Conscious vs. Subconscious Core Beliefs - Part 1

All right. I had one of those "gotta pee" dreams, you know, where in your dream you really need to pee but are somehow thwarted, and as soon as you wake up, you realize that you really gotta pee? And as you pee, you think, "Well, thank God I didn't wet the bed!" You know what I'm talking about.

So I was musing about that this morning as I fed the cat and made coffee and puttered around the apartment. We sorta don't know where dreams come from, let's face it, but we tend to think of them as coming from our subconscious, another label that we're not really sure about. But if that is where dreams come from, then you could say that my experience was as follows:

(1) A physical reality/desire (full bladder/gotta pee) presented itself while I was in a subconscious-driven state, aka dreaming. The physical reality triggered a core belief: "Peeing relieves the pressure on a full bladder" (a perfectly reasonable and strongly-held core belief for me).

(2) Before the kegel muscle or whatever relaxed and allowed the pee to escape, another relevant core belief was applied: "It's a bummer to wet the bed" (again, a perfectly reasonable and strongly-held core belief for me).

(3) The two valid core beliefs were connected, and the subconscious presented the physical reality/desire (full bladder/gotta pee) through dreams featuring failed attempts to pee.

(4) As the physical reality became more pressing, the subconscious steered my being to wakefulness, whereupon I could consciously take note of the physical reality and act upon the two applicable core beliefs - I got out of bed, went to the bathroom (third core belief: "Peeing in the toilet is good"), and peed.

What's really exciting - yes, exciting! - about this experience was that it allowed me to glimpse the core beliefs at work subconsciously - and in this case to see that the conscious and subconscious core beliefs were in synch.

Here it is in a sentence: Experience is physical reality/desire filtered through conscious and subconscious core beliefs resulting in self-directed action.

Work with me here.

I just saw a matinee of The Dark Knight yesterday. The experience was a physical reality/desire (there's this new movie and I desire to see it) filtered through conscious core beliefs ("the price of a matinee ticket is reasonable," "critics are reliable sources of information," "Heath Ledger is good," "seeing an action movie in a theater is better than seeing an action movie at home," "the theater I plan to go to has comfortable seats" and "I can afford to buy a ticket," "waiting in line sucks," "little kids make sucky theater companions," and "the movie might suck") and an unconscious core belief ("I'm too fat to go to the movie theater") resulting in self-directed action (I went to the theater, plunked down my 7 bucks, and saw the movie).

In the case of seeing The Dark Knight, the core beliefs encouraging me to see it outweighed the core beliefs discouraging me, so I went - and I was rewarded: I loved the movie. My experience reinforced and validated all of my core beliefs except two: the theater was full of little kids but they didn't make sucky theater companions, so I can now revise that particular core belief to "Little kids sometimes make sucky theater companions." Also, I wasn't too fat to go to the movie. Ding ding ding - alert - alert - invalid core belief - invalid core belief.

Now let's take another example, shall we, class?

Physical reality/desire: Travel to Thailand.

Conscious core beliefs: Thailand looks gorgeous, love Thai food, fascinated by culture, will be a great experience, too expensive, can't afford it, plane will be uncomfortable, humidity sucks, passport expired, cat will be lonely.

Unconscious core belief: I'm too fat to travel to Thailand.

Self-directed action: Don't go to Thailand.

Ding ding ding - alert - alert - invalid core belief - invalid core belief: too fat to go to Thailand. People as fat I as I am go to Thailand all the time; I can buy two seats on the plane and be comfortable; if I get tired or my feet hurt, I can sit down.

I may still end up not going to Thailand, but the core beliefs upon which I make that determination will be valid.

Here's another one:

Physical reality/desire: Need a more fulfilling and remunerative job.

Conscious core beliefs: Capable of doing it, qualified, hard worker, good employee, loyal, lots of opportunities, enjoy challenges, too tired to put in the effort, fear of insecurity, don't want to give up bennies of current position, my current position is known and a future position is an unknown, don't have appropriate interview clothes, can't afford it, rejection sucks, failure sucks, wasted effort sucks, rocking the boat sucks.

Unconscious core beliefs: I'm too fat, interviewers won't hire fat people.

Self-directed action: Don't try to obtain a more fulfilling job.

Ding ding ding - alert - alert - invalid core belief - invalid core belief: too fat to get another job. I got my current job being as fat as I am now; interviewers do hire fat people (me!); I do have appropriate clothes for interviewing (or I could purchase them).

I may still end up not trying to obtain a more fulfilling job (although with the removal of the invalid core beliefs, it seems the decision is tilted in the other direction), but whatever I decide, the core beliefs upon which I make that determination will be valid.

Let's look at the biggie now:

Physical reality/desire: Want to be thin and fit.

Conscious core beliefs: being thin and fit is wonderful, it is healthier to be thin and fit, being healthy is wonderful, I am more comfortable and attractive when I am thinner and fitter, I know how to lose weight, I love food, I love the taste and texture of rich food in my mouth, I love swallowing, buying new clothes is fun, buying new clothes is expensive, don't have appropriate clothes to exercise in.

Unconscious core beliefs: losing weight is hard, physical exercise is hard, being hungry is painful, eating gives me comfort and joy, I'm supposed to be fat, I'm too fat, if I lose weight I'll gain it back, possibility of failure is high, failure sucks, wasted effort sucks, hunger sucks, I could break a bone exercising, broken bones suck, can't afford to break a bone, people will make fun of me exercising, humiliation sucks, shame sucks, sweating sucks, tofu sucks.

Self-directed action: Don't try to be thin and fit.

DING DING DING DING DING! Needless to say, lots of invalid subconscious core beliefs at work here.

• (subconscious belief) Losing weight is hard - (conscious belief) No, not really. It's simple, but maybe not exactly easy.
• Physical exercise is hard - actually, it can be moderate and very pleasant.
• Being hungry is painful - it is a little unpleasant but it isn't painful.
• I love food - but I don't love what eating excessive amounts of it do to me.
• Eating gives me comfort and joy - eating used to give me comfort and joy, but not any more.
• I'm supposed to be fat - no, I'm not.
• I'm too fat - I'm not too fat to lose weight and exercise.
• If I lose weight I'll gain it back - a might, but I might not.
• Buying new clothes is expensive and I can't afford it - I can use the money I save on food for clothes.
• Possibility of failure is high - possibility of failure is medium.
• Failure sucks - failure doesn't always suck, sometimes it's instructive.
• Wasted effort sucks - it wouldn't be wasted effort.
• Hunger sucks - well, sometimes it sucks but lots of times it's tolerable.
• I could break a bone exercising and broken bones suck - chances are I won't break a bone exercising, and I have health insurance.
• People will make fun of me exercising - no, they probably won't, I'm just projecting.
• Humiliation sucks - I won't be humiliated.
• Shame sucks - I won't feel shame.
• Sweating sucks - it can feel good to sweat.
• Tofu sucks - tofu can be delicious.

My reality/desires are usually valid.
My self-directed actions usually conform with the core beliefs through which my reality/desires are filtered.
The problem is that many of my subconscious core beliefs, particularly as they relate to being fat, are inaccurate or invalid, or simply not in synch with my conscious core beliefs. Once upon a time, my subconscious core beliefs were valid, but they aren't anymore - yet they're still on the books.

Now back to the pee thing - maybe the mommies out there can help me out with this.

Once upon a time we did not hold the core belief of "It's a bummer to pee yourself." We were babies. We peed ourselves. We didn't connect peeing with the discomfort of a wet diaper, or maybe we even liked the feeling of a warm wet diaper! We didn't know we could control our pee. But pretty soon we adopted this particular core belief, probably consciously before subconsciously, and we became non-pee-yourselfers. Kids who are 8 or 9 who still wet the bed consciously hold the core belief, "It's a bummer to pee yourself," but maybe subconsciously they haven't accepted this yet. Almost all of them, however, will eventually carry this belief into the subconscious, and with the valid core belief in place, they will stop wetting the bed.

How do we identify our subconscious core beliefs, and then modify or replace them to correlate with our conscious core beliefs? What is the process?

Good question. I'll try to tackle that in Part 2.

The Audacity of Hope

I've been thinking about my Palm Springs chapter lately - a friend of mine at work announced he's leaving government to pursue a business opportunity, and it all came rushing back.

The parallels between my friend and me are numerous - we both had jobs with the government which required the hatching and raising of ideas. I was a program manager of various Justice Department initiatives, such as efforts to coordinate law enforcement efforts across jurisdictional lines. I used to joke that I was the Henry Kissinger of law enforcement, and it was true: I had to use diplomacy so that years-long grudges between a sheriff's office and the FBI, for example, could be smoothed over and a spirit of cooperation could grow. Another example was when an anti-crime initiative was shoved down the throat of an inner city neighborhood, and I had to find common ground between a heavy-handed police department and a suspicious, even hostile, community. To say that these projects took good ideas and the finesse to implement them goes without saying.

It was an exciting time for me - lots of independence borne of a history of successes, the support of the bigwigs to do what I felt was right to do, and I was having a small but positive impact on the world around me.

But government is a funny place, with its own set of circumstances as they relate to employees. In almost any other environment, an employee who proves themselves to be creative and productive sees some sort of commensurate rise in their remuneration. Not necessarily so with the feds, where there's no such thing as bonuses tied to performance (well, now there are programs like that, but back in the day there wasn't). And a variety of things started to happen which helped propel me out the door.

First, the people I worked for derived great benefit from my work. Their futures were enhanced by the speeches they gave which I wrote, the programs they took credit for which I developed, and the ideas they capitalized on which I conjured. I mean, my bosses leapfrogged into prestigious judgeships and appointments in part because of my efforts.

Second, the more ideas I had, the greater the workload because there was nobody but me to implement them, yet the salary stayed the same.

Lastly, as my successes racked up and it became a given that whatever Stevie did was gonna be great, I started to resent the complacency of that. What had generated great delight in the eyes of others became the norm.

So I started to think, "Hey, why not work for myself?" I didn't really have a plan, a business in mind when I started to think this, but I had developed a great deal of confidence in my ability to hatch good ideas and believed that I could enjoy the fruits of my labor much more directly if I was self-employed.

I took the plunge - literally, as it turns out. I quit the government, moved to Palm Springs for a little much-needed rest and relaxation time, swam every day in my pool, and thought about my future. I was reimagining myself.

Oh, it was wonderful, especially after 15 years of non-stop work, of 10-hour days, 6 days a week, in a suit, sitting at a desk. I had never been particularly good at taking care of myself, so it was 15 years of cumulative job-related stress that needed to melt out of me in that sleepy desert resort. Which it did, like fat rendering out of a roast as it cooks in the oven.

A roasting piece of meat is an apt description: I lost over 100 pounds, got golden brown, and felt "done" - complete - in a way I had never felt before. There was something so right about it. Oh, I felt really good. I wore gauze shirts and khaki shorts and drove around town in a 1962 Olds 98 convertible. I breathed the fresh air and gazed at the mountains. I had a fling with the pool boy. I was reborn.

I was convinced that a huge part of my rebirth was the singing to myself I was doing while I floated about in that gorgeous pool (I lived in the guest house of an unoccupied, crumbling, walled estate built in the 30's). To the accompaniment of cooing doves and droning dragonflies, I sang along with new-agey music I played on the stereo and started to feel the vibrational energy working in all my cells. Struck by how great I was feeling, I pored over books on music therapy, tonal healing, chanting, all manner of ways people had been using sound to heal (it's a centuries-old practice) and got excited about the idea that I could help others the same way I was helping myself.

Somehow, I thought, I could make a business out of this in Palm Springs. After all, spas all over the area already catered to rich, self-pampering people open to new age ideas. I could create a whole new business offering vibrational therapy to people. I would be a new age therapist in an unlicensed field.

I would be a lullabiologist. Talk about the audacity of hope!

Oh, it was incredibly fun to hatch this plan. The idea was simply this: I would sing at people, bang a gong or two, tap a tuning fork or two, and make them better. I was completely earnest in this idea. I believed, and still do, that vibrational energy is a tremendous, untapped source of healing. How much better would it be, for example, that rather than having a huge latte to get ourselves going, we went into some booth for ten minutes and were given a big energizing dose of light and sound vibrations every morning? (I still think this is a great idea, by the way).

I gathered my set of tuning forks, three Tibetan singing bowls, found an office space, and placed an ad in Palm Springs Life magazine. A new age radio deejay saw the ad and I was a guest on her show, demonstrating my techniques. A woman called in and reported problems with her liver. I emitted a low tone, not unlike a hippo calling to his mate. She call in the next day to say she felt better. I was launched - I became a regular monthly guest on the program. The nurse in charge of a hospice heard me on the radio, contacted me and I was soon volunteering, going from bed to bed and doing my lullabiology. People actually seemed to like it. I contacted a famous spa and proposed the idea that, while people were getting mud treatments and massages, I could be sitting in the corner, doing a customized tonal treatment for them (at extra cost). The spa director thought it was a great idea. I got the job of singing the national anthem at games of our local minor league baseball team, in exchange for which I got a free ad in the program (not really my target audience, but still).

I wasn't making a living yet, but I had a few clients and the response was positive, so I kept at it, honed my technique and patter, and hoped for the best - that by the time my savings ran out, I would be making enough to cover the bills. The race was on.

And then I got a call from Deepak Chopra's institute in San Diego. One of my six clients apparently had raved about me, so I was called in for a meeting. I won't go into the details here, but after a number of discussions I ended up moving to San Diego and trying to develop something with the Institute that we could market under their successful umbrella of tapes, books, and lectures on all things metaphysical. After about three months, the spirit of the idea just faded away, for them and for me, I think it was just talked to death, and I found myself with a comatose idea, no money, and no idea where to go from there.

In desperation, I enrolled in design school (which I totally loved) and started looking around for part-time work. My friendly, handsome, talented new neighbor looked around my fabulously decorated desert chic apartment and suggested I help him come up with a plan to redecorate the restaurant he worked at. Our collaboration was a success: I loved working with him, we laughed all the time, the restaurant redo was a hit, and I left lullabiology far behind me. Eventually we had the opportunity to design a few vacation rental interiors for his uncle, and that lead to a full-time business managing oceanfront vacation properties. We had a great time. We worked hard. We did everything from design fliers to scrub toilets. We furnished something like 20 properties. You wouldn't believe the number of sofas and salad bowls we bought, the walls we painted, the hundreds of trips to Home Depot and Target and consignment stores and the Pier One clearance center. The number of sales pitches we made to prospective tenants. The trips back and forth to the beach at all hours of the day and night in response to plumbing problems and partying neighbors and locked out guests. Mostly I remember having great hope for the future. Look at how the Universe had smiled down upon me! And I was in love.

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune came together for us in unexpected ways. My love was unrequited, the work which had started out to be so fun started to feel like drudgery, I dropped out of design school, regained the weight I lost in Palm Springs (along with my enthusiasm for living), and after four years, our business collapsed. It was a devastating experience. A complete crash and burn. It still fills me with sadness to think of the promise unfulfilled in our efforts, and I still mourn what could have been.

But that year in Palm Springs and the first couple of years in San Diego were by far the most wonderful years of my life. I was alive. I tasted the success of my efforts. I was creative and free. I came closer to loving myself than I ever had before or since. Things were dicey financially, but I was a butterfly. I danced in hope and joy.

Is it too late to recapture that audacious sense of hope? It's been seven years - can I do it again without throwing away the steady salary and health insurance? I have to believe it is possible.

It all started with reimagining my life as I floated in a pool in Palm Springs. I don't need the pool so much as I need the optimism to reignite. I wrote recently about when beautiful Sheila O'Malley visited me and we went to a gallery opening in Taos. I could see myself as one of the gallery goers, a creative, happy person in loose-fitting linen clothing, just like I wore in Palm Springs during my lullabiology days. I had a glimmer of hope then, a moment of thinking, hey, I could be that person again.

I think maybe hope is the missing ingredient in my present life.

Why Not Gastric Bypass Surgery?

One of my faithful readers (a small but fervent group, much to my delight) made a comment on my last post. Sybil asked why, if I've been struggling all my life with weight, I don't opt to have weight-loss surgery. This is a good question and one that deserves to be answered, so here goes.

Conventional Western medicine has tried for a hundred years to find solutions to obesity, from tapeworms to drugs to surgery. The surgical methods developed recently boil down to one thing – they make it hard to eat too much by restricting the stomach to the size of a walnut. It's an inside-out prison. Put me in a cage where I cannot reach food and I'll lose weight, I assure you. Force me to eat only blended broccoli and liquid protein and I'll lose weight. Constrict my stomach to the size of a walnut and I'll lose weight. Put me on a desert island. Tie my hands behind my back, pull out all my teeth, burn the taste buds off my tongue, sew my lips together, remove my epiglottis, feed me wood pulp – and I'll lose weight. Lots of it.

In the 70's, when I was just 18, I went to one of the most preeminent bariatric physicians in the world and faithfully followed his protein-sparing modified fast. I lost 100 pounds in 9 months drinking cherry-flavored liquefied pig snouts. I also lost my ability to think because I was in a malnourished haze, lost my ability to stand up without being dizzy because my blood pressure was so low, and lost the enamel on half my teeth from having to drink enough potassium to keep my electrolytes balanced enough not to die. What I didn't lose was the fundamental, human need to enjoy food of all types, to feel satisfied, and to have a lovely social time with friends over a meal. Do I need to tell you what happened when the program ended?

In the 90's, I jumped on the Phen-Fen bandwagon and lost 100 pounds. I also lost the ability to donate blood. I have a rare blood type and it is sorely needed by hospitals to use for infants, but because my blood pressure almost doubled while on the drugs, they turned me down at the Red Cross. If you've done any reading about the deadly side-effects of Phen-Fen, you'll know that I might have lost my life. When I went off the drugs, do I need to tell you what happened?

Fully one-third of gastric bypass patients regain their weight loss by circumventing the limitations of a small stomach (sipping chocolate milk shakes is a popular choice). Contrary to the claim that you are "satisfied and not hungry" when your tiny walnut-sized stomach is full to bursting with the one-ounce portion of tuna it took you ten seconds to eat, what you actually feel is sick – painfully full, dizzy, the famous dumping syndrome which is akin to the most uncomfortable moment you had just prior to throwing up. Almost all gastric bypass patients suffer from chronic vitamin deficiencies, the long-term effects of which have not been fully understood. Three quarters of patients have chronic diarrhea. A quarter of patients have surgical complications ranging from infections to perforations. A few die on the operating table. A few others die in the weeks following surgery. All will attend their family celebrations for the rest of their lives and eat a tiny bite of birthday cake – aware always that they cannot be fully present at the party, that they must remain ever vigilant, ever separate, ever different from the people around them.

The argument goes, so what if there are health risks to gastric bypass? Being obese is so much more unhealthy. Actually, surprisingly, despite all you've read and all you believe, what seems to be the most unhealthy things about obesity are the weight loss-weight gain yoyo that puts enormous strain on the heart and circulatory system, and the emotional distress of trying to be thin: the devastation to self-esteem of yo-yoing up and down the scales (failure being an unrelenting visitor to a dieter's door) and the overriding sense of guilt, shame, embarrassment and pain of being fat, of being reviled by most of society – of hating yourself.

My recent visit to the doctor surprised me and may astound you – normal blood pressure, normal cholesterol, normal triglycerides, greater than normal lung capacity, no diabetes, normal liver and kidney function, normal ECG. And I'm a 440-pound 49 year-old man. I'm supposed to be dead.

I am convinced that obesity is a puzzle that hasn't quite been figured out yet. I believe it is a complex, yet fundamental, coming together of cross-purposes between the mind and body, between the conscious and the unconscious, between the lizard brain and the frontal lobes, between DNA and the environment, between nature and nurture, between thought and feeling, between holy and profane, between life and death.

I am convinced that the solution will not come from the Medical-Industrial Complex. Their response so far is to treat symptoms, not causes – and make billions of dollars in the process. Whatever convoluted treatment they might develop, the mind/soul must have its own way.

I have an opportunity here – I am my own laboratory. I am a thinking, feeling, functioning person with 45 years of experience being fat. I can possibly make a breakthrough that will change my life. That breakthrough might even change others' lives.

Or not.

Perception is Inference

Just finished a fascinating article about itching in the New Yorker. The part about the woman called "M" who couldn't stop scratching an itch on her head until she finally tore through her skull with her fingernails is just mind-boggling.

But the article really isn't about itching. It's about the idea that perception is not just reception.

It goes like this: We see a tree - but our reception of it through our eyes and ears and nose offer an incomplete picture, just a small fraction of the data needed to fully understand what we're seeing, so our brains fill in with its rich storehouse of knowledge about trees and sunlight on leaves, and branch formation - and the culmination of the received data plus the stored data is what we actually perceive.

This is a breathtaking thought. Perception is inference.

Here is a longish excerpt, then I'll pick up the thought trail afterward:

A new scientific understanding of perception has emerged in the past few decades, and it has overturned classical, centuries-long beliefs about how our brains work—though it has apparently not penetrated the medical world yet. The old understanding of perception is what neuroscientists call “the naïve view,” and it is the view that most people, in or out of medicine, still have. We’re inclined to think that people normally perceive things in the world directly. We believe that the hardness of a rock, the coldness of an ice cube, the itchiness of a sweater are picked up by our nerve endings, transmitted through the spinal cord like a message through a wire, and decoded by the brain.

In a 1710 “Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge,” the Irish philosopher George Berkeley objected to this view. We do not know the world of objects, he argued; we know only our mental ideas of objects. “Light and colours, heat and cold, extension and figures—in a word, the things we see and feel—what are they but so many sensations, notions, ideas?” Indeed, he concluded, the objects of the world are likely just inventions of the mind, put in there by God. To which Samuel Johnson famously responded by kicking a large stone and declaring, “I refute it thus!”

Still, Berkeley had recognized some serious flaws in the direct-perception theory—in the notion that when we see, hear, or feel we are just taking in the sights, sounds, and textures of the world. For one thing, it cannot explain how we experience things that seem physically real but aren’t: sensations of itching that arise from nothing more than itchy thoughts; dreams that can seem indistinguishable from reality; phantom sensations that amputees have in their missing limbs. And, the more we examine the actual nerve transmissions we receive from the world outside, the more inadequate they seem.

Our assumption had been that the sensory data we receive from our eyes, ears, nose, fingers, and so on contain all the information that we need for perception, and that perception must work something like a radio. It’s hard to conceive that a Boston Symphony Orchestra concert is in a radio wave. But it is. So you might think that it’s the same with the signals we receive—that if you hooked up someone’s nerves to a monitor you could watch what the person is experiencing as if it were a television show.

Yet, as scientists set about analyzing the signals, they found them to be radically impoverished. Suppose someone is viewing a tree in a clearing. Given simply the transmissions along the optic nerve from the light entering the eye, one would not be able to reconstruct the three-dimensionality, or the distance, or the detail of the bark—attributes that we perceive instantly.

Or consider what neuroscientists call “the binding problem.” Tracking a dog as it runs behind a picket fence, all that your eyes receive is separated vertical images of the dog, with large slices missing. Yet somehow you perceive the mutt to be whole, an intact entity travelling through space. Put two dogs together behind the fence and you don’t think they’ve morphed into one. Your mind now configures the slices as two independent creatures.

The images in our mind are extraordinarily rich. We can tell if something is liquid or solid, heavy or light, dead or alive. But the information we work from is poor—a distorted, two-dimensional transmission with entire spots missing. So the mind fills in most of the picture. You can get a sense of this from brain-anatomy studies. If visual sensations were primarily received rather than constructed by the brain, you’d expect that most of the fibres going to the brain’s primary visual cortex would come from the retina. Instead, scientists have found that only twenty per cent do; eighty per cent come downward from regions of the brain governing functions like memory. Richard Gregory, a prominent British neuropsychologist, estimates that visual perception is more than ninety per cent memory and less than ten per cent sensory nerve signals. When Oaklander theorized that M.’s itch was endogenous, rather than generated by peripheral nerve signals, she was onto something important.

The fallacy of reducing perception to reception is especially clear when it comes to phantom limbs. Doctors have often explained such sensations as a matter of inflamed or frayed nerve endings in the stump sending aberrant signals to the brain. But this explanation should long ago have been suspect. Efforts by surgeons to cut back on the nerve typically produce the same results that M. had when they cut the sensory nerve to her forehead: a brief period of relief followed by a return of the sensation.

Moreover, the feelings people experience in their phantom limbs are far too varied and rich to be explained by the random firings of a bruised nerve. People report not just pain but also sensations of sweatiness, heat, texture, and movement in a missing limb. There is no experience people have with real limbs that they do not experience with phantom limbs. They feel their phantom leg swinging, water trickling down a phantom arm, a phantom ring becoming too tight for a phantom digit. Children have used phantom fingers to count and solve arithmetic problems. V. S. Ramachandran, an eminent neuroscientist at the University of California, San Diego, has written up the case of a woman who was born with only stumps at her shoulders, and yet, as far back as she could remember, felt herself to have arms and hands; she even feels herself gesticulating when she speaks. And phantoms do not occur just in limbs. Around half of women who have undergone a mastectomy experience a phantom breast, with the nipple being the most vivid part. You’ve likely had an experience of phantom sensation yourself. When the dentist gives you a local anesthetic, and your lip goes numb, the nerves go dead. Yet you don’t feel your lip disappear. Quite the opposite: it feels larger and plumper than normal, even though you can see in a mirror that the size hasn’t changed.

The account of perception that’s starting to emerge is what we might call the “brain’s best guess” theory of perception: perception is the brain’s best guess about what is happening in the outside world. The mind integrates scattered, weak, rudimentary signals from a variety of sensory channels, information from past experiences, and hard-wired processes, and produces a sensory experience full of brain-provided color, sound, texture, and meaning. We see a friendly yellow Labrador bounding behind a picket fence not because that is the transmission we receive but because this is the perception our weaver-brain assembles as its best hypothesis of what is out there from the slivers of information we get. Perception is inference.

The author goes on to describe a radical new treatment called mirror therapy (aha, so that's what Stevie is getting at!) originally tested with phenomenal success on people with phantom limb issues -

The theory—and a theory is all it is right now—has begun to make sense of some bewildering phenomena. Among them is an experiment that Ramachandran performed with volunteers who had phantom pain in an amputated arm. They put their surviving arm through a hole in the side of a box with a mirror inside, so that, peering through the open top, they would see their arm and its mirror image, as if they had two arms. Ramachandran then asked them to move both their intact arm and, in their mind, their phantom arm—to pretend that they were conducting an orchestra, say. The patients had the sense that they had two arms again. Even though they knew it was an illusion, it provided immediate relief. People who for years had been unable to unclench their phantom fist suddenly felt their hand open; phantom arms in painfully contorted positions could relax. With daily use of the mirror box over weeks, patients sensed their phantom limbs actually shrink into their stumps and, in several instances, completely vanish. Researchers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center recently published the results of a randomized trial of mirror therapy for soldiers with phantom-limb pain, showing dramatic success.

A lot about this phenomenon remains murky, but here’s what the new theory suggests is going on: when your arm is amputated, nerve transmissions are shut off, and the brain’s best guess often seems to be that the arm is still there, but paralyzed, or clenched, or beginning to cramp up. Things can stay like this for years. The mirror box, however, provides the brain with new visual input—however illusory—suggesting motion in the absent arm. The brain has to incorporate the new information into its sensory map of what’s happening. Therefore, it guesses again, and the pain goes away.

Basically, the brain left alone filled in the wrong perception about what was going on in the phantom limb, and the incoming data - that the limb was missing - was not enough to dissuade the brain from insisting that its data was correct, so the person without a limb feels pain, cramping, imagines the hand at twice the size, all based on information the brain gathered when the trauma to the limb originally occurred. By feeding the brain an image of the arm as whole and complete and normal, the brain reimagines the limb and stops creating pain.

By giving the brain a new stream of data about the missing limb, it can "rethink" its interpretation of what's going on with the missing arm and let go - immediately in some cases - of the perception of excruciating, unrelenting, real pain.

Wow.

Okay.

So now comes a thought: What about my magic mirror post from yesterday - where the incoming image of myself looking ten percent thinner helped my brain perceive myself as thinner, which may have helped me lose weight?

If a person's view of themselves, whether through their reflection in the mirror or a number on a scale or lab test results, is constantly presenting their current condition - and if the brain is filling in with a rich storehouse of other data regarding themselves - then the condition is reinforced, reiterated, reimpressed on the subconscious as reality, and the brain works to maintain this status quo.

If a brain can conjure pain where there's no nerve (I mean, think of it - that's pretty phenomenal, isn't it?) , why can't the brain also conjure hunger when there's no hunger? The article talks about how a person can start to itch just by thinking about bugs crawling on their skin. I know I can create a craving - a true aching need - for butter pecan ice cream just by starting to think about it, even when there's no way I could be hungry. What if the brain takes its perception of the body it inhabits and then starts firing off signals to reinforce this perception - hunger and sloth to keep the fat person fat, stiffness to keep the immobile from moving around.

Creative visualization as a valid concept has been around for a long time. A person can imagine making free throws from center court, getting the ball in time after time after time, and they will actually see a measureable improvement in their free throw skills when they're next on the court. If the person watched film of themselves missing the basket time after time, their ability would not change.

If I give my brain the opportunity to perceive my physical self as thinner, more fit, more attractive, my brain will work to make it so. Maybe it would adjust my daily calorie requirement down a few notches so that I felt full sooner. Maybe it would send more endorphins and not reuptake them so fast, which would lead to more happiness and not so much discontent. Maybe it would send the message to my muscles that they wanted to be exercised.

My unbeknownst experiment with the magic mirror in Palm Springs bears this out. I perceived myself as thinner, and although I knew it was a false perception, I felt better, happier, more comfortable with myself, and my brain went about the business to make the perception real - I lost weight, I became more active.

From the time we are little children, we learn through a multitude of experience that the mirror is "true," that what we see is exactly correct. The overriding knowledge our brain has of this shapes our perception of what we see every time we look in the mirror. Even when we know the image reflected is distorted in some way, we still believe it to be true. Hence, a minute or two every morning in the magic mirror persuaded my brain that I was indeed thinner.

I'm left breathless with this thought.

The Man in the Mirror

I'm reading numerous treatises on visualizing the life you want, you know, The Secret and The Nature of Personal Reality, that sort of book. And it's terribly apparent that looking at myself through rose-colored glasses is the prescription. In my case, seeing myself and acting as if I were a thinner, more active person, with robust energy and much less bellyfat (the new buzzword used as a prod to encourage sales of ineffective over-the-counter medications). I think there's merit in this - I've talked about core beliefs before, and this is a component of it.

It goes something like this - if you believe you are "wrong" in some way, if you put your thoughts on what's "wrong" with you, your belief and thoughts will trigger and attract more of what's wrong, whereas if you can shift your core belief and put your thoughts on what's "right," you will manifest and attract more of what's right, or in this case, more of what you want.

It's a chicken-or-egg thing: does the negative belief and thoughts come first, and then the experiences that mirror them, or is it the other way around? Do we label ourselves "unlucky" (consciously or unconsciously) before or after we start experiencing unlucky moments? Does my core belief that I am a hugely fat person trigger my unconscious to make and keep me fat in order to conform to the belief?

I can clearly make the scientific case that I am obese. The number on the scale. My reflection. The size of my clothes. The stares from strangers. The chafing. The huffing and puffing. The list goes on. And I am a realist, generally - I don't believe in fooling myself. But I'm also self-critical, and my impulse is to go to extremes in cataloging my faults. The disgust in a stranger's eyes doesn't come close to the disgust in my own when I look - really look - at myself. Shame. Embarrassment. Guilt. Sadness. Heartbreak. All empirically appropriate emotional responses to the reality of myself, goes the inner scientist and harsh critic.

I'm the opposite of Dorian Gray. My "badness" is on display, 24/7 for all the world (and myself) to see. It's pretty hard to avoid my personal reality.

I used to have a mirror. It was huge, about four feet by six feet. I got it in Palm Springs from a consignment shop. It had a braided natural wicker frame. Gorgeous. And it had a magical quality which I didn't realize when I bought it - it was slightly concave vertically, just slightly, so that when I looked at myself I saw a Stevie about 10% thinner than I really was. It was fabulous. It never failed to put me in a good mood to see myself, and I would twirl in front of it and notice that I looked better, that I was, indeed, losing weight, that my clothes were looser, and that I liked myself more. It was true that I was dieting, and of course I spent hours each day in my pool, and I was really losing weight, but the mirror subtracted that extra percentage and it was such a boost. It I had lost 40 pounds, it looked like 60. If I had lost 100, it looked like 150. It's like looking at yourself under the enhancement of professional Hollywood lighting. Or in an expertly airbrushed photo. You're the enhanced, most perfect, better version of yourself, and it looks pretty damned good.

I want to stress that I knew from the first day I got the mirror that I was seeing a smaller version of myself; I knew I was really 10% bigger. I was my true size in the bathroom, and this smaller version in the living room. Still I loved the way I looked in the mirror, and I could somehow suspend the "truth" and inner critic, suspend the negative talk about myself and just let this rose-colored image of myself bathe my brain cells, flood my unconscious. I didn't realize its positive, almost hypnotic and certainly profound effect on me until I moved to San Diego and needed to place find a mirror for one of the vacation rental units I was hired to decorate. I sold the mirror to the property owner, and in a flash, it was out of my life. Getting rid of the mirror was a self-destructive act, I see that now, but at the time I persuaded myself that I just had to use it for this oceanfront unit and I happened to have one in stock. Plus part of it was I was being a martyr and making the sacrifice in an attempt to make my business partner love me. Sigh. What incredible folly. It looked great at the beach, by the way. I have no doubt people had great vacations because of it - wouldn't you want to look thinner when you twirled in front of a mirror in a bikini? Every Hilton and Hyatt and Macy's and Gimbel's should do it.

Is it a coincidence that right about the time I got rid of the mirror I started to regain the weight I had lost? Which came first, the pleasant image of me ten percent thinner, or losing weight? Or did I get rid of the mirror because it was counter to my self-destructive core beliefs? Without the opportunity to suspend the "real" vision of myself, I saw the truth, and the truth didn't set me free - it sent me into the kitchen to look for a comforting bowl of ice cream.

In the six months since I started loving myself again and treating myself kindly, in order to put into play some of the "as if" thinking encouraged by the books I've read, I was able to avoid most reflections of myself. Like lots of people, I have big mirrors in the bathroom, and the closet doors are mirrors, but I can keep my eyes averted pretty much all the time and never really look myself over. I use a little mirror in the shower to shave, it's about six inches in diameter, so all I ever really look at is my face - and not all of it, either - just my face without the double chin. In a steamy environment.

As I type this, there's a full-length closet mirror door just to my left, and if I turned to it, I would see my full-length profile. I could also swivel my desk chair toward it and get a full-frontal. I call it the Buddha shot. In harsh light. No ten percent reduction. Just me in all my cascading fleshness, my enormity. My yeasty doughness. I manage somehow never to look. Almost never.

I've been thinking lately about that magic mirror from Palm Springs. I've been thinking about it because I've got Spring fever. Awhile back I posted about it, the time each year when I come out of hibernation and start looking around for a little sumpin-sumpin. It's as inevitable as ragweed pollen. I frequently have to stop myself from whinnying, like Carol Burnett in a skit about horsey girls.

My friskiness gets me roiling, gets me boiling, and it takes me to the online land of the big'n'gay. I activate a few personal ads, take a picture or two of myself with my cam, sit back, and see what the cat drags in. Part of the irony of it is that in the world of chubby-chaser cyber hooking up, my calling card - my fetishized characteristic - my selling point - is my ginormous belly. Pictures of myself (clothed) in the most unflattering angles are my ticket to generating lots of hits, lots of drooling guys who look at my great big belly and see pure happiness. Seriously. I'm Raquel Welch in their eyes. I'm Jayne Mansfield. The sexiest sex toy in the world. A 440-pound breast.

And, of course, it's obvious that I am unable to suspend belief in myself being thinner and being more active if I am immersed in imagery of myself in all my humongousness. If I decide to do a little cam-2-cam play, where I remove my shirt and manipulate my belly, you know, bounce it around a little for some guy out there, I get this incredible positive feedback, grunts and moans and money shots being the norm, and at the same time I'm just staring at myself - seeing myself in the cam shot undulating around, the cam focused in close up on those parts of me I want most to change. I tell myself, "Stevie, they think you're beautiful and sexy, and it's better to get compliments than looks of disgust, isn't it?" But it's not better. It's eroticizing a debilitating fact of myself, rubbing my nose in the images I most need to eliminate from my view. And if the ads and cam play result in a hookup, isn't it even worse? Yes, it would certainly be fun to kiss and cuddle, to see a handsome naked man in front of me. To touch and be touched. But at what cost?

I am like Raquel Welch in this respect also: I wanna be appreciated for my brain, not my breasts. I can cause pandemonium in the hearts and minds of chasers everywhere by putting myself on display, but what I really cannot do is feel good about myself while doing it. I can score me a hot guy who will worship my belly. But I cannot hold a positive view of myself at the same time. Degrading myself is a recipe for weight gain, not weight loss. This much I know is true.

So I am disabling the ads and unplugging the cam. I am pulling away from this land of cross purposes, where I think I'm being flattered and appreciated but I'm really demeaning myself. My Spring fever is real - it's a true part of my mechanism, and it can be embraced, but in a different way. It needs to manifest itself in walks around the neighborhood, not trolling for sexual attention.

Just so you know, I just took a tablecloth and covered the closet mirror door to my left. There will be no data input and emotional despair from surreptitious glances at my current physical reality. I can willingly suspend belief and "see" a better me, a thinner me, a more happy and healthy me, like I used to do in that magic mirror so long ago.

Now - where the HELL can I get another one??!!

Still ahead: how to pretty up your tomboy

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