What do you feel defines a well balanced person? What components do you consider important in attaining good balance? If spirituality or equivalent is a necessary component what are some of the components you would consider equivalent. If love and relationships are considered a necessary component what might be an acceptable substitute for those who for whatever reason have not achieved this?
Example; We have 1,000 mg of various natural chemicals available to us each day, with a recommended daily dosage of each one that come to a total of about 400 mg. Various activities we do throughout the day will either stimulate or repress the production of these various chemicals. The Dr. tells you: “ I want you to spend 1 hour a day in some kind of physical activity outdoors, I want you to spend at least 2 hours a day of quality time with your wife and family, you need at least 2 hours a day of some type of creative thinking or activity, and I recommend you take at least an hour for social interaction where you are well received and comfortable. Of course you will need to work 8 hours a day and sleep 8 hours a day.
If you were the Dr. what would you recommend?
I like to reflect back on a more primitive society when I think of this. As a man I see myself out trying to solve problems of hunting, finding food, new sources of fibers and building materials etc. And then I see myself at the campfire at night telling of my discoveries and being appreciated. This would solidify my place in the village and make it easier for me to find a desirable mate. And most importantly establish an identity. I can cross these over to modern times equivalents.
Recommended daily dosage of vitamins and minerals may be 400 mg. I can guarantee you’ll need a lot more natural chemicals than that to survive, though.
When I get into my autotelic zone of painting/sculpting, I think I feel something akin to spirituality. There’s a feeling that I’m apart of something much bigger than myself, that I have a purpose, and that I’m not just a bunch of atoms.
Since I’m not a spiritual person, I am grateful that I get to experience this feeling.
I have to say, though, I’d be would wary of a doctor who tried to write a prescription for my life, beyond a general recommendation to eat, sleep, and stay active. I have had people “should” on me before. Even though they mean well, their advice never works for me. Always falling short is hard on the ego and leads to depression.
Plus, I think feeling good and being productive is more important than being “balanced” just for the sake of it. Some of history’s most remarkable people have been unbalanced, because all they wanted to do is play with equations, jigger with pea plants, paint nudes, write code, compose symphonies, etc. I think finding one’s place in the world is much more important than striving for balance. I wouldn’t want to have a doctor who disagreed with this.
I agree with you, i think creativeness can fill the voids in many areas of our lives we may be missing out in. I don’t believe ballance means equal parts as much as it does sufficient stimulation. I was just using the above as an example of what some might consider kind of typical.
I don’t think there is a substitute. Meaningful social relationships (with family, spouses, friends, coworkers, community, etc) where you can be authentic, safe, forgiven, accepted, cared about, connected, etc. are very important to emotional resiliency and quality of life since we are social animals. The fact that in western culture we place almost no value in these things and instead value signs of dominance and social influence (looks, power, income, career, mating prospects, IQ) is likely a big part of why we have so many psychological problems. If we spent anywhere near as much time building meaningful community as we do trying to achieve power and success we’d be much healthier mentally.
So I don’t think there is a substitute.
Beyond that, self acceptance and self compassion is a major factor in quality of life (well I’m sure genetics plays a major role too, but we really can’t control that). Carl Jung said ‘neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering’ which is true. People can’t accept themselves, so they engage in tons of Freudian ego defenses to hide from and overcompensate for their pains and flaws. The ability to have a realistic perception of yourself and to have compassion and acceptance for yourself has a role in how well we deal with setbacks and how much enjoyment we get in life (not to mention the kinds of people we are drawn to. People who treat themselves nicely are drawn to people to also treat them nicely).
What you say about chemicals has nothing to do with the rest of what you say, which is about psychological balance and health. Although it is probably technically true that the natural chemical balances within your body and brain are related to your psychological condition, the relationship is extremely complex (and poorly understood), so to all practical intents and purposes they might as well not be related at all.
You nailed exactly what I was hoping this discussion would steer toward. As a lay person I can best relate to my own life and to some degree that of close friends, to a lesser degree those I have worked with.
As complex as the relationship between the brain chemicals and our psycholgical condition may be I feel the dynamics behind them are very straightforward, mostly predictable, and not overly complicated. We get rewards where we can. If we haven't experienced successes in vital areas we seek out substitutes or just go into depressions. I feel proffessionals should be better able to identify these area we are lacking and prescribe excersizes in living that might simply give better results. Good results compound on one another.
No, you seem to have entirely missed the point of my previous post. I was saying that the dynamics of the relationship between brain chemicals and psychological condition (and the behaviors through which you may be able to affect your psychological condition) are extremely complicated, not very much understood by science, and not at all straightforward or predictable. If you want to get an understanding of what you can do (short of taking drugs) to improve or otherwise change your psychological condition, it is best to leave brain chemicals out of it.
Maybe, for instance, exercise tends to make people more cheerful. (I am not saying that is true, it is just an example.) If so, if you want to be more cheerful it might be (other things being equal) a good idea to get more exercise. What is more, if, and experiment has confirmed the exercise-cheer correlation, your doing so is based on science. No doubt brain chemistry plays some role in how exercise affects cheerfulness, but nobody knows much about how that works, and you don’t need to know in order to make use of (or indeed, scientifically test) the facts about exercise and cheer.
NJTT, I did read your post. I disagreed with you conclusion but felt you had nailed the issue at hand.
For the sake of an easy to understand analogy for lay persons such as myself, I see the chemicals the same way I see primary colors that are used by paint stores for mixing paints. I would compare our mood or state of mind to the a specific color arrived at by the mixing of these various primary colors. We may go from shades of gray or blue to shades of red or orange depending on where we were at that day.
In my opinion it is not neccessary to know exactly what blend of colors is needed to arrive at a certain color as long as we know which buttons to push to get the end result we are looking for. I think where a lot of us fail is that we attempt to go straight to the proper color or mood before we have cleaned all the contaminated colors from the base color. I feel like just being aware that some bio chemical reaction is taking place makes it easier for a subject to accept the needed changes.
Therapists tend to spend a lot of time talking to patients about their history. How honest patients are and how accuratey they are able to convey thier history is up for debate. I feel establishing profiles based on a patients successes or failures in different areas of their lives may offer a more accurate insight into what is actually going on with them. Over my lifetime I have seen quite a few people successfully turn thier lives around becuase of some small twist of fate that happened to be successful. Maybe a job they were very good at, a hobby they gained some recognition at, a good relationship, religion, new group of friends etc. The topic can go in so may different directions it really is hard to address it fron any single standpoint.