If a psychiatrist tells me I have a “biochemical imbalance” when I am lethargic, depressed, manic, or schizophrenic where my life is a mess does that mean when I am energetic, cheerful, exuberant, and in the zone of my game where “every shot is nothing but net,” my “biochemical imbalance” is a “biochemical in-balance”?
The “science” of emotional regulation kept me imprisoned in a living hell for nearly twenty years.
The “logic” of cognitive regulation through emotional guidance set me free.
The world that your (neuroplastic) mind understood yesterday, will no longer exist tomorrow if you change your cognitive habits today. When I came to the point in my life that I understood “where I am is not my fault, but it is now my responsibility,” that is when life started getting better for me.
Dark Night of the Full Moon: School of Hard Knocks (22,200 words)
Andrew O. Jackson
free downloadable PDF, new tab (2024-04-14b)
Published by: Symbiotic Psychology Press · P.O. Box 930153 · Verona, WI 53593 USA
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The greatness of the human life experience emerges from the flames of individual desire arising out of hell’s fiery conflicts on earth. Intention is forged in these fires. Emotion aligns our journey with these new intentions. Each succeeding generation will have its own mountains to climb and waters to cross with their own stars to navigate towards. Intent is that guiding star and our emotions perceive its light. The more joyous the feeling, the more harmonious and powerful the wonders revealed through life’s journey.
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“I like to say I have a PhD in Psychology from the School of Hard Knocks. The difference being that an accredited school requires classes, exams, and a successful defense of one’s own dissertation. I, on the other hand, either realize, develop, and self-prescribe a new psychology of cognitive-emotional behavior more in line with natural evolution and live, or fail and die.”
Andrew O. Jackson suffered from psychotic mania, suicidal depression, and schizophrenic tendencies. He was in and out of mental hospitals from 1979 to 1996. Once after another “blackout” period, he “awoke” in a mental ward and wondered how he got there this time. The nurse said he went up to a police car and told them that his friend needed help. His “friend” was a trash can. Another time he “awoke” with a rope in his hand ready to put an end to this torturous life when a voice asked him, “Can you go on?” “They” wanted him to continue this existence a while longer. He replied, “Yes” and got himself to a hospital.
Around 1993, in a moment of inspiration that has now led to his cognitive-emotional re-processing paper, he began a self-directed healing program using his good-feeling emotions, moods, attitudes, and feelings as indicators of, and a progression towards a healthy biochemical, neurological, and physiological state of being. After a couple more psychotic episodes (one that landed him in the El Paso County jail and led to a divorce from his first wife) and after seventeen years of therapists, psychologists, and psychiatrists, he no longer needed the benefits of their assistance. He has been medication-free and without disassociation, depression, or mania episodes since 1996.
Since 2005, he has been writing to academics around the world advancing a new emotional paradigm that defines cognition as causal to and emotions as an effect of biochemical, neurological, and physiological states of being. Emotions, instead of being regulated by cognitive behavior as current psychological academia prescribes, have evolved into a cognitive-emotional control mechanism to guide cognitive behavior towards the health, well-being, and prosperity of the individual.
He has an MS in Technology Education and an MS in Management Technology from the University of Wisconsin – Stout. He was a high school shop teacher, a college CAD (computer-aided design) instructor, a guest instructor in China teaching quality and inventory management, and a quality manager at an OEM (original equipment manufacturer). He is now happily married and retired from mechanical engineering, spending his summers sailboat racing and winters alpine skiing with his wife Barbie and their two cats.
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First-mate Barbie in charge and Captain Andy second in command
racing their E-scow, Avanti on Lake Mendota, Madison, Wisconsin USA.
Barbie and Andrew skiing at Vail, Colorado USA.
Ice boating with “Ole Blew” on Lake Mendota.
Gunkholing with “NorthStar” on the Baie Fine of Lake Huron, Canada.
Mindy and Jennifer being disturbed on their anchor watch.