I had occasion to have lunch yesterday with a friend of a friend, who it turned out, has a tremendous fear of developing Alzheimer’s Disease. I was able to share with her some finings that I had recently come across from what is now simply called the nuns study and although results were published a few years ago there was one major finding that I thought might be reassuring. There was a correlation between what the researchers referred to as the presence of grammatical complexity and idea density in the nuns autobiographies (submitted when they applied to join the order) and the subsequent development of Alzheimer’s symptoms. An even more interesting finding arose from the autopsies performed by the researchers after the nuns had passed away. There were nuns who had the physical aspects of the disease, in other words the presence of plague and damaged areas of their brains, but they had no apparent symptoms. I already know that one aspect of neuroplasticity is the ability of the brain to retrain healthy areas to replace functions lost from other damaged areas of the brain. It wasn’t stated in the article I read in Time magazine that this is what had happened with these nuns but I find that even the possibility that I could retain cognitive functioning in spite of the fact that my brain might be damaged by Alzheimer’s to be enormously reassuring. The friend-of-a-friend I met yesterday did not seem as reassured but I thought I did detect a faint glimmer of hope in her eyes…
About five years ago I was diagnosed with social anxiety. I already knew from my reading that ADHD almost always comes with coexisting disorders known as co-morbitities and I was pretty sure I had it from reading the symptoms. So it was no great surprise, but now it was confirmed. I also knew that social anxiety does not equate to shyness neither in the intensity nor in the range of fears. Social Anxiety is usually described as fear of scrutiny and, in my case at least, scrutiny resulting in judgment. I have no fear of public speaking. Well maybe a little, as in the old adage, “If you ain’t scared, you ain’t paying attention.” Mine comes into play around the telephone and with authority figures. I also have trouble in social situations where I don’t know people. I would rather rather walk a plank over a pool of sharks than step into a room full of people. In a lot of ways social anxiety had caused more damage in my life than ADHD and following the diagnosis there was another period of adjustment to that fact. Not long after though, I had the opportunity to participate in group therapy employing Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH). We met once a week over some two months or so. An early impression of my fellow participants was that they were all articulate, intelligent and if you met them under favorable social conditions you would never guess they had any kind of anxiety. I found the application of CBT somewhat strenuous mentally, although the one time outside the group that I did apply the mechanisms I was taught, I had quite positive results. But it was difficult and I came to the conclusion that if I had been in my twenties, I would have made the effort but at the age I was I wasn’t sure that the benefits equated to the effort of doing it and in my mind that effort was substantial and I couldn’t imagine having to go through it in every social encounter in which I would experience anxiety. However, I came across some research about what happens in the brain with CBT and realize now that I had missed an important aspect of the training. I discovered that it wasn’t just tricking my brain out of the fears. I was actually changing the structure of my brain. In other words, I would not have to go through the CBT process forever, every time I was faced with a social anxiety trigger. Eventually, I just wouldn’t react to the triggers at all because the structure of my brain would have been changed. I think I still have the worksheets I was given in those CBT sessions. I’m going to look for them now…