Foreward
We are all familiar with the phenomenon of the formidable chore. It may be a closet that needs cleaning or a garage that needs emptying out. We resist the chore like crazy, building up a mountain of reasons why now is not the time and our lives are too full or too busy to take on even one more task.
Then one day, in one moment, we feel differently – and within five minutes the whole job is done. It’s not just about how much sugar is flowing through our muscles at any given time that determines our level of activity and interactivity with life. Our consciousness has a power and a rhythm of its own.
The human mind can power the body through a chore (like cleaning closets) when it’s in the right mood. And while no-one would say that cleaning out a closet is a purely psychological act, the biggest hurdle to getting things done is not in our bodies but in our psyche. It is with the mind that we turn on or off the flow of energy in the body. Yet somehow in our culture today, drugging the brain to alter its chemistry has become unrealistically overemphasised in terms of the role it plays in controlling our moods.
My background, education and work is as a research scientist. While for the past twenty years I have been working on an AIDS drug which is leading to an effective vaccine for the HIV virus, I was originally trained in a neuropharmacology laboratory. We pioneered the development of specific receptor active drugs which increased serotonin and went on to become a new class of highly-touted anti-depressants. I was there to watch rapid progress in neuroscience lead to the de-stigmatization of mental illness, a good thing by any stretch of the imagination.
Yet believe it or not, the popular idea of a “chemical imbalance” has not been rigorously proven scientifically! Yes, blaming depression on a shortage of serotonin makes a lovely soundbite for television commercials and pharmaceutical brochures, but the conclusive evidence that anti-depressants work through this mechanism is actually not there. True, important drugs which reverse clinical depression do indeed block the uptake of serotonin into rat brain nerve endings in test tubes. But, to cite but one fly in the ointment, this uptake inhibition happens immediately, while the depression itself doesn’t lift for three weeks.
I suspect based on recent data implicating lipid metabolism in so called ‘bipolar disorder’ (a moving target diagnosis which has been changed three times in my professional lifetime) that at the root mental illness is about the rhythm of energy flow throughout the entire body, not in a ‘cosmic’ mysterious sense, but the amount of and actual energy available for our brains and bodies to use.
The idea that you can magically fix a chemical imbalance in the brain with drugs also remains scientifically unproven and the gross over-prescribing of psychoactive drugs is potentially dangerous. As the data has shown, a small percentage of both young people and adults have had severe violent responses towards themselves and others in response to the proliferation of this kind of medication as a ‘cure-all’ for life’s most fundamental problems.
Taking drugs has replaced working on yourself and your life – and now that anti-anxiety and anti-depressant medications can be prescribed by any kind of physician, the lack of counselling and sensitivity to the power of consciousness as a healing force has become endemic.
In sharp contrast to this approach, Michael Neill steps forward in this book as a powerful spokesman for the wonderful world of the mind. He offers clear, practical ways to manage your moods effectively without drugs. These techniques go beyond the traditional offerings of psychotherapy or even Cognitive- Behavioural therapy and get into the heart of what’s possible. There is no mind-body split. There is always something you can do to make things better.
This book also offers a ‘happy’ alternative to the victim mentality of conventional medical treatment. Through stories of his own battles with depression and the work he has done with clients over the past sixteen years, Michael paints a vivid picture of how much of what we feel is actually under our own direct control.
His experience in the realms of thought management through the application of neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) and other cognitive and somatic disciplines is extensive, yet his explanations of how to use these tools to manage your moods quickly and easily are a joy to read and practice. Simply put, we can all learn to make ourselves happy, and this book will show you exactly how to do it.
One caveat:
Clinical depression is a very serious and potentially fatal disease. Neither Michael nor I would argue that you can just will violent or suicidal tendencies away. Anti-depressants can be helpful, even though we don’t really know how they work yet. It has been proven that they are most effective given with therapeutic counseling.
While the techniques in this book are potentially useful even in clinical situations, they will work best in conjunction with a holistic and inclusive approach. Our brains run on sugar (glucose) in a narrow zone of regulation. Therefore the amount of sugar we eat has a profound effect on our moods. At the end of the day, getting to know yourself and how your moods are impacted by the foods you eat and the amount of sleep and exercise you get will form an important part of your personal programme for happiness.
Perhaps I can sum it up best by sharing the story of a young friend of mine whose mother suffered from a diagnosis of bipolar disorder throughout her life. His whole life has been affected by this diagnosis and the widespread belief that he is ‘doomed’ to inherit unhappiness through his genetic make-up. In fact, there is no clear scientific evidence proving that depression or anxiety are genetically transmitted diseases.
Yes, stress, anxiety and depression (and for that matter, life itself!) can be extremely difficult to deal with – but the real burden is believing there’s nothing you can do about it.
Let’s face it – all of us are moody. We may hide our moods in the dark closets of our minds, forcing ourselves to go to work each morning at jobs we don’t enjoy and to smile at our colleagues who we don’t really know (and don’t really know us). We may even resist the ‘chore’ of cleaning up our thinking and cleaning up our lives.
And this ultimately leads us to the promise of this practical and important book: when we learn to manage our thoughts and bring love to the front of our mind, that love can override and even transform the ‘brain chemistry’ which fuels our bodies, our actions and our lives.
Our culture has swung so far to the “pill for every ill” extreme that I think it is very important for everyone to be exposed to the unique and fresh perspective you are about to discover. Regardless of any academic debate it may cause, I’m going to recommend this book to my young friend. It is clear to me that what Michael Neill has to say works. Read this book, and feel happy!
