CHAPTER THIRTEEN: "Fear, Fear, Here, There and [NO NO, NO, REBOOT] Not Everywhere!!"

This is the chapter that almost wasn't. This is the chapter where I focus/keep focusing on fear, a chapter which I was so afraid to write that I kept shutting myself down. I had myself convinced that I didn't have anything else to say about matters related to health and healing.

I am sitting on the sofa this morning, staring into the white sky following a spring snowstorm last night here in Denver.

It's 23 degrees outside -- ice and snow coat the streets. Only two days ago, it was sunny and in the mid-sixties. It was so warm that in the evening, we had an impromptu margarita party with some of our neighbors outdoors on the patio in our condo complex.

OK, so it's taken me a couple of weeks, and two important conversations, to understand why fear started to grip me last week, as tight as bark on a tree.

It has all to do with the fact that I made my reservation to return to Massachusetts in mid-April. It's not like I don't have a host of wonderful reasons to go back, including many friends and lots of family -- in particular, two adorable grandchildren in Boston.

But leaving here is difficult, because two children and my son-in-law and grandbaby Monte

are here. As are the mountains where we have been hiking non-stop. And new friends we are getting to know and enjoy in our condo complex and elsewhere. Oh, one other thing: there is almost continual sunshine in Denver.

So anyway, fear began percolating. And once the match had been lit, firing up my fear, then it spread through me like wild fires on a tinder dry chaparral.

OK so that's the bad news.

The good news is that I figured out how to turn the situation around! And that's what I want to talk about here: how I found a way out of the cloud of fear that was engulfing me.

It all started when I happened on a book by one of my heroes: psychologist and neuroscientist Dr. Richard Davidson, who has made a name for himself with pioneering experiments demonstrating that you can "train" your mind to change your brain in such a way that you improve both your mental and physical health.

I first encountered Davidson's

work more than a dozen years ago, when I began teaching a class called, "Reading and Writing the Happier Self." It was a class I designed with my students in mind, as many of them were plagued by depression. With the help of an experienced mindfulness teacher, I focused on ways that students could bring themselves more life satisfaction. Here is the way I described the goals of the class:

"This upper level seminar, based loosely on a very successful class at Harvard University, will use theoretical, literary and practical readings from a variety of disciplines to help students focus their critical thinking skills on the concept of happiness, and how to use cognitive skills to help achieve a more peaceful and fulfilling life. Reading and writing transform the way we think, and how we see ourselves in the world. Neurological research now shows that changing the way we think can produce positive physiological changes in the brain."

And a few sentences later, I wrote:

"In keeping with research by psychologist James Pennebaker and others who have demonstrated the value of expressive writing, students will engage in extensive journaling and other self-reflective writing assignments as they seek to define what it means, and what it takes, to find happiness."

By revisiting that book, I began to understand what I was feeling, and why I have felt so much fear swirling inside me the last couple of weeks.

That book reminded me of the very great irony of my teaching that class on happiness: with no warning, I became so depressed after the second term I taught it that I had to retire early from my teaching job at the University. The depression swamped me so badly that I ended up in a mental hospital for a couple weeks, and there I endured several rounds of ECT.

So here now is why fear has been crawling around inside me for the last couple of weeks. I realized that I am afraid that by leaving Colorado, where I have been having a ton of fun, I might find myself back East feeling...depressed. I know, that sounds a bit extreme. But when it comes to depression, I have a healthy dose of PTSD. Even when I'm feeling fine, I always have lurking inside me some level of concern that at some point down the line, I might find myself falling into a slump.

I suffer from PTSD despite the fact that I take anti-depressants daily, and have for many years. Medication has been extremely helpful, enabling me to respond more effectively to psychotherapy. But as important as medication has been, it hasn't erased the PTSD, nor does it prevent me from feeling fear and anxiety from time to time. I am still deeply susceptible to fearful and superstitious thinking surrounding my physical health, a holdover from the cancer. Whenever I come down with a chest cold, or any other illness for that matter, almost inevitably, I get scared that my cancer has returned!

It doesn't matter how preposterous the situation is. My husband is forever reminding me that the cancer left me, understandably, with PTSD and it is this PTSD that I have to deal with. He also reminds me to try to laugh at myself, if that's possible.

Not long ago, for example, I noticed a small bump on the palm of my left hand. This may sound ridiculous, but I said to my husband, "Oh my God, honey, I hope I don't have hand cancer." (I don't, as I saw my doctor for a checkup and she told me that bumps like these are a by-product of aging.)

Fear can also blanket me when I have to have routine blood work, or some other diagnostic testing. I start imagining the worst outcomes. That's not surprising when I consider how I was diagnosed with cancer back in June of 2002. It was almost literally overnight. One day I noticed I had a bump the size of a small egg on my collar bone. I wasn't particularly concerned; I thought maybe it was Lyme disease. But a visit to my doctor quickly led to a CT scan with contrast dye. And that led to the dreadful phone call from the doctor -- on a Friday evening as I was getting dressed for my son Noah's Bar Mitzvah.

I was half dressed, in my new navy blue skirt and high heels, when the call came. The doctor, trying to spare me bad news, suggested "we come in on Monday to talk about it." She didn't want to tell me what was going on, but I insisted. So she told me: I had lymphoma, and I would need chemotherapy and radiation.

That's not the kind of phone call you ever want to get. It turns your life inside out, and makes you perpetually afraid of going to the doctor. Any doctor!

Soon after I completed my treatment for cancer in 2003, I started to see a very caring and careful physician who believes in working with both conventional and alternative remedies. I trusted Dr. Ron Stram a lot, and so, when we were discussing lifestyle matters, I remember telling him that I was afraid that my tendency toward depression had brought about my cancer; did I need to worry about that?

In so many words, Ron told me, yes, illnesses like cancer can occur more readily in patients who suffer from depression.

So where am I going with all this?

Here: sometimes fear [feels/has felt/will feel] like an endless swamp of mud that is always on the horizon, threatening to move in to suffocate your life, top to bottom.

As a cancer survivor, and a person with a history of serious depression, I know that it is essential that I devote as much energy as possible each and every day to staying healthy and upbeat. It is also essential that I recognize when fear -- the emotion that has colored the last couple of weeks -- is threatening to pull the rug out from underneath me.

The operative word I live by these days is

REBOOT. As often as fear threatens, I know that I must try to stop the mental program(s) and narratives operating in the machine that is my brain, and start thinking in a more positive way. I must be prepared to "reboot" my thinking as often as necessary.

How do I do this? I rely on a multitude of regular activities:

1) I meditate a half hour each morning. This may be the most important thing I do. As Dr. Davidson has found in his research, long-term, regular meditation helps you identify narratives that don't serve you. It helps you change your self-talk too!

2) I journal before and sometimes after meditating, focusing as much as possible on keeping myself feeling positive. I concentrate on love, joy and gratitude.

3) I chant during meditation. There are four different chants I use; I chant a specific vocalization associated with each of my seven chakras. That chanting is supposed to keep the chakras clear of blockages that might lead to disease. 4) I try to walk at least three miles a day.

5) I do a half hour or more of yoga postures every day, really trying to use my breathing to stay centered.

6) I try to do things I enjoy as often as I can, like painting and hiking and seeing friends and family.

7) I spend time holding my dog. And sometimes, I turn on loud music and we dance together.

8) I stare at the sky, and lately, at the mountains.

9) When things happen that are sad, or disappointing or stressful, I try to slow my breathing down, and focus on acceptance. As my neighbor has begun to tell his four-year old son, "that's the way life is."

10) I try to live mindfully, savoring enjoyable moments, focusing on maintaining a positive outlook.

More often than not, this combination of things work. What's most important for me is reminding myself, over and over again, that I always have a choice. I can choose to change my mind, and my attitude. Interestingly, the word emotion derives from the Latin, "emovere," which translates into "move or move out." I can move myself into another emotion.

Back to that book by Dr. Richard Davidson I mentioned up top. It's called "The Emotional Life of Your Brain," and I highly recommend it. Davidson lays out the findings from many years of brain research using Magnetic Resonance Imaging machines (MRIs). What he's found is that emotional states can be traced to specific neuronal firings in the brain (these firings light up in MRIs.) He has identified six emotional "styles" that compose each one of us: resilience, outlook, social intuition, self-awareness, sensitivity to context, and attention. Each of us demonstrates our own emotional "fingerprint" depending on where on the continuum of each style we fall.

Davidson says he is driven by two central questions: “Why is it that certain people are more vulnerable to life’s slings and arrows, and others are more resilient? And how can you nudge people along whatever these continua are to promote more resilience and well-being?” No one ever managed to do the kind of detailed analysis of our emotional lives before; in fact, when Davidson, who did his graduate work at Harvard, began his research during the 1980s, the field of psychology wasn't inclined to see the point of studying the "fluff" of emotions.

Davidson's work is novel and ground-breaking for another reason: much of his work has involved the scientific study of the MRI scans of the brains of long-time meditators, i.e., Tibetan monks! Many of them have traveled all the way around the world to Davidson's lab at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in order to get wired up for these brain studies! (The findings have been remarkable!)

Davidson is himself a long-time meditator, and he was moved to begin studying the positive effects of meditation after he was specifically asked to do so by no less than the Dali Lama himself.

Three decades later, Davidson is leading a small research empire at Wisconsin, which includes the Center for Healthy Minds, which has at its central mission to "cultivate well-being and relieve suffering through a scientific understanding of the mind."

"Our research, rooted in neuroscience," Davidson says, "comes down to one basic question: What constitutes a healthy mind?"

The notion that one can train your mind in such a way as to change your brain is for me, a terribly exciting concept. And one that helps assuage my fears because it reinforces the idea that I can exert some control when my emotional life gets bumpy. Davidson's work also confirms what I know to be true for my own well-being: that meditation (along with medication) have been of uppermost importance in keeping me healthy.