MONDAY 12 FEBRUARY
It’s a longish quote, but it generally describes my current situation with astonishing accuracy (“generally” because, for instance, there are no detested cousins-in-law, but the opinions of others can act as triggers). I have a lot to say but my typing ain’t up to it right now, however before I paste the quote, let me say with absolute sincerity that, annoying symptoms notwithstanding, in terms of personal growth and insight, Parkinson’s (coupled with the Parkinson’s Recovery Project) is the best thing that has ever happened to me. So there, I’ve said it, now the quote from Stuck on Pause by Janice Hadlock.
A person who is slowly but steadily recovering from the habit of triggering self-induced pause might be astonished by the flip-flops his body goes through before he is completely recovered.
Imagine this scenario: A person feels unusually relaxed one morning after an inspirational reading of Marcus Aurelius, the deeply spiritual emperor/ philosopher of ancient Rome. He has no symptoms of pause. He thinks to himself how lately, he has been free from pause symptoms for an increasing number of minutes every day. Due to his recent ability to relax more and more often, he assumes that he is truly making progress. He says to himself that, surely, his pause-related symptoms are diminishing. He tells himself, incorrectly, that the recent episodes of milder than usual symptoms are proof that he is recovering. He is inwardly delighted: everyone will soon notice how much better he is doing. What praise shall soon pour in!
But then, looking out the window, he sees his detested, gloomy cousin-in-law unexpectedly coming up the walkway to the house. He knows that this critical and negative person will be looking for any sign that the Parkinson’s symptoms are not going away. Instantly, the person’s rigidity and tremor reappear and with seemingly heightened power. Dismayed, he concludes that he has made no progress at all! He is getting worse, not better! His thoughts of progress were wrong: he has been deluding himself. He is not recovering, after all. He is worse!
This incorrect negative conclusion can be utterly paralyzing. This paralysis can increase the person’s conviction that he is doomed, and this thought further enhances his need to use pause mode – his accustomed mode for emotional self-protection.
In fact, the person’s healthy, I’m safe pathways might be steadily growing stronger. However, all the links to the brain’s pause behaviors are still there, inside the brain. All of them. As soon as a person again uses the brain pathways associated with pause mode, all the old links might be activated. If you haven’t ridden your bicycle in a long while, you might no longer have your strong bike riding muscles, and it might feel a little strange at first to be back on the bike again, but you will have one hundred percent of the brain information and linkages necessary to ride that bicycle. When you climb on the bike and start pedaling, all the brain linkages associated with riding a bicycle will kick in. All of them.
Just like all the old skills for riding a bicycle will be activated when you climb on a bike, no matter how long it’s been since the last bike ride, when a person’s gotten good at using pause mode, all the old brain skills for riding the “pause bike” will always still be there, patiently waiting to be activated. When you re-activate self-induced pause, after a break of a few minutes, hours, or weeks, all the pause-based brain linkages might become fully activated.
My patients have all assumed that recovering means having fewer symptoms in a somewhat linear fashion: symptoms should steadily decrease in frequency and strength, as a proof of recovery. In the early days of the Parkinson’s Recovery Project, I assumed this as well. I was thinking of Parkinson’s as an affliction like the flu or a torn ligament; remove or fix the cause, and the symptoms will slowly melt away. This understanding was not correct, because Parkinson’s disease symptoms are not the real problem. The symptoms are a side effect of using pause mode. A person’s varying intensities of symptoms can be related to the intensities of his pause-activating thoughts, at any given time