"What is right with you?" Pt. 10: Getting Started

Taking the first steps can be so difficult.  It can mean letting go of something.  Even if you are hurting, afraid, or very down, there can be a comfort in not doing something about it.  For instance, if you are to make a call to a therapist (say me), there is further risk.  What if you do not get the help you think you are seeking?  What will I think of you?  I mean, psychologists learn all kinds of theories.  Will he just fit what I am saying into his theory?  Will I really be heard?  Will he "get me?"  While this could happen, it can miss a very important point.  You know more about you and what is like to be you than anyone.  A friend, a pastor, or helping professional must start there...with you you are.  You are the starting point, not your friend, therapist, or pastor...at least when the focus on who is being helped is yourself.   There is the difficulty of reaching out and not knowing what will happen, but you need to listen to yourself and your experience of how you feel treated and responded to.  That is important too.  You may not trust yourself completely to do this, but you must have a least a bit to try...My Website

"What is right with you?" Part 17: Being open

Being open to experience, to life, and to relationships sounds so good doesn't it?  And who in their mind categorically says no to that?  However, there is a part of our mind that does just that.  Whether in every day life or in therapy, while we consciously want to grow and experience more, a part of does not.  This part, which we call our defense mechanisms, wants to protect us from harm.  Depending upon our personal sensitivities and varying life experiences, we may go to great lengths to shut down our very efforts to grow, to experience freedom, and to more freely relate with others.  So it turns out that we are far more conflicted than we think we are.  In therapy and other forms of growth producing experiences we need to learn about this defensive part of ourselves so we can see how that part of our mind operates and see more clearly that we have a choice.  I want to highlight one thing further about this.  This means that this "defensive" and at times, somewhat sabotaging part of ourselves is not who we are, but merely protective armor.  The essence of who we are tends to be shielded by our defenses, and in growth, we learn not only about our defenses, but how to have more flexible defenses in order to venture further in our life experience...NEXT TIME:  More on the anxiety that challenging our defenses to risk more produces...MY WEBSITE

"What is right with you?" Part 16: If so much is "right with me" why would therapy be helpful?

Many people turn to therapy because they have good intentions and goals, but are unclear on how to reach them, or may find that key keep sabotaging their efforts to reach them.  Often these ways of sabotaging are frustrating and limiting in one way, but they are also there to protect us from something.  A therapy relationship gives a person the opportunity to explore and learn about these "defenses" through the experience of the relationship.  Thus, therapy is a resource for learning in the process of a relationship.  This kind of learning cannot be found in a book, a class, or workshops.  Not that these are not excellent resources at times, but the living, careful, compassionate, intuitive, and feeling approach of mutual exploration helps us safely learn and change parts of ourselves that are not always accessible (we mean well, but we have blind spots).  The goal, which I will continue to say more about in my next entry, is to be more open to life where we have struggled to be so.  MY WEBSITE

"What is right with you?" Part 15: Another word about medications, chemical imbalances...Can medications just be written off that easily?

Are medications this easily written off (see prior post)?  Clearly not.  The prior post takes a harsh look at the lack of data supporting the ideal of "mental illness" or biological/chemical imbalances as causes for emotional problems.  However, it needs to be made very clear that our stress, emotional struggles, and so on, can take its toll on the body and may result in our having symptoms which express these conditions. From this point of view, symptoms are natural indicators of things gone awry that need help.  Sometimes this means that our minds and bodies can go into overload and that medications may be needed to help us cope until we can. Also, some individuals do not always have the resources with their insurance (this is especially increasingly so in a society and a culture that does not value healing relationships in therapeutic settings and seems more inclined towards medical model solutions such as medications), nor do we all have the finances, or psychological resources to cope with the rigors of psychotherapy.  In summary, from my point of view, medications can help.  Our body can be thrown off balance by the stressors of life and need to be held in check until, and if we can find another way through these challenges.  Thus, in this respect "What is right with you?" includes the asset that our symptoms can be to us in helping us back to health. MY WEBSITE

"What is right with you?" Part 14: Yes, but aren't some conditions the result of a chemical imbalance or genetics?

This is a very good question, because we have been strongly conditioned to believe this.  Before I say more about this, I want to affirm that medication helps many people through many things.  At the same time, there are some important considerations to be made regarding the assumption that medications are a cure for a problem with the brain, or a chemical imbalance.

The following represents a summary of the research on the so-called "mental illnesses":

     * No gene has ever been identified as associated with any "mental illness."
     * Despite being able to measure neuro-transmitters, no support for chemical
        imbalance has ever been found.
     * Psychiatry is the only branch of medicine that treats "disorders" or medical
        conditions with no known causes.                            
     * Twin studies' correlations do not rule out environment and artificially inflate
        results by double counting (proband) instead of pairwise tallying.
     * Brain imaging studies do no support any consistent findings associated with
        "mental illness"

An alternative view is that symptoms are not to be blamed on the body, a defective brain, or some kind of chemical imbalance, but rather are the result of the mind's creative ability to protect itself against further emotional pain.  Therefore, symptoms, rather than being something to be disabled by medications, again, seem to play an important part of signalling the clues of what is ailing the psyche (soul).  How does making an unfounded claim that we are brain impaired, etc. have on our already struggling psyche?  MY WEBSITE

"What is right with you?" Part 13: Let's start looking at symptoms

Symptoms or dreams, or other confusing experiences often occur to us as something going wrong with us.  But let us take a closer look.  I once worked with a woman who complained of chronic emptiness, often with depression.  We explored the emptiness together.  It was interesting because as we explored the history of this feeling, she recalled a story of telling everyone about her experience of being visited by a beautiful butterfly, how it landed on her and she interacted with it for some time before it flew away.  She was amazed and gleefully told everyone, but the feeling  was not returned, in fact it was diminished.  Although this was later determined to not be an isolated event, but typical for her experience as a child, we explored how her experience was full of life, and anything but empty.  It was full of life, enchantment and wonder!  It was the response that was so empty and devoid of celebrating her amazing experience.  Apparently she had internalized this empty, callous, and devaluing response in the place of an appropriate one, of affirming her emerging identity and feeling good about sharing her experience.  This was the beginning of many explorations and discoveries around her "experience" of emptiness, something that was accurately reflecting in her mind (as the symptom of emptiness) of her experience. It clearly was not her own void, but representing the lack of response (and her inner experience of it) to her emerging sense of self.  Her experience was full of life, but the reaction lacking.  A rich inner life began to emerge where she once felt only a void, shut off from re-experiencing more pain that might emerge from having an experience of getting excited, only to be ignored and/or diminished.  Her symptom of emptiness was an amazing clue for us in our work.  Symptoms mean things.  More to come...  MY WEBSITE

"What is right with you?" Part 12: "Normal?" What is that?

I apologize for the long break from my blog, but I do find myself delighted to return to write more about the question of "What is right with you?"  Sometimes we make fun of the concept of normal, or ask what it is, as if we know it is quite elusive.  Yet, somehow we are quite afraid to venture towards something of who we are for fear of this strange inner part of ourselves that we have internalized.  There is this "norm" that we must not depart from.  The consequences seem drastic.  And we are not talking about something like whether to wear clothes or not here!  We talking about the slightest risks to share a new idea, or wonder about expressng a feeling, etc.  We are afraid to not fit in.  The release of the newest edition of the Diagnostic Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders, 5th Editon (DSM-5) brings this to mind.  Why aren't normalcy, and the elaborate measures that we can sometimes go to, or at least fear in the back of our minds, and/or trying to be sure that we fall squarely within the bell curve, considered to be a disorder?  I mean, lets stop and think about that.  Do we make ourselves crazy trying to be normal?  I tend to think that efforts to be "Normal" become an emotional straight jacket.  Just try to notice that as you go about your day!  Does trying to be normal take us closer or further from what might be right with you?  My Website