The mind-body disconnect - part two.

An alternative route of speculation, and a far less sensitive one, is to further examine the mind-body disconnect in women.  The fact that women are not consciously in sync with their physical arousal may leave room to question this weakness in relation to depression, eating disorders, and other diet/exercise related issues.

A quick lesson in emotion:  emotion is a part of our autonomic nervous system, part of our peripheral nervous system, which is wired through our limbic system.  You know how a hug can make you feel really happy?  That's the peripheral nervous system at work.  That's the mind-body connection.  When you get sick and maybe experience irritability, again, that's the mind-body connection.  Simply put, when our bodies feel bad, our minds feel bad, and vice versa.  So what happens when that link is fuzzy?

I'm going to use the example of diet soda, and also use an anecdote to make a point (I can hear my Psych professors weeping now).  Diet soda, in essence, is one of the worst things you can put in your body.  More specifically, the aspartame found in diet soda is one of the worst things you can put in your body.  Essentially, there are elements of aspartame that your body cannot properly break down and dispose of.  One specifically to focus on is methyl alcohol.  When put into your body, methyl alcohol becomes formaldehyde and rests as a toxin within your body.  Toxin, or poison, obviously is not a good thing to have inside your body and is apt to make it feel bad.  Victims of aspartame poisoning report a wide range of symptoms, some of which have been diagnosed as MS, brain tumors, etc.  Several people who have gone through detoxification have seen a reduction in symptoms, sometimes even in tumor size.  For more information, seek out a documentary called "Sweet Misery."  There is information within the documentary for further resources if you are interested.

So, back to the point.  In all essence, aspartame is pretty bad stuff and is bound to make your body feel bad. As we know, when your body feels bad, so does your brain.  Cue my anecdote.  I watch my sister suck down bottles of diet soda a day (and this doesn't include other diet foods she's eating, which may contain dangerous chemicals as well).  At the same time, I hear her talking about her continuing struggle with depression and a need to increase or change her medication.  I cannot help but wonder if my sister is a victim of mind-body disconnect.  I can't imagine that her body is fairing well after years of drinking diet soda, and yet she is focused solely on what is going on with her mind.  I try to encourage her to really pay attention to how she feels after she eats or drinks anything, but judging from her medicine cabinet, headaches and the like are annoying yet trivial aspects of life that she is not willing to invest much time in - aside from picking up an extra large bottle of ibuprofen whenever she goes to Costco.

It's no secret that depression affects women disproportionately, and I wonder if that has anything to do with possible disconnection.  Women live in a society where thin is in for them, and I have to wonder how many women shop specifically for a diet fad, and how many of them are suffering the consequences.  Any processed food is bound to have a negative impact on the body - we humans are neither processed nor genetically modified, so I am curious as to why we are expected to eat these things.  

Furthermore, we live in a society where we are becoming less and less active with each generation.  We are eager to say we are tired because we are depressed or depressed because we're tired.  We're also quick to blame the world - work weeks that are too long, a failing economy.  Our reasoning is more of a cycle of illogic.  If we're tired and depressed, it's likely that we've spent too many nights loafing on the couch.  If we're stressed about work or the world, we might seek solace in television and comfort food, even though we should be choosing a treadmill.  I imagine that if we took a look at the numbers, we'd find men sweating out their stress more than women.  More than that, I know we'd find more women with unhealthy relationships with food - whether it be eating too much or too little or throwing it up.  I'd argue that there's more than a casual arrow between depression and eating disorders.  I think it would be possible to hypothesize that at the very least, the eating disorder acts as a catalyst for the depression, especially as the body starts to really break down.

I'll end here - tonight has been productive for my my mind, but again, it is all in speculation.  As always, this journal comes with a disclaimer.  That is, I'm not a professional, I'm a student.  This is a place for me to share concepts I find interesting and sort through some of my own ideas on topics.  If I make any exceptional points in class or on a paper, I'll be sure to share.  Still, I'm not a doctor or licensed professional.  I cannot counsel you, recommend you change your medication, or give you the green light to start a diet and exercise routine.  Your doctor can talk about these things with you.  All I can do is provide food for thought, and maybe offer you some topics to bring up to your doctor or therapist.


If I have it in me, I'll try to expand on that article some more later.  There were so many elements of it, and so many things to say about each one.  I have a lot to say about Diamond's research.  Although lacking in external validity (she didn't include heterosexual women in her studies), her topic is fascinating and one I'd like to explore.  Rape fantasies and desire vs. power and narcissism, and how that might relate to the loss of sexual desire a woman may feel in long term relationships.  Not to mention buffering her statements from claims of misogynistic undertones in her theories.  Really, read the article again and think.  It's not as sexist as it sounds.

Female sexuality: the mind body disconnect - pt. 1

Article:  http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/25/magazine/25desire-t.html

Note:  This entry is a response to theories posted in the article.  Nothing written here has been scientifically validated.  The purpose here is to open the stream of consciousness and perhaps raise possible hypotheses that can be tested, or at least encourage a look into correlational studies.

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This article discusses several research projects done by sexologists in an attempt to answer what Freud could not.  What do women want?

Chivers' research seems to suggest that there is a mind-body disconnect with women, at least in the realm of their sexuality.  She is not the only scientist seeing this phenomenon.  Women are capable of physical (objective) sexual responses without conscious awareness of desire or arousal.  Evolutionary theory would see this as adaptive.  Women have faced sexual violence throughout history, particularly rape.  It is suggested that women evolved to have physical arousal without conscious awareness of want as a defense to these unwanted advances - a physical response provides her body protection from tearing and infection.

Moreover, it may be possible to hypothesize that the mind-body disconnect in women serve an adaptive purpose for the psyche as well.  Physical assault, while horrifically traumatizing, may produce more serious psychological damage is woman had the same strong mind-body (objective-subjective) connection that their male counterparts do.  That is, women may hold the capacity to defend their psyche by disconnecting their subjective experience from what their body is going through (the objective experience).  This may produce inability to recall certain details, entire parts, or perhaps even the majority of the assault itself.  When a womans conscious is separated from what is happening to her body, she may later in subsequent therapy be able to separate herself from the experience; her body has been victimized, but she does not have to be a victim.

I discussed this topic with a friend of mine who has her MA in Psychology.  She had suggested that there may be additional consequences of this mind body disconnect.  She expressed interest in seeing if there are any possible links between this disconnect and certain mental disorders, specifically Disassociative Identity Disorder, or DID (formerly multiple personality disorder).  DID more prevalent in women than men, and the number of patients meeting the criteria is swiftly rising.  Although controversial for a number of reasons, it may not be all that unreasonable to speculate that DID can arise as an individual response to sexual trauma.  The characteristics of DID, in a way, offer another degree of separation from the experience.  For those who are unable to resolve psychological issues related to sexual trauma or for those who feel subjectively victimized, an "alter ego" so to speak may offer their conscious a break from a world where they feel like a victim.

This is, of course, entirely speculation.  The amount of testing that would have to go into a research project like this far outweighs this authors abilities at this time.  First, correlational studies would have to be performed to even see if there is a link between DID patients and any history of sexual violence.  The problem with this is the controversy that comes from each of these, particularly surrounding the therapist.  There have been several incidences in history where therapists have brought out problems in patients, such as DID or a history of sexual assault when neither existed in the first place.  Doing a correlational study would be a delicate task, and would need to be done by some very careful, intelligent researchers.  Furthermore, if a study like this made it into the experimental phase, some very large ethical issues may arise.  I'd imagine at one point in a study like this, it would be important to measure the objective and subjective sexual responses of rape victims, but doing so much as connecting the patient to a plethysmograph may prove to be detrimental to the patient's psychological well being.  Beyond that, obtaining consent for such a study may prove to be a very difficult manner.

(TBC)

Course hopping. Weather forecasting.

At the very last minute, I changed my course load for the quarter.  I dropped counseling to take Native American Psych Values.  Counseling will happen again.  I told myself that whatever I had to do, I'd take the NAPV course the first chance I got.  It's a selected topics course, meaning its one of several Psych 410 courses.  Funny thing is, my other course, human sexuality, is also a Psy 410 course.  My DARS audit is showing that these indeed will count as separate courses.

This class looks like it will be a challenge to my last quarter of classes.  Much less based in science, more in sociology.  The instuctor is also a heavy believer in concepts that lie outside of science - generations of wisdom passed down, before a world where we are told what we can and cannot take as truth.  I like the contrast.

I'm not sure what my drive is behind this decision.  I think that part of it is that I feel like I better identify with a traditional (native) culture more than the reigning one.  It's easier for me to give thanks to plants and animals and see them as part of a collective conscious than it is to pray to some invisible man in the sky.  It is easier for me to recognize time as cyclical and to make changes based on that recognition - instead of waiting for some event to fall into my lap, I know it is up to me to make something extraordinary out of each day.

With that, I'll leave you with a fabulous story told by my instructor today.

A farmer is gearing up for winter, collecting and stacking hay for his animals.  He wants to know how prepared he should be, so he asks around and is directed to speak to an old native man that lives on top of a hill.  The farmer goes up, and asks the native, "how bad is the winter going to be?"  The native looks around, out the windows, and sighs, "it's going to be a pretty rough winter."

The farmer thanks him and promptly runs back to his farm and begins stacking more hay.  He is not sure he has enough, so he returns again to inquire about the upcoming winter.  "I need to know, how bad will this winter be?"  Again, the native takes a moment to look outside.  "It's going to be pretty terrible."

The farmer returns to his farm and stacks as much hay as he can fit.  Still worried, he decides to go one more time and ask the native about the winter.  "Are you sure this is going to be a rough winter?"  The native again looks outside.  "Oh, yes, the worst one yet."  The farmer is amazed.  "How do you know all this?"  The native simply responds, "Well, I look down there at that farm and count the stacks of hay - the more bales of hay, the worse the weather.  The farmer that lives there has been creating a large stockpile over the past few days, so I think it will be a very difficult winter."

Enlightenment Effect.

In psychology, the enlightment effect refers to the idea that public knowledge about psychological research can change the world in a positive way.  For example, if people were more aware of bystander non intervention (bystander effect), we would expect to see an increase in help being offered in an emergency situation, even when a group is present. 

My goal with this journal is to give readers a general look into psychological theories that I find beneficial and interesting as I work towards my degree. This will also be combined with thoughts and opinions on certain topics.  Please read the disclaimer and note that any and all content here is not to be taken as a replacement for professional help.

There are some ideas that I may form an opinion or hypothesis about, and have to edit later as new information comes along.  This is the nature of education.  It is also the nature of science.  On my first day of class, I was informed that most of what I learn will probably be irrelivant in several years, as better theories are formed through careful experimentation.  The trick is to keep an open mind.

There are also several aspects of the world that fall outside the limits of science.  Whereas we have not yet designed sound studies to prove or disprove the existence of God, a soul, ESP, or any other supernatural phenomenon, we can design correlational studies to see if there is any association between belief in certain supernatual phenomenon and traits.

There are also a lot of experiments that have been done that will need to be improved on throughout the years, as better equipment and research designs become available.  As of right now, I am not properly trained for sound experimental design, thus, many of the topics I will discuss will be backed up by research already done by others.  Any opinions or hypotheses I may form are a long way from being tested by me, but I will do my best to keep a plausible scientific explanation in mind, include research that may serve to both support and refute my opinion, and be prepared to be proven wrong.

DISCLAIMER - Please read first!!!!!

The content in this journal is NOT a replacement for professional psychological or psychiatric help. 

Please talk to a professional before making any changes in your psychiatric treatment. 

The author of this journal is a psychology STUDENT, not a licensed professional.  This journal is serving as a creative outlet as the author journeys through school.  Again, author is NOT a licensed professional and any thoughts or opinions stated in this journal are not meant to be a replacement for professional help. 

ALWAYS speak with your doctor or a licensed professional before altering your mental health routine (ie: diet, exercise, and/or medication, etc), as not doing so could be potentially dangerous to your health.