How to tell a story that has no beginning and no end? A tale that was ongoing before you were born and continues to this day?

Choose an episode that pressed your first footprints on some new path. Like the time you landed in a mental hospital. Not the first time, when you were bent on squeezing the life out of your sad, broken body, but the second. The time you saw God, or thought you did. Start there.

In the first hospital the fence around the roof-terrace garden rose four feet above your head. Like an inmate, you were led into this pen each day, where you felt the moist San Francisco breeze and the warmth of a sweet pale sun shining through chain link. It might have been pleasant, but you didn’t experience it that way. Demoralized, you were battling a long-checked rage, decades old, now turned against your own body in the desolate dark between thirty-minute bed checks. At night you wrapped your head in cellophane (your sister unknowingly smuggled it in to you) and jammed plastic down your throat, hoping to choke. Each time you reached for death the pain grew too intense, and you broke free to fall backward gasping, frustrated and ashamed. You sensed raving demons in your stark gray room; they loomed over your narrow bed, clinging with curved nails from the steel grate that saved you from jumping out the tenth story window.

No. Don’t mention that hospitalization. Talk about the next one.

Where to begin? How about in the emergency room a week after discharge from the suicide watch? Or earlier, when you were descending the stairs toward the kitchen. The air conditioning was running full-blast, even though it was only March. You were sweating, flushed, blood pressure climbing. Your wife was chilling the house to slow the rivulets flowing off your forehead, the wet patches soaking through your tee shirt, and your incessant pacing. She convinced you to lie down, but you jumped up within minutes. As you descended the stairs you knew. Or thought …

You publish something online about feeling suicidal, and you quickly realize the topic upsets people. After the last essay, posted both here and on my personal site (WillSpirit!) I received many kind emails and comments, which was sweet and gratifying. But I also heard some expressions of alarm.

Since suicidal depression has haunted my life since my mother died in a psychiatric hospital when I was six, it hardly shocks me. But the average person doesn’t share my lifelong relationship with oppressive sorrow and the insistent urge for relief, and so feels uncomfortable with the topic. On the other hand, the sentiments expressed in many of the responses show that some readers suffer with similar darkness.

Although I do feel a bit exposed after the last essay, it’s hard for me to feel shame about suicidal thoughts. Partly because they feel familiar, and partly because they seem predictable. Who wouldn’t feel suicidal after an upbringing like mine?

Who indeed? The Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) Study demonstrated that the risk of suicide attempts is strongly linked with formative adversity. Compared to a person with an ACE Score of zero, a person with a score of seven or higher is 31 times more likely to attempt suicide as an adult. What this means, in practical terms, is that 35% of adults with very high ACE Scores have already attempted to end their own lives. Since my own score is at least seven, I see no reason to apologize for my despair.

(The ACE Score, by the way, is a rough instrument: it counts the number of categories of adversity without regard for severity or repetition of incidents, and certain kinds of trauma may be missed completely. For instance, loss of a parent to suicide or murder counts the same as loss to divorce, but few of us would view those situations as equivalent. Thus a low score doesn’t mean that childhood was easy or without damaging effects. There is also doubtless an interplay between individual susceptibility and trauma severity. This brings up the issue of …

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We suffer for our ideas. Here are some of the concepts that can make me miserable: “I haven’t lived up to my potential;” “I don’t have enough friends;” “I’ll be alone in old age;” “No one takes me seriously.”

These thoughts are prompted by my personal history and situation, but they amount to vague and ungrounded fears. (How is potential defined? How many friends equals enough? Can I be sure about the future? How would I know if I were taken seriously?) It surprises me that I care so much about thoughts with so little solidity.

Why do mere ideas carry such weight? It’s a question worth asking from time to time. In answering, my first impulse is to turn to neuroscience. What might a basic understanding of the brain suggest about why beliefs feel important?

In simplest terms, we have emotional centers deep in the cerebral cortex that color our attitudes. The amygdala is a prime emotion generator responsible many negative feelings (and a few positive ones). It recognizes threats and primes us to react. It drives our rage and our terror.

Emotion centers are often considered more primitive than brain regions responsible for rational thought, because they evolved earlier. But emotions are vital even to logical decision making. It’s been shown that when people suffer damage to these ‘lower’ brain regions, they sometimes lose the ability to make choices. Despite being able to list the pros and cons of competing options, they can’t choose among them. Why not? Probably because they lack the feeling that choices matter. Without an emotional sense of better vs worse, the result is indifference or paralysis.

Emotions are valuable. They aren’t infantile, rudimentary surges that overwhelm higher thought. They’re the engines that propel us toward what matters in life. Still, although feelings are vital and necessary, they get us in trouble. Why is that?

Consider how emotions evolved. We share the amygdala and related emotion structures with other mammals. One of the reasons we bond better with dogs than with lizards is that mammals display emotional depth but reptiles don’t. Dogs can appear happy, …

Over cups of coffee a few days ago, my friend Larry Berkelhammer and I discussed mindfulness meditation. For some reason, I felt moved to criticize Western mindfulness instruction as “derivative.” Larry served as a good foil to my rant, since as explained in the ‘About Dr. Berkelhammer‘ section of his website, he has a long, distinguished history of practicing mindful meditation and teaching it to those with chronic illness.

Let me admit up front that I was tossing out an ill-formed opinion that stands contrary to truth. Jon Kabat-Zinn, the well-known advocate of mindfulness in clinical settings, hardly deserves scorn. Nor do Buddhist meditation teachers, many of whom have helped me advance on my path toward greater acceptance and less neurosis. I could chalk my comments up to a momentary breakdown of reason.

But after considering the matter for several days, I wonder if there isn’t some vein of truth hidden amidst the sediments of useless argument. If so, we can consider this essay a mining expedition, a search for the valid nugget of concern that motivated my remarks.

Since I kept labeling Western mindfulness derivative, it makes sense to start there. Meditation as taught in medical centers, as popularized by Kabat-Zinn, comes stripped of the Eastern metaphysical context from which it emerged long ago. Teachers emphasize technique and downplay interpretation. There is no discussion of the nature of reality. The origins of mind might be considered from a neuroscience perspective, but not from a mystical one. Students learn body scanning, mindful eating, walking meditation, and nonjudgmental awareness, but they are not encouraged to question modernity’s basic assumptions about the universe. Non-duality and cosmic consciousness are off the table.

Jon Kabat-Zinn, Larry Berkelhammer, and others who have introduced the power of mindfulness to the suffering would never have succeeded had they insisted on philosophical stances contrary to what moderns consider realism. Medical institutions are both cautious and conventional. Even devoid of metaphysics, mindfulness faced resistance at first.

Meanwhile, teachers at Buddhist centers have long brought contemporary values and outlooks to task. They point out …

Feelings spread through groups of people, right? Not long ago I was riding in the car with my wife when another driver behaved aggressively as we sped down the freeway. It was frightening and maddening. As the other car cut her off, my spouse reacted irritably. In hopes of calming her I pointed out that the dangerous driver must have been feeling pretty crummy to act as he did. His rage threatened to infect us, almost like a psychic virus. I suggested we build up immunity and try to keep his poison out of our minds. It isn’t often that a husband can change his wife’s thinking, but on this occasion my words helped a little.

So I’ve been thinking about this ever since. Consider the classic story of the boss yelling at the manager, the manager punishing a worker, the worker going home and insulting his wife, the wife scolding the child, and the child kicking the cat. The angst that drove the boss to act out gets propagated and ends up hurting the hapless family pet.

We see variations on this all the time. In every stock market crash negativity spreads so rapidly that securities can lose half their value in a day. Terrorist attacks are intended to inject paranoia and despair into a population, and they often succeed. Arguably, the massive US debt that now weighs down our economy resulted from the (second) Iraq war, which never could have been launched save for 9/11. Psychic toxins spread swiftly and do great harm.

I’m reminded of Richard Dawkin’s concept of a meme: “an idea, behavior or style that spreads from person to person within a culture.” In his 1976 book, The Selfish Gene, Dawkins used the example of religion, which transmits highly specific ideas about God and morality. He proposed that as they are passed from person to person, concepts replicate with occasional modification; over time the most ‘successful’ (i.e., most adopted) memes come to dominate group thought.

Perhaps the phenomena I’m discussing here could be referred to as affemes, or ‘affective memes.’ The …

The last post explored the futility of seeking lasting satisfaction through work, love, and other worldly pursuits. Recognizing this dilemma, we might ask: If satisfaction is evanescent, why do anything at all? Why not just refuse to participate?

But even stasis leaves an imprint, so we need to be sure of ourselves before rejecting society and its activities. We cannot avoid marking the world; our freedom lies in selecting how. We are destined to work and to love, but our decisions direct our efforts and affection. Some strive toward selfish ends and love narrowly. Others behave generously and adore the entire biosphere.

All of which raises another question: How do we optimize our choices?

Until recently, I seldom felt satisfied. Even during those rare periods when life was going smoothly, without uproar or mood disorder, it always seemed lacking. No career, relationship, home, hobby, or vacation escaped this critique.

I knew mine was not a healthy attitude and harbored no doubt that my personality was flawed. But I could not fix the problem.

Although I don’t call myself a Buddhist, there is little doubt that the Buddha saw our human situation clearly. One of his “Four Noble Truths” states that life is inherently unsatisfying. This comforts me, because it situates the root problem in the world rather than my character.

Not that I don’t need to change, but the issue isn’t one of learning to feel fulfilled in the common sense of the word. Adjusting my personality won’t alter the fact that life disappoints.

According to Buddhist nosology, afflictions of the human spirit derive from three delusions about reality. We habitually seek permanence, satisfaction, and individuality, but impermanence is the rule, dissatisfaction is unavoidable, and individuality is an illusion.

A recent series of posts on my primary site, WillSpirit.com, attempted to tackle the last of these three, which I believe to be the most challenging. Today’s essay deals mainly with the second and a little with the first, both of which are easier to accept.

Both here and on my primary site, I’ve covered Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) several times. The ACT method has helped me find peace of mind that exceeds what I was able to achieve using other therapies.

It seems like a worthy topic for that reason, but I should emphasize that my perspective is that of an informed layperson, not a psychotherapist. Consider this a disclaimer: these blog posts cannot be used as guides to adopting ACT behavioral techniques. My goal is merely to advertise the power of the therapy. Interested readers should consult authoritative books and professionals.

With that out of the way, I’d like to return to my last post, which attempted to illustrate some ACT concepts through the vehicle of my own hangups following my mother’s death.

As I look back at that essay, I see it covers a lot of ground. Single sentences gloss over topics that take up entire chapters in ACT texts. For the sake of clarity, it’s worth dissecting the key points a bit further.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy has been very helpful to me in grieving important losses, including those that still haunt me from childhood. In this context, ACT’s working hypothesis is that the questions and recriminations with which we torment ourselves after the death of a loved one are products of language and can be addressed by adjusting our relationship with verbal thought.

ACT emphasizes how thinking can interact with feelings to obstruct our pursuit of values. Let’s take my mother’s death as an example and see how this works.

As mentioned last time, my mother died in a psychiatric hospital after battling depression for years. That much is factual. But my mind has never been satisfied with the documented information.