Posted by glenn on April 17, 2003, at 16:46:40
I have managed a bit of thinking about your post regarding cortisol and the two interesting theories you mentioned and I have a problem with them both. I could accept both as being possible for many people but as you bring up the evolutionary aspect it seems a bit unlikely that everyone would work in the same way.
An idea is that it pays to have certain members of a population who are either supersensitive or perhaps wired differently in order to give such a population early warnings of possible danger.
Such an idea is expressed slightly differently but similarly in the book- " living with our genes" by Dean Hamer and Peter Copeland in the concept of harm avoidance and in - " The highly sensitive person " by Elaine N Aron.
I cannot work out if this is simply a matter of extra sensitivity or a different structure to those mentioned in the theories but my experience of cognitive therapy may illustrate it.
I had 30 sessions and in spite of being called a compliant patient I could never convince my therapist that for me feelings came first , then bad or negative thoughts.
She always used to say to me that cognitive therapy worked better if you knew waht you were afraid/ worried/ depressed about and I could never give her a better answer than " how I feel, after I have begun to feel it!)
Sounds strange and maybe it is, but I guess ther is some evolutionary advantage to having some who feel and act before they can cognitively respond.
Also my reaction is not adrenaline like at all, no sweating, thumping heart etc.
I guess no one can say if this is cortisol or not or whether that is just somewhere downstream, but for me I know my levels are massively high and the symptoms are rather wierd.
Interestingly enough Xanax is the only benzo that helps, valium for example makes me much more anxious ?!
Food for thought!All the best
Glenn
poster:glenn
thread:220143
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20030417/msgs/220143.html