HUMAN LOSS & SEPARATION ANXIETY DISTRESS:
A Personal Story of Panic Attack and Anxiety Understood
Through Jaak Panksepp’s 7 Emotional Brains Model
And the Lesson of Loss Learned for the Family of Humanity
“He has well profited who learns by loss.” Michelangelo
This is Jack Carney, in Auckland, New Zealand, perhaps one of the world's first billionaires of LOSS.
These words will introduce you to a topic I have had a life long interest and experience in: HUMAN LOSS in all its forms but particularly the deaths of most highly valued, intimate others. In terms of the Michelangelo quote I am a billionaire in LOSS. I have learned from the TEST of LOSS its necessary LESSON of CARE. I learned to use my L.O.S.S. to LINK me to others (L.inking O.ur S.eparate S.elves).
I claim the seminal work of the affective neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp and the cardiologist-epidemiologist James J. Lynch scientifically explain the CAUSE of the MENTAL DISORDER EPIDEMIC WORLDWIDE in the Welfare States. And I am convinced that if you understand their work you will also know the CURE for the CAUSE. My 72 years of life lived in six countries with four wives, two children and many LOSS experiences embody the living proof of the truth of Panksepp’s and Lynch’s findings.
I created a non-profit, Social Enterprise, I named LOSS LINKS to understand and support HUMAN LOSS in all its varieties and variables:
Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/LOSSLINKS/
Website: http://losslinks.webs.com/
Accompanying LOSS LINKS now also are my CARERS FOR HEALTH CARERS as well as MOUNT MASLOW MENTORS.
www.facebook.com/CarersForHealthCarers
www.facebook.com/groups/MountMaslowMentors
These three Social Enterprises are based on providing a free Worldwide Call-in Service (chat, speak, or view) available 24/7/365 in multiple languages via an application, for persons suffering Loss who feel isolated, lonely and without anyone to care for them. Callers can talk intimately—and anonymously if desired—with volunteer Mentor-Listeners capable of Heart-felt Communication. I am seeking a donor-philanthropist to fund the startup of this Worldwide Call-in Service that I believe is desperately needed.
The 21st Century has witnessed an Epidemic of Isolation and Loneliness in response to Human LOSS. Neither traditional Family and Religion nor Modern Medicine has slowed the explosive growth of Mental and Social Disorders. Today we prematurely die of Communicative Diseases (poor relationships) more than Communicable Diseases (influenza). The World’s Uncared for are Crying Out for Care—heartfelt talk that connects them intimately to another Human Being. Being linked by talk to another who Cares brings healing. The CURE is CARE.
JACK’S HISTORY OF ANXIETY AND PANIC
What follows is my life story of HUMAN LOSS in terms of its expression as PANIC and ANXIETY that result from Separation Anxiety Distress (appropriate acronym S.A.D.) and the Life Lessons I learned from the Tests of Loss.
My first Anxiety Episode (low level Panic Attack) came in 1989 when I was the sole full time carer for my second wife, Elaine, who was dying from terminal cancer. Her dying took place over some 9 months, and about midway through this period, I experienced the first and sudden appearance of a strong sense of Anxiety/Fear coming from no particular event. Nothing specific seemed to cause it. I was puzzled as well as scared.
In 1989 as a self-reliant male of 45 years, who had been through many relatively extreme emotional experiences including spiritual deaths/rebirths, etc., to have this Anxiety/Fear rise so strongly in me from nowhere challenged my sense of self-respect and I felt some shame when I went to my doctor for help. We were friends and he gave me a small amount of some benzodiazepine with the comforting comment that he too would feel anxious doing what I was doing and knowing me he was not worried about me becoming dependent on the drug and just take a little and see if it helps. As I think back on it, the disclosure of my vulnerability was probably the main helper, as I took only a little of the medication several times and the Anxiety went away for the remaining period of my wife’s dying. I continued without any further Anxiety through her death and my grieving until 1991.
A month after Elaine’s death, May 1989, I met Katharine, the 1st of 3 Grand Turning Points of my life. Now, an explanation of why I met Katharine so quickly after Elaine’s death. I had been separated from Elaine for four years when I went back to be her full time carer for the nine months from when her cancer returned after an absence of six years to when she died. So after Elaine’s death I resumed my search for a woman to share my life with. It only took a month to find her through an exclusive dating agency in Australia.
It was Love at First Sight and Love of my Life. Katharine moved in to live with me for the first three months after we met. But I valued my independent freedom more than committing to an exclusive relationship with her that she desired and so she went back to Brisbane to live nearer her work. For two years, every weekend I drove the one-hour trip from my home to stay the weekend with her. Although I chose not to commit to her, I had no interest in any other woman from the time I first saw her. I had no hint of Anxiety with her during the three years I lived in Australia.
Then in 1991 I left Katharine to move to America to make my fortune. I had invented a new household product and sold it to a marketing company who thought it had considerable profit potential. I was finally going to make my entrepreneurial adventures pay-off; I had many past business failures but this would make me financially comfortable at last. I flew Katharine over to be with me and I rented a Jeep and we toured America for 2 months flying high. Then a series of events occurred that left me broke on the mean streets of Los Angeles with only a credit card, my wits and the woman who loved me through all the ups and downs. To add to the insecurity I was in a country where I was in a legal limbo due to my past refusal to fight a war and being deemed a criminal by the Empire of that time. I bought a car with the last of my credit and became one of the best paid courier drivers in L.A. Katharine rode in the passenger’s seat and navigated as I sped expertly through the L.A. traffic jams using my car racing skills from youth. However, the Anxiety reappeared even stronger (although not what I now would term a full blown Panic Attack) than when it first appeared in 1989.
I could not sleep and was often restless and resorted to running and exercise to relax. I went to a doctor who diagnosed me as “depressed”. He gave me a Tricyclic medication that enabled me to get the sleep I could not seem to obtain without it. I refused the label of “depressed” as I had not withdrawn in any way from life. To the contrary I was working 12 hour days, 6 days a week, exercising, writing poetry and prose, and living with a wonderfully supportive woman—Katharine—who loved me in spite of my inability to decide to marry her as she wished. My Anxiety (never a full blown Panic Attack) continued up and down as I earned a living trying to recoup my financial loss while enjoying Katharine as much as my “fallen” status would allow me—which turned out to be not enough for her—rightly so. In August of 1992 she decided to leave me to go back to Australia and resume the executive market research work she had been doing that would grant her more self-worth and earnings. My refusal to commit to her exclusively with marriage settled the issue.
On the day she left from L.A.X. airport I noticed a small hole opening up where my belly button used to be. Day by day with her absence from me the hole grew ever larger until the Void in the center of me made the message overwhelmingly clear. She was the ONE, my Soul Mate, my Other Half—our values matched almost totally as did our self-development too except for my immaturity of non-commitment. My vaunted freedom as independence from any constraining relationship suddenly became the adolescent orientation it always was. My giving up my “Independence” for the much greater value of our “Interdependence” became the 2nd Great Turning for me.
Commitment was the key that unlocked me from the cell of my solitary confinement. For when Katharine was with me in L.A. and I did not commit, my Anxiety remained. It was only her leaving me to go back to Australia that finally woke me to fully understand (embody emotionally) her supreme value to me. Once I committed to her, my Anxiety-Panic disappeared. I had no Anxiety-Panic whatsoever—not a trace, NONE. In retrospect it remains astounding to me that I took three years to finally grow up and mature from the Love of Wisdom to the Wisdom of Love. I count myself as the most fortunate of men who had a woman who valued me enough to wait for me to live what became our Great Love. The four years from the day I decided to commit to her were the happiest years of my life to that point in time and since.
My 3rd Great Turning was Katharine’s nine months of dying and death on December 17, 1996. Only a few days after Katharine’s death, the Anxiety returned as ABSOLUTE PANIC. I staggered through the disintegration of who I was as I lived out her loss. I slept only a few hours a night and would often wake in the middle of the night with a Panic Attack that necessitated my main way of coping with it: taking a walk, going out for a drive, walking in a public place such as a shopping mall if they were open. I tried to use my friends to help me cope but they were too frightened by Katharine’s death at a youthful 34 (I was 18 years older than her and all her friends were her age) to be strong enough to bear my grief and to be there for me when the Panic Attacked.
Katharine’s dying and death were the 3rd Great Turning (the last?) of my life because from this experience I finally understood the Human Condition and learned the LESSON OF LOVE FROM THE TEST OF LOSS. I learned to use LOSS TO LINK ME TO OTHERS.
From Katharine’s death in 1996 until meeting my Chinese fourth wife, Helene, in late 2005, the full blown Panic Attacks receded and mutated into a chronic off-on Anxiety. I coped with by starting up new businesses, becoming a community activist, falling in love with two new women, using tricyclics, controlled drinking (alcohol), teaching, coaching, riding my bike, and connecting with friends and loved ones as much as I could. For two months from the initial commitment to permanent relationship my bond was strong and clear with Helene who later became my fourth wife, and my anxiety disappeared.
A few months later after our “honeymoon” period, Helene’s bipolar disorder came between us, and although we were married, I knew our relationship would not continue as a marriage. The Anxiety began to come back little by little up until our divorce in 2008 when my Anxiety-Panic roared back again and remained until 2010.
In this year I met another wonderful woman, Zoe, who moved in and lived with me. She stayed with me a year during which I was doing my usual working, drinking and taking the tricyclics as I had been doing since 1997. During this year of our intimate and satisfying relationship, the Anxiety-Panic almost disappeared again.
When Zoe left to live on her own, my Anxiety-Panic returned with the most physically disabling Panic Attack ever that left me face down on the ground and for which an ambulance was called (neighbors thought I had a heart attack but all was ok, only Panic!). Thankfully, I have not had to endure such an episode since.
From that time to this 2017, the anxiety comes and goes at various intensities and for various periods. About 16 months ago I stopped drinking alcohol for the first time in many years, and thus was better able to use my anxiety more directly to link me to life and intimate others. The acronym L.O.S.S. contains the core of Wisdom of LOSS. We must use loss to link us again to life and others: L.inking O.ur S.eparate S.elves.
SEPARATION DISTRESS IS THE PRECIPITATING CAUSE OF MENTAL DISORDERS
The Loss of Loved Ones and its linkage to the Anxiety/Panic episodes I think is well evidenced in the events reported above. Research backs me on this. In Life Events Preceding the Onset of Panic Disorder (1985) Faravelli, writes that panic patients were more likely to have ‘underwent a major life event (death or severe illness, either personal or of a cohabiting relative) in the two months preceding the onset of symptoms.’ And, from an article on Jaak Panksepp, the affective neuroscientist, Sarah-Neena Koch, wrote: “He cites research that points to early childhood loss as a major risk factor for future depression and panic attacks. He proposes that one may be more vulnerable to depression and panic attacks ‘because of permanent developmental modification of the emotional substrates of separation distress.’”
Beyond the Losses of the women as an adult I recorded above, my entire life has been found in LOSS from infancy on. My mother died when I was 3; my father when I was 14. Two wives
(as described above) died from cancer their hand in mine to the end. I divorced two wives. My adopted son, suffering from schizophrenia, killed himself. My Chinese fourth wife was a diagnosed bi-polar who I helped out of a lockup ward. Too many friends and clients killed themselves outright or through various drawn out self-destructive addictions to alcohol and other drugs. Professionally, I have worked in Palliative Care and as a researcher for Queensland Health interviewing addicts and the mentally ill. Further, I had a number of friends who had been diagnosed with serious mental illnesses. So I am familiar with LOSS in most of its forms.
JAAK PANKSEPP AND THE 7 PRIMARY PROCESS BRAINS
My most important explanatory discovery about LOSS in general and its specific relationship to Panic Attacks and Anxiety, came when I began reading the work of the renowned affective neuroscientist, Jaak Panksepp. Here is a brief introduction to his work:
"Jaak Panksepp’s work defines seven fundamental emotions [Emotional Brains—note Panksepp intentionally capitalizes the terms]: SEEKING, RAGE, FEAR, LUST, CARE, PANIC/GRIEF (ATTACHMENT) and PLAY. Discovered using brain-stimulation techniques to isolate emotion circuits, these primary-process systems are instinctual emotional systems - what we may think of as ‘drives’ or ‘motivations’. The Attachment system, or PANIC/GRIEF system as Dr. Panksepp calls it, serves an evolutionary function in helping us secure bonds with our parents as infants and with romantic partners, friends and family as adults. It’s governed by opioids (endorphins), chemicals in the brain that induce a feeling of comfort and satisfaction when triggered by an intimate bonding experience. If we’re separated from a caregiver in childhood or a partner in adulthood, a panic response is triggered. This is characterized by distress, which later turns to grief and sadness. This response is thought to have evolved from when a lost juvenile animal would call for its mother and try to attract her attention in the wild after which the brain mechanism prompts the mammal to ‘give up’ as a means of self-preservation and protection." Antonia Short
“Jaak Panksepp explains that ‘as indexed by diverse as primates, rodents, and birds,’ PANIC/LOSS neurocircuitry is clearly distinct from FEAR neurocircuitry. Electrical stimulation to very specific brain areas produces the separation calls. He decided to call the neurocircuitry that generates feelings of loneliness, grief, and separation distress—as well as panic attacks in humans—the PANIC system. Panksepp emphasizes that the PANIC/LOSS system ‘is especially important in the elaboration of social emotional processes related to attachment.’” Sarah-Neena Koch
“I would anticipate that clients will often experience enormous relief to be simply educated about their emotional primes and to recognize how they can become masters over these primes rather than being mastered by them. The mere act of learning about them as ancient evolutionary tools for living can take an enormous burden off troubled minds. A better understanding of our ancient emotional energies may allow individuals to better deal with the upsetting feelings of the brain and develop cognitive habits that help engender more positive feelings.” Jaak Panksepp
NOTE for therapists/counsellors:
It is interesting to me, and I think might be of interest to the therapeutic community using Panksepp’s model to help those suffering from mental disorders, is the fact that I have never fallen into “Depression”. For whatever reason(s), my 6th PANIC/LOSS Brain has become stuck in “Panic” mode. When I can’t obtain enough CARE, I keep being sent by my PANIC Brain to my 1st SEEKING Brain to get that CARE. This has enabled me to not only survive my multiple losses but to thrive through them. As I wrote above it is through LOSS that I learned the LESSON OF LOVE which is CARE beyond genes or money.
HOW PANKSEPP’S WORK APPLIES TO HUMANITY AS WELL AS ME
The etymological meaning of CARE: PIE root gar- "cry out, call, scream"
I am convinced the CAUSE OF THE MENTAL ILLNESS EPIDEMIC worldwide in the Welfare States (anxiety, depression, bipolar, schizophrenia) is now clearly established by Panksepp’s work and that of the epidemiologist-cardiologist, James J. Lynch’s three books on the Medical Consequences of Loneliness.
“Mental and substance use disorders are the leading cause of nonfatal illness worldwide, with a global disease burden that trumps that of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, diabetes, or transport injuries, new research shows.” Medscape
“Communicative Disease, coined by Dr. Lynch, is the absence of heartfelt communication in human relationships which leads to loneliness and social isolation.” Olive Poison
“At times it seems as if our nation [U.S.A.], having reached its high-water mark of prosperity, is simultaneously awash and drowning in a sea of narcotics and prescriptive medications to help deaden the pain of isolation and loneliness. It is almost as if we have agreed to submit voluntarily to a national, chemically-induced frontal lobotomy to cope with the loneliness and disconnectedness of our age. For all of the recent health data suggest that if current trends persist, Communicative Disease, and its resultant loneliness, will equal Communicable Disease as a leading cause of premature death in all post-industrialized nations during the twenty-first century.” James J. Lynch
The CAUSE: The CARE 5th Brain has been socially disconnected from our 6th PANIC Brain. CARE is what keeps our species going. Without it we would be extinct along with the other 98% of species that didn’t make it. If this Crying Out for CARE is not responded to properly it leads to the litany Mental Disorders plaguing the advance economy, Western Welfare States. A significant proportion of the population in all age ranges—some 20% to 50%—is struggling with controlling its FEELINGS OF SEPARATION DISTRESS that are at the core of substance abuse, under-and-over-eating, crime, and a host of other self-and-other-destructive behaviors.
Thus, what the West in general is suffering from, is a disruption or compromise of its CARE behavior upon which its survival depends. When you break the primordial link between Parent/Carer and Child/Cared For (of any age) you have the personal emotional disaster of titanic dimensions known as the Mental Illness Epidemic—especially depression and anxiety—that we now have in the Welfare States. The reasons for this profound DISCONNECT I sum in the phrase the “IRON CAGE” which I will not go into here.
Because we know the CAUSE OF THE EPIDEMIC, we also know the only PERMANENT CURE: Freely entered into and responsibly maintained INTIMATE RELATIONSHIPS OF MUTUAL CARE—to link once again the 5th CARE Brain to the 6th PANIC Brain.
I invite any contacts.
My email: themesofjack@gmail.com;
Skype: Jack Carney FreeEach
Jack, at Home in the Universe, using L.O.S.S.
(L.inking O.ur S.eparate S.elves) to Link me to Others and Life.
