A cafe rendevous: my internet dating adventure continues

Slightly Nutty recently got back into the internet dating saddle and wrote in this blog about a prospective meeting with an unattached Gentleman. I promised to provide a ‘date update’, so here goes!

The Gentleman and I arranged to meet in a café in the inner eastern suburb of Camberwell last Saturday morning. His choice of café was inspired: it was quiet, with upmarket but soothing décor, a fire in a closed grate that emanated a silent warmth, next to an intimate, cushioned conversation nook. A delicate morning sun outside. Blessedly no upbeat, irritatingly superfluous music to batter the ears.

Even the timing was good; he entered seconds after I’d sat down, and put out his hand for me to shake. All four people in the establishment stared and must have realised immediately that it was some kind of pre-arranged and probably internet-inspired first date, which I jokingly told him off for, but really, who cared?

Another good sign: he ordered peppermint tea. That’s exactly what I’d been planning to order and I’d been determined not to mention my food intolerances, initially at least. Such relief not to have to explain why I was not scrabbling for a coffee hit.

The Serepax was working beautifully. I’d taken it the night before, planning to capitalise on the double advantage of a good night’s sleep and the anxiety reduction that, for me, continues well into the next day. (I’m an extremely strategic user of benzos and may write a blog entry about this in future.)

I knew the Gentleman had a South African accent and, as it’s not my favourite accent, I was (at the risk of sounding racist) worried that I’d find it too strong. But it was a soft version that sounded almost English.

So what actually happened? How did we get on?

The Gentleman and I are very different – he’s a ‘financially secure’ executive who devours books on world politics and economics, I’m a delicate would-be writer struggling to carve out a living as a part time editor/copywriter. But there were commonalities. I love solving the problems of the world, as he does, and we wrangled with that for quite a while before going into detail about the kinds of films we both liked and why we liked them.

He sat opposite me with his half-smile, a sureness and strength there that I liked. He had solid, meaty shoulders I could imagine cupping my hands on. A goodness of heart, and no anxious desire to impress. Perhaps he is too strong for me but maybe I can throw some conversational punches at him that he won’t be fazed by.

Throughout the chat, in my benzo-induced calm, I struggled with feelings of disappointment: acknowledging them, and wondering what they meant. He was clearly not my soulmate: there was no perfect click, no pure and joyful meeting of minds. I had not found the ultimate home of my soul and my heart, the place at which I could finally rest my head, metaphorically speaking.

I’m embarrassed to read that last paragraph. My last post suggested that because I’d met the Gentleman on a dodgy site, my expectations were going to be lower and I would not be disappointed if we did not find ourselves so dizzily in love that locating the second date at a registry office would be an inevitability.

Bullshit. I brought to the meeting all my deepest desires, and every single girlish hope and fantasy I’d ever harboured.

But here’s the thing: they were tempered with the realism I’ve painfully acquired. I’ve come to a point in my life when I am prepared to compromise to a greater degree than ever before, but only if my intuition – my gut feeling – wills it. I can finally let myself follow that flow in matters of the heart, but I’m also intellectually able to recognise the reality of what’s out there for me now, what someone at my stage of life, and in my work situation and state of mind, can reasonably expect. If I can bring these two things together, intuition and a realistic outlook, it may be possible for me to strike a balance between my youthful dreams and the reality of some kind of relationship, even if that relationship does not live up to society’s current ideal, and cannot fulfil every single need I harbour.

But that’s all still just a possibility. The Gentleman and I will probably have a second meeting. And that’s as far as things have got at this juncture.

One step at a time.

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The perils of internet dating

After a long absence, Slightly Nutty recently returned to the exciting, unpredictable world of internet dating. What a ride it’s proving – and I haven’t even met the Gentleman in question.

I admit to being on a rather ‘questionable’ dating site, down a notch in the respectability stakes from RSVP, which I hate to give free publicity to but have to admit is probably the best known dating site in Australia.

But I prefer the dodgy site I’m on, for a host of reasons. And they don’t include posting naughty pics of myself in compromising positions with my face artfully blanked out.

I’ve only met one person through this dodgy site so far and he, like me, was a refugee from RSVP. And the Gentleman I’m hoping to meet up with in the next week or so also looks like he could easily be on RSVP – he’s fully clothed in all of the three pics he sent me.

So why do I bother? Why not just get back on the RSVP treadmill?

The main thing is the expectations are lower. RSVP meetings are fraught with danger for the slightly nutty. I’ve been on and off RSVP for ages (you can hide and display your profile at will) and, now that I’m in my forties, I’m finding that dates basically expect me to own. Yes, property. They don’t like genteel poverty and fear you are going to sponge off them. My one and only female date asked me if my job was full or part time, and whether I owned or rented. It felt like a job interview.

It’s not just that, but the general expectations that accompany an RSVP date, mine included. They evoke a host of long-buried needs, hopes and unrealistic expectations. In contrast, when I meet someone from the dodgy site I’m not scrutinising them as closely and asking the questions: ‘Could this be my next life partner? If so, does it matter that they like playing obscure board games/have appalling taste in restaurants/break wind in intimate moments?’ The thing I’m mainly interested in is the chemistry. Is there something there? Are there things to talk about? Do I want to spend time with them?

But there are still difficulties, the main one being the need to have a recent photo on hand for prospective suitors.

Because the site I’m using is a bit dodgy, I didn’t want to have pictures of myself on my profile for all the world to see. Even if I did, the last decent picture of me is two years old and shows someone who looks younger and prettier than I normally do. When this current Gentleman responded to my profile, sending me recent non-rude pictures of himself, I realised I would have to update my own pics and send some to him. (On the website you can post your photos on a ‘private gallery’ and tick a box when sending a letter to allow the recipient to view the pics.)

So I asked an obliging friend to help out. We went to the urban forest near where he lives and took lots of shots, in heaps of different poses, in the hope of choosing the best ones. Predictably I was disappointed with the ones he sent me to choose from. I’ve never been that photogenic, but I’ve become less so as I’ve gotten older. It didn’t help that I had bad PMT that day either. And it also didn’t help that the photos were on large files that gave uncomfortably detailed close ups! (Tip: if you're not happy with photos of yourself, blame the photographer!)

But no excuses. I would upload the best three to my ‘private gallery’. I did, asking the Gentleman to contact me if he still wanted to meet up for coffee. (The photo-taking friend and I had rationalised that it was preferable to supply ordinary photos rather than pics so flattering that the prospective would be dreadfully disappointed when he first clapped eyes on me.)

I uploaded the pics on Wednesday. I went away on an overnight trip on Thursday and was hopeful that on my return on Friday afternoon a response would be waiting for me.

No response. Saturday morning arrived. Again nothing. Saturday afternoon also proved unfruitful.

I reeled, I quavered and I quaked. This would be the first time I had been rejected on the basis of a photograph!

I spoke to another friend whose roles include being a kind of mental health buddy. We discussed the concept of exposure, a popular therapeutic tool in the treatment of anxiety and OCD. Exposure therapy involves putting up with discomfort in relation to a phobia, fear or obsession, and gradually increasing one’s exposure to that discomfort.

As someone with a minor case of body dysmorphic disorder (which in my stronger moments I admit is actually an impossible demand that I be beautiful) one of my worst fears is being rejected on the basis of my appearance. The silence on the Gentleman’s part suggested this might have actually occurred.

But in fact, my mental health friend and I agreed, there was no way I could know this for sure. Perhaps the Gentleman didn’t like my ‘look’ rather than my ‘looks’. Alternatively he might simply be away, or incredibly busy, etc etc. Staying in this state of uncertainty, of unknowingness, rather than forcing some unalloyed truth from the world is the essence of exposure therapy.

I told my mental health friend I had wanted to send the photos to him to get his opinion. But we both agreed that that would constitute seeking reassurance, a no-no in exposure therapy.

Anyway, on Saturday evening the longed-for answer finally arrived. Yes, the Gentleman would still like to do coffee. He explained his slowness by saying that he wasn’t addicted to the dating site and didn’t check his messages that often. This had the ring of truth to me, as there had been a lapse of several days between telling him I was going to post the pics and actually doing it.

We still haven’t spoken, but it looks like we’re going to catch up on Saturday morning. Wish me luck!

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Do your job: a plea for politicians and the media to stop pushing stupid policies

Warning: This is going to be one of my grumbling posts, one of the ones that points out what is wrong with our body politic and how yours truly would go about fixing it up.

Every now and then something shocks me into the realisation of just how poor our media is these days. I don’t want to pick on journalists and say they're lazy and kowtowing, because if they are – and not all fall into that category – it's the industry's fault. But they're the ones we see, hear and read so they will have to cop my vituperation!

For example, I'm usually these days moderately annoyed by Fran Kelly's interviews with federal pollies on Radio National's Breakfast program. She lets them get away with blatant lies. I'm talking about both major parties here, who tow lines that differ only slightly from those of the opposing party but share the characteristic that they have very little to do with reality.

The reasons are extremely complex and I won't go into them in any detail. But what we have now, on both sides, is shockingly poor policy based on trying to keep in favour with two different forces.

Populism
The first category of policies are there to look good to the electorate, sound dramatic to journos, and make everyone think the government is doing something. These policies are sweeping, poorly conceived ideas that will grab headlines. They are cooked up by unaccountable, taxpayer-funded media advisers. They usually bear little resemblance to social and economic research findings, and sometimes contradict them.

For example, it makes more sense to give more money to disadvantaged schools rather than the same amount of money to every school, regardless of how obscenely wealthy its clientele and how steep its fees. However, every school, no matter how wealthy, was eligible for federal Labor's school infrastructure program.

This meant that the nation's wealthiest schools, such as Melbourne's Scotch College, Wesley College and Haileybury College, Geelong Grammar, Brisbane Grammar and Adelaide's Scotch College, received millions of dollars in taxpayer funds for new halls and classrooms that they didn't need.

Wouldn't it make more sense to have a teachers in schools program, or even a decent-toilets-and-sportsgrounds-in-schools program, for (government) schools? And how does this ridiculous gift to the rich square up with federal Labor's supposed commitment to 'social inclusion'?

It's also a bit silly to let the morale of child protection workers get so bad that the Human Services department has at least 70 (yes, 70) vacancies and then come out and say how shocked you are when the system breaks down and children get placed with known sex offenders. This is what the Victorian Labor government has done, ignoring realms of research on the long-term effects of poverty and abuse in an electorally unattractive area of social policy.

Now, after the expected outcry, Brumby has pulled out a few bells and whistles and announced 200 new child protection positions. It sounds good, but apart from the question of recruiting -- how are they going to find willing workers when there are already 70 vacancies -- the relevant union says that this is not nearly enough to answer the need, and address the 2000 children waiting for a case worker. Nor will there be wage increases for child protection staff, or a limit set on the number of children allocated to each worker, surely prerequisites for retaining staff in this difficult job. Never mind -- 200 is a nice round number and sounds good.

Corruption
The second category of poor policies are those based on the relentless need for both Labor and Liberal to make decisions that please or at least do not disturb business and corporations at the expense of every other aspect of human life and flourishing. These policies are based on the dependence of the major parties on donations from business, a kind of legalised corruption.

For example, it's a bit silly to admit climate change is happening and then plan new deals to sell massive amounts of dirty brown coal to India (Victorian Labor) and to support a coal mine in some of the most fertile farmland in NSW, the Liverpool Plains (NSW Labor).

And it's a bit silly to admit climate change is happening, live in one of the countries worst affected in terms of rising temperatures, but let promising solar energy projects fail through lack of investment (Victorian Labor).

Both of these types of decisions result in an appalling, criminal waste of taxpayers' funds that could otherwise be used for the genuine advancement of the whole country.

We live in the information age. We have never had access to so much human knowledge. We know more about human psychology, how and why communities flourish, the kinds of criminal justice policies that don't perpetuate crime, than we ever have. We know about the effects of disadvantage and how to create a fairer playing field for Australian children. Academics give away their knowledge for free. Yet it's becoming rarer and rarer for politicians of the two main parties to make decisions that are vaguely sensible, and that have some cognisance of what is actually happening in the world.

Journalists, of course, are not the sole reason for this. But I think in relation to these trends they are falling into some major traps, which I'll outline below.

Trap 1: Let the pollies spout garbage without challenging them

Busy as they are, I don’t think journos these days have the time or the willingness to do some of the basic research required to actually challenge statements of their interviewees that are blatantly untrue. Such an ability relies on the time to read not just newspapers but books written by sophisticated commentators. Not to mention the bravery required to lose the good will of increasingly defensive politicians.

Take the ridiculous rumble that opened up when Kevin Rudd dared to say recently that the Howard government had dithered. Peter Costello flung himself into the fray: how dare Rudd tell such outright lies?

A journalist who had read, say, Mark Davis's Land of Plenty or George Megalogenis's The Longest Decade would have felt compelled to challenge some of Costello's assertions about just how great the Liberal government was – a government that failed to invest in either skills or infrastructure, sat on its hands for a decade as Australia slid into a climate-change-induced drought, and threw money at the electorate not to reduce unfairness but to curry favour with the swinging voters.

Not Fran Kelly. She mainly just let him talk. It was a typical example of how she treats politicians these days – give a token 'devil's advocate' question that reflects the opinion of the opposing force, but fail to actually challenge the veracity of what the politician themselves is saying.

But Kelly's fallen into a common trap – she's entered the world of the politicians and now she thinks like them. She cares only about how their policies differ from the opposing party, not whether they're actually any good, or the extent to which they actually interact with reality. She's become part of the world of spin.

Trap 2: Fool readers into thinking we have a functional democracy by portraying politicians as individuals

Another popular trap is to take an in-depth look at politicians as individuals to disguise the fact that they have little agency to subvert dominant party ideologies and structures. So we get a profile on Environment minister Peter Garrett in a recent issue of Good Weekend that is supposed to humanise him and paint him as someone who may care about the environment after all. But the point is not whether Garrett cares, has a good family life, loves his dog, prays every day etc – the point is that he's part of a party system and style of action that prevents him from doing anything meaningful.

The only interesting personal aspect to puzzle over is why he joined the ALP when he seemed to be a much better fit for the Greens. This is an intriguing question but the decision is made now and Garrett ain't going anywhere. He's now part of the problem, not the solution. (Not only that, but the establishment must be happy that at least one former rabble rouser has been tamed and silenced.)

Such profiles beguile us into thinking that the system is still working and that individuals can make a difference within the major parties. This is increasingly simply untrue. This style of journalism doesn't rock the boat too much, in fact it puts journos in the politicians' good books because it gives the latter valuable publicity.

Trap 3: become so frightened of being criticised for bias that you are too scared to provide honest, factual commentary about what is actually going on

Recently, Australia Talks, the popular talkback program on Radio National, ran a program on whether politicians were too influenced by big business. The host, Paul Barclay, seemed obsessed with emphasising that even if there were no undue influence (huh?) the perception of influence within the public was a problem. I'm sorry, but my sister's dog Jordan, who is a cocker spaniel and not the brains trust, knows there's undue influence. You would have to be living on Jupiter not to be aware of this obvious fact. Yet the ABC believes this fact is actually an opinion, and way too dangerous for a program host to be mouthing.

So what was the juicy piece of information that shocked me into realising just how bad things are in terms of calling a spade a spade? John Faine's Conversation Hour on ABC local radio (a great program apart from the ponderous name of the station – and Faine at his best is often an exception to my complaints) featured a US investment banker turned author, John R Talbott.

Talbott basically said that no good policies occur in the US any more because Congress is hopelessly corrupted by big business. He cited the shocking lack of regulation that produced the Global Financial Crisis, and the way the bailouts protected executive salaries, and he castigated Obama for handing over the health insurance issue to Congress. He also complained about the emissions trading scheme that was in the offing there – like us, the US is planning to give huge subsidies to the big polluters.

He was so honest, brave and unfazed. But it's devastating when you think about what is actually at stake. The GFC has produced untold amounts of hardship among the working classes in the US, a degree of hardship that we rarely hear about. And it's decimated the black middle class. And what hope now for the 46.3 million Americans with no health insurance?

Commentators, especially those from overseas, safely invited here by toothless writers' festivals, are allowed to tell the truth in the media. The journos aren't.

Imagine if journalists took the obvious truths and relentlessly, unremittingly, challenged politicians of every rank and stripe about them until the population got furious and put pressure on them to make real changes. This is what is not happening in either Australia or the US. But it needs to.

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‘What light through yonder window breaks?’ On getting up and going to bed early

I’m a naughty stubborn contrarian from way back. It took a good fifteen years for me to get off caffeine even though it was giving me panic attacks and shocking blood sugar problems. Going against the demands and needs of my body has come ‘naturally’ to me for years, but I’ve tried hard to change and to start listening to myself.

For the last five years I’ve been living in a noise-afflicted house that has kept me in a constant state of sleep deprivation (note the victim mentality evident in the words ‘kept me’). I’ve tried every sort of ear plug on the market and sometimes even wear clunky headphones in bed if things get really bad.

The night noises that have assailed me at various times include a distressed dog who yelps frantically whenever its owner leaves it alone in the house (steps have been taken and now the yelps are confined to working hours), trams that whine and clatter full pelt down the hill until midnight and beyond, weekend hoons blasting up and down the busy street I live on, a constant low-frequency hum whose source I’ve never been able to identify, and European washing machines reaching an orgasmic frenzy of spinning before finally subsiding to an exhausted clunk.

Rather than getting used to these noises, in some ways I’ve grown more sensitive to them (the exception is routine traffic noise: at the level I can hear it with ear plugs on, it’s almost soothing).

Until recently, the neighbours with the dog ran their washing machine, dryers and so on up until 11-11.30 pm, and crashed and banged as they were getting ready for bed around that time. It got to the point where going to bed after them was preferable to lying in the dark awake and bathed in hot fury. But they’ve quietened down lately (the note I dropped into the letterbox about the dog – not the first time I’d complained – also contained a polite request to run appliances only between the hours of 10 am and 10 pm, and it seems to have worked!).

So finally, finally, I am obeying the rhythms of my body and going to bed when it wants me to, namely, before 10.45 pm (actually I think it wants me in bed by 9.30, but that’s a bit extreme).

My body clock is a ruthless disciplinarian who takes no prisoners when it comes to sleeping patterns. When I was going to bed between 11.30 and midnight, it would still wake me up at about 6, often earlier. But this was during the winter months. Now that the earth’s drawing closer to the sun, my sensitive biorhythms alert my hypothalamus to start rousing me at about 3 or 3.30 am, and I routinely wake up more or less fully at about 4.30 am. I’m alert, with cortisol coursing through my body, but also tired because I haven’t had enough sleep. I lie there moving in and out of a light, inadequate doze until about 7 am.

But I’m not really complaining. It’s impossible to explain how right it feels to be going to bed a bit earlier, even if I’m still sleep deprived. I have more energy, more life force. I’m more in tune with myself. I even notice the extra energy when I’m trotting off to bed. Even at the end of a busy day, I’m not dragging myself around exhaustedly the way I used to.

I’m working a bit more at the moment and struggling to get the practical things done that I’m so neurotic about. Last Saturday I got up early so as to be able to wash my car before the weekend queue had set in at the local car wash. By the time I got there it was already 8.45 am, but I’d never been at the car wash that early before, and I enjoyed the pale yellow sun glinting on the lights and the stainless steel as I scrubbed. The freshness of early morning was still in the air, the traffic was lighter, the air cleaner and cooler. It felt so right to be there at that time.

So now, with a bit less darkness available every night, I have to work up to going to bed earlier still. Bed time has been, since my transformation, anywhere between 10.30 pm and 10.45 pm. But it has to become even earlier still if I’m to beat the sun. I’m now aiming for 10 pm.

The sticking point is my beloved tele watching. To wind down at night, I like to have time enough to read but also time to watch a bit of tiv. It’s my link to the wider world, and it takes me out of my own head. It’s my treat at the end of a long day at the computer. I wouldn’t want to give it up completely, even if I could. But I’m going to have to cut down, and that’s a discipline I’ll struggle with.

Eating and dishes will also have to be disposed of earlier – no more Phillip Adams on the radio as my hands paddle around in soapy hot water.

It’s going to be tough but it will add a whole new dimension to my life. With more sleep I’ll be stronger and more present, there’ll be more of me. And the mornings will be mine, for writing, reading and working. Evenings will be shorter, but I’ll stop work earlier to wind down. And at night, when I slide into the waiting sheets, sleep, precious sleep, will claim me.

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Attention!

Attend!
Pay attention!
Are you paying attention?

It seems that attention is what's missing in this society. But how important is it?

Lately a few things I've been hearing and observing have made me think about this scarce commodity, so hard to come by in our rushed, atomised, money-obsessed world.

But what does it mean? And why have I suddenly become fixated on it?

In the last few years, a few books relating to this idea have been published in Australia. A young Australian philosopher, Damon Young, wrote Distraction: A Philosopher's Guide to Being Free, about the prevalence of distraction in the modern world, ruefully admitting his addiction to his Blackberry even while on holiday. And Hugh Mackay wrote Why Don't People Listen?, a well-received book in which he urged readers to start really listening to others.

Both of these books' topics are related to attention. Distraction is attention's obvious opposite. Listening is impossible to do properly if you're not attending to someone. But attention has wider scope than listening. It's a focus on someone or something, sometimes an intense focus. Why does it matter?

I regularly take my sister's little cocker spaniel, Jordan, to the park for a romp. When we get back to his place, I usually play Fetch with him for a little while. Occasionally we play Fetch at the park but he's usually too distracted by his all-consuming sense of smell to keep focused on the game. With such succulent, wafting scents everywhere, it's almost impossible to get him to follow the track of the ball (Fetch!) let alone bring it to me (Come!) and drop it at my feet (Give!)

What I have noticed, though, is that he performs much better when I focus on him. When I look at him and am very aware of what I intend him to do, what I want him to do, he seems to sense it. If I'm half-hearted and distracted, so is he.

Attention seems to be to be related to love and bonding. I have a strong bond with Jordan, and when I 'activate' it through my attention, this no doubt helps him to keep focused on me as we play this game.

Children, as we all know, absolutely crave their parents' attention, and will act out mercilessly if they don't get it.

I'm hopelessly intolerant of my friends having their mobile phones on and answering them when I'm socialising with them one-on-one, because for those minutes they're on the phone they've let go of that attentiveness that I'm hungry for.

Journalist Rupert Isaacson is the father of an autistic boy, Rowan. The child was incontinent, constantly having tantrums and unable to relate to others when Isaacson and his wife, psychology professor Kristin Neff, decided to take him on a trip to Mongolia to be healed by shamans (horses were already playing a large role in his progress, so the trip also involved horses).

After the shamanic healings took place, miraculous changes occurred. Rowan became toilet trained, his tantrums virtually ended and he made his first friend. Isaacson wrote a book about the experience, Horse Boy, and a documentary has been made about the journey.

Isaacson can only speculate on what actually caused the changes. But could part of the shamans' powers have come from the intense focus they had on Rowan, and the inner healing powers they were able to summon up, during the healings, partly through that focus?

And could some of the trip's success have come about because Rowan's parents were so intensely focused on him and what they wanted for him, not in a grasping way but in their willingness to drop everything for him? (This is not to suggest, of course, that attention will cure everything, or that parents with disabled children who can't be helped are not giving enough attention.)

Recently a UK journalist, Simon Singh, along with coauthor Edzard Ernst, wrote the book Trick or Treatment? Alternative Medicine on Trial (I think this is too complex an area to have only one opinion on; homeopathics are nothing but water, yet herbs are clearly medicines that we still need to know much more about.)

Naturally Singh was down on homeopathics, and I don't blame him. But when western scientists and science writers such as Singh have discovered that people benefit from homeopathics anyway, I think they too easily dismiss the reasons. There's the placebo effect of course; that's the mind healing itself, which is highly significant and extremely worth exploring.

But it's also acknowledged that sitting down with a naturopath who listens to your problems, asks you questions about all aspects of your life and gives you the time and attention that so many GPs are just too busy to give may also help the healing process.

But, you might well ask, what about animals and children? How could they possibly benefit from homeopathics and get better as some seem to? Of course, the usual maxim applies that many would have got better anyway regardless of treatment. But perhaps the actual dispensing of the homeopathics, with the ritual involved and the attentiveness necessary, has something to do with it?

Too bad that kind of thing can't be measured, and too bad it can't be bottled and marketed and made it into a brand (I guess capitalism tries to do that, but I'm talking about real attention …).

What if all medical students, in addition to having good marks, had to demonstrate qualities such as empathy and compassion? Perhaps this is an essential aspect of healing, not just an add-on?

Attention is perhaps a kind of love, or perhaps love is not the word I'm looking for. I don't mean individualistic love or romantic love but the life force that flows through us. Perhaps when we give something or someone our attention we allow our minds to provide the beginnings of healing. That's one reason why truth and justice commissions are so important after terrible massacres. Sufferers need to be heard by other humans.

And that's why in naturopathic, but also psychotherapeutic, consulting rooms all over the world, people seek out and are willing to pay large sums of money to those who will listen to their stories, mobile phones and pagers turned off and no computer blinking in the background. That's one aspect of therapy I really miss – the quietness of the consulting room, and the sense that someone was giving me their complete, undivided, fully focused attention, even if only for 45 minutes a week.

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Changing my mind: slightly all-over-the-shop thoughts about brain plasticity, excessive worry, and mindfulness

For many years I have pictured my condition/illness/neurosis (whatever you want to call it) as a small child constantly tugging at my sleeve and demanding care, attention and protection. Of course, I’m not Robinson Crusoe in seeing myself this way – inner child therapy suggests that we all have a needy child inside us that we need to listen to, love and support.

What I’m trying to do more actively these days is actually learn to manage this child, look after it, but also keep it in line. And to do this I’m finding myself viewing my brain as a pliable thing that I can manipulate.

I know this sounds a bit negative and mechanistic so let me explain. Ever since I read The Brain That Changes Itself by Norman Doidge, a book that reveals some of the latest research into just how plastic and changeable our brains actually are, I’ve been pondering how disempowered I’ve always felt about handling my chronic anxiety and panic.

These feelings of disempowerment have only increased over the last four years or so, since I gave up therapy and decided once and for all that my body couldn’t handle antidepressants. During this time I have done a few empowering things – I learned how to control my breathing and still practise abdominal breathing when stressed; I did a short group therapy course for social anxiety sufferers; and I bought a mindfulness book and CD, and still do a mindfulness session with the CD about four times a week.

I also try to practise mindfulness (staying in the present; being aware of my surroundings and sensory experiences; noting but not judging thoughts) but I’m not strict about letting the thoughts go – more on that later.

These are all good things, but with my wayward brain they’re simply not enough!

The Brain That Changes itself was an incredibly affirming book. I’m the sort of person who needs constant affirmation, and exterior, visible proof that something is working. I think that’s one reason I’m finding it hard to make further necessary changes like starting meditation – there’s no-one there to say ‘I can see that’s making a difference’, no machine I can hook up to that will show my altered brainwaves after a meditation session.

But Doidge’s book, even if it can’t make my brainwaves visible to me, has been making me see my brain as something fluid, something that I can change, something that’s constantly affected by what I think, do, and tell myself.

So I don’t want to manipulate it in a way that denies my reality (‘I am now a multimillionaire with a swish New York apartment and a cottage in the south of France’). I just need to give it a bit of discipline. When I think of manipulating my brain, I’m actually thinking of a process more like, say, massaging sore muscles into shape or, conversely, exercising slack muscles.

Some examples. I can fall prey to obsessive thoughts sometimes, and while I don’t class myself as having OCD (I have enough problems!) I found the section on OCD in Doidge’s book very helpful. (It’s also useful for anyone who worries excessively.)

When you have an obsessive thought that won’t go away, you do two things: you refuse to focus on the content of the thought, and tell yourself the actual content is not the problem, but the obsessive thinking is; and then you do something pleasurable to distract yourself.

It’s so simple, and yet, if you do it over and over, determinedly, you’re actually changing your brain, creating positive new circuits and connections. What a fantastic idea!

Of course, it’s hard work, and takes perseverance. And it doesn’t mean you actually eliminate the old mental habits. Instead, you create new, competing circuits.

This part of the book was quite tantalising, because the book as a whole doesn’t include a lot of practical suggestions for dealing with anxiety and so on.

But it does suggest how important self-talk is in general, something I’ve been working on in a separate but related area, my social anxiety. Every time I go into a scary social situation, I now tell myself I’m safe. I tell myself I’m doing well. I talk sense to myself. I guess this is a very basic form of cognitive behavioural therapy, which seeks to identify and challenge irrational thoughts.

The book also offers a concrete way of thinking about those more esoteric habits that are hard to introduce, such as meditation, progressive relaxation or mindfulness in daily life. These practices are not simply good in the abstract; over time they’ll produce new neural connections and new mental habits.

When I think about it, meditation (even if it’s not specifically mindfulness meditation) and progressive relaxation (where you progressively tense and relax all the major muscles in the body) are related to mindfulness, if not forms of it, because they’re both about being in and experiencing the present moment.

But mindfulness actually seems to clash a bit with the good self-talk and the anti-worry treatment described in Doidge’s book.

Mindfulness is quite interesting in relation to the general kind of brain manipulation I’m discussing. If I adopt it along with my anti-worry strategy I’m at once attempting to take control (by introducing a new practice that will alter my mind for the better, and striving to stay in the moment) and let go (by not trying to control or judge feelings, behaviours, thoughts but simply observing them; by letting life be the way it is).

This is consistent with Doidge’s suggestion of not buying into the content of the thought. But it contradicts the idea that I should challenge my thoughts, either in relation to persistent obsessions and worries, or specific anxieties like social anxiety. According to mindfulness practice, I should simply note thoughts, not buy into them as fact, and let them go.

Perhaps this apparent contradiction doesn’t matter – perhaps the main thing is to have a grab bag of tools one can use? Oh dear, I can feel a worry coming on …

If anyone has any suggestions about reconciling mindfulness with CBT and the treatment of obsessive thoughts that I’ve briefly sketched, I’d be glad to hear them!

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There’s something about Cate

‘Our Cate’, as the Australian media love to call Cate Blanchett, has well and truly made it. She’s been in countless successful films, and is regularly on the red carpet at opening nights. But she’s one of the few stars who will always be first and foremost seen as a practitioner of the actor’s craft rather than an empty-headed celebrity. This blog entry is a little treatise of admiration for her – well, sort of – and a meditation on acting styles.

The other night I watched a great documentary on ABC 1, In the Company of Actors, that featured Blanchett. It’s a fly-on-the-wall study of the process of taking a successful Australian production – the Sydney Theatre Company’s Hedda Gabler – to New York.

The original season, directed by Robyn Nevin, was performed in 2004. It starred Cate Blanchett as Hedda, who agreed to the project because it was to be based on an adaptation of the original Ibsen play written by her husband, Andrew Upton. The cast would include actors of the calibre of Hugo Weaving, Aden Young and Justine Clarke.

We watch the cast rehearsing the play in Sydney, in a huge high-ceilinged studio, where they’re dressed casually and horseplay around in between finetuning scenes. Next thing they’re in New York, working out how to buy subway tickets, carrying out a technical rehearsal, experiencing their first taste of New York snow, and taking part in a Q and A with local high school students.

Despite the stellar cast, it’s Cate Blanchett who stands out in the doco, even in the rehearsal room. Cate can’t help but always be acting. In this doco, sometimes I swear she responds to the camera (despite herself, I reckon) and plays the part of an actress rehearsing a role. Not that she’s not actually rehearsing the role as well, of course.

Which leads me to the thesis of this blog entry. Forget the bad actors, I’m not talking about them, the ones who are stars first and actors second. (I’m also talking about film rather than the stage, as the latter necessarily involves exaggeration of movements, voice projection and so on.) When it comes to good film actors, I think there are two kinds – those who overtly dramatise the role, perhaps are in danger of overdramatising it, and those who disappear into it. Blanchett is definitely in the former category.

In the doco, the camera takes advantage of this quality in Blanchett. We see her dressed for her role as Hedda Gabler, hair up in a severe bun and wearing a very fitted Edwardian gown with a high collar, set to make her first entrance on the first night in New York. (We find out later that the audience has included luminaries such as Jane Fonda and Meryl Streep.) In the moments before she goes on stage she stares nervously around, breathes, drinks some water, waits. The camera at this point shows a quick series of stills of her performing these actions, rather than obvious motion. Blanchett’s whole persona lends itself to this beautifully. Again, she’s unconsciously acting being an actress waiting to go on stage.

You can’t fake this kind of, well, fakery. It has to be there, in the litheness of your movements as well as your intelligence, and the way that the two work together. That’s why Nicole Kidman and Gwyneth Paltrow will never be great actresses – they’re reasonably intelligent but they can’t communicate their characters through their bodies that effectively. When Kidman tries too hard to do this, she’s ludicrous. Blanchett's lanky body, in contrast, drips affect, no matter what she's doing.

This category of actors show off their craft – you know they’re acting, you can see it, but does that matter if the acting’s good? I don’t think it does, mostly, in the same way that you might be able to see the machinations of a favourite writer but still love their work.

The other classic example of this style is, of course, Meryl Streep. Think of the mannerisms she employed in Sophie’s Choice, or the exaggerated accent in Evil Angels. Streep is always on show, always being seen, yet she’s mesmerising. Recently I watched her being interviewed by British talk show host Jonathan Ross about her role in Mumma Mia. She draped herself on the couch and smiled just a little too magnanimously, and she was stately, dignified and actorly. But she was also funny, ironic, willing to laugh at herself.

Emma Thompson’s another obvious example of this category – her style was just perfect for a classic melodrama like The Remains of the Day.

The danger with this kind of actor is that if they are let loose they may ultimately overdramatise, so it’s very important that the director reins them in. One of the few of Blanchett’s performances I didn’t like was her role as Katie Hepburn in The Aviator. A drama queen playing a drama queen? It was way too much (and she was too old for the role, I thought).

I sympathise with this kind of acting because I think I can understand it. It’s fuelled by a particular kind of sensibility that always needs to add another layer to life, to either send it up, ramp up its emotional volume, or both. It’s born of a compulsive need to comment on things, to reflect the world back at itself, through the medium of the body. It runs in my family – my uncle was an amateur thespian and my sister’s a drama teacher, and as a frustrated non-actor I’m always wanting to mimic people and dramatise the stories I tell others. I don’t think it’s necessarily an exclusively feminine tendency, but I think women add to it a further layer of culturally installed self-consciousness that men don’t tend to have.

There is a very different kind of actor that, as I said, inhabits the character so entirely they disappear into it. It’s not a matter of underplaying the role, but of letting one’s ego disappear altogether. Samantha Morton stands out in this regard, for example in her role as Deborah Curtis in the film Control.

At her best Kate Winslet does this too and Aden Young is simply brilliant at it, as he demonstrated in the role of Nat in the recently released film Lucky Country. And let’s not overlook Anthony LaPaglia: it’s been said of him that you can see him thinking. Finally, there’s Russell Crowe, bless his cotton socks, who despite his huge ego and the dramatics he gets up to with telephones in real life, is never afraid to play men of every stripe and character, and to ‘become’ them.

Ultimately neither acting style is innately superior to the other. Both styles remind us that no matter how obscenely rich and ridiculously feted they are, and even how absurd their private lives may become, good actors are first and foremost artists.

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