences, releasing unresolved tensions, and cultivating present-moment awareness, we can embark on a journey of profound healing and growth. Let us embrace the power of change and embark on the path towards greater well-being and fulfillment.

Embracing Vulnerability: The Power of Mindfulness in Healing from Abandonment Trauma

Abandonment, whether experienced as a baby, a child, a teen, or an adult, can leave deep emotional scars that echo throughout our lives. The crushing weight of feeling unseen and uncared for, especially by the one leaving, can instill a fear of abandonment that lingers, shaping our interactions and responses to relationships in adulthood.

For many, the abandonment might have occurred before conscious memory formed, yet its impact reverberates through moments of panic and anxiety, often leaving individuals confused and embarrassed by their own reactions. The automatic eruption of rage at the mere prediction of being left again is often misunderstood, sometimes even perceived as a threat, perpetuating a cycle where the fear of abandonment becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

It’s essential to understand that these reactions stem from a place of deep-seated trauma, where the coping mechanisms developed in response to abandonment were the only tools available at the time. The humiliation and alienation felt in a society often lacking in empathy only compound the distress.

Enter mindfulness—a powerful tool for embracing our vulnerable, traumatized states while cultivating more adult-like or pro-social responses to triggers. Mindfulness invites us to slow down and non-judgmentally observe our thoughts, feelings, and impulses without immediately acting upon them. While it may seem daunting at first, with practice, it becomes empowering, soothing, and encouraging, offering a path to greater freedom and connection.

Incorporating mindfulness into our lives requires patience and dedication, but the benefits are profound. Here are some strategies to begin the journey:

1. Making Sense of Feelings: Start by acknowledging and accepting your feelings without judgment. Allow yourself to experience them fully, recognizing that they are valid responses to past experiences.

2. Orienting Exercises: Incorporate practices like Somatic Experiencing to prevent overwhelm and ground yourself in the present moment. These exercises help regulate the nervous system, providing a sense of safety and stability.

3. Journaling or Art: Engage in creative expression as a means of processing your experiences and emotions. Writing or creating art can provide a tangible outlet for exploring complex feelings and gaining insights into your inner world.

While mindfulness is a lifelong journey, each step taken brings us closer to healing from the wounds of abandonment. By cultivating awareness and compassion for ourselves, we can gradually transform our reactions, fostering deeper connections with others and reclaiming our sense of agency in the face of adversity.

In a society that often overlooks the complexities of trauma, practicing mindfulness offers a beacon of hope—a pathway to liberation from the shackles of our past and a return to wholeness. As we journey inward, embracing our vulnerabilities with courage and grace, we discover the resilience and strength that have always resided within us, waiting to be awakened.