👻 Halloween Ghosts and Cold Ocean Therapy ( Bonus Episode ) 🎶

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"Between, between" ( a Halloween-appropriate song )  3:32

An introspective pop anthem of changes in  our world and our perception at this time of year, vanquished by a cold ocean swim

On CBC Early Edition in Vancouver, Stephen Quinn lost his voice this morning… which got me thinking about the origins of Halloween and the exceptions we have of it.  

Having recently watched “Ingress” by Rachel Noll James I realized How the brain maintains coherence: the present writes the past in real time. Grief resists because it's a memory with high emotional valence; identity evolves by loosening that grip; growth is the art of living with multiple ghost-timelines without letting any one possess you. We are all quiet multiverse travellers, jumping from one edited memory to the next. 

At Halloween, the traditional change of seasons, the lack of cognitive coherence due to sometimes rapid environmental changes and increased darkness in the northern hemisphere can lead to increased anxiety, hence the boo, and ghosts traditionally associated with Halloween.
 
  Full Song: Between between

Singers, please see: instrumental-only version with CC to sing along.

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Transcript

0:25

Welcome to the deep dive. So today we're really diving into something, well, fascinating, a bit unnerving maybe. It's this space where psychology, the seasons, and our own sense of coherence kind of crash into each other. Especially when the world outside feels like it's shifting under our feet. We're looking at sources that explore the mental state that pops up right around now. late October, early November, why it messes with our heads so much. Short days, long nights, that whole vibe. Yeah, and our goal really is to give you a bit of a shortcut to understand why the seasonal shift often brings up so much turbulence emotionally and how our brains actually try to, well, compensate, how we try to cope. We've been looking at research on personal identity, memory, anxiety, how it's all managed or sometimes mismanaged.

And the absolute core idea we found, the real nugget, is this: 1:14

Your brain keeps things feeling real, keeps you feeling coherent. Mainly because your present self is always rewriting your past, constantly updating it in real time. Okay, rewriting the past. Constantly. That's huge. That idea feels like the hinge for everything we're talking about today. We're always updating our own history to make sense of who we are right now. But what happens when that editing process stalls? or breaks down. Exactly. And the sources suggest this specific time, the shift into November, feels so shaky, partly because of the darkness. You know, in the Northern Hemisphere, the light just disappears. Right. And it's not just a physical change. It's like it disrupts our mental balance, too. You hear weird things, too, like one source mentioned hearing that CVC's Stephen Quinn lost his voice recently. It's maybe not directly related, but it adds to that general feeling, doesn't it? That things are a bit... off. Transitioning, less stable. That's a perfect way to put it, that off feeling. The sudden environmental shift is destabilizing, so let's connect the dots there, between the seasonal change and the psychological state it triggers. Historically, this time of year has always been about transition, right? From life to hibernation, light to shadow. Okay, yeah, let's really unpack the specifics. How does the environment actually mess with our internal wiring? Well, the sources point to the rapid changes, less light, colder temperatures, maybe shifts in our daily routines. All this contributes to what they call a lack of cognitive coherence. Lack of cognitive coherence. Think of it like your brain's Wi-Fi signal getting choppy. When things outside change too fast, the light vanishes, the temperature drops, your brain struggles to keep a stable connection to reality. And that creates that anxious, unsettled feeling inside. So the outside world is moving too quickly for our internal processor. The usual anchors, like sunlight, are gone. And that instability translates directly into anxiety. Precisely. And, you know, this actually helps explain some old traditions around this time. This lack of coherence, this internal choppiness, it leads to a cultural fascination with things that are, well, incoherent. Ghosts, specters. The anxiety stems from that internal noise. So what does the brain crave? Something immediate, intense focus, the sudden shock of a boo or a jump scare. It actually acts like a quick psychological reset. A reset. How? It forces you instantly and completely into the present moment. It cuts through all that internal noise and restores immediate coherence just for a second. Wow, okay. So Halloween isn't just about thrills and chills. It's about forcing presence. A shock to the system to find clarity. But let's go deeper into that internal noise itself. Our great sources talk about something really compelling. Ghost timelines. This seems to get to the heart of identity and memory. Yes, this is where it gets really interesting. Our sense of self, our identity, it's basically built on the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. The sources put it beautifully. Memory is fundamentally a story that I tell, and the brain is always, always trying to edit that story. Updating the past narrative so our current self feels stable and consistent. Smoothing the rough edges, deleting the cringy bits, highlighting the wins, that sort of thing. Exactly. We curate our own history. But then, grief. That throws a wrench in the works, right? And maybe not just grief over loss, but any big regret, any unresolved past thing. The sources say grief resists that editing because it has a high emotional valence. What does that actually mean for us, for you listening? Yeah, high emotional valence.

Think of it this way: 4:43

if most memories are like regular files, you can easily tweak or move to the recycle bin. Grief is like a corrupted file that keeps popping up, demanding your attention, maybe even crashing your system. Ugh, yeah. The sheer emotional weight of that memory kind of locks it in place. It refuses to be overwritten by the present narrative you're trying to build. It just sticks. And if it sticks, it stops you from moving forward easily, it anchors you to an older version of yourself. I really like the source's take on growth here. It's not about erasing the past. No, it's about changing your relationship to it. Identity evolves, the sources say, by loosening that grip those old heavy memories have on you. Loosening the grip. Growth isn't about becoming one single perfect new self. It's more like the art of living with multiple ghost timelines without letting anyone possess you. Multiple ghost timelines? Wow. In a way, we're all sort of quiet multiverse travelers, as one source put it. Every day we're subtly jumping from one slightly edited memory set to the next, trying to stitch together a coherent self from all these potential versions. Okay, hang on. If we're constantly rewriting things, how does that mesh with finding actual truth about ourselves or our past? Helpful self-deception. That's a really fair question. The sources seem to suggest that the self isn't a static truth waiting to be found, but more like a functional narrative. The coherence is the goal, the feeling of making sense. We aren't trying to erase history entirely. It's more about choosing which versions of our past we let steer our actions today. When we don't choose, or can't choose, that's when we feel haunted. Haunted by what we did, sure, but also haunted by what we could have done. The other paths. Ahhhh. So the October anxiety isn't just about spooky things outside. It's about those unedited, unresolved versions of us. Our own potential, the lives we didn't live, the probability set we left behind. The lyrics mentioned in the material really nail this, don't they? My brain rewrites the photographs, but grief won't let me edit them. Exactly. And that other line, identity's a shifting shell. It captures that fragility. And think about how this applies to any big life change you might be going through. Maybe you're listening and you've changed careers or ended a relationship or even just learned something that totally rocked your worldview. Yeah. That deep discomfort you feel. That's often your brain grappling with the ghost timeline of who you used to be, the one that's now asking why you picked this path. Right. And as if... navigating our own internal multiverse wasn't tricky enough. We had to deal with the here and now, the external pressures. Let's shift to that. The state of flux the sources capture with that song title. Between, between, or it's Wischen. Wischen, yeah, that German word for between. It's perfect, isn't it? That feeling of being caught, suspended, lost in possibility. And the sources use a songs verse, the first verse, to really ground the psychological wobbliness in today's reality. It's a reminder that this seasonal internal lack of coherence gets piled on by very real, very modern stress. This is where it feels heavy. Yeah. Okay, we've got ghosts of the past, I get that. But we're also slammed with immediate real-world threats. The lyrics lay it out. The red keeps writhing. Food keeps hiding. Doctor closed. The planet's bleeding. Yeah, stark stuff. These aren't abstract anxieties. They demand attention now. They don't give you space to just ponder your inner complexities. And that double whammy intense internal confusion plus intense external pressure, it leads straight to that core existential question in the chorus. If the world is unstable and my past is a tangled mess, I feel like I'm walking between every version I could be. Lost in probability. Totally lost. Adrift. And the end point of all that fragmentation, that overwhelm, is asking yourself desperately, Which one of me is real? That question, that's like peak incoherence, isn't it? You need something powerful, something immediate to just stop the spinning and ground you. Which brings us perfectly to the dramatic pivot in the source material, the proposed solution, faced with all this layered incoherence, psychological, seasonal, societal... problem demands something profound, something physical. And the answer, maybe surprisingly, is cold ocean therapy. Cold ocean therapy. Wow, okay, that sounds intense. Why is it such an extreme physical shock? Why not, you know, mindfulness or talking it through? Yeah. What's the mechanism here? That's a key question. The sources suggest gradual change is great for long-term stuff, but it doesn't zap acute cognitive incoherence, that feeling of being lost right now. What you need is something to override the brain's default networks, especially the limbic system, our emotional instinctual core. The shock of the cold water is so sudden, so total, it forces all your cognitive resources away from ruminating about the past or worrying about the future and slams them entirely onto one thing. immediate physical survival. Okay, so instead of gently trying to reason with those sticky grief memories or future anxieties, the body basically feels as a hard reboot of the present moment. The shock is the instant antidote to being lost in probability. That's the idea. And the source material paints a really vivid picture of this in the bridge in third verse. The ocean isn't just chilly, it's 10 degrees and falling, serious cold. 10 degrees Celsius, brr. It's an immediate full-body encounter. Salt and shock and gasping lungs. And importantly, this happens with friends beside me. It's not solitary, it's a shared ordeal. Oh, that shared part seems critical. It must amplify the effect, right? Yeah. You're anchored not just by the cold, but by seeing others right there with you doing the same insane thing. Creates a solid shared reality. Absolutely. And the therapeutic effect described is immediate. It's total. The cold erases everything. Those internal phantoms, the ghost timelines causing all the anxiety, they scatter in the spray. Wow. You literally cannot dwell on past regrets or future worries when your body is screaming at you to just breathe. Just survive this second. So that sheer potency allows the physical experience to rewrite the day. Just like that. The speaker in the source actually achieves that goal of growth. Hold my ghost but let them go. Not through slow processing but through this intense brief confrontation. It's liberation through facing it head on, not avoiding it. The end result is this powerful feeling of release, immediate release. All the shadows, all the might have beens dissolving in the sea. That raw, undeniable survival instinct becomes the ultimate anchor. It resets the fragmented self. So the cold ocean delivers that necessary shock therapy for the specific anxieties amplified by the season's change. October then kind of offers both things, the darkness and the remedy. It brings the problem, but maybe also the tool to fix it, albeit a pretty intense So wrapping this up, what does this mean for you listening? We've journeyed from that seasonal anxiety tied to memory resisting edits and our identity feeling fragmented, made worse by all the modern pressures piling on. We found that according to these sources, immediate coherence, that feeling of being grounded and real now, can sometimes be found by facing those frozen thresholds. through intense, physical, maybe even shared shock. Yeah, it suggests that the power to decide what's real, to feel coherent, is ultimately internal. It's a choice we can make even when the outside world feels chaotic. Because after that whole cold water ordeal in the sources,

the phrase that resonates, even though it's unspoken, is: 12:27

"I choose what's real." So that cold ocean plunge is like a practice run in consciously overriding the noise and choosing your present reality.

The question we want to leave you with is this: 12:38

What immediate conscious choice can you make today about which of your ghost's timelines, those regrets, those might have beens you allow to possess you right now? Which version of you are you choosing to be real today? Something to think about. Go dive into that. There's a shadow in my breathing Something's stealing what I need The rent keeps rising, food keeps hiding Doctor closed, the planet's bleeding I count my coins out Hold my breath between the living and what's left I'm walking between, between every version I could be Walking between, between all my ghosts are haunting me October comes, the light runs thin My mind can't hold the shape I'm in between, between Which one of me is real? The harvest fails, the fever stays The maps won't tell me where I've been My brain rewrites the photographs But grief won't let me edit them Memories, a story that I tell Identities, a shifting shelf I'm walking between, between Every shadow following me Walking between, between Lost in probability When seasons turn, the world goes dark Can't find the thread, can't find the start Between, between Which one of me is real? Then the ocean, ten degrees and falling We strip down the waters calling Salt and shock and gasping lungs Friends beside me, we become The colder airs The face is everything, the phantoms scatter in the spray Sun on stone, skin on skin, afternoon rewrites the day I hold my ghost but let them go, the western light it tells me so I walk between, between, but the water set me free All the shadows, all the might have been's dissolving in the sea October gave a gift to me, the darkness and the remedy Between Between