Dependency Syndrome Quotes

Many neglected and abused children grow up to be adults who are afraid to take risks of striking out on their own. Many will remain dependent on their abusive parents and unable to separate from them. Others leave their abusive parents only to attach themselves to a partner who is controlling.

Fears don't exist in isolation. They tend to rise and fall depending on what people think they can do about them.

If the parent represses the girl's anger not just once but over and over again, a deeper injury occurs: the girl will eventually dismantle her anger response. Ultimately, it's safer for her to cut off a part of her being than to battle the person on whom her life depends.

Popular morality blames victims for going into debt – not only individuals, but also national governments. The trick in this ideological war is to convince debtors to imagine that general prosperity depends on paying bankers and making bondholders rich – a veritable Stockholm Syndrome in which debtors identify with their financial captors.

More often than not, a statist's argument against Anarchism boils down to an unwillingness to take control and responsibility for their own lives, actions, and communities. The sad truth is that the human animal has been domesticated to the point where it actually fears Liberty.

Many chronic symptoms and health conditions—such as fatigue, sleepiness, mood disorders, insomnia, gastroesophageal reflux disease, lipid disorders, high blood pressure, headaches (including migraines), gas, bloating, irritable bowel syndrome, joint inflammation, acne, and difficulty concentrating, to name a few—will improve on a ketogenic diet. Treating lifestyle conditions with lifestyle change such as this can make us a healthier and less drug-dependent country. – Jackie Eberstein

Dependence on drugs is not a disease, it is not a virus, it is not something that stalks only the dregs of society. Drug addiction is REALIZED EMOTIONAL DEFICIENCY SYNDROME.

You cannot live without your adrenal hormones and, as you can see from this brief overview, how well you live depends a great deal on how well your adrenal glands function.

Sophia’s case sheds light on CFS because there were changes in her dorsal ganglia – the gatekeepers to sensation in the brain – and we know that fatigue depends on sensory perception.

Rearview Mirror Syndrome One of the most crippling causes of mediocrity in life is a condition I call Rearview Mirror Syndrome (RMS). Our subconscious minds are equipped with a self-limiting rearview mirror, through which we continuously relive and recreate our past. We mistakenly believe that who we were is who we are, thus limiting our true potential in the present, based on the limitations of our past.   As a result, we filter every choice we make—from what time we will wake up in the morning to which goals we will set to what we allow ourselves to consider possible for our lives—through the limitations of our past experiences. We want to create a better life, but sometimes we don’t know how to see it any other way than how it’s always been.   Research shows that on any given day, the average person thinks somewhere between 50,000 and 60,000 thoughts. The problem is that ninety-five percent of our thoughts are the same as the ones we thought the day before, and the day before that, and the day before that. It’s no wonder most people go through life, day after day, month after month, year after year, and never change the quality of their lives.   Like old, worn baggage, we carry stress, fear, and worry from yesterday with us into today. When presented with opportunities, we quickly check our rearview mirror to assess our past capabilities. “No, I’ve never done anything like that before. I’ve never achieved at that level. In fact, I’ve failed, time and time again.”   When presented with adversity, we go back to our trusty rearview mirror for guidance on how to respond. “Yep, just my luck. This crap always happens to me. I’m just going to give up; that’s what I’ve always done when things get too difficult.”   If you are to move beyond your past and transcend your limitations, you must stop living out of your rearview mirror and start imagining a life of limitless possibilities. Accept the paradigm:  my past does not equal my future. Talk to yourself in a way that inspires confidence that not only is anything possible, but that you are capable and committed to making it so. It’s not even necessary to believe it at first. In fact, you probably won’t believe it. You might find it uncomfortable and that you resist doing it. That’s okay. Repeat it to yourself anyway, and your subconscious mind will begin to absorb the positive self-affirmations. (More on how to do this in Chapter 6:  The Life S.A.V.E.R.S.)   Don’t place unnecessary limitations on what you want for your life. Think bigger than you’ve allowed yourself to think up until this point. Get clear on what you truly want, condition yourself to the belief that it’s possible by focusing on and affirming it every day, and then consistently move in the direction of your vision until it becomes your reality. There is nothing to fear, because you cannot fail—only learn, grow, and become better than you’ve ever been before.   Always remember that where you are is a result of who you were, but where you go depends entirely on who you choose to be, from this moment on.

hallmarks of the syndrome—a powerful individual’s coercing a captive into submission, and even the demonstration of affection—have now been identified in cases of dependent children, battered wives, prostitutes, prisoners of war, and victims of hijackings.

CHINA SYNDROME China is great. China is BIG. China is FUN. And it's hugely frustrating to know that even if I dedicated the rest of my life to the project, I'd never see all of it. There's little question in my mind that as China continues to emerge as an economic superpower, and as we find ourselves increasingly dependent on its manufacturing—and its credit line—that it will eventually pretty much rule the world. To which I say, "Welcome to our future masters!" With China as our landlord, we will, at least, be eating a hell of a lot better.

It might surprise you to discover that some of the superstars you see on the big screen or those entertaining thousands in stadiums, have moments of sheer terror before they go on stage. They also compare themselves to others in their field and worry that they will not live up to the expectations of those who are supporting and depending on them.

This is why human relationships usually take me beyond my limits. They wear me out. They scatter my thoughts. They make me worry about what I have just said and what they have just said, and how or if that all fits together, and what they will say next and what I will say then, and do I owe them something or is it their turn to owe me, and why do the rules change depending

People with a right parietal lobe injury, for example, will commonly suffer from a syndrome called spatial hemi-neglect. Depending on the size and location of the lesion, patients with hemi-neglect may behave as if part or all of the left side of their world, which may include the left side of their body, does not exist! This could include not eating off the left side of their plate, not shaving or putting makeup on the left side of their face, not drawing the left side of a clock, not reading the left pages of a book, and not acknowledging anything or anyone in the left half of the room. Some will deny that their left arm and leg are theirs and will not use them when trying to get out of bed, even though they are not paralyzed. Some patients will even neglect the left side of space in their imagination and memories.3 That the deficits vary according to the size and location of the lesion suggests that damage that disrupts specific neural circuits results in impairments in different component processes.

Well before she became famous — or infamous, depending on where you cast your vote — Loftus's findings on memory distortion were clearly commodifiable. In the 1970s and 1980s she provided assistance to defense attorneys eager to prove to juries that eyewitness accounts are not the same as camcorders. "I've helped a lot of people," she says. Some of those people: the Hillside Strangler, the Menendez brothers, Oliver North, Ted Bundy. "Ted Bundy?" I ask, when she tells this to me. Loftus laughs. "This was before we knew he was Bundy. He hadn't been accused of murder yet." "How can you be so confident the people you're representing are really innocent?" I ask. She doesn't directly answer. She says, "In court, I go by the evidence.... Outside of court, I'm human and entitled to my human feelings. "What, I wonder are her human feelings about the letter from a child-abuse survivor who wrote, "Let me tell you what false memory syndrome does to people like me, as if you care. It makes us into liars. False memory syndrome is so much more chic than child abuse.... But there are children who tonight while you sleep are being raped, and beaten. These children may never tell because 'no one will believe them.'" "Plenty of "Plenty of people will believe them," says Loftus. Pshaw! She has a raucous laugh and a voice with a bit of wheedle in it. She is strange, I think, a little loose inside. She veers between the professional and the personal with an alarming alacrity," she could easily have been talking about herself.

As a physician bedridden with myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) for more than a decade who is totally dependent on others, all thanks to a major relapse caused by GET, I am in a unique position to answer how harmful GET and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) really are. The basis of these therapies is false illness beliefs, meaning that it is all in the mind. These beliefs ignore all of the evidence that ME is a physical disease, such as intracellular immune dysfunctions, which not only restrict exercise capacity but also worsen with exercise (2).

Suppose we humans are, as a species, exhibiting disease behavior: we’re multiplying with no regard for limits, consuming natural resources as if there will be no future generations, and producing waste products that are distressing the planet upon which our very survival depends. There are two factors which we, as a species, are not taking into consideration. First is the survival tactic of pathogens, which requires additional hosts to infect. We do not have the luxury of that option, at least not yet. If we are successful at continuing our dangerous behavior, then we will also succeed in marching straight toward our own demise. In the process, we can also drag many other species down with us, a dreadful syndrome that is already underway. This is evident by the threat of extinction that hangs, like the sword of Damocles, over an alarming number of the Earth’s species. There is a second consideration: infected host organisms fight back. As humans become an increasing menace, can the Earth try to defend itself? When a disease organism infects a human, the human body elevates its own temperature in order to defend itself. This rise in temperature not only inhibits the growth of the infecting pathogen, but also greatly enhances the disease fighting capability within the body. Global warming may be the Earth’s way of inducing a global “fever” as a reaction to human pollution of the atmosphere and human over-consumption of fossil fuels.

Now, here is the kicker: while hemi-neglect can occur when there is actual loss of sensation or motor systems, a version of it can also occur when all sensory systems and motor systems are in good working order—a syndrome known as extinction. In this case each half brain seems to work just fine alone, but it begins to fail when required to work at the same time as the other half. Yet information in the neglected field can be used at a nonconscious level!5 That means the information is there, but the patient isn’t conscious it is there. Here is how it works. If patients with left hemi-neglect are shown visual stimuli in both their right and left visual fields at the same time, they report seeing only the stimulus on the right. If, however, they are shown only the left visual stimulus, hitting the same exact place on the retina as previously, the left stimulus is perceived normally. In other words, if there is no competition from the normal side, then the neglected side will be noticed and pop into conscious awareness! What is strangest of all is that these patients will deny that there is anything wrong; they are not conscious of the loss of these circuits and their resulting problems. It appears, then, that their autobiographical self must be derived only from what they are conscious of. And what they are conscious of is dependent on two things. First, they are not conscious of circuits that are not working. It is as if the circuits never existed and consciousness for what the circuits did disappears with the circuit. The second thing is that some sort of competitive processing is happening. Some circuits’ processing makes it into consciousness while others’ does not. In short, conscious experience seems tied to processing that is exceedingly local, which produces a specific capacity, and that processing can also be outcompeted by the processing of other modules and never make it to consciousness. This has astounding implications.

Treating Abuse Today 3(4) pp. 26-33 TAT: I want to move back to an area that I'm not real comfortable asking you about, but I'm going to, because I think it's germane to this discussion. When we began our discussion [see "A Conversation with Pamela Freyd, Ph.D., Part 1", Treating Abuse Today, 3(3), P. 25-39] we spoke a bit about how your interest in this issue intersected your own family situation. You have admitted writing about it in your widely disseminated "Jane Doe" article. I think wave been able to cover legitimate ground in our discussion without talking about that, but I am going to return to it briefly because there lingers an important issue there. I want to know how you react to people who say that the Foundation is basically an outgrowth of an unresolved family matter in your own family and that some of the initial members of your Scientific Advisory Board have had dual professional relationships with you and your family, and are not simply scientifically attached to the Foundation and its founders. Freyd: People can say whatever they want to say. The fact of the matter is, day after day, people are calling to say that something very wrong has taken place. They're telling us that somebody they know and love very much, has acquired memories in some kind of situation, that they're sure are false, but that there has been no way to even try to resolve the issues -- now, it's 3,600 families. TAT: That's kind of side-stepping the question. My question -- Freyd: -- People can say whatever they want. But you know -- TAT: -- But, isn't it true that some of the people on your scientific advisory have a professional reputation that is to some extent now dependent upon some findings in your own family? Freyd: Oh, I don't think so. A professional reputation dependent upon findings in my family? TAT: In the sense that they may have been consulted professionally first about a matter in your own family. Is that not true? Freyd: What difference does that make? TAT: It would bring into question their objectivity. It would also bring into question the possibility of this being a folie à deux --

Two other highly vocal FMSF Advisory Board members are Dr Elizabeth Loftus and Professor Richard Ofshe. Loftus is a respected academic psychologist whose much quoted laboratory experiment of successfully implanting a fictitious childhood memory of being lost in a shopping mall is frequently used to defend the false memory syndrome argument. In the experiment, older family members persuaded younger ones of the (supposedly) never real event. However, Loftus herself says that being lost, which almost everyone has experienced, is in no way similar to being abused. Jennifer Freyd comments on the shopping mall experiment in Betrayal Trauma (1996): “If this demonstration proves to hold up under replication it suggests both that therapists can induce false memories and, even more directly, that older family members play a powerful role in defining reality for dependent younger family members." (p. 104). Elizabeth Loftus herself was sexually abused as a child by a male babysitter and admits to blacking the perpetrator out of her memory, although she never forgot the incident. In her autobiography, Witness for the Defence, she talks of experiencing flashbacks of this abusive incident on occasion in court in 1985 (Loftus &Ketcham, 1991, p.149) In her teens, having been told by an uncle that she had found her mother's drowned body, she then started to visualize the scene. Her brother later told her that she had not found the body. Dr Loftus's successful academic career has run parallel to her even more high profile career as an expert witness in court, for the defence of those accused of rape, murder, and child abuse. She is described in her own book as the expert who puts memory on trial, sometimes with frightening implications. She used her theories on the unreliability of memory to cast doubt, in 1975, on the testimony of the only eyewitness left alive who could identify Ted Bundy, the all American boy who was one of America's worst serial rapists and killers (Loftus & Ketcham, 1991, pp. 61-91). Not withstanding Dr Loftus's arguments, the judge kept Bundy in prison. Bundy was eventually tried, convicted and executed.

Treating Abuse Today (Tat), 3(4), pp. 26-33 Freyd: You were also looking for some operational criteria for false memory syndrome: what a clinician could look for or test for, and so on. I spoke with several of our scientific advisory board members and I have some information for you that isn't really in writing at this point but I think it's a direction you want us to go in. So if I can read some of these notes . . . TAT: Please do. Freyd: One would look for false memory syndrome: 1. If a patient reports having been sexually abused by a parent, relative or someone in very early childhood, but then claims that she or he had complete amnesia about it for a decade or more; 2. If the patient attributes his or her current reason for being in therapy to delayed-memories. And this is where one would want to look for evidence suggesting that the abuse did not occur as demonstrated by a list of things, including firm, confident denials by the alleged perpetrators; 3. If there is denial by the entire family; 4. In the absence of evidence of familial disturbances or psychiatric illnesses. For example, if there's no evidence that the perpetrator had alcohol dependency or bipolar disorder or tendencies to pedophilia; 5. If some of the accusations are preposterous or impossible or they contain impossible or implausible elements such as a person being made pregnant prior to menarche, being forced to engage in sex with animals, or participating in the ritual killing of animals, and; 6. In the absence of evidence of distress surrounding the putative abuse. That is, despite alleged abuse going from age two to 27 or from three to 16, the child displayed normal social and academic functioning and that there was no evidence of any kind of psychopathology. Are these the kind of things you were asking for? TAT: Yeah, it's a little bit more specific. I take issue with several, but at least it gives us more of a sense of what you all mean when you say "false memory syndrome." Freyd: Right. Well, you know I think that things are moving in that direction since that seems to be what people are requesting. Nobody's denying that people are abused and there's no one denying that someone who was abused a decade ago or two decades ago probably would not have talked about it to anybody. I think I mentioned to you that somebody who works in this office had that very experience of having been abused when she was a young teenager-not extremely abused, but made very uncomfortable by an uncle who was older-and she dealt with it for about three days at the time and then it got pushed to the back of her mind and she completely forgot about it until she was in therapy. TAT: There you go. That's how dissociation works! Freyd: That's how it worked. And after this came up and she had discussed and dealt with it in therapy, she could again put it to one side and go on with her life. Certainly confronting her uncle and doing all these other things was not a part of what she had to do. Interestingly, though, at the same time, she has a daughter who went into therapy and came up with memories of having been abused by her parents. This daughter ran away and is cutoff from the family-hasn't spoken to anyone for three years. And there has never been any meeting between the therapist and the whole family to try to find out what was involved. TAT: If we take the first example -- that of her own abuse -- and follow the criteria you gave, we would have a very strong disbelief in the truth of what she told.

7 Severe hemophagocytic syndrome with failure of one or more organs. The choice of cytoreductive regimen depends on the type of malignancy, which is not always precisely known on arrival of the patient in the ICU. For acute leukemias, efforts should be made to characterize the lineage (ALL or AML) before treatment is initiated, but if lineage cannot be determined, a non–lineage-specific

PRECIOUS” The Hebrew word for “precious” means to carry weight, to be scarce or esteemed. When something is precious, one places more value on it than on other things, making it “weighty.” When “precious” appears in other Old Testament passages, it’s surrounded by danger, notions of redemption, the human soul, and the eyes of the beholder (1 Sam. 26:21; 2 Kings 1:13–14; Ps. 49:8 KJV; 72:14). The precious soul must be saved before it’s too late. When the word precious is called upon, it’s usually because something is at stake. What is at stake? According to Søren Kierkegaard, despair.3 When humans are overwhelmed by their finitude and blemishes, they lose sense of their God-given greatness. We need to be reminded, lest we forget. After all, we were created in God’s image; isn’t that enough? Why do we weep over our appearance, struggle with acceptance, and burn with envy toward others? We were created in God’s image! There’s nothing nobler, more beautiful, or more stunning than that. Yet we treat our souls as if they were garbage. We desperately need to be reminded of the weight that our souls carry before it’s too late. I was waiting in line behind a man and his son at a café. The man was middle-aged and fairly rugged. His teenage son had Down syndrome, but his eyes were bright and he wore excitement on his face. Dad was getting him hot chocolate with whipped cream. As the two were waiting for the barista to hand them their drinks, the dad reached out his arm and placed his hand on the back of his son’s hair. He gently folded his fingers into his son’s hair and said, “Hey, beautiful.” Both puzzled and innocent, the son answered simply, “What?” Staring deeply into his son’s face, the dad said, “I love you.” This father saw the weight of his son’s preciousness. In the world’s eyes, this boy would never be a great athlete or a top student. He would never attain the world’s standard of beauty. He’d probably live at home for longer than usual, depending on the care of his parents. He was most likely demanding and had surely required more of his parents as a baby. He probably had more than a few idiosyncrasies that tested his family’s nerves. He was probably messy.4 But his dad loved him. His dad didn’t label him as a burden, but as beautiful. His dad loved him just the way he was—I could see that plainly. Our souls are sick from head to toe, yet our Father finds a way to love us anyway. Picture God raising his hand to your head and sifting your hair between his fingers. He looks into your eyes—knowing full well what you are—and says, “Hey, beautiful. I love you.” That’s enough to melt my heart in joy. There are no conditions to meet in order to earn God’s love. He is in love with you just as you are. “You carry a lot of worth in my eyes, you are heavy-laden with beauty, and I love you.

The “active couch potato syndrome” is an actual observed scientific phenomenon whereby devoted fitness enthusiasts—who conduct daily workouts but live otherwise inactivity-dominant lifestyles—are not immune to the cellular dysfunction and metabolic disease patterns driven by inactivity. Statistics referenced by James Levine, MD, PhD, a Mayo Clinic researcher, international expert on obesity, and author of Get Up! Why Your Chair is Killing You and What You Can Do About It,

I’ve heard of people falling for their captors and depending on them. I think that may be happening to me. I believe they call it Stockholm Syndrome. But, what else do I have? Where do I go from here?

even though the false self is meant to protect the more vulnerable self, it actually has the effect of weakening it. When people who have become dependent on false-self functioning go into therapy or enter a 12-step program, they can go through a period of feeling very vulnerable and shaky because they are removing their coping strategy and exposing the pain underneath it. But over time, new healthy emotional habits get created, and new ways of healthy coping get practiced and adopted.

Self-Image and Self Development ✓ Experiencing more kindness and compassion toward yourself. ✓ Becoming more and more the person you want to be. ✓ Self-appreciation. ✓ Enough security to be open to feedback. ✓ Sense of equality with others. ✓ High self-esteem. ✓ Sense of identity. ✓ Personal integrity. ✓ More wholeness and balance. Other Categories People have resolved or made significant progress with the following difficulties using the Core Transformation Process. ✓ Healing of Abuse and/or Trauma. ✓ Anorexia and Bulimia. ✓ Alcoholism. ✓ Drug Addiction. ✓ Co-dependence. ✓ Depression. ✓ Fears and Anxieties. ✓ Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome. ✓ Hyperactivity and Learning Disabilities. ✓ Multiple Personality Disorder. ✓ Schizophrenia. ✓ Health Concerns. ✓ Resolution of specific issues and conflicts.

Earlier in this book under the ‘Antidepressant drug dependence’ heading, I mentioned the long-standing strategy of referring to drug withdrawal problems with antidepressants being incorrectly referred to as ‘discontinuation syndrome’. I wrote that the medical profession and pharmaceutical industry have for decades engaged in systematic public misinformation and deception, designed to wrongly enhance the public image of these substances, their prescribers and manufacturers.

Recovery from the Nice Guy Syndrome is dependent on revealing one's self and receiving support from safe people. It is essential, therefore, that men who want to break free from the Nice Guy Syndrome find safe people to assist them in this process.

As Roland Summit wrote in his classic study The Child Sexual Abuse Accommodation Syndrome: “Initiation, intimidation, stigmatization, isolation, helplessness and self-blame depend on a terrifying reality of child sexual abuse. Any attempts by the child to divulge the secret will be countered by an adult conspiracy of silence and disbelief. ‘Don’t worry about things like that; that could never happen in our family.’ ‘How could you ever think of such a terrible thing?’ ‘Don’t let me ever hear you say anything like that again!’ The average child never asks and never tells.

One does not need to be a rocket scientist to know that the interests of the public would have been best served by properly evaluating the risk of drug dependence with SSRI antidepressants before they were unleashed upon the public. On the contrary, medical and drug company interests prevailed. These substances were launched without any evaluation of their dependence-creating potential. When people quickly reported problems coming off them, this was euphemistically minimised as ‘discontinuation syndrome’.

Simply put, if ‘split personality’ is behaving differently under different conditions or stimulus, then each one of us is carrying this syndrome .... however, how stark the gap reaches is entirely dependent upon ourselves. If it is too wide a gap, one becomes a ‘case study’!!

The way you deal with your stress can save or sink you, depending on what it is. Of every 10 workers, 3 suffer from total scam, the Burnout Syndrome. Even at lower levels, stress can cause physical and psychological problems, such as headaches, exhaustion, high blood pressure, gastrointestinal problems, the feeling of disability, and depression.

VIBRATION = ETHERIC Essentially, the etheric is the vibration layer: you sense the etheric while you feel the vibration. That assertion is too simplistic to be completely true, and some etheric levels of light and astral vibration can be discerned later. But the equation: ‘vibration= etheric’ is an excellent reference in the beginning to make sense of your experiences. Vibrating movement in your feet, for example, means that in the hands, the etheric life force is set in motion. Feeling the eyebrows movement means that the third eye's etheric layer is triggered...and more, for any part of your body, or even outside your body's limits. Not only does the etheric permeate the physical body, but it also spreads beyond it in proportions that may vary depending on different internal factors. When the vibration seems to be more intense in your hands or elsewhere, it means that you are coming into contact with the etheric body's deeper and more complex layers. We use external stimuli in the beginning to awaken the etheric vibration sensation. Afterward, without rubbing or using any other external stimulus, you can get the same feeling. The sound is going to come from within. Therefore, I would say that you do not think too much about whether the experience is real or etheric or theoretical in these first stages of training. Believe in your experience. A very simple evidence of the vibrations of non-physical nature would be to cut off your physical hand and know that you still feel the same vibration as in amputees ' phantom limb syndrome. Some signs of this vibration's non-physical nature would be that you will feel it in all kinds of places in your body, without any form of physical stimulation or rubbing. You will even sense it beyond the limits of your physical body, first around you, and then in objects that are increasingly distant. The etheric movement sense will then be completely separated from any physical sensation. In any case, please remember that there is nothing (and therefore nothing to doubt either) to believe in the approach. It is not what you believe that matters, but what you interpret. The constant focus is on learning directly. Know how to interpret this vibrating force and then determine how to comprehend it.

Alcoholism Also known as Alcohol Dependence Syndrome may modify and influence characteristics of one's behavior producing a. momentary emotional enhancement, and b. reduction to anxiety level's that individuals suffering from mood or anxiety disorders may crave. Thus, perpetuating patterns of self- destructive behavior. Causes of Alcoholism include Depression, Anxiety Disorder, PTSD, Genetic Predisposition, and an Overactive Prefrontal Cortex. Other Causes may include life turmoil, loss, shitty parents, females, loneliness, females, and… a. self-awareness of subtle but gradual decay within one’s soul, conditioned by culture, society, and an overstimulated sociological pressure prompted into a state of constant consuming, and b. realizing that we are just manifested consciousness endowed with temporary control of a meat-slop of atoms flying on a giant rock in infinite space. Excessive Drinking may cause dizziness, shaking, aggression, sexualized compulsive behavior, vomiting, headaches, slurred speech, and… looking at your bloody fist after a blackout; then looking at your friend on the floor holding the side of his jaw; then watching your friend get up. walk out and slam the front door, shouting, “Fuck you!” Benefits of Alcohol include forgetting.

The treatment of pandeficiency syndrome includes restoration of nutritious diet, attention to the intestinal flora, and the following few nutrients: vitamin B3, both niacin and niacinamide, ascorbic acid, a strong B-complex preparation like 50 mg or 100 mg B-complex, selenium, zinc, calcium, magnesium, and omega-3 essential fatty acids. The doses depend on the symptomatology.

Paradoxically, men can be less angry at women when they depend on them less.

[Men] are brought up to both depend upon and yet resent the power they perceive women hold over them.

Happiness is externally focused. Joy is an internal state of being that is not dependent on our circumstances. I define joy as a deep-seated place of abiding in our hearts and souls. Being joyful does not mean you are always happy; we can have joy during painful situations, such as loss. Happiness is fleeting, and joy flourishes not only when things are good but also in difficult times. Joy is rooted in our faith in God, who is bigger than our circumstances. The beautiful part about joy is that we do not have to bring it about in our strength.

In 1974, San Francisco newspaper heiress Patty Hearst was kidnapped by a radical group called the Symbionese Liberation Army, whose goals included “death to the fascist insect that preys upon the life of the people.” After being kept in a closet for a while, she came to identify with her new peer group. Before long, she was enthusiastically helping them generate income, at one point brandishing a machine gun during a bank robbery. When left alone, with an opportunity to escape, she didn’t take it. She later described the experience: “I had virtually no free will until I was separated from them for about two weeks. And then it suddenly, you know, slowly began to dawn that they just weren’t there anymore. I could actually think my own thoughts.” Hearst didn’t just accept her captors’ “subjective” beliefs, such as ideology; she bought into their views about how the physical world works. One of her captors “didn’t want me thinking about rescue because he thought that brain waves could be read or that, you know, they’d get a psychic in to find me. And I was even afraid of that.” Hearst’s condition of coerced credulity is called the Stockholm syndrome, after a kidnapping in Sweden. But the term “syndrome” may be misleading in its suggestion of abnormality. Hearst’s response to her circumstances was probably an example of human nature functioning properly; we seem to be “designed” by natural selection to be brainwashed. Some people find this prospect a shocking affront to human autonomy, but they tend not to be evolutionary psychologists. In Darwinian terms, it makes sense that our species could contain genes encouraging blind credulity in at least some situations. If you are surrounded by a small group of people on whom your survival depends, rejecting the beliefs that are most important to them will not help you live long enough to get your genes into the next generation. Confinement with a small group of people may sound so rare that natural selection would have little chance to take account of it, but it is in a sense the natural human condition. Humans evolved in small groups—twenty, forty, sixty people—from which emigration was often not a viable option. Survival depended on social support: sharing food, sticking together during fights, and so on. To alienate your peers by stubbornly contesting their heartfelt beliefs would have lowered your chances of genetic proliferation. Maybe that explains why you don’t have to lock somebody in a closet to get a bit of the Stockholm syndrome. Religious cults just offer aimless teenagers a free bus ride to a free meal, and after the recruits have been surrounded by believers for a few days, they tend to warm up to the beliefs. And there doesn’t have to be some powerful authority figure pushing the beliefs. In one famous social psychology experiment, subjects opined that two lines of manifestly different lengths were the same length, once a few of their “peers” (who were in fact confederates) voiced that opinion.

I always thought it was disgusting and ugly, how the weak live their lives depending on each other shamefully licking each other's wounds. A way of life that no one could truly want. I was certain that no greatness could ever come from that. That's what I thought until I met you.

Depending on each other and facing the difficulties that go with it takes a lot more effort than living on your own, separated from the rest of the world. Loving each other, hurting each other, over and over, until our death. All those things that seem so normal are actually incredibly difficult. To accomplish a normal life might be an achievement as great as writing a book that goes down in history!

Examples of good conditioning include: Good manners Understanding dangers Ability to learn and gain useful knowledge Good social skills Respect for others Good diet Happiness (positive outlook) Discipline Fair minded balanced attitudes based on understanding (empathy) Good driving Regular exercise/healthy lifestyle Reliability/loyalty Honesty Lack of dependency Lack of negative impulsivity Negative forms of conditioning could include: Gambling Overeating/bad diet Repetitive criminal activity Unreliability Lack of empathy Laziness Bad manners Non clinical depression (negative outlook) Non-dependency drug use Bad driving Speech patterns Negative problematic attitudes (Radicalisation/Extremism) Spousal abuse Negative impulsivity Watching too much TV Lack of exercise Device overuse

Why did I stay? My self-esteem was ruined for a very long time. I was socially isolated from my family and friends. I kept everything that was going on in my marriage a secret. I feared for my safety if I left him. I was financially dependent on my spouse. I am an educated woman who was working towards a master’s degree when I met him. He persuaded me to stop school after the birth of our first son. Eventually, he trapped me in his web of lies. I believe I suffered from Stockholm syndrome for many years. It isn’t easy to leave. Unless you have lived in an abusive relationship, a typical person wouldn’t understand. It seems perfectly logical to an outsider that it would be easy to leave an abusive relationship. It truly isn’t and walking away is terrifying for a victim. No one deserves to live his or her life as a prisoner. Love shouldn’t hurt and abuse is not love. —Mary Laumbach-Perez

And then there’s physical dependence. As defined in medical terms, physical dependence is manifested when a person stops taking a substance and, due to changes in the brain and body, she experiences withdrawal symptoms. Those temporary, drug-induced changes form the basis of physical dependence. Although a feature of drug addiction, a person’s physical dependence on a substance does not necessarily imply that he is addicted to it. The withdrawal syndrome is different for each class of drug — in the case of opiates such as morphine or heroin it includes nausea, diarrhea, sweats, aches and pains and weakness, as well as severe anxiety, agitation and depressed mood. But you don’t have to be addicted to experience withdrawal — you just have to have been taking a medication for an extended period of time. As many people have discovered to their chagrin, with abrupt cessation it’s quite possible to suffer highly unpleasant withdrawal symptoms from drugs that are not addictive: the antidepressants paroxetine (Paxil) and venlafaxine (Effexor) are but two examples. Withdrawal does not mean you were addicted; for addiction, there also needs to be craving and relapse. In fact, in the case of narcotics, it turns out that the addictive, “feel good” effect of these drugs seems to act in a different part of the brain than the effects that lead to physical dependence. When morphine is infused only into the “reward” circuits of a rat’s brain, addiction-like behaviour results, but there’s no physical dependence and no withdrawal. “Dependence” can also be understood as a powerful attachment to harmful substances or behaviours, and this definition gives us a clearer picture of addiction. The addict comes to depend on the substance or behaviour in order to make himself feel momentarily calmer or more excited or less dissatisfied with his life.

Autophagy also plays an important role in the prevention of Alzheimer’s disease. Alzheimer’s is characterized by the abnormal accumulation of amyloid beta (Aß) proteins in the brain, and it’s believed that these accumulations eventually destroy the synaptic connections in the memory and cognition areas. Normally, clumps of Aß protein are removed by autophagy: the brain cell activates the autophagosome, the cell’s internal garbage truck, which engulfs the Aß protein targeted for removal and excretes it, so it can be removed by the blood and recycled into other protein or turned into glucose, depending upon the body’s needs. But in Alzheimer’s disease, autophagy is impaired and the Aß protein remains inside the brain cell, where eventual buildup will result in the clinical syndromes of Alzheimer’s disease. Cancer is yet another disease that may be a result of disordered autophagy. We’re learning that mTOR plays a role in cancer biology, and mTOR inhibitors have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of various cancers. Fasting’s role in inhibiting mTOR, thereby stimulating autophagy, provides an interesting opportunity to prevent cancer’s development.

fasting also stimulates growth hormone, which signals the production of some new snazzy cell parts, giving our bodies a complete renovation. Since it triggers both the breakdown of old cellular parts and the creation of new ones, fasting may be considered one of the most potent anti-aging methods in existence. Autophagy also plays an important role in the prevention of Alzheimer’s disease. Alzheimer’s is characterized by the abnormal accumulation of amyloid beta (Aß) proteins in the brain, and it’s believed that these accumulations eventually destroy the synaptic connections in the memory and cognition areas. Normally, clumps of Aß protein are removed by autophagy: the brain cell activates the autophagosome, the cell’s internal garbage truck, which engulfs the Aß protein targeted for removal and excretes it, so it can be removed by the blood and recycled into other protein or turned into glucose, depending upon the body’s needs. But in Alzheimer’s disease, autophagy is impaired and the Aß protein remains inside the brain cell, where eventual buildup will result in the clinical syndromes of Alzheimer’s disease. Cancer is yet another disease that may be a result of disordered autophagy. We’re learning that mTOR plays a role in cancer biology, and mTOR inhibitors have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of various cancers. Fasting’s role in inhibiting mTOR, thereby stimulating autophagy, provides an interesting opportunity to prevent cancer’s development. Indeed, some leading scientists, such as Dr. Thomas Seyfried, a professor of biology at Boston College, have proposed a yearly seven-day water-only fast for this very reason.