Thoughts about my Mind

I've had a couple sessions with the shrink at this point and this week, I've found myself thinking about the mind.

The Goldberg Contraption in My Head

I have this image of my mind as a great big Goldberg contraption, a la the old mousetrap game. As I go through life, stimuli -- words, situations -- are like balls of various sizes, colors and consistency. To make meaning of these balls, they roll around through the contraption, getting sorted out, until they find the rut in which they most aptly fit and plop into a container *plink* of definition.

Some of the ruts and sorting mechansisms came into being at moments that made a great impressions on me. Others appears through repeated use. Though the whole contraption is multi-leveled and -layered, I kind of think of ruts like paths in the earth. Some made by pacing, some by flash floods, others by the flow of careful irrigation. Some are planned paths and others shortcuts that emerged between other ruts.

The Placebo Effect

I think placebo effects are great. They are actually my preferred way to be comforted or cured. So often, placebo effect is dismissed. It's an anomoly, a sort of margin of error. X percent of the control group thinks it's better although they are just taking some inert substance.

But isn't that the best we can hope for? To be cured by something with no side effects? Give me a placebo any day.

Even if the placebo effect is all in one's head, it's like -- to extend my image of the mind -- their's been this pathway of disease and suddenly the mind alters that pathway to be not so uncomfortable or even just plain gone. It does that just because it expects a change.

Of course the placebo effect requires belief. I read this great article in The Atlantic a few years ago in which a traditional doctor who has been taking an alternative medical treatment tells skeptics not to explain their skepticism to him, "Don't ruin my placebo effect." As you read on, if you are skeptical of the treatment I've been getting, don't ruin my placebo effect and post statements of your skepticism.

Changing the Ruts.

This week in therapy I tried EMDR and I think this is really going to work for me. When I try to go in my mind to the memory we worked on, it's like the earth has been smoothed and resurfaced. The ruts associated with the memory are all gone. It's really cool. I vaguely remember the incident, but the details are a little fuzzy and their no emotion associated with it. Trying to concentrate to recall the details and the emotion is, well, boring. I find my attention going elsewhere.

What's really strange is that I get the same feeling when I try to recall incidents that share the same theme as the one we worked on.