getting closer to my darkness
I have always struggled with my mind, but the intensity seemed to worsen in the past few months. Tracing back, I think it was since my covid infection. I wasn’t surprised to…
tags /feedback-loops /
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Together they create a stable, properly balanced pair of organisms
A second person transmits regulatory information that can alter hormone levels, cardiovascular function, sleep rhythms, immune function, and more—inside the body of the first. The reciprocal process occurs simultaneously: the first person regulates the physiology of the second, even as he himself is regulated. Neither is a functioning whole on his own; each has open loops that only somebody else can complete. Together they create a stable, properly balanced pair of organisms.
being creative is not just about making things
I place a lot of value on creativity in my life, and this has been pretty consistent throughout my various life stages. For a long time it was tied to my identity…
a bit of silence within the noise
The other day while just sitting around in my living room, I had this sudden awareness of my newly developed capacity to feel subtler emotions – instead of just high and low…
on westworld, freewill & exercise
[mild spoilers ahead] When I gotten from reading a copious amount of psychology and neuroscience research is that it is very debatable that human beings have free will at all, and that…
But they were cured—the stress symptoms reversed
But they were cured—the stress symptoms reversed—when researchers brought in what they called a ‘monkey hug therapist,’ an older monkey who constantly hugged and cuddled the stressed-out baby monkeys. So what was going on? The hugging broke the feedback loop, sending the message ‘No more steroids needed,’ damage over and done with! The chronically elevated CRF levels came down.
stress increases with increased steroid production
...stress increases with increased steroid production. Depressed people typically have high levels of these stress steroids. In fact, depressed people are in a chronic state of ACTH activation because of a disrupted feedback loop that fails to signal when there are sufficient levels of steroid in the blood. So the CRF-ACTH axis just keeps pumping out more and more steroids. Autopsies almost always show a tenfold higher level of CRF in the cerebrospinal fluid of those who killed themselves compared to those who died from other causes.
When stress prevents the molecules of emotion
When stress prevents the molecules of emotion from flowing freely where needed, the largely autonomic processes that are regulated by peptide flow, such as breathing, blood flow, immunity, digestion, and elimination, collapse down to a few simple feedback loops and upset the normal healing response. Meditation, by allowing long-buried thoughts and feelings to surface, is a way of getting the peptides flowing again, returning the body, and the emotions, to health.