Better-ish

As a Gay Sitcom Dad, I’m always in search of typecasting ideas. 

For example, a couple of years ago I wrote in “Tragedy Tomorrow” that most days I saw myself in striped pajamas as the Movie Dad from Life is Beautiful, shielding his son from the horror of the Holocaust. Only “once or twice a year” did I manage to achieve the ultimate parental glow:  on a particularly good day, I’d end a conversation with one of my children “feeling like Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird.”

In the last few months I’ve experienced another exponential improvement in my mental health. The timing is particularly fortunate – with the exception of five days’ respite over Winter Break, I've been a full-time single dad ever since my ex moved back to the Midwest in August.

Nowadays I can pull off ultra-sensitive single dad/lawyer Atticus Finch mode whenever I sit down for a soulful conversation with one of my children. But I like to mix things up. Some days I lean more toward Oscar Wilde – the world needs more Witty Gay Sitcom Dad. However, my fallback role is Jeeves. It’s best for everyone if my kids think of me as omniscient and omnicompetent.

Last Wednesday, Jeeves failed me completely. I was discussing the Olympics with my eleven-year-old son. He didn’t believe me when I insisted the Tokyo games will be held a couple of years from now, four years after the last Summer Olympics.

Later that day I had a similar conversation with one of the Baritones from Vancouver Men’s Chorus. We were trying to figure out when we sang “Love Shack” by the B-52s. By my mental calculation it was a couple of June concerts ago. Not four.

I was absolutely convinced it’s been two years since VMC’s “Road Trip” show and the Rio de Janeiro Olympics. Fortunately Jeeves and I didn’t bet anyone a new X-Box.

This strange two-year gap in my internal chronology shouldn’t come as a complete surprise. Here’s what I wrote a couple of years ago in “Woke”:

I am currently living in my own Hallmark Christmas movie.

Last Christmas is a blur. I retained only a couple of memories from last year’s VMC concert. Mostly I hid in dark corners. Indeed, most of 2015 - 2017 is lost in a fog. After increasing frustration with practicing law and raising kids in Seattle, I grasped at the false hope of moving to Bellingham for my dream job. Instead, a tragic confluence of bad choices, bad luck, and bad people destroyed my life. 

This Christmas is different. I can tell I've turned an important corner in the last few months. My mental health is noticeably better – not just the wearying projection of normalcy, but my actual mental health. I get out of bed and do stuff. The kids are thriving in Bellingham. I voraciously read and write again after years of drought. Things make sense for the first time in decades. Although I miss my faraway friends from earlier epochs, I’m putting down roots and making friends again. Not only did I enjoy singing in VMC’s holiday concerts, but I finally overcame my anxiety over socializing with all those nice Canadians just across the border. (They’re mostly harmless.) I even managed to sing a fleeting faux-Jewish solo without melting down.

It’s like I woke up out of a coma just in time for Christmas Eve. A holiday miracle. 

This is the point in the Hallmark Channel movie where everyone hugs and cries. Then I ask, “So what did I miss?”

What feels different this time is the rest of the fog has lifted. The scariest part of living with mental illness is when you know you’re not yourself. Anhedonia smothers you like a blanket, and loved ones describe strangely uncharacteristic behaviors you don't remember.  

Now I feel like myself, even when I feel unwell. The good news is that most of my fuzzy memories have finally snapped into place. The bad news is that my brain concluded the simplest way to adjust my internal clock was to delete two years from the timeline. It’s sorta like switching to Daylight Savings Time. Or like when England converted from the Julian Calendar to the Gregorian Calendar, and eleven days were dropped from September 1752.

So how am I doing with some of the other challenges I’ve described on this blog? For one thing, telephone customer service representatives across North America and the Indian subcontinent can rejoice. They don’t push my buttons anymore.

As longtime readers will recognize, this change is a big deal. Numerous early blog essays were devoted to my horrifying experiences dealing with Comcast’s wretched customer service. In contrast, for the last month I’ve been struggling to get my mother’s iPhone connected to the rest of us as part of Apple’s byzantine “Family Sharing” program. So far I’ve had five long telephone conversations with Apple technical support, as well as exchanging numerous emails. 

As my parents can attest, I’ve calmly handled the entire Kafka-esque experience. At one point, someone from Apple sent me an email suggesting that I log out of my own AppleID, and log back in. The next time I spoke with a technician on the telephone, she gasped and said “ooh, that was a bad idea.”

According to Apple, my mother will only have to wait another two weeks to access the family music account. At least she can now check Facebook and Fitbit again. Meanwhile I still can’t get my laptop, iPhone, and computer to synch. But somehow life goes on.

There’s been much less progress with some of my other PTSD-amplified anxiety symptoms. For example, I still struggle with serious bruxism, i.e. teeth-grinding.  

A few months ago, the pain in my jaw was excruciating. For the first time in my life, I scheduled a nonregular dentist appointment. I was convinced that I needed a replacement filling or a root canal. Fortunately, the X-ray didn’t reveal any serious problems. Unfortunately, my teeth grinding is out of control once again. Meanwhile, our dog Buster chewed up my night guard along with several more pairs of socks and underwear. 

So for Christmas my parents got me socks and a new night guard.

My daughters were born two weeks apart. Rosalind was adopted three and half year after Eleanor’s birth, and the girls have zero in common biologically, physically, or otherwise. We have an unusual hashtag in our family:  #NotTwins. For example:

Last month, one of my daughters sat me down and said “Papa, you realize you’re supposed to look people in the eyes when you talk to them, don’t you?”

Later that same week, my other daughter hugged me and said “Papa, I’m glad you don’t stammer when you’re home with us.”

I use the catchall phrase “social anxiety” to refer to various overdetermined layers of tics and behaviors. Some of mine relate to codependency, which my insightful Bellingham physician Dr. Heuristic identified four years ago when he diagnosed me with PTSD. Fortunately, I’ve successfully faced codependency after years of Codependents Anonymous and other treatment steps. Even the most relentless narcissists from my prior life finally realize I’m not going to return their texts and give them one more chance.

Other social challenges result from the tyranny of the closet and the lingering effects of trauma. As I wrote in “Avoidant,” most theories of human psychology, from Freudian analysis to Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy, place great weight on what we avoid. Avoidant thoughts and behaviors indirectly reveal how our mind works, or doesn’t work. As I gradually sift through layers of painfully repressed memories, I’m increasingly able to interact with other people.

Finally, some of my social quirks are just part of my personality. But they’ve always been heightened in predictably stressful contexts, such as miscarriages of justice, or spending time around other gay men. As I wrote last month in “Artificial Emotional Intelligence,” this has been one of the biggest challenges I’ve faced over the last four years: 

PTSD had the effect of moving me several notches further away from “normal” on the autism spectrum, particularly in my interactions with other gay men. I’ve lost much of my already dubious ability to read ordinary social cues. Faces are a blank. Nowadays I can’t tell if someone is hitting on me, or challenging me to a duel.  

Lately I’ve been reading John Elder Robison’s book Be Different: Adventures of a Free-Range Aspergian. I can relate to many of his tales and tips about life as a social misfit. On the other hand, the recent improvements in my mental health have included exciting progress in this area. I recognized my biggest breakthrough a couple of weeks ago, when I was treated by 911 medics and sent to the hospital for the first time in my life. (A bunch of fierce Canadian drag queens pushed me down the backstage stairs at the Granville Island Revue Stage. Allegedly. It’s a complicated story. You’ll have to read “Falling Can Be A Drag” for yourself.)

When abusive treatment by my new Bellingham employers first triggered strange new anxiety symptoms, the most visible sign was a dramatic increase in my formerly mild case of trichotillomania – the compulsion to pull out your hair. I began ferociously rubbing my forehead and yanking out what's left of the hair above it. Most of the time I’m unaware it’s happening. By the end of particularly stressful days, my scalp is raw. To mitigate the effect, I learned to fiddle instead with over-sized pipe cleaners – “fuzzy things.”

Ironically, my trichotillomania is worse than ever. I’ve exhausted the supply of fuzzy pipe cleaners at the Michael’s craft store in Bellingham. So I may have to plan a special trip to Seattle this week, just to stock up on fuzzy things and coronavirus supplies. 

If you insist on searching for a silver lining in the plagues I’ve endured over the last four years, particularly the impact of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (or rather the impact of my former employers’ horrifying treatment that triggered PTSD symptoms), there is one obvious candidate:  my new-found freedom from decades of debilitating writer’s block. If nothing else, writing has been essential to each improvement in my mental health.

However, I’m tempted to argue the most important change has been to transform my trauma-inspired “fixed mindset” into a “growth mindset.” Here is psychologist Carol Dweck's definition of each type of mindset:

In a fixed mindset, students believe their basic abilities, their intelligence, their talents, are just fixed traits. They have a certain amount and that's that, and then their goal becomes to look smart all the time and never look dumb. In a growth mindset, students understand that their talents and abilities can be developed through effort, good teaching and persistence. They don't necessarily think everyone's the same or anyone can be Einstein, but they believe everyone can get smarter if they work at it. 

One image from Dweck’s book Mindset sticks with me. It comes from her description of a child psychology experiment. Researchers can accurately distinguish between students with a fixed mindset and those with a growth mindset by assigning each child a set of challenging brainteasers. In my mind, Dweck’s example of the boy with a fixed mindset sounds just like my son now, or me for three decades – wearily sighing at the prospect of work and failure. In contrast, Dweck’s growth mindset youth rubs his hands together and exclaims “I love puzzles!” 

Being forced to deal with one real disaster after another over the last few years eventually taught me how to bounce back from repeated failure. Life is good and getting better. Still, I hope my PTSD-induced symptoms will go away someday. Maybe I will be magically cured once my villainous abusers finally take responsibility for their actions. Or when the courts order them to take responsibility. I know it’s just a theory, but humor me. 

Nevertheless, if losing two years of my life and pulling out my hair every day forever are the worst things that ever happen to my family, I’ll take it.

Previously in Rock Bottom Stories: “Maximum Leverage.”   Next: “Least Gay Great Day Ever.”

Make Waves

As Harvey Milk said, the most important thing you will ever do as a gay person is come out. Over the last few decades, our collective coming out has transformed society. 

Coming out also transforms individuals. Of course safety and other practical considerations can put reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions on how we do it. But even as an introvert, my own experiences and my observation of other LGBT folks have taught me to err on the side of outing yourself.  The truth makes you free.

Today I publicly came out once again by revealing an important part of my story for the first time – the role that Western Washington University and its abusive leaders played in destroying my health and career. Here are my prepared remarks from the public comment period during the December 13, 2019 meeting of the Western Board of Trustees.

My name is Roger Leishman. Some of you will remember me from when I had the honor of serving as Western’s Chief Legal Advisor. I'm here today to let you know why I suddenly disappeared, and what I’m doing with my life these days.

Four years ago I was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I realize I don’t resemble the typical image of a PTSD patient. My unexpected disability was rooted in trauma that occurred three decades ago, but my PTSD symptoms were triggered by recent events. 

Unfortunately, my employers at the Washington Attorney General’s Office bungled their response to my disability disclosure. They exacerbated my injuries, discriminated against me, and illegally fired me. Sadly, as other people living with mental illness can attest, my experience is all too common.

After I made enough progress with my PTSD, I submitted requests to the State under the Public Records Act and tried to figure out what happened. The documents shocked me. My former colleagues intentionally discriminated against me both as a disabled person and as an openly gay man – then embarked on a clumsy cover-up that continues today. 

One of the things I learned from the State’s incriminating email trail was the why – why did a bunch of supposedly smart lawyers break the law in their haste to expel an outsider who everyone acknowledged was providing exceptional legal services to the university?  

The answer: because former Western president Bruce Shepard demanded that I be fired. 

As I wrote in an early blog post, one of the few silver linings in Donald Trump’s poisonous orange cloud is that his election made it much easier to explain how malignant narcissist personality disorder works. I have no reason to doubt that Bruce Shepard was an able administrator and educator. (Unlike Donald Trump.) However, by the time I interacted with him as a lame duck during the 2015-16 school year, President Shepard was demonstrating increasingly obvious indicia of malignant narcissism. For example, Bruce Shepard became enraged by criticism, or even by the mere hint of someone saying “no” to him. 

When the lawyers at the Attorney General’s Office destroyed my life, they did it to accommodate President Shepard’s malice and prejudice. I look forward to sharing the detailed evidence I’ve gathered regarding President Shepard’s role. For now, I’ll point to one specific example, because it happened here in this room. 

I sang with Seattle Men’s Chorus for fifteen years. The Trustees were aware of my participation in the chorus; several Trustees had attended our concerts. SMC is one of the nation's oldest gay choruses, and one of Washington’s most successful arts organizations. During a public meeting of the Board in 2015, I compared the Trustees’ momentous task of choosing a new university president to the Seattle Men’s Chorus search to replace its conductor for the first time in thirty-five years. 

Documents produced under the Public Records Act revealed that the Washington Attorney General’s Office took adverse employment action against me because President Shepard told them he was offended by my LGBT arts analogy. 

Let that sink in. Bruce Shepard had me fired, in part, because he thought the real-world analogy I shared with you Trustees was too gay. 

While I was at Western, I personally observed and endured multiple examples of Bruce Shepard’s abuse of power. Perhaps my experience was isolated. I doubt it. 

Some of you are already familiar with name Matthew Babick. He was Western’s internal auditor until he was unilaterally fired by former President Shephard in April 2015, after Matt raised questions about the president’s expense account. I never met Matt when he was at WWU. But his daughter is in the same grade as my daughters, so over the last couple of years we’ve chatted at volleyball games and gymnastics meets. Last month I ran into Matt at the Sehome High School choir concert. I learned that he’d finally reached a settlement in his wrongful termination claim against the State – four and a half years after the Babicks were victims of serial abuser Bruce Shepard.

President Shepard’s abusive treatment of former Western student Tysen Campbell is even more horrifying than the plight of a couple of unemployed middle-aged dads. Four years ago, Mr. Campbell was a sophomore student athlete at Western. After racist provocations by Western’s rabble-rousing Associated Students President, Mr. Campbell published a brief response on an anonymous social media site, which he removed within seconds. Like the studentbody president's original post, Mr. Campbell’s comment was offensive, but protected by the First Amendment.

When Mr. Campbell was identified as the perpetrator, the first-time offender was jailed overnight, and charged with the exceptionally serious crime of felony harassment. He was publicly humiliated and kicked out of school in disgrace. No action was taken against any of the other students who contributed to the heated debate.

In January 2017, the Bellingham Herald ran a useful article recapping events in the case. The occasion of the Herald’s article was the final disposition of the case against Mr. Campbell. The prosecutor agreed to drop all charges. The decision not to pursue felony harassment charges is entirely understandable – Mr. Campbell’s statement did not constitute a true threat, and instead was protected from prosecution as free speech. See, e.g., State v. Kilburn, 151 Wn.2d 36, 54, 84 P.3d 1215 (2004); State v. Kohonen, 192 Wn. App. 567, 370 P.3d 16 (2016). Someday folks will look back at this episode as a tragic and irresponsible systemic failure.

In almost thirty years as a civil rights lawyer, I have never witnessed anything more appalling than Western’s violation of Mr. Campbell’s rights. All that was missing was a few deranged tweets. When I attempted to counsel President Shepard against continuing on this misguided course of action, his response was to insist on my termination. 

Not all abuse involves sex, but all abuse involves power and its misuse. 

One of the lessons of the #MeToo movement is that our collective silence enables repeated abuse by powerful men, then covers up their misconduct. I therefore invite other members of the Western community to come forward with their own stories of former President Shepard’s abuse of power. Feel free to contact journalists at the Western Front or Bellingham Herald, law enforcement, Western’s Equal Opportunity office, or myself. 

Please join me in speaking truth to power.

Lost Youth, Part 2

In “Lost Youth, Part 1,” I discussed the current Netflix documentary The Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened, about Stephen Sondheim and Hal Prince’s 1981 musical Merrily We Roll Along. The doomed original production of Merrily was cast with inexperienced young actors. Each looks back on his or her younger self – and the transformational experience they shared – with wistful awe.     

The same week I watched The Best Worst Thing, I finally got up the nerve to stream the powerful new HBO documentary about Wade Robson and James Safechuck, two men in their 30s who accuse Michael Jackson of repeatedly molesting them as children. Like The Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened, HBO's Leaving Neverland illustrates hows how the events of our youth cast long shadows.

Celebrated documentary director Dan Reed divided Leaving Neverland into a pair of two-hour segments. Most of the first half consists of excerpts from Reed’s one-on-one interviews with Robson and Safechuck, along with interviews with their mothers and a few other family members. These segments are intercut with contemporaneous news footage of Jackson, as well as archival photos, audio, and video from the families. 

Robson’s family is from Brisbane, Australia. After winning a Michael Jackson dance contest, Robson met his idol and then was invited onstage at a concert. Soon after, Jackson flew Robson to visit him in the States, and eventually sponsored most of the family’s emigration to California.

Safechuck is from suburban Simi Valley, California. With the encouragement of another stage mother, Safechuck began working in commercials. He met Jackson on the set of a Coke ad. Jackson adopted the family, sneaking over to their ranch house for “normal” nights out, and inviting them to his mansion.

Robson and Safechuck calmly relate parallel stories of being groomed for something special. The sexual details are matter-of-fact and chilling. In each case, Jackson slowly seduced the preteen superfan, both emotionally and physically. Meanwhile, Jackson successfully campaigned to alienate the boys from their families, and to make each boy complicit in their lovers' secret. The twisted bond with Jackson became the foundation of each man's successful career in show business, while disabling their capacity for healthy intimate relationships as adults.

The men’s accounts are relentless and cathartic. Yet the documentary's most interesting and troubling portraits are of each mother – juxtaposing the excitement of their brush with fame with each woman’s gradual recognition that she enabled horrifying abuse.

After watching the first half of Leaving Neverland, you are completely drained, absolutely convinced, and wonder what the filmmakers have left to say.

The second half of Leaving Neverland is even more devastating. The documentary’s true purpose is to show how abuse still traumatizes victims and their families many years after the original acts.   

The interviews with Robson and Safechuck turn from the crime to the cover-up, as each boys describes how he lied to protect Jackson from accusations of abuse. They also recount the difficulties they encountered as adults attempting to maintain healthy interpersonal relationships. Video footage from their 20s shows a couple of emotionally stunted adults. Robson and Safechuck tell the interviewer “We’re mentally little kids – we’ve just gotten older… Your putting it on yourself … I had a lot of self hatred, and I didn’t know why.”

As a traumatized gay Mormon who became an LGBT advocate, I’ve been examining the tyranny of the closet for more than three decades. Leaving Neverland resonates with other descriptions of the longterm effects of lies and emotional compartmentalization, such as therapist Alan Downs’ classic book Velvet Rage.

Leaving Neverland documents the collateral impact of abuse and deceit. Robson and Safechuck are not the only victims. For me, the most jaw dropping moment of the documentary was when we learned Robson’s father hanged himself the day after the rest of his family moved from Australia to California to be close to Jackson. 

The second half of Leaving Neverland also introduces the men’s wives. They describe the challenges of connecting with Robson and Safechuck, and the cloud that lifted when their husbands finally confronted their past with Jackson. The documentary shows how having children themselves became the catalyst for both men's transformation. With effective therapy and the support of their families, each began the long process of excavating memories, rebuilding human connections, and telling their stories.

The backlash to Leaving Neverland began immediately after the documentary premiered at Sundance. Diehard Michael Jackson fans refused to credit Robson’s and Safechuck’s allegations, and instead attacked the two accusers. They complained about the filmmakers’ choice to focus on the victims and their families rather than devoting equal time to Jackson’s side of the story. They also criticized the documentary for failing to cross-examine Robson and Safechuck about their motivations and potential inconsistencies in their stories. 

Leaving Neverland does include contemporaneous news footage showing other Jackson accusers and defenders. For example, Macauley Culken describes multiple sleepovers with the singer, and insists nothing untoward occurred. I believe him. However, Culkin already was a movie star when he met Jackson, rather than a starry-eyed groupie. Unlike Robson, Safechuck, and similar Jackson accusers, Culkin doesn’t fit the profile of a vulnerable youth ripe for grooming. Culkin's story is completely consistent with Leaving Neverland’s portrait of Jackson as a cunning sexual predator hiding in plain sight. 

Recognizing the cultural significance of Leaving Neverland, the online magazine Slate recently published a collection of articles examining the impact of the documentary on Jackson’s legacy. That’s what a paradigm shift looks like. Unfortunately, whether it’s Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, Les Moonved, or the Catholic and Mormon clergy, someone has to be the penultimate accuser – the last victim no one believes, before the evidence finally becomes overwhelming. Abuse is never obvious until it is.

Michael Jackson died ten years ago. Why can’t we all just move on? 

As Robson observes in Leaving Neverland, “Secrets kill you… I want to speak the truth as loud as I spoke the lie.”

I can relate to Robson’s and Safechuck’s experiences. Three years ago, my former employers gaslighted and tortured me, then illegally discriminated against me based on the disability they triggered. Telling my story was a vital part of my recovery. Meanwhile, not one representative from the Washington Attorney General’s Office has ever apologized, or acknowledged the harm caused by their actions. To the contrary, they reflexively denied any responsibility, and relentlessly attacked me – even when their increasingly preposterous assertions contradicted the undisputed documentary record, and prejudiced their own legal position. 

As long as bullies get away with abuse, victims need to find the courage to tell their stories. Not just for their own mental health, but for sake of other survivors and society. 

Woke Humans

Humans think we’re special. On some level that’s just our delusion of grandeur. Numerous other species are faster, stronger, prettier, more numerous, etc. Some species have actual Marvel Cinematic Universe superpowers, like flying or inflating. 

On the other hand, our species’ accomplishments – for better and for worse – have transformed the planet. Just look at our name. We’re "homo sapiens," which is Latin for “wise men.” Humans are special because we can think. At least we think so.

Other animal species have brains, too. Many animals share similar cerebral structures. Some species even have some of that impressively rational grey matter on top. Nevertheless, other than a few obsessed primate researchers and all devoted pet owners, the rest of us would agree no other species matches the kind of consciousness every unimpaired human exhibits after a certain age.

So how did pre-human brains make the leap to human minds? 

Under some brain/mind models, consciousness arises from sheer processing power. For example, in the Terminator movies, the good Arnold Schwarzenegger warns us not to flip the switch and turn on a scary global “Skynet," because it will lead to computers taking charge of the planet. Similarly, adding more peripherals and memory eventually woke up my personal favorite sentient computer, Mycroft in Robert Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. A big-is-better approach made particular sense to mid-20th-century behaviorists, who argued brains consisted of undifferentiated and malleable neurons. 

More recent brain/mind models emphasize particular brain regions and their associated functions. You can expect more from life than lower animals, because they're limited to a reptilian brain stem and cerebellum. Like other mammals, we're also blessed with purely emotional limbic lobes that sometimes think they’re in charge. But even our clever chimp and dolphin cousins would envy the wrinkly grey folds of our well-endowed cortex. 

The newest and most human part of the brain is the “prefrontal cortex." This is the home of executive function and other highly complex mental processes, including key aspects of language and presumably consciousness. 

Regardless of your specific brain/mind map of human consciousness, it’s fun to think about how we got here. Evolutionary biologists and child psychologists have tried to identify when the human mind originated. Both point to the same breakthrough in the development of the human species and in the development of each human individual child:  “Theory of Mind.”

This phrase comes from an influential 1978 paper by David Premack and Guy Woodruff, “Does the chimpanzee have a theory of mind?” Their model is rooted in philosophical writing that goes back to Descartes and beyond. 

In one of those annoyingly postmodern ways, the term is self-referential. “Theory of Mind” is not merely shorthand for a prominent theory about how minds develop. It’s also the essential human brain function itself:  having the capacity to understand our experience and act based on the proposition that other individuals possess a mental state that may differ from our own. 

Under this theory, a child – or a species – attains the capacity for “Theory of Mind” when their brains have developed enough to perform the following functions:

You and I can each feel, believe, and imagine different things. And we both know it.

To pound the point again, true consciousness doesn’t mean merely having a brain that can feel, think, and envision things. Don't get me wrong, these are impressive feats. A minuscule fraction of all species have accomplished feeling, and even fewer can make a feeble claim for anything resembling thinking. As far as we know, no other species is capable of imagining alternative futures. Nevertheless, having a "mind" also means your brain is powerful enough to recognize there are other folks out there who desire, think, and dream, too.

There’s a second and perhaps more subversive element of the mind/brain theory of Theory of Mind. I’ll skip its history and implications because I am a humble English major, not a "Philosophy Ph.D." [Ed. Note: That’s another annoyingly self-referential term.] Anyway, the capacity for Theory of Mind also means your brain can perform this operation:

I recognize my mental state and your mental state are independent of the real world – we can each feel, believe, and foresee things that are not true and never will be.¹

            ¹Hopefully no one is tediously postmodern enough to ask the follow-up question “Does it matter whether you think I recognize that, too?” 

As with other mental health impairments, some individuals’ capacity for Theory of Mind may be diminished in one way or another. This can result from a wide variety of influences on your brain/mind, from autism spectrum disorders, schizophrenia, and ADHD, to damage from drugs including cocaine and alcohol, to malignant narcissism.

Did you know that when you type the phrase “Theory of Mind” into Google Images, you will find multiple PowerPoint presentations from introductory psychology courses, all including this same cartoon?

Anyway, let me tell you my theory of Theory of Mind.

There’s lots of living things out there. Zillions of species have enough brains to do Me.

Many species can do both Me and That. “That” is everything that’s not “Me.” "That" is not all the same. For example, only some of That is edible.

A creature with Theory of Mind can do Me, That, and They. “They” is sorta like “Me.” As with That, eventually we figure out They is not all the same. For example, only some of They is edible. #chemistry #MeToo.

Ultimately, Theory of Mind allows humans to understand other people, as well as ourselves. Hopefully by working together we can better understand all the That that’s out there, and solve some of the world's pressing problems. Isn't that what thinking is all about?

But maybe, just maybe, there’s a little bit more.

According to Blogger’s statistics, the all-time least-read post on this blog is my essay last month about Pixar movies and brain anatomy, “Inside Out.” I blame Facebook’s rapacious new algorithm. Or maybe the off-putting topics. Of course, Blogger is part of the Separate But Evil Google Empire, so it could be their fault. Math is hard. 

Whatever the cause, my post’s neglect makes me sad. Until now it was probably my personal favorite of all the essays I wrote this year that didn’t involve either my family or Canada. After discussing Fear, Joy, Anger, Disgust, and the brain modules corresponding to those four emotions from Inside Out, this is what I wrote about Sadness:

I started this essay months ago, but I got stuck trying to write about Sadness. 

My life is depressing. Some days when the kids are gone I can't get out of bed, let alone write. More importantly, I didn’t want to characterize this emotion as a mere negative – an insufficient supply of dopamine. To the contrary, the complex relationship between Sadness and Joy is at the center of the movie Inside Out.  

Then at my friend Henry’s suggestion I read Robert Sapolsky’s Behave: The Biology of Humans at our Best and Worst. Sapolsky is an excellent writer, and he does an amazing job of explaining brain function and its relationship to other physiological and social processes. Behave starts at the level of the individual neuron, and telescopes out to address neural networks, brain modules, hormones, developmental biology, genetics, cultural transmission, and natural selection. 

Sapolsky discusses the role of the brain’s Anterior Cingulate Cortex region. The ACC monitors our internal and external environments for any discrepancies with our expectations. The ACC not only identifies “unexpected pain,” but it also helps us process the "meaning of pain." For example, major depression is linked to ACC dysfunction. 

Significantly, the ACC also plays a key part in a uniquely human trait:  empathy. Observing and understanding pain – ourselves’ and others’ – apparently is essential to our shared humanity.

Under my theory, a healthy Theory of Mind requires another essential brain capacity. Humans are not only the species who can do Me, That, and They; we can also do We. “We” is the portion of They that we treat like an Us – rather than a Them.

So what happens when humans finally evolve enough to feel empathy?

Our brains grow three sizes. Not just our hearts.

Happy Holidays from Bellingham and Vancouver 

I hope someday I read something by Sherman Alexie again

Trigger Warning

I’ve made this essay a public part of my blog, rather than save it for my book manuscript. However, I didn’t post a link to it on Facebook or elsewhere. I want anyone who reads this to know what they’re getting into.

Earlier this year, multiple woman came forward with credible accusations against noted Native American writer Sherman Alexie. I intentionally waited until after reading all of You Don’t Have to Say I Love You before learning any details about the sexual misconduct accusations against Alexie. You can quickly find a summary in the NPR or PBS articles online if you choose. Alexie has admitted “some” of the allegations are true. After these allegations came out last month, Alexie cancelled all his public events, and declined this year’s Carnegie Prize.

The allegations are particularly horrifying because they involve one of the worst evils Alexie himself denounces in his recent memoir: a flawed tribal elder who contributes to the tribe’s multi-generation cycle of abuse by preying on weak acolytes. All of Alexie’s accusers are adults – but they are also young Native Americans or other women of color Alexie mentored as writers.

I hope someday I read something by Sherman Alexie again

In my essay “Blaming You Parents,” I observed I would never have read Sherman Alexie’s recent memoir if my mother hadn’t handed the book to me last week with the comment she particularly liked the poetry included in the book.

I wanted to write this separate essay about the reasons I probably would never have gotten to Alexie’s memoir if my mother hadn’t given it to me, and how I expect to approach his writing in the future. By an odd coincidence, I had just joked in “Your English Major Personality Type” that our long-overdue #MeToo awakening has added to the challenge of reading texts by certain writers:

Nowadays, the Historical-biographical approach seems old fashioned. Nevertheless, it has become acutely relevant in this #MeToo moment. Apparently, we're no longer supposed to watch Woody Allen movies. Even the early, funny ones.

As it turned out, the day after publishing that paragraph about Woody Allen, I read most of You Don’t Have to Say I Love You. Alexie’s memoir about his relationship with his mother, his tribe, and the multi-generational impact of trauma was powerful stuff for someone with my peculiar history.

Alexie’s book already was on my reading short list even before my mother gave it to me. However, last month I got the impression from a headline I saw on Facebook or Slate that Alexie was the subject of some #MeToo sexual misconduct accusations. I never learned anything more, but my vague impression about Alexie was enough to bump back him down to the reading long list. (#LeishmanFamilyMotto: "So many books, so little time.")

I've now examined the recent sexual misconduct accusations against him. I’m confident I would never have bothered with Alexie again, absent my mother’s quiet importuning. 

I won’t miss Woody Allen if I have to live with only my memories of his body of work. Most of his good movies are still there in my head, although now they will always be ever-so-strangely skewed.

It’s going to be more of a sacrifice with Alexie. He’s a lot younger than Woody Allen, and we share some very interesting "Doppeler" connections. In contrast, I think both Woody Allen's prolific film-making and his contribution to my faux-Jewish schtick have reached the point of diminishing returns.

So far I’d only read two of Alexie’s books, as well as multiple essays published in Seattle's Stranger weekly. I loved Alexie’s semi-autobiographical The Absolute True Diary of a Part Time Indian, which until this year's revelations filled a unique and vital niche in American letters. More recently, You Don’t Have to Say I Love You is the most powerful book I’ve read so far in 2018. It beat out some heavy-duty competition, including Call Me By Your Name and Robert Wright's The Moral Animal.

I’m hopeful I managed to read all of Alexie's important books before the #MeToo cloud descended on his oeuvre. Most of his other publications are collections of poetry or short stories. Poetry is like sex, I never pay for it. I’m not that kind of an English Major. (Except for poetry by my gay Mormon BYU classmate Timothy Liu.) And I don't have a short enough attention span for short stories.

Under the present circumstances, it's unlikely I will ever read anything by Sherman Alexie again. After this essay, I'll probably never again write about him again, either. If I do either, it will be very gingerly.

But we’ll see what happens. I'm a hopeful person.