Dr. John Nadas M.D.  is the author of  " How I Confronted and Transformed my Inner Personalities", "The Book of Reality: The Neuroscience of the Teachings of Jesus " and" The Cure for Everyday Hypnosis" all deeply effective tools in helping people on their personal transformational  journeys and available on Amazon.  Dr. Nadas has been practicing Psychiatry in Canton Ohio for 43 years. He graduated from Duke University School of Medicine in 1974 and did his residency in Psychiatry at the University of Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute. Dr. Nadas was a student of the famous Psychiatrist and developer of self psychology, Heinz Kohut. He  was the NCAA National Collegiate Fencing Champion in 1970.

“The first thing you have to know is yourself. A man who knows himself can step outside himself and watch his own reactions like an observer”.

Adam Smith   

From " The Cure for Everyday Hypnosis" by  John Nadas M.D.

By John Nadas M.D.

   The Art of Managing Your Mind

                                   



A good life is one that is filled with joy, confidence, and energy. Relationships are deep and meaningful. Not only do you provide love and enrichment to others, but they in turn provide you with great experiences and support and guidance when you need it. The purpose of this book is to weave together the latest discoveries of neuroscience and psychology with the greatest teachings of the ages to provide you with a blueprint to help you attain the best possible life you can have.

 To save you the trouble of going to the back of this book to read the last chapter first, I thought I would start with the final step of how to effectively manage your mind. This chapter all by itself will not provide an effective strategy for creating an exceptional life because it skips over many insights and skills that a person must have before he or she can successfully apply this practice. So, if you wish to gain control of your life, you will still have to read and understand the rest of this book.

The mind is an incredibly complex instrument, and a wonderful one at that. Out of all our remarkable possessions, what we enjoy and appreciate the most is our own mind when it operates intelligently, creatively, and spontaneously. Most of us have many good things in our lives. Our good fortune may include our own families, enough money to meet our needs, the many conveniences and   technologies of American life, and friends who are caring and worthwhile human beings. What is more exciting than all this is the experience of having a mind that works well. No one is always blessed with this. Everyone gets worn down by the world at times, but moments of clarity, confidence, and creativity greatly enrich our lives.

 The “magic” technique, the final step of dealing effectively with our mind, is the skill of learning to stop any thought, emotion, or drive that we need to end. As a psychiatrist, I have worked with thousands of patients in my career. Those who have been able to do this effectively have become free of their emotional problems.

This approach may seem mundane and simplistic. We prefer to accentuate the positive, to develop our skills, enhance our creativity, and intensify our motivation. I am in complete agreement with this mindset. The human potential imperative is the point of psychiatry and psychology. The essence of psychotherapy is not to eradicate “mental illness”; the genuine goal is to help people reach their full potential. And this is where we are headed. However, first a person must do some “housecleaning” as it were, clear out the baggage he has in his mind.

What are these mental phenomena which a person may want to stop? At the psychiatric end of the scale, there are agonizing symptoms that endanger or destroy people’s well-being. Demoralizing thoughts about suicide, feelings of doom and desperation, panic attacks, and uncontrollable impulses to act out one’s emotions can be devastating. The history of psychiatric treatment is that medical physicians have gone to great lengths to stop these untoward experiences in their patients. Electric-shock therapy, anti-psychotic medications, and frontal lobotomies are just a few of the extreme measures that have been utilized to help people stop their inner turmoil. The general public may be distressed by these treatments, but the patients themselves may be grateful to attain some peace in their minds.

Ordinary people do not have such distressing symptoms, but they may have troublesome experiences from which they would like to be free. The list of common symptoms is a very long one: worrisome thoughts, feelings of insecurity and self-doubt, endless procrastination, overindulgence in food, alcohol, sex, or entertainment; addictions, compulsions, phobias, guilt, irritability, outbursts of anger, road rage, sadness, hurt, and despondency. Many people just muddle along with such symptoms, believing that these are normal, expectable problems of life and never ask for professional help. They deal with them on their own, as best as they can.

Everyone has their own repertoire of coping mechanisms, rationalizations, and escapes from their pain. Perhaps they are useful in some ways. Unfortunately, many of only serve as a cover-up. The Freudian term “repression” can be applied to them.

In their simplest form, they serve as distractions from what is going on in our mind. Going shopping, cleaning up, watching TV, listening to music, and calling up friends help to put troubles out of our mind. Many people become involved in hobbies, volunteer work, and athletic activities. All of these can be good in themselves. The problem is that when they are used as psychological defense mechanisms, they simply repress the emotional problems we have, leaving them alive in our mind, ready to emerge and wreak havoc at inopportune times.

What is needed is a technique that effectively clears out our troublesome thoughts, emotions, and impulses. This technique should also protect us from carrying out actions which are against our wishes.

There is no contemporary psychotherapy, religious system, or counseling program that provides an effective way to accomplish this. As such, you will be hearing about this new technique for the first time. This is not a technique that I can take credit for. It arises from cutting edge neuroscience research that has provided significant insights into the workings of the mind and brain.

Neuroscientists have discovered a crucially important center in the brain. This part of the brain enables an action which is best described as the inhibition of mental activities. At first glance, it is reminiscent of repression, but it is actually quite different. This center in the brain is located in the orbital-frontal cortex, and it serves to inhibit certain processes in the “unconscious mind,” (technically called the limbic system). The unconscious mind is the source of our emotions, drives, and negative thinking.

The reason that the action of the orbital-frontal cortex has remained a secret until the present time is that it operates unconsciously. We have no direct access to it, we cannot directly engage it, and we cannot observe it as it operates. This does not mean that people don’t use their orbital-frontal cortex, but it does mean that they don’t realize that they are using it. For example, some people tell others that they don’t worry about anything, they just stop worrisome thoughts. They do this by “an act of the will.” However, these people are ineffectual at teaching others how to do it. The individuals who try to learn how to control their minds through an act of the will usually conclude that they just can’t do that: “I tell my mind to stop, but it doesn’t even slow down.”

The situation is similar with stopping addictions and bad habits. Many people have the experience of quitting smoking because they “decided to quit smoking.” They threw their last pack of cigarettes away, and then never smoked another cigarette. Some of these people say it was a simple thing to do, while others explain it was difficult and they were anxious and felt stressed and gained a lot of weight. Either way, simply describing what they did does not effectively convey their technique to other people who feel stymied in their attempts to succeed at these same goals.

The technique that allows a person to utilize his or her orbital-frontal cortex is a new form of meditation. All meditation will not result in this achievement, because there are many variants of meditation. Meditation can refer to relaxation, contemplation of one’s mind, blissful experience, or having a blank mind. Meditation can have goals as varied as knowing oneself, eliminating troublesome experiences, becoming free from stress, or becoming a compassionate human being.

We know that meditation can have an effect on the orbital-frontal cortex because of the recent work of neuroscientists. They studied the brains of many people and discovered that some individuals have strong orbital-frontal cortexes and some have weak ones. They were able to determine the strength of an individual’s orbital-frontal cortex by measuring its thickness. In the neocortex of the brain, thickness is an indication of the number of connections that exist between neurons. Those people who have thin orbital-frontal cortexes have less power over their minds, are more likely to smoke and more likely to be depressed. In contrast, meditation practitioners have thicker orbital-frontal cortexes, and they have greater control over their minds.

Some forms of meditation are of little or no help in the process of gaining control over one’s mind. For example, many people use mental imagery while meditating, and many others listen to “meditation music.” Such practices may help to reduce stress, however, they impede greater progress because they repress the problems that a person has. As such, more extensive working through of inner problems cannot take place.

The skill of becoming aware of our mental processes is essential to effectively deal with them. Yes, the technique of inhibiting our unconscious mind is a powerful part of this practice, but it relies on our ability to get in touch with our minds in the first place. The inhibition that we learn is not a whole-scale repression of our unconscious mind. It is a selective process which inhibits what needs to be controlled when it needs to be controlled. This is not a hampering of our unconscious mind. It is a powerful tactic which allows the conscious mind to control the unconscious mind when this is needed, rather than be overpowered by the unconscious mind inopportunely.

Since “meditation” can refer to so many different mental activities, it is better to label this new procedure with a new name. There are many other words for meditation, such as mindfulness, contemplation, focusing, and awareness. It is this last word that I suggest for this new practice, since awareness is such an important part of the process which allows a person to gain a far-reaching control of his or her mind. Awareness or awareness sessions is what I call this new practice of gaining deeper insight into one’s mind and acquiring access to the orbital-frontal cortex so that we can engage its power skillfully and effectively.

Joy is the end result of the control we develop over our minds. Once we have eliminated stress, frustration, and worries, we naturally feel good in our activities and fulfilled in our relationships. We develop energy, confidence, and a zest for life. We become willing to face new challenges, and they become stimulating and rewarding.

The prospect of changing your brain may seem beyond our capabilities, but actually it is something we do all the time.

Neuroscientists call this “neuroplasticity.” This refers to the fact that changes are made to our brain whenever we learn new ideas or develop new behavior patterns. We develop new synapses between neurons and create changes in neural pathways whenever we play baseball, meet an interesting person, or learn geometry. We similarly make changes to our brain when we develop the skill to control our minds. Developing mental power and skills requires practice and effort, but it is something we all can do and need to do.