Post-traumatic stress disorder was in the news recently. There appears to be a correlation between concussions and PTSD especially if the injury involved a loss of consciousness. My heart goes out to these soldiers.

Both of my grandfathers were in WWI but it was only my dad’s father that I believe had PTSD. It made sense as he saw much more combat than my mom’s father (pictured here) who was in a cooking outfit. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that there’s not any photos of my other grandfather in uniform. The war must not have held any good memories for him.

Interesting story about the genes and worry.

I once read about something called ‘impostor syndrome‘ where outwardly successful people feel that if others only knew the truth about them, they would be sunk, their life would be over. All of their success in life was just a fluke and had nothing to do with their intelligence, creativity, work ethic or the type of person they were. They don’t feel successful on the inside and don’t feel good about who they are.

Now imagine feeling like this with a black dog too. That’s a double whammy and we fear if others only knew, we’d be done for. We feel bad about feeling bad. It’s like compound interest with our emotions.

An eloquent little exercise to help break anxiety by my friend at Devyou.com

It’s good to know the ins and outs of how and why something works when you’re learning a new skill. In teaching martial arts I would explain how to do a particular move and why it should be done a certain way. “Move this way with your whole body, where you are at your strongest, against this point on your opponent, where they are weakest.” There are many ways to do something but usually there’s one way that is more efficient and effective than others. That’s what we were all trying to learn.

Ah-ha or Analysis Paralysis

Given that Halloween is upon us, I thought I would take a break from the black dog and scare you with a little something besides depression in today’s post. It is true. Everything happened just as described . . . believe it or not.

The Pink House

The color is what I remember. It was pink. Not salmon, corral, dusty rose or mauve, just a faded pink house with a few dark runny splotches on it. Some kids from the neighborhood had shown their displeasure by cracking a few eggs against it. I really couldn’t blame them. I have yet to see a pink house that a couple of eggs wouldn’t improve. Apologies to John Cougar Mellancamp.

Today’s post is a little long winded. My apologies - I just don’t know how to shorten my story today. I hope your patience will be rewarded.

This is my 85 year old dad. By the age of 40 in his career as an Army officer he’d been in battle in 3 wars; World War II, Korea and Viet Nam. He was never physically wounded but he saw a lot of his friends die. He’s seen the best and worst of humanity and always managed to keep things in perspective and love & take care of his family.

We’re all experts at tension.

Everyone reading this is old enough to be a ‘black belt’ in their body’s use . . . so why aren’t we? Why aren’t we smarter about how our bodies and minds work? We go about our day thinking that we’re relaxed but if we really paid attention we’d realize we’re not. Maybe we hold our shoulders a little high, hunch our back or slump a little in our chair. We wonder why we have a knot in our back, a stiff neck or get headaches. Why are we constantly rewinding and replaying events in our mind or fast forwarding to what we hope is a better future? We’re black belts all right . . . at tension.

MIT scientist have identified and treated the biochemical mechanism of fear.

MIT biochemists have identified a molecular mechanism behind fear, and successfully cured it in mice, according to an article in the journal Nature Neuroscience.

Researchers from MIT’s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory hope that their work could lead to the first drug to treat the millions of adults who suffer each year from persistent, debilitating fears - including hundreds of soldiers returning from conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan.