So I suspect my mom, me and my kid all have this short allele on the serotonin receptor gene. Idk if any genetic tests let you test specifically for that, because I've asked friends whove had their genome sequenced about it, and they said their report said nothing about httlpr-5.
A lot of mentally ill behavior is your brain on stress. That's my hypothesis of ADHD as you've read on my substack. I'm sure if we dig into bipolar disorder and other such stuff, we'll find something similar. What I've found from my experience is that a lot of patterns of thinking get wired from ages 0 to 3, and also reinforced in later ages if your parents continue the same behaviors. Those thought patterns are what increase your stress levels, apart from having a stressful environment in general.
From trying to deal with this with my daughter, it feels like it's all about you understanding how to reconcile your emotions with the outside world. Like my kid gets upset by a lot, wants to touch all the things. I've to teach her how to think about all those feelings in a productive way. I can't just say no dont do that. I've to acknowledge why that emotion is happening and help her achieve the same goal in some other acceptable way, and this is how she learns to accept herself and be functional. If you're attuned to your child, this is easy, trivial even. But if it's a high energy highly sensitive child, it's just really hard to be attuned and not be upset yourself. The only way to have my kid learn how to behave in different situations seems to be to just spend everyday doing different things and going to different situations and settings and hold her hand through it.
The deal with the serotonin receptor gene thing is this mutation makes it so that serotonin doesn't stay long enough in your brain, and you need something else to soothe you when you're emotionally upset. It also means you laugh about things longer. There are many ways to deal with this - being in a relatively relaxing setting with people you care about, having more iron in your diet so your body can make more serotonin when it wants, and consuming adaptogens. Basically you want to reduce cortisol in your body so your prefrontal cortex isn't constantly going offline. Long-term, doing things to increase mitochondria really helps - exercise, sleep, sunlight.
When my brain "works well", stress isn't getting to me, I'm not thinking as many negative thoughts, and I don't feel as impulsive. It feels like most of the function of the brain is inhibiting negative thoughts and actions, and when it isn't working well, it gets awash in negative thoughts and impulses.
I'm not sure how to reconcile this with the right brain/left brain sort of paradigm. One idea that occurs to me is that left brain stuff is what you don't need to learn in a personalized way, and right brain stuff is what you need to learn in a way personalized to you in the world, i.e. experiential learning. You can't learn how to talk to people or resolve conflict from books. You need to learn it from people around you. You could learn it on your own in stressful situations, but it won't include acknowledging your own emotions, and I think that's what makes someone a sociopath - the ability to stuff down your own feelings and just mechanically do 'what's required'.
I think this sort of 1-1 learning is getting harder and harder to come by from anyone other than your parents. You don't have this as much in schools, even, for various reasons including more rules and regulations and emotionally distant, stressed out teachers. So if your parents mess up, there's nothing to make it better.
Fascinating to get to watch you spitball educated protohypotheses!
My ECT psychiatrist has called my specific insight into my own mind “fascinating” as well, as I bring a scientific approach to recording my post-ECT cognitive dys/function and my related efforts to hypothesize as to what might be occurring in terms of underlying functional effects.
I’m a 53 year old former “gifted” child (IQ 156), a survivor of childhood physical & sexual abuse at the hands of my father, and a lifelong victim of my own self inflicted trauma for first “failing” to protect my older sister (I was 8-12, she was 10-14) and our mother from his depredations, and then trying to “atone” for those perceived failures by creating impossible duties for myself, through which I know I did tremendous good, but from which I could only ever focus on the shortcomings.
As a result, I’ve lived a life as a relatively high-functioning and -achieving man, though with constant company in the form treatment resistant depression, CPTSD, GAD , sleep disorders, and 3 bouts of suicidality (at 21, 48, and 51). But I also got a degree in Physics, minor Mathematics, and concentration in Nuclear Engineering along the way, rejected grad school fellowship offers, became a successful (though tortured) one of the earliest crop of successful information/cybersecurity professionals, and was fortunate enough to stumble upon a loving partner who has given me the greatest gifts of all: love, support, encouragement, and two wonderful children.
Apologies for the bio … it’s a prelude to my question:
Could you recommend any resources to better organize my varied cognitive abilities & challenges, such that I might be better able to apply my experiences and perspectives in support of the very protohypotheses that you lay out in this post?
My thanks regardless of any response — it’s approaches like yours that move the needle on understanding, in my experience. You may not be “right”, but there’s something there to be better understood, and in that the efforts to slice & dice phenomena and research results differently are a crucial piece of assembling a new hypothesis, leading to paradigm shifts.
Be well, as you’re clearly trying to help others be 🙏
Lila's answer is good -- generally speaking, I think you want to start from physical health and let things flow from there. But I also think psilocybin can really help people with complex PTSD -- at high doses, it's a bit like getting a "Christmas Carol" and/or "It's a Wonderful Life" experience with a spirit. It can help you put past traumas and decisions into context and to see yourself better. At the same time, seems to simultaneously heal the brain and gut and inflammation in the body, and to restore hormone health. But you want to do your research first and make sure you find a good source and do it in a safe setting.
I used to loved shrooms, back in university days and shortly thereafter (probably 25+ years ago now since last trip) — the perspective shift certainly helped, but then research got super busy, and I mostly ended up just drinking and smoking pot to ease my mental pain.
I’ve been virtually a teetotaler for the last 5+ years, and off THC since before Christmas past (to “qualify” for ECT, which has been so helpful but also quite challenging in other ways).
FWIW I actually reached out to the one Canadian researcher doing psilocybin work, but he’s been between projects for a couple of years now — stupid rules on controlled substance research, even here 😢).
I wonder if you meant this as a top level comment, and for Meghan to answer your question?
In case you meant this for me - I suggest what works for me - bullet journaling, broad spectrum mineral supplements, whole foods based diet, and cut out all processed food, sunlight, good sleep.
The book that really helped orient my thinking on this has been Brain Energy by Dr. Chris Palmer. The books that helped me heal from my own childhood are: Scattered Minds by Gabor Mate and The Myth Of The Spoiled Child by Alfie Kohn, but my issues were caused due to persistent low level shittiness, not big-T trauma as it seems to have been for you.
The thing I'm very curious about is the 5-HTTLPR gene and its effects, and how it could correlate with a lot of other mental health issues. If you're interested in doing a literature review, this could be a great topic actually.
But I also thought your reply, the very first to Meghan’s OP no less, was exceptionally well-considered and constructive too 🙏
I’m all over the first 2 of your suggestions, definitely need to work on the second pair, am grateful for the lengthening days & hopeful that our seemingly interminable cold & rainy spell will soon end, and lastly, sleep remains the enemy for me: despite the incredible good that ECT has done for my depression & misplaced guilt/shame, PTSD dreams have returned to haunt me, and on a good night I get 4h of sleep. (I’m getting great support, but clearly 5+ years of this has been taking a toll cognitively as well)
I appreciate the book suggestions as well 🙏 Cognitively, I’m still struggling post-ECT to maintain focus for reading at any length, or even following an audiobook for very long. (A true shame, as I’ve always been a voracious reader; but along with the other cognitive side effects, I wouldn’t consider changing my decision re ECT for even a nanosecond.)
Penultimately, I’m not quite sure what you’re getting at re. a literature review, but as a former astrophysics research assistant & Natural Sciences Senator at my uni, I’m intrigued if you’re willing to spare a few more minutes of your time clarifying for me.
And finally, my sincere thanks for you taking time already to read & respond with such helpful & considerate suggestions — and for your evident interest in helping to advance the state of understanding of differences/disorders of mental development & function.
Hi Meghan and all, briefly me, gifted child, oversensitive teen, c PTSD then HF Aspergers diagnosis recieved here in the UK.
I have been asked what autism means, and I still have no answers.
I know I always said to people 'you have to use both sides of your brain' so your indepth essay of enquiry comes with great interest too, born 69 I am old enough the recall the whole Indigo children phase of the 70's.
Thank you, I may return more comments after digesting your full meaning here.
I tend to be highly empathic very good at understanding our 'non verbal' animal friends, I suffer in modern society it is true, but so do they. At times I myself choose to be non verbal, but have been overly punished for this.
I am also highly sensitive to 'atmospheres' and refused many food types in childhood including specific sweets as causing headaches.
I am incredibly creative but also into maths, chess & Philosophy.
Philosophically, within Philosophy of Biology, there is inference that autism is an evolutionary factor, perhaps even a driver, a force for or marker of evolution taking place.
I think it's possible the "sensitive" genes are part of evolution, but "autism" is the unhealthy environment interacting with those genes -- so now we have to evolve the environment to better nurture the genes.
The shaman is the medicine man of old, (here man being genderless) my easiest teachers to quote are Castenada and Kenneth Meadows, that some ¼ of us are born shaman, having already crossed the river, and historically took on the role of chief, physician, herbalist priest, artist, etc
That the shaman (I have even seen Jesus cited as shaman and no less nor more) may be those perceived as autistic or mentally ill in modern strictured and divided society. Does that help?
I think this is slightly off -- I'm not convinced anyone is "born" a shaman, though perhaps some people and not others are born with the genetic material to potentially develop into one. I've seen the argument that shamans and prophets would be viewed as "autistic" today but I also don't think that's true. "Autism" is a label which describes impaired non-verbal communication, theory of mind skills, and broad social functioning, as well as repetitive behaviours. There's no evidence that historic shamans or Biblical prophets (etc) had these traits. I tend to see this line of thinking as an example of the runaway left hemisphere thinking it can do it all without the wisdom and intuition of the right / failing to realize what it's even missing.
Shamans and prophets are spiritually connected by definition, which is a mentalistic cognitive function (remember that Badcock characterizes autism as hypo-mentalistic; as well, autism is highly correlated with atheism) and lateralizes to the right hemisphere.
So they weren't / aren't autistic. It's more likely that they would be dismissed as mentally ill and somewhere on the schizophrenic spectrum. I was chatting with the granddaughter of a shaman recently and she mentioned many in her family could see spirits -- a gift that lends itself to shamanism if the culture believes spirits are real, but which leads to misunderstanding and stigmatization in an autistic culture that does not believe in such things.
However, as in this essay, many of these potential-shamans might have relational autism, ie feel like the weirdos in a culture of sub-clinically autistic people. But that's not "autism".
Hi again Meghan, I was sharing Kenneth Meadows's view from his book 'shamanic spirit'.
Can't judge myself.
I do know that autistic people were classically (mis) judged as schizoid personality types but that has now changed due to diagnostic criteria and increased interest in "learning difficulties".
So hey, I decided to read Gilchrist. I think it's way too speculative, but my hunch is there is something to it. I am going through a period when I am thinking our civ has gone mad. Something is truly ... off. Kinda like when a young person suffers a schizophrenic break... except it's affecting all of us to one extent or another. I made a foray recently into the world of woke political commentary, and my summation would be -- wow. It's not just TDS, it's Orwell's two minutes of hate, today and every day. They come together to hate and heap verbal abuse on Trump and his minions. Most of them do not engage at all apart from that (that I have seen), and those few that do, quickly disengage because discussing divergent opinions is so stressful for them (by their own admission).
But it's not just that... it's bigger. So thanks for pushing me this way.
To add to this... I just watched some vids showing shrinks talking to schizophrenics who are doing their disordered thinking bit. And my impression coming out of it was... OMG that shrink is mad as a hatter too! Just differently from the kid she is talking to. Wow. If I was that kid I'd wanna hit her... :-)
I think Mattias Desmet does not go far enough. He talks about our society having a mass formation psychosis during covid. It started long before, and it did not stop with covid. It's chronic.
Unfortunately, the helping professions -- especially psychotherapy -- tend to attract disordered and traumatized people. They can be powerful healers if healed themselves, but too frequently this is not the case.
One thing to consider is that the TDS response is not coming out of a vacuum. He's actively encouraging that kind of response, because when opponents lose rationality, you win. I'm surprised it took me so long to understand the why. I presumed it was a failing of his rather than a conscious decision. With that, I presume he's opportunistically taking advantage of the cultural malaise rather than the cause of it.
There is something to what you say. Part of Trump's strategy is to be outrageous, in the sense of being provoking and over the top and... well, avalanche comes to mind! :-) He's got so many enemies, perhaps it's the only way to make any headway.
But they react that way even when he does a good thing. They go out of their way to find a reframe that will paint even a good thing as horrible, and then start shrieking again. I saw it after he faced SA's president with the ongoing masacres of white farmers.
And then it plays into all of us. Like a family completely overwhelmed with responding to that kid gone schizo, we are all trapped in this "clown world" where no rational path is possible. To stay with my example, a sane society would take the opportunity to discuss what is going on in South Africa. It's a tragedy not just for them. But noooo! Orange Man Baaaaad! --- Oi.
Always humbled to inspire anything beyond eye-rolls and cautionary tales Meghan, what a vibe!
As I've mentioned, my understanding of autism is continually evolving the more I read, but (as of the current moment) Dr Steven Gutstein's RDI framework answers most of the questions I have had around it thoughtfully and with what appears to be a strong research basis, while "feeling" (in a right-brainy way) very intuitive with my own experiences of parenting and observing.
Gutstein's framework views autism as an overdevelopment of "static thinking" (which roughly correlates with left-brain thinking as per McGilchrist's work) and the failure of complex dynamic processing (right-brain as per McGilchrist) to develop as usual, beginning at around 3-4 months. In the autistic child, what he calls the Guided Participation Relationship (GPR) with the mother fails to develop, most likely due to genetic or epigenetic influences in the earliest stages of life (but I imagine attachment can also play a role). The GPR is a tricky concept, but basically it is when baby begins to be interested in mother in a "shared attention" kind of way, encouraging her to look at what he finds interesting, pointing, being interested in what she is doing. It is when baby becomes "apprentice" to a parental "guide", and therefore begins to learn about there being an "us", graduating into more and more complex relating and problem-solving. A child can be securely attached, but not develop the capacity for shared attention. At the same time, I imagine the capacity for shared attention will be damaged by poor early attachment (to be clear, this is my hypothesis as a relational psychotherapist, not something Gutstein explicitly states). It makes sense to me that someone who is not a safe attachment figure will also not be someone who is trustworthy to learn from.
This also accounts for the "superpower" hypothesis of neurodiversity. An example Gutstein gives is the 'Human Camera', a man who can produce a photorealistic street map after a brief flight over the city. A particular static brain function is overdeveloped to the point of being impressive, but basic social and problem-solving is profoundly stymied.
Also, your hypothesis (right-brained in a left-brain world) seems to intuitively make sense, and I'll reflect on it over time and see where I get to. I score highly on many ASD scales, have an ADHD diagnosis, and definitely relate to feeling 'off' and psychologically androgynous. I am quite bad at many social cues, but I am good at intuitive moments that are hard to quantify in hard clinical science. I believe it was Symington who spoke about this, that sometimes something comes to mind in the practice of psychotherapy and you have no idea where it comes from, and yet you know you must voice it. Many of the greats speak about this (sometimes it is called reverie) and I don't think it's coming from ego ... they usually describe it being quite embarrassing not being able to explain why they did something that profoundly shifted the therapy along. Something that defies "technique" or "theory". Which is increasingly viewed with suspicion if not scorn in the increasingly left-brain world of mental health.
None of this is "theories." It's all rank speculation. One of the commenters called it protohypotheses. Good catch.
"I think most people realize that the West needs some sort of collective healing and at least a slight change of course — to heal the brain-gut, the right hemisphere, to reconnect to each other, to our own bodies, to nature, and to Spirit, while still staying grounded in science and logic and law and other left-hemisphere strengths."
Yes! And it would be equally good to keep the crazy shrinks and their DSM-obsessive-compulsion out of it.
Edit: The West probably needs more than a "slight" change of course. A couple of centuries back (more than that, actually) we elevated reason and what's called left-brain achievements, and good came out of it, but then it got too much. Our civ keeps behaving as though when a little bit of something is good, lots more of it must be better. It's sinking us... The rationalizers keep wreaking damage. That's how I think of it. I think the Waldorf schools have tried to counter this, in their early grades they focus on creativity far more than math etc.
And sitting in front of a screen or gazing into a phone is not helping... what to do?
A small erratum: "Fallon, who died in 2023, was what he described as a “pro-social” non-violent psychopath"
No. He says very clearly that he takes long vacations from his "normal" life, and that he will never divulge what he does during those times. As far as we know, he turned into Jack the Ripper on his times off...
Evolution has fostered the incidence of "restrained psychopaths" as most of the unrestrained ones end up in jail or dead.
Edit: I found his book palpably coy, styling himself just so for the reader's consumption. As a psychopath would do, of course. Prominent among manipulative strategies, it's usually termed "impression management."
I mean, it's possible, but psychopathy is a spectrum and if the high need for stimulation and thrills are met through stuff like partying and career success, it makes sense that most people who are somewhere on the psychopathy spectrum would not be violent. I assume that Fallon didn't divulge stuff that would have hurt his wife or other family members, i.e. partying offences.
It is possible. But so is the other, darker option. What I find remarkable is that you would go a bit out of your way to defend him (or rather to defend psychopaths in general - chuckle). Is it so hard to admit that evil lives among us, often unrecognized?
Psychopathy, unlike a lot of other conditions, is more nature than nurture -- and sub-clinical psychopathy is useful to society. Sub-clinical psychopaths make excellent surgeons (you don't want a surgeon who flinches when he cuts into you), and they can be good leaders if they have a strong sense of compassionate empathy. They can also do heroic things quicker -- someone with psychopathic tendencies may be more likely to impulsively jump into a river or a burning building to save someone, for example. Less delay, less hesitation. Less fear. Less affective empathy overwhelming them, etc.
Oh I agree! If you have to go to war against the neighboring tribe, having a few psychopaths among your warriors is to your advantage. Would Soviet Union have won the war if not for Stalin?
What I am referring to, however, is saying things that lull people regarding their potential for massive harm, and make it more difficult to recognize them for what they are. You are doing it again. If they were pro-social, if they had a "strong sense of compassionate empathy" they would not be psychopaths, now, would they?
Psychopathy isn't in the DSM and the definitions vary across the literature and in common use. However, of the three types of empathy, only affective empathy is by definition compromised in psychopathy. They often have good cognitive empathy (unless they are also autistic), which is one of the reasons they can be so dangerous. Compassionate empathy varies, but it's very possible for someone to have little to no affection empathy and/or cognitive empathy and a lot of compassionate empathy (the desire to do things on behalf of others). The issue is that in those cases, people might not have the best idea of what they are doing.
No, of course it's not in the DSM. And narcissism too has been removed, I hear, haha. Foxes guarding the henhouse.
Similarly, they have also perverted (IMO) the definition of empathy, which to a normal person implies a friendly "putting oneself in the other person's shoes". Does a cat have empathy with the mouse because it accurately perceives the mouse's distress and uses that in its hunt to the mouse's detriment?
Yeah, I read it! She's right that psychedelic advocacy can be dangerous when people aren't properly informed, and very few people really know what they are doing (myself included, I'm constantly learning). I know that when I write about psychedelics I just go on forever and it can be overwhelming -- my essay on psilocybin is like 5,000 words and my tea recipe is obnoxiously complicated, but this kind of thing is why I think it's necessary. They CAN heal many brain-gut and immune-related conditions -- sometimes quite dramatically -- but it really, really depends on how, where, and with what intention and beliefs you do them.
Yeah, I mean, I actually think psilocybin is the only "safe" one (the rest of the popular "psychedelics" like ketamine and MDMA and LSD have a much higher risk of addiction and/or psychosis etc) and I think people should be at least 25 before trying it.
So I suspect my mom, me and my kid all have this short allele on the serotonin receptor gene. Idk if any genetic tests let you test specifically for that, because I've asked friends whove had their genome sequenced about it, and they said their report said nothing about httlpr-5.
A lot of mentally ill behavior is your brain on stress. That's my hypothesis of ADHD as you've read on my substack. I'm sure if we dig into bipolar disorder and other such stuff, we'll find something similar. What I've found from my experience is that a lot of patterns of thinking get wired from ages 0 to 3, and also reinforced in later ages if your parents continue the same behaviors. Those thought patterns are what increase your stress levels, apart from having a stressful environment in general.
From trying to deal with this with my daughter, it feels like it's all about you understanding how to reconcile your emotions with the outside world. Like my kid gets upset by a lot, wants to touch all the things. I've to teach her how to think about all those feelings in a productive way. I can't just say no dont do that. I've to acknowledge why that emotion is happening and help her achieve the same goal in some other acceptable way, and this is how she learns to accept herself and be functional. If you're attuned to your child, this is easy, trivial even. But if it's a high energy highly sensitive child, it's just really hard to be attuned and not be upset yourself. The only way to have my kid learn how to behave in different situations seems to be to just spend everyday doing different things and going to different situations and settings and hold her hand through it.
The deal with the serotonin receptor gene thing is this mutation makes it so that serotonin doesn't stay long enough in your brain, and you need something else to soothe you when you're emotionally upset. It also means you laugh about things longer. There are many ways to deal with this - being in a relatively relaxing setting with people you care about, having more iron in your diet so your body can make more serotonin when it wants, and consuming adaptogens. Basically you want to reduce cortisol in your body so your prefrontal cortex isn't constantly going offline. Long-term, doing things to increase mitochondria really helps - exercise, sleep, sunlight.
When my brain "works well", stress isn't getting to me, I'm not thinking as many negative thoughts, and I don't feel as impulsive. It feels like most of the function of the brain is inhibiting negative thoughts and actions, and when it isn't working well, it gets awash in negative thoughts and impulses.
I'm not sure how to reconcile this with the right brain/left brain sort of paradigm. One idea that occurs to me is that left brain stuff is what you don't need to learn in a personalized way, and right brain stuff is what you need to learn in a way personalized to you in the world, i.e. experiential learning. You can't learn how to talk to people or resolve conflict from books. You need to learn it from people around you. You could learn it on your own in stressful situations, but it won't include acknowledging your own emotions, and I think that's what makes someone a sociopath - the ability to stuff down your own feelings and just mechanically do 'what's required'.
I think this sort of 1-1 learning is getting harder and harder to come by from anyone other than your parents. You don't have this as much in schools, even, for various reasons including more rules and regulations and emotionally distant, stressed out teachers. So if your parents mess up, there's nothing to make it better.
Fascinating to get to watch you spitball educated protohypotheses!
My ECT psychiatrist has called my specific insight into my own mind “fascinating” as well, as I bring a scientific approach to recording my post-ECT cognitive dys/function and my related efforts to hypothesize as to what might be occurring in terms of underlying functional effects.
I’m a 53 year old former “gifted” child (IQ 156), a survivor of childhood physical & sexual abuse at the hands of my father, and a lifelong victim of my own self inflicted trauma for first “failing” to protect my older sister (I was 8-12, she was 10-14) and our mother from his depredations, and then trying to “atone” for those perceived failures by creating impossible duties for myself, through which I know I did tremendous good, but from which I could only ever focus on the shortcomings.
As a result, I’ve lived a life as a relatively high-functioning and -achieving man, though with constant company in the form treatment resistant depression, CPTSD, GAD , sleep disorders, and 3 bouts of suicidality (at 21, 48, and 51). But I also got a degree in Physics, minor Mathematics, and concentration in Nuclear Engineering along the way, rejected grad school fellowship offers, became a successful (though tortured) one of the earliest crop of successful information/cybersecurity professionals, and was fortunate enough to stumble upon a loving partner who has given me the greatest gifts of all: love, support, encouragement, and two wonderful children.
Apologies for the bio … it’s a prelude to my question:
Could you recommend any resources to better organize my varied cognitive abilities & challenges, such that I might be better able to apply my experiences and perspectives in support of the very protohypotheses that you lay out in this post?
My thanks regardless of any response — it’s approaches like yours that move the needle on understanding, in my experience. You may not be “right”, but there’s something there to be better understood, and in that the efforts to slice & dice phenomena and research results differently are a crucial piece of assembling a new hypothesis, leading to paradigm shifts.
Be well, as you’re clearly trying to help others be 🙏
Lila's answer is good -- generally speaking, I think you want to start from physical health and let things flow from there. But I also think psilocybin can really help people with complex PTSD -- at high doses, it's a bit like getting a "Christmas Carol" and/or "It's a Wonderful Life" experience with a spirit. It can help you put past traumas and decisions into context and to see yourself better. At the same time, seems to simultaneously heal the brain and gut and inflammation in the body, and to restore hormone health. But you want to do your research first and make sure you find a good source and do it in a safe setting.
https://thecassandracomplex.substack.com/p/psilocybin-magic-mushroom-tea-recipe
Thanks again to both you & Lia.
I used to loved shrooms, back in university days and shortly thereafter (probably 25+ years ago now since last trip) — the perspective shift certainly helped, but then research got super busy, and I mostly ended up just drinking and smoking pot to ease my mental pain.
I’ve been virtually a teetotaler for the last 5+ years, and off THC since before Christmas past (to “qualify” for ECT, which has been so helpful but also quite challenging in other ways).
FWIW I actually reached out to the one Canadian researcher doing psilocybin work, but he’s been between projects for a couple of years now — stupid rules on controlled substance research, even here 😢).
But I’m going to dig deeper again.
Namaste to you both for your help & time 🙏
I wonder if you meant this as a top level comment, and for Meghan to answer your question?
In case you meant this for me - I suggest what works for me - bullet journaling, broad spectrum mineral supplements, whole foods based diet, and cut out all processed food, sunlight, good sleep.
The book that really helped orient my thinking on this has been Brain Energy by Dr. Chris Palmer. The books that helped me heal from my own childhood are: Scattered Minds by Gabor Mate and The Myth Of The Spoiled Child by Alfie Kohn, but my issues were caused due to persistent low level shittiness, not big-T trauma as it seems to have been for you.
The thing I'm very curious about is the 5-HTTLPR gene and its effects, and how it could correlate with a lot of other mental health issues. If you're interested in doing a literature review, this could be a great topic actually.
ECT brain strikes again 😜
Nevertheless, Meghan did see it, thankfully.
But I also thought your reply, the very first to Meghan’s OP no less, was exceptionally well-considered and constructive too 🙏
I’m all over the first 2 of your suggestions, definitely need to work on the second pair, am grateful for the lengthening days & hopeful that our seemingly interminable cold & rainy spell will soon end, and lastly, sleep remains the enemy for me: despite the incredible good that ECT has done for my depression & misplaced guilt/shame, PTSD dreams have returned to haunt me, and on a good night I get 4h of sleep. (I’m getting great support, but clearly 5+ years of this has been taking a toll cognitively as well)
I appreciate the book suggestions as well 🙏 Cognitively, I’m still struggling post-ECT to maintain focus for reading at any length, or even following an audiobook for very long. (A true shame, as I’ve always been a voracious reader; but along with the other cognitive side effects, I wouldn’t consider changing my decision re ECT for even a nanosecond.)
Penultimately, I’m not quite sure what you’re getting at re. a literature review, but as a former astrophysics research assistant & Natural Sciences Senator at my uni, I’m intrigued if you’re willing to spare a few more minutes of your time clarifying for me.
And finally, my sincere thanks for you taking time already to read & respond with such helpful & considerate suggestions — and for your evident interest in helping to advance the state of understanding of differences/disorders of mental development & function.
Be well 🙏
Hi Meghan and all, briefly me, gifted child, oversensitive teen, c PTSD then HF Aspergers diagnosis recieved here in the UK.
I have been asked what autism means, and I still have no answers.
I know I always said to people 'you have to use both sides of your brain' so your indepth essay of enquiry comes with great interest too, born 69 I am old enough the recall the whole Indigo children phase of the 70's.
Thank you, I may return more comments after digesting your full meaning here.
I tend to be highly empathic very good at understanding our 'non verbal' animal friends, I suffer in modern society it is true, but so do they. At times I myself choose to be non verbal, but have been overly punished for this.
I am also highly sensitive to 'atmospheres' and refused many food types in childhood including specific sweets as causing headaches.
I am incredibly creative but also into maths, chess & Philosophy.
Best wishes
Joanne
I was a picky kid too, but one of the funny things about that was that the pickiness mostly kept me from eating unhealthy stuff.
Perhaps more people are being born with "sensitive" genes as a way of helping humanity change direction.
Philosophically, within Philosophy of Biology, there is inference that autism is an evolutionary factor, perhaps even a driver, a force for or marker of evolution taking place.
Then there is the shamanic view.
I think it's possible the "sensitive" genes are part of evolution, but "autism" is the unhealthy environment interacting with those genes -- so now we have to evolve the environment to better nurture the genes.
That is a very unique way of seeing things Meghan Thanks
What is the shamanic view, Joanne? It sounds intriguing
The shaman is the medicine man of old, (here man being genderless) my easiest teachers to quote are Castenada and Kenneth Meadows, that some ¼ of us are born shaman, having already crossed the river, and historically took on the role of chief, physician, herbalist priest, artist, etc
That the shaman (I have even seen Jesus cited as shaman and no less nor more) may be those perceived as autistic or mentally ill in modern strictured and divided society. Does that help?
I think this is slightly off -- I'm not convinced anyone is "born" a shaman, though perhaps some people and not others are born with the genetic material to potentially develop into one. I've seen the argument that shamans and prophets would be viewed as "autistic" today but I also don't think that's true. "Autism" is a label which describes impaired non-verbal communication, theory of mind skills, and broad social functioning, as well as repetitive behaviours. There's no evidence that historic shamans or Biblical prophets (etc) had these traits. I tend to see this line of thinking as an example of the runaway left hemisphere thinking it can do it all without the wisdom and intuition of the right / failing to realize what it's even missing.
Shamans and prophets are spiritually connected by definition, which is a mentalistic cognitive function (remember that Badcock characterizes autism as hypo-mentalistic; as well, autism is highly correlated with atheism) and lateralizes to the right hemisphere.
So they weren't / aren't autistic. It's more likely that they would be dismissed as mentally ill and somewhere on the schizophrenic spectrum. I was chatting with the granddaughter of a shaman recently and she mentioned many in her family could see spirits -- a gift that lends itself to shamanism if the culture believes spirits are real, but which leads to misunderstanding and stigmatization in an autistic culture that does not believe in such things.
However, as in this essay, many of these potential-shamans might have relational autism, ie feel like the weirdos in a culture of sub-clinically autistic people. But that's not "autism".
Hi again Meghan, I was sharing Kenneth Meadows's view from his book 'shamanic spirit'.
Can't judge myself.
I do know that autistic people were classically (mis) judged as schizoid personality types but that has now changed due to diagnostic criteria and increased interest in "learning difficulties".
Thank you it does! I hadn't come across that perspective before.
So hey, I decided to read Gilchrist. I think it's way too speculative, but my hunch is there is something to it. I am going through a period when I am thinking our civ has gone mad. Something is truly ... off. Kinda like when a young person suffers a schizophrenic break... except it's affecting all of us to one extent or another. I made a foray recently into the world of woke political commentary, and my summation would be -- wow. It's not just TDS, it's Orwell's two minutes of hate, today and every day. They come together to hate and heap verbal abuse on Trump and his minions. Most of them do not engage at all apart from that (that I have seen), and those few that do, quickly disengage because discussing divergent opinions is so stressful for them (by their own admission).
But it's not just that... it's bigger. So thanks for pushing me this way.
Orwell and Huxley were prophets.
To add to this... I just watched some vids showing shrinks talking to schizophrenics who are doing their disordered thinking bit. And my impression coming out of it was... OMG that shrink is mad as a hatter too! Just differently from the kid she is talking to. Wow. If I was that kid I'd wanna hit her... :-)
I think Mattias Desmet does not go far enough. He talks about our society having a mass formation psychosis during covid. It started long before, and it did not stop with covid. It's chronic.
Unfortunately, the helping professions -- especially psychotherapy -- tend to attract disordered and traumatized people. They can be powerful healers if healed themselves, but too frequently this is not the case.
I read Orwell and Huxley in the early 90's and my thinking has been shaped by them amongst others. Good to meet you Erin. I am in the UK.
One thing to consider is that the TDS response is not coming out of a vacuum. He's actively encouraging that kind of response, because when opponents lose rationality, you win. I'm surprised it took me so long to understand the why. I presumed it was a failing of his rather than a conscious decision. With that, I presume he's opportunistically taking advantage of the cultural malaise rather than the cause of it.
There is something to what you say. Part of Trump's strategy is to be outrageous, in the sense of being provoking and over the top and... well, avalanche comes to mind! :-) He's got so many enemies, perhaps it's the only way to make any headway.
But they react that way even when he does a good thing. They go out of their way to find a reframe that will paint even a good thing as horrible, and then start shrieking again. I saw it after he faced SA's president with the ongoing masacres of white farmers.
And then it plays into all of us. Like a family completely overwhelmed with responding to that kid gone schizo, we are all trapped in this "clown world" where no rational path is possible. To stay with my example, a sane society would take the opportunity to discuss what is going on in South Africa. It's a tragedy not just for them. But noooo! Orange Man Baaaaad! --- Oi.
Always humbled to inspire anything beyond eye-rolls and cautionary tales Meghan, what a vibe!
As I've mentioned, my understanding of autism is continually evolving the more I read, but (as of the current moment) Dr Steven Gutstein's RDI framework answers most of the questions I have had around it thoughtfully and with what appears to be a strong research basis, while "feeling" (in a right-brainy way) very intuitive with my own experiences of parenting and observing.
Gutstein's framework views autism as an overdevelopment of "static thinking" (which roughly correlates with left-brain thinking as per McGilchrist's work) and the failure of complex dynamic processing (right-brain as per McGilchrist) to develop as usual, beginning at around 3-4 months. In the autistic child, what he calls the Guided Participation Relationship (GPR) with the mother fails to develop, most likely due to genetic or epigenetic influences in the earliest stages of life (but I imagine attachment can also play a role). The GPR is a tricky concept, but basically it is when baby begins to be interested in mother in a "shared attention" kind of way, encouraging her to look at what he finds interesting, pointing, being interested in what she is doing. It is when baby becomes "apprentice" to a parental "guide", and therefore begins to learn about there being an "us", graduating into more and more complex relating and problem-solving. A child can be securely attached, but not develop the capacity for shared attention. At the same time, I imagine the capacity for shared attention will be damaged by poor early attachment (to be clear, this is my hypothesis as a relational psychotherapist, not something Gutstein explicitly states). It makes sense to me that someone who is not a safe attachment figure will also not be someone who is trustworthy to learn from.
This also accounts for the "superpower" hypothesis of neurodiversity. An example Gutstein gives is the 'Human Camera', a man who can produce a photorealistic street map after a brief flight over the city. A particular static brain function is overdeveloped to the point of being impressive, but basic social and problem-solving is profoundly stymied.
Also, your hypothesis (right-brained in a left-brain world) seems to intuitively make sense, and I'll reflect on it over time and see where I get to. I score highly on many ASD scales, have an ADHD diagnosis, and definitely relate to feeling 'off' and psychologically androgynous. I am quite bad at many social cues, but I am good at intuitive moments that are hard to quantify in hard clinical science. I believe it was Symington who spoke about this, that sometimes something comes to mind in the practice of psychotherapy and you have no idea where it comes from, and yet you know you must voice it. Many of the greats speak about this (sometimes it is called reverie) and I don't think it's coming from ego ... they usually describe it being quite embarrassing not being able to explain why they did something that profoundly shifted the therapy along. Something that defies "technique" or "theory". Which is increasingly viewed with suspicion if not scorn in the increasingly left-brain world of mental health.
None of this is "theories." It's all rank speculation. One of the commenters called it protohypotheses. Good catch.
"I think most people realize that the West needs some sort of collective healing and at least a slight change of course — to heal the brain-gut, the right hemisphere, to reconnect to each other, to our own bodies, to nature, and to Spirit, while still staying grounded in science and logic and law and other left-hemisphere strengths."
Yes! And it would be equally good to keep the crazy shrinks and their DSM-obsessive-compulsion out of it.
Edit: The West probably needs more than a "slight" change of course. A couple of centuries back (more than that, actually) we elevated reason and what's called left-brain achievements, and good came out of it, but then it got too much. Our civ keeps behaving as though when a little bit of something is good, lots more of it must be better. It's sinking us... The rationalizers keep wreaking damage. That's how I think of it. I think the Waldorf schools have tried to counter this, in their early grades they focus on creativity far more than math etc.
And sitting in front of a screen or gazing into a phone is not helping... what to do?
A small erratum: "Fallon, who died in 2023, was what he described as a “pro-social” non-violent psychopath"
No. He says very clearly that he takes long vacations from his "normal" life, and that he will never divulge what he does during those times. As far as we know, he turned into Jack the Ripper on his times off...
Evolution has fostered the incidence of "restrained psychopaths" as most of the unrestrained ones end up in jail or dead.
Edit: I found his book palpably coy, styling himself just so for the reader's consumption. As a psychopath would do, of course. Prominent among manipulative strategies, it's usually termed "impression management."
I mean, it's possible, but psychopathy is a spectrum and if the high need for stimulation and thrills are met through stuff like partying and career success, it makes sense that most people who are somewhere on the psychopathy spectrum would not be violent. I assume that Fallon didn't divulge stuff that would have hurt his wife or other family members, i.e. partying offences.
It is possible. But so is the other, darker option. What I find remarkable is that you would go a bit out of your way to defend him (or rather to defend psychopaths in general - chuckle). Is it so hard to admit that evil lives among us, often unrecognized?
Psychopathy, unlike a lot of other conditions, is more nature than nurture -- and sub-clinical psychopathy is useful to society. Sub-clinical psychopaths make excellent surgeons (you don't want a surgeon who flinches when he cuts into you), and they can be good leaders if they have a strong sense of compassionate empathy. They can also do heroic things quicker -- someone with psychopathic tendencies may be more likely to impulsively jump into a river or a burning building to save someone, for example. Less delay, less hesitation. Less fear. Less affective empathy overwhelming them, etc.
Oh I agree! If you have to go to war against the neighboring tribe, having a few psychopaths among your warriors is to your advantage. Would Soviet Union have won the war if not for Stalin?
What I am referring to, however, is saying things that lull people regarding their potential for massive harm, and make it more difficult to recognize them for what they are. You are doing it again. If they were pro-social, if they had a "strong sense of compassionate empathy" they would not be psychopaths, now, would they?
See what I am getting at?
Psychopathy isn't in the DSM and the definitions vary across the literature and in common use. However, of the three types of empathy, only affective empathy is by definition compromised in psychopathy. They often have good cognitive empathy (unless they are also autistic), which is one of the reasons they can be so dangerous. Compassionate empathy varies, but it's very possible for someone to have little to no affection empathy and/or cognitive empathy and a lot of compassionate empathy (the desire to do things on behalf of others). The issue is that in those cases, people might not have the best idea of what they are doing.
No, of course it's not in the DSM. And narcissism too has been removed, I hear, haha. Foxes guarding the henhouse.
Similarly, they have also perverted (IMO) the definition of empathy, which to a normal person implies a friendly "putting oneself in the other person's shoes". Does a cat have empathy with the mouse because it accurately perceives the mouse's distress and uses that in its hunt to the mouse's detriment?
I go by Hare and George Simon.
Yikes! This girl practically engineered a bad trip for herself on 1 g of mushrooms.
Amazing.
https://clareashcraft.substack.com/p/psychedelic-advocates-have-gone-too
Edit: Ha, you are already there. I shoulda checked before sending you the link! :-)
Yeah, I read it! She's right that psychedelic advocacy can be dangerous when people aren't properly informed, and very few people really know what they are doing (myself included, I'm constantly learning). I know that when I write about psychedelics I just go on forever and it can be overwhelming -- my essay on psilocybin is like 5,000 words and my tea recipe is obnoxiously complicated, but this kind of thing is why I think it's necessary. They CAN heal many brain-gut and immune-related conditions -- sometimes quite dramatically -- but it really, really depends on how, where, and with what intention and beliefs you do them.
I was struck by how she fed her fears into it... sorta creating a positive feedback loop.
On the other hand, she is very detailed and lucid in describing what was happening with her, and I always appreciate that.
More and more, I think doing drugs when very young is not a good idea.
Yeah, I mean, I actually think psilocybin is the only "safe" one (the rest of the popular "psychedelics" like ketamine and MDMA and LSD have a much higher risk of addiction and/or psychosis etc) and I think people should be at least 25 before trying it.