Category Archives: Ahimsa

TDD (Temper Dysregulation Disorder with Dysphoria)

At a luncheon recently I mentioned, intending to share my skepticism about the evolving DSM and its 5,000 new categories eligible for lucrative psycho-pharmaceutical medications, Angry Baby Syndrome.  I smirked as I brought up the newly minted diagnosis: Temper Dysregulation Disorder with Dysphoria, a proposed addition to the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), among other things the guide for what insurance will pay for by way of pharmaceuticals.  

One of the strangers at the table, a woman with some professional familiarity with these matters, immediately nodded knowingly.  “Yes, it’s a real condition, there are some babies who just start off angry,” she informed us and the conversation drifted quickly from where I was trying to steer it.  In truth, though I am opinionated, I had no real interest in steering this particular conversation, I was merely stroking one of my pet peeves– the madness and brutality of runaway capitalism.  I worked on my vegan lunch plate, smiling neutrally as I chewed, and let my mind drift in and out of the talk around me.

I’d read a great article, given to me by my friend the now retired judge, about the meteoric rise of mental illness diagnoses.  The article was a review of several books on the boom in psychopharmacology, I’ll find it for you.  A long review, but fascinating, well-written and worth a read.  Marcia Angell begins:

It seems that Americans are in the midst of a raging epidemic of mental illness, at least as judged by the increase in the numbers treated for it. The tally of those who are so disabled by mental disorders that they qualify for Supplemental Security Income (SSI) or Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) increased nearly two and a half times between 1987 and 2007—from one in 184 Americans to one in seventy-six. For children, the rise is even more startling—a thirty-five-fold increase in the same two decades.  Mental illness is now the leading cause of disability in children, well ahead of physical disabilities like cerebral palsy or Down syndrome, for which the federal programs were created.  

(click here to read the article)

I can’t help thinking of TDD, Angry Baby Syndrome, in the context of a story my parents told, and believed, until the end of their lives, a myth I always took pains to demythologize.  At ten weeks old I became red and rigid, my little fists clenched, with a look of rage on my face that no amount of concerned staring or direct questioning from my frightened parents could wipe away.  With great anxiety, they rushed me to the pediatrician.  The good doctor took one look at me, began to laugh and said: “this child is having a temper tantrum!  I’ve never seen it in a baby so young, but this is definitely one angry baby!”  I recall thinking “fuck you, doc.  I’ll live to laugh at your fucking anger some day, you articulate, quack prick.  Just wait until I can talk, assbite.”  By ten months old, according to my proud mother, I was talking, though neither at ten months nor at any time after that did I bother to track the cavalier pediatrician down.

The point of this story to me was always that rather than figure out why their child was so unhappy as to be having a temper tantrum, the two young parents took comfort from the quack’s diagnosis that the kid was just irrationally enraged.  The expert confirmed my parents’ fear that their baby was just one of those born pricks– adversarial, angry, vindictive, challenging, defiant, hating all authority.  Who knew a ten week old could have the worldview to make all these judgments?   I have to believe it helped set the course of my adversarial childhood, this expert’s glib diagnosis that did not extend past a relieved chuckle.  He concluded, essentially, that this baby suffered from nothing more than being an enraged little asshole.  Kind of funny, in a way, no?

I always thought a good doctor might have felt the kid’s little fists– said to the parents, “I’ll be damned, even though it’s August, feel how cold this little guy’s hands are… maybe he’s pissed off because nobody has made sure he’s warm enough.”  Indeed, my mother reported that I always immediately calmed down whenever she gave me a warm bath, but of course, it was impossible to carry around the baby bathtub full of warm water to bathe me whenever I started becoming irrationally enraged.  

But my point in writing this is not to wonder whether TDD with Dysphoria is not a perfectly good diagnosis (why not give a pill to a young child who is just an irrationally angry bastard all the time?) or to muse about whether or not that pediatrician 57 years ago did anyone any favors, or to belatedly defend my, admittedly, infantile behavior.   

I replaced a roll of toilet paper backwards just now.  I noticed it and calmly removed the roll, reversed it, snapped it back into place.  This struck me as a great moment.  The calm fixing of a minor problem was unaccompanied by any sort of snarl, curse word, smirk, clucking of the tongue.  I still fly into a Tourretic rage when I’m leaving the house in a hurry and my ear buds are violently yanked out of my ears as the cord whips around a doorknob, or the long horn bicycle handlebars.  Part of my rage is at the randomness, seeming cruelty and absolute regularity with which these little delaying things always seem to happen, as though the universe is giving me the finger when I most need its silent cooperation.  But with today’s toilet paper tragedy, I was happy to notice myself fixing a minor problem as calmly as the Buddha.  

I took a breath and thought about the progress I’ve made from that vicious little ten week old I once was, the raging TDD poster baby.  It made me think of my father’s terrible temper, and his insistence, until right before the end, when he smartly reversed himself, that people are what they are programmed to be, by genetics and upbringing.  He always dismissed as delusional the idea that one can consciously change this programming.  My dad’s reflex, when a mistake was made by himself or anyone else, was to become instantly enraged.  I spent decades being mad at myself when I did something careless, or stupid, things that earthlings do all the time.

Follow if you can: you are snipping the ends off string beans, nipping the stem off and a bit of the tip on the other end. In one bowl the prepped beans that will be steamed or sauteed, in another the ends you will be discarding.  One after another, bing, bing, bing, the stems into the little metal bowl, string beans into the strainer.  Then, bip! stem into the string beans, whole string bean into the bowl of ends.  One would expect, at most, a little smile and head shake, a plucking out of the stem, an extraction of the string bean, and quickly restoring them to their desired places.   It would be hard for many people to understand the reflex to a paroxysm of rage when the stem gets flipped into the wrong bowl, but it is there for some.

Did my father have his face whipped all through his early childhood, and the angry course of his life irremediably stamped on his little soul, because he had undiagnosed TDD?  Did his mother, an insane little bitch, as far as I can make out, suffer from untreated TDD?  Is the reflex to be enraged carried in the DNA?  If this reflex is then reinforced by infallible repetition, can the programming to react this way be undone by mere mindfulness and a desire to not react with rage to every frustration, no matter how minor?  

Let us not underestimate the practice of mindfulness, working in tandem with a strong enough desire to change a painful reflex.   I’ve been trying to apply this principle to my dealings with others, with some success.  I have remained fairly mild in situations that would have provoked me to major unmildness before.  Imagine my delight to find myself the recipient of this forgiving gentleness in the moment of realizing how maddeningly idiotic my placement of that roll of toilet paper had been.  Noticing these small, valuable steps is a great gift we can give ourselves.

Or, an old reflex suggests, the wishful thinking of a fucking idiot.  Though I think not, whatever my father or a respected doctor might have once said to the contrary.

Only Human

We mess up, our plans go awry, comments meant to be light and funny sometimes fall badly, shattering into sharp pieces in the awkwardness they produce.  Our best plans, our smartest theories, turn out to be less brilliant than we thought.

When angry at someone it is easy to reduce them to the sum of their aggravating faults, forget that they are frail humans to whom a certain degree of self-blindness and hypocrisy is as natural as walking on two legs.   If they hurt us once, shame on them.   If they hurt us again and again, in extreme cases we are driven to become the leader of our nation and unleash a vast coordinated killing campaign.  Bombs, missiles, machine guns, flame throwers, burning chemicals dropped from the sky, torture and endless detention, relentless pursuit of enemy and friend of enemy alike, collateral damage be damned.  A slightly less insane approach is to accumulate billions of dollars and build beautiful houses for ourselves every place that we like, and to scream that we are victims of a holocaust if anyone speaks of taxing us fairly.  And there are less and less insane ways to deal with hurt all the way down to the saintly one of quickly forgiving all who mistreat us.  If someone hurts you and apologizes, it is a good practice to accept the apology and move on.  If someone hurts you and steadfastly refuses to allow that they’ve behaved badly, that’s a trickier situation.

Outside, in raging winter winds bringing single digit wind-chill, if the radio is to be believed, overly loud speakers somewhere nearby, perhaps on the campus of the college a few hundred feet from here, blared an auto-tuned hip hop number that was mildly annoying.  As I tried to gather my thoughts with the recorded drum pounding, “I Love Music” by the O’Jays made a cameo and I thought of the irony, the random, unintended ingenuity, of using one of a person’s favorite songs as a bludgeon upside the head.  Now it is just a kick drum, bap! BAP! bap! bap!, and a small voice wailing like a baby who’s been punched by an insane parent or guardian.  Somebody’s idea of a groovy time over there, no doubt.

Where the line is between overlooking a friend’s occasional bad mood and swallowing abusive behavior is sometimes hard to say in the individual case.   The case can always be made that the other person is only human, and sometimes humans slip up, do hurtful things.  Hell, humans organize lynch mobs, scream with veins popping on their necks and faces and are not satisfied until someone is mutilated.  Humans, it must be said, also rush into burning buildings to rescue small frightened animals.

One of the great personal dilemmas is to stay in a posture of forgiveness toward friends and family, while not tolerating abusive patterns that are sometimes subtle and dangerous.  They are dangerous precisely because they are subtle, easily denied and made to appear as figments of your oversensitive imagination rather than concrete hurtful actions done in a thoughtless or cruel way.  The subtle hurtful behaviors are easily justified, satisfyingly employed as small, sharp whips, to lash sensitive places on the face while telling the injured party that they are insane.   The beauty part?  Insane people often do believe innocent behaviors to be subtle, dangerous, hurtful, used as small, sharp whips to lash sensitive places on the face while the whipper puts on the most innocent of faces and tells them they are insane to feel that way.

There’s no place like home

I’ve got to be quick, because there is not enough air in here and I’m told it’s beautiful outside and I need to stretch the legs and breathe.  I am just thinking about the games we learn as kids and how much deliberate and focused attention and hard work it takes to unlearn the bad ones.

It’s a tiring story, but my father was a tormented soul.   Great, dark sense of humor, but essentially a well-defended fortress against all potential invaders.  Everyone was included in this category.   If I had a problem being raised by someone like this, it was not something he was obliged to concern himself with.   That was his position for our long, difficult relationship, his answer to every attempt on my part to have him lower the bridge so I could cross the moat: I was the one with the problem, not him.  A position he apologized for quite sincerely hours before he died.

He gave me the gift of belatedly acknowledging that my painful childhood was largely the fault of an adult incapable of being a better parent.   He acknowledged that I was right to be hurt and saluted, for the first time, my many attempts over the years to improve the relationship.

While he was alive and on his feet, however, he’d fight to the death any suggestion that on his deathbed he’d have the regrets that could be so easily seen by anyone who wasn’t him.

I Love Music (Just as long as it’s groovin’)

The O’Jays, a group of singers who knew a few things about how to work a groove, had a great hit called “I Love Music”. It’s here, for anybody who wants to hear it right away.  It speaks so well for me, as it pumps through the computer speakers,  that I have almost nothing to add here at the moment.

But it would not be like me to hold tongue or pen, especially now, trying to remain conscious not to speak ill of anyone, and having only good things to say.

Here at 2:27 goes that great guitar, sallying into the mix like a saxophone.  I’m no expert, but when I hear a mix like this I know what moves me– and I’d spin this disk again just to hear that guitar break.  Then at 4:19, presumably that same guitar player starts making with the jazzy riffs.   Hot damn, the bongos and everything, that percussion section, the piano, bass– all kicking in to make that joyful noise.  Here come some strings and the vocalists come back, everyone leaving room for the others.

I started off nodding along to a mix of a recent jam session very well recorded in a basement in San Francisco, wondering idly where this love of a groove comes from.  Part of the answer is this track by the O’Jays, it seems to me.  Also beloved to me, that space in between the instruments, where they put their parts down against the others, listening intently as they dream their own dreams.   Best image I know of the best way to live your life.

The enduring injuries of childhood

Some, I imagine, did not receive traumatizing injuries during their upbringing.  I would like to meet and talk to someone who didn’t some day.   Most people I know, in a candid moment, will describe self-hatred, shame, rage, humiliation, terror, depression and several other shades of pain they don’t deserve   My father, at 80, on his death bed, admitted for the first time how the brutality he’d endured as a child had doomed him to live in a black and white world, holding off rooms full of potential abusers wherever he went, instead of using his great gifts to bring more color into the world.

No tears for us, please.  Like the fact that we all die, that injuries we suffered as young children endure is no mystery, nor anything to get tearful about.  How do we face the fact of our eventual deaths?  Outside of not thinking about it, by living as well as we can.   How do we endure the enduring hurts of childhood, even as adults, even as tough people who would rather kick somebody’s ass than admit how much we hurt?  That is hard work and does not yield to a simple answer.

We pay careful attention, think unhurriedly, use our words to describe things as clearly as we can.  We model the way we want others to treat us.  We do not do to others what we hate done to ourselves.  We consciously work to do better, to replace an angry reflex with a kind gesture.   It’s not easy, or, even, it must be admitted, in some cases, even  possible.  People may be too damaged, too bitter, crazy, anxious, desperate, invested in the needs of their egos or their justifiable rage to even imagine another way to live their lives.  Imagining a better way to live is the first step, like imagining anything is the first step to anything different.

No time at the moment to do anything but the best I can.  And wish strength to you to do the same.

Ahimsa Boy without a net

Arriving at the meeting at 6:13, carrying $95 of Thai food he just paid cash for, Ahimsa Boy is greeted by a dour “6:15, my ass.”

“6:14,” Ahimsa Boy notes, “and yes, your ass.”

On his way to the meeting, about fundraising, specifically crowdfunding, he is asked about something he didn’t put on the agenda and then challenged: If you haven’t sought to become a Vendor for the NYC DOE yet, what are we funding if the business is so limited?  Never mind the exhaustive list of things we need to fund to make the business viable and sustainable that he has sent out twice in preparation for the meeting.

At the meeting Ahimsa Boy is told not be be a control freak, to give others autonomy and let them be creative.  He mildly points out that this is his fondest wish, it’s just that he has been doing 99% of all the work, since there is nobody to relinquish control to.

After showing the first draft of a very short eye-catching animation appetizer, intended to catch the attention of people with a ten second internet attention span, he’s told:  not enough kids, bad advertisement, doesn’t give a sense of what the program does, won’t make people want to give money, needs a watermark with the website in the corner of every frame so people know how to contact you.   Then when he explains that none of those things are the purpose of this quick blur of color and invention, he is told to stop being defensive and censoring people.

“There are a thousand reasons the thing won’t work, all we need is the one reason that it will” he holds up signs saying this.

This is interpreted, in real time, as a not subtle invitation to drink a big, cold beaker of “shut the fuck up” and he is told as much.

“So you don’t want us to give our honest opinions, you just want us to tell you everything you’re doing is great.”

A rhetorical question, Ahimsa Boy assumes, then takes a breath and tries to give a gentle answer.

But I’ll tell you something, the strain of being Ahimsa Boy without a net, doing all the heavy lifting and smiling at people who mostly give the minimum, if they show up at all, and want credit for being your biggest supporters, with the right to tell you constructively how much most of what you’re doing misses the mark: priceless.

Mike Gets It

One of the after school programs where we do the workshop provides a helper, a counselor, a guy we’ll call Mike (since that’s his name).  Mike came in the first time with a drill sergeant demeanor, herding the kids, telling them sternly to stay in their seats and be quiet.

This was not really the vibe we need in the workshop, the first rule is move around to where you’re comfortable, keep moving if you like.  The second is to talk about what you’re planning to do.  

There was a minor clash that first time, the second time was a little easier.  By the third session Mike felt no need to discipline the kids, since they were all busy and involved with what they were doing.  Last week I pointed something out to Mike.

“Damn…” he said, and I nodded.  Four kids were animating at the animation stand by themselves, two moving the things on the animation stand, two photographing.  

“And in the full two-hour workshop another couple of kids would be at the computer editing and working on the soundtrack while the other kids were animating,” I pointed out.   He was impressed.

This week Mike was animating.  Sitting by ten year-old Jacob, the two of them enthralled by a Muybridge sequence I’d shown them,  Mike said “I’ll help you,” and was soon diligently working on a sequence of a running man.

By the end of the session Mike was as giddy as many of the kids sometimes get after a session of animation.

“Lily,” I called out to the girl who was trying to get her book back from Mike, who was holding it just out of her reach, “leave Mike alone.”

And Mike, rather than barking at the kids to stay in their seats, threw his head back and laughed.

Music Sweet Music

At the end of a hectic animation session on too little sleep Thursday, ignoring a couple of the fathers, who were waiting to pick up their kids after the workshop, I assembled the wild little animators around me on the carpet to do the soundtrack.   Loopy, a wonderful multi-track looper app was open on the iPad, a five-way headphone splitter plugged in.   Four kids and I put on the headphones.

I pointed to the clock, it was 4:55.  Not enough time, I noted, we really needed the 25 minutes I was trying to get while they were ignoring my attempts to get the room cleaned up and ready, but anyway…

I had them listen to the beat, which Amza had tapped in to set the tempo for the metronome.  My only instruction:  do something along with the beat when I point at you.  I realized quickly it was best to give each a track of their own, to be able to fade things in and out and get rid of any noise, while preserving anything that might be great on its own track.  It also kept the rest of them quiet and allowed the one making the track to hear him or herself think.  It is crucial to be able to hear yourself when making music with others.

“When I point to you, say how old you are” and I pointed to Amza who rapped out, “I am eight eight eight eight”, and then to Natalie who sang “I am Te-ehn!” and around the circle it went, Kazu, who deadpanned “I am ten” then Auden, “I am eight eight eight eight” and so forth.  Amza then sang a ditty right out of the history of Afghanistan, where his mother is from.  Natalie sang a wild and melodic loop that sounded like “Magical Purpose” sung three times, but which I realized, after 1,000 listenings during overdubs, was probably “Magical Puppies.”  The others all kicked in manic parts, I said goodbye, and they were off.   I stayed behind to finish cleaning up and then took my assistant for a burger.

When I got home and began mixing it down I was struck by the variety, the creativity, the fact that they were all singing in the same key, and none of them did anything that conflicted with the beat.  I was amazed as I began to dub a bass track and some more percussion to go with the metronome that was on the track.  I added an electric piano playing a simple pop chord change.  It was rocking.

Then the devil got into me.  I couldn’t stop.  There’s a piano playing the theme, then a bluesy riff that goes against the beat and the bass line.  It was impossible to resist adding a guitar part, inspired by Stochelo Rosenberg by way of Eric Clapton, then another, then a tenor ukulele.  Every time I listened to the finished track I thought of something else that needed to be added.  And I went back and added it.

Played back against the already frenetic animation, it’s useless as a soundtrack.  Very good to listen to while walking a few miles, as I intend to do presently, but relentlessly hectic, preventing the mind from focusing on what it is watching, turning the animation into a nightmare of over-amped wildness, instead of a cool melange of new and groovy ideas.

Oh, well.  The technique works beautifully, and augurs well going forward, even if not the hopped up use I put this first experiment to.  As I told a kid, who sounded truly shocked to hear it, we learn the most by trying something and failing– and then trying it again.

I know whereof I speak.

Sending a Severed Head by email

Honestly (not really), I wonder what’s wrong with me sometimes.  

I ponder the lack of response I often get and never stop to consider that what I think of as a delightful six second animated snapshot of true friendship and whimsy may actually be a grisly severed head.  

Errors in judgment and misguided thinking happen all the time.  Look at the otherwise highly intelligent people who believe barbaric, destructive things and spend millions to convince others of these repugnant beliefs.  

So I suppose I should be philosophical at the virtually unanimous aghast silence that met this latest emailed monstrosity.  One brings it on oneself when one appoints oneself a spokesman for friendship and creativity in a world that commodifies everything, most especially time.

You be the judge:  http://vinebox.co/u/wsEcbPUF5lE/wdsh1bQVTUo

Maren's monster