I’m going to interrupt the discussion I have underway regarding confession and so forth because I thought of a GREAT analogy to explain to you a great danger in modern society. This is especially for you, young readers, because it is essential that you understand the trouble inherent with a way of life that you were all born into and assume, wrongly, that it is beneficial and good.
The way of life that you easily use and could indeed say has molded your personalities and spirituality, and not for good, is the use of acronyms, code words, secret languages, and slang with double and “symbolic” meanings. I am going to explain to you why this is totally harmful to you and to humanity in general. Now, I’m not trying to be a hypocrite or alarm you, since I of course use acronyms such as LOL and others that come from computer or phone language. But because I have a foot in both the old/traditional world and the new/messed up world, I can explain to you the problems so you can recognize them.
I’ve explained to you that human bodies exist as they do today because of both biological processes (such as evolution, natural section, survival of the fittest, and the marvelous complexity of life organisms) and spiritual processes (being created in God’s image, being given the conditions on this beautiful earth that allow life, and the ability to know and understand God on his terms). So the bodies that you have, as humans, are suited for the reality of life. Remember, more than ninety nine percent of the time humans existed they did not know how to read or write! Your bodies and your minds, which house your soul as its temple, became optimized simply by living, just living… not through technology, writing or speech. Modern capabilities such as communications have not done one iota to provide better bodies, minds or spirits. Modern capabilities, such as when humans started to speak and write, are benefits only in the collective (the group) because it gives what is called a “survival advantage.” In other words, families and other groups by speaking with each other can survive better.
Now, here is the problem. Let’s start with the analogy using, let’s say in Africa, a deer and a lion.
Deer, like humans, came into marvelous being without speech and writing or technology. The same is true of lions. Thus when a lion starts to stalk a deer in order to hunt it for food, each one, the lion and the deer, are using bodies and minds that exist and are optimized for survival and thriving without any technology or communications. Deer “know” they are potential prey, and they tend to be alert when grazing or at rest. Lions “know” that deer “know” they are prey, so lions know that they have to sneak up on deer or else the deer will run away. For millions of years this relationship has not only worked well, but thrived, with each population becoming healthier and healthier until as much as the earth can sustain of them exists. They thus become kind of their “optimal” condition.
Now, when the deer is grazing it is not wasting “thought time” thinking about lions or other stalkers. It is able to graze or rest and at the same time be alert. Lions also do not have to remind each other using communications to “be quiet” and “sneak up” on deer. They have both the instinct of their species, and they also learned from their parents and other herd or pride members when they were young. So it’s not like one deer has to keep reminding itself to “watch out for predators,” while one lion has to keep reminding the dummy in the pride to not try to walk up to a deer, but to use stealth and sneaky stalking instead. Animals arrive in a natural and REALISTIC harmonious state with each other and the environment.
What if we waved a magic wand and now imagined that deer and lions had these great “gifts” of human types of communication, but only for the stalking/being stalked circumstances? In other words, each animal does not naturally know its own role and responsibilities, but has to use speech and deliberate cues among each other.
Natural scenario: Lion stalks a herd of deer. Deer sees the lion at some point and run. Lion catches one deer that is unable to flee as fast as the others.
Unnatural scenario: Lion stalks a herd of deer, but he needs to hear in his earpiece coaching from other lions about whether to be fast or slow, stalk to the left or to the right. The old lion nags into the earpiece of the stalking lion that he should “be totally quiet” and “avoid walking through branches that might snap and give him away.” However, the brashest of the lions is also speaking into the earpiece of the stalking lion, “Don’t listen to that old coot. Go through the snapping branches but just be fast about it and you’ll catch one.” Odds are the lion will be so confused that he never succeeds in concentrating on what used to be natural to him. Eventually the lions would die out as the gift of “communications” in stalking destroys their natural and seamless integration with reality.
Now, I have been concerned about the unnatural and artificial means of communications that humans have adopted for a long time. I can actually tell you my “Oh, oh” moment, when I got REALLY worried about this problem for the first time. You can even look up on the Internet what year this was (I’m not online as I’m writing this so I’ll just tell you what to search for). It was when I started reading articles about this new “craze” in a “secret language” that English Cockneys, such as taxi drivers, were using. It’s called Cockney rhyming slang. The way that it works is that instead of saying what they mean, they say words that if you do kind of a inner “word association” process to make a link to another word or phrase, and then substitute rhymes of those words, you can figure out what he or she is saying. It made my head hurt when I first read examples, and the decades have not changed my distaste for that trend. Part of the culture is that there is kind of a smirking smugness at having a secret language that is intellectually challenging being used by people who are often dismissed by society as being “lower class.” In other words, the people pushing Cockney slang often had a subversive political chip on the shoulder kind of agenda.
Now, so you young people can better understand this, it was not a short hand for convenience as are texting acronyms. For example, the acronym BRB means “be right back,” a realistic real action that is written quickly using the first letters of each of the three words. I have no quarrel at all with acronyms, even as your spiritual mother who may not be up to date with every acronym, LOL. They are simply quick ways to state real things and it is parents’ responsibilities to learn the lingo of their kids and modern youth. I’m not a hand wringer that using texting acronyms will cause modern youth to read less of the dusty gems of English literature, LOL. But now let me show you how BRB could be changed into either the Cockney rhyming slang, the forefather of the secret languages that I worry about, or an agenda filled cult tool. First, let’s pretend we are doing smug Cockney rhyming slang. I’m going to figure this out as I’m typing it so you can see the process, and thus the danger.
The first word in “be right back” is “be.” Here’s one way to represent the word “be.” You think to yourself that “be” sounds like “bee.” Bees are associated with honey. Honey rhymes with “funny” so you start your “be right back” phrase with the word “funny.” The second word, “right” can mean quickness, as in the phrase “be right back,” but “right” also means direction (to go toward the right) or politics (conservative), or even degree of correctness (to be accurate about something). Suppose that you are a leftist and hate the right wing of politics. If the conservatives were in power, especially if a woman was the figurehead, you might think of the “right” (politics) as being a “bitch.” “Bitch” rhymes with ditch so you substitute “ditch” for the word “right.” You pat yourself on the back a bit how clever you are and how you got “a dig” (pun) in on your imagined enemy, the “right,” even though politics has nothing to do with the expression “be right back.” The third word, “back,” means to return, since the phrase “be right back” means “I will return soon.” However, the word “back” can also mean the reverse side of the body, where the front is the chest and the other side is the “back.” For example the buttocks are also called in English the “backside.” So perhaps you decide to use the word “rump” to invoke the word “back.” You then think of a word that rhymes with “rump” so you might use the word “dump” or “bump.” You’d probably not use “bump” since it starts with the same letter as the word you are replacing, “back,” and that is not clever enough, so you pick “dump.” Thus in your secret language, instead of saying “be right back” you say to your equally clever friend “funny ditch dump.”
You watched me actually think of this example as I typed. So now we look at “funny ditch dump” for the first time as the oh-so-smartass secret language substitute for “be right back.” Fans of this type of secret language would receive special glee from “funny ditch dump” because notice the irony. Without my planning this I’ve come up with a phrase that actually implies the opposite of what you were actually meaning to say. Does a “funny ditch dump” sound like someone planning to BRB? You can giggle when texting your friend who shares your nutty and damaging secret language “FDD” which stands for “funny ditch dump,” which sounds like you are laughing while dumping your text friend in a ditch while at the same time meaning that you will be right back.
When I first read about Cockney rhyming slang I was immediately alarmed on behalf of humanity, seriously. I realized that this thirst for secretive elitist cleverness was corrosive, like acid, on reality and on human mental and emotional connectivity with reality. And I was correct, even more than I had guessed I would be, for there are now millions of people who speak, perform daily task “scripts,” and who have programmed, without realizing it, their own minds to have totally unreal wiring.
So the lion is now stalking the deer. He hears in his earpiece the old lion shout “fee fade ram!” The stalking lion stops dead in his tracks thinking “What?!” He starts to try to decode. What rhymes with “fee?” Is it “he” or “brie?” If he decides the “correct one,” “he,” what word association is with “he?” Is it maybe “she?” What rhymes with “fade?” Is the correct rhyme “jade” or “made?” If it is “made” what does “made” mean in association with? Fortunately the lion watches a lot of TV detective shows and realizes that to be “made” means that a person being followed by someone else has recognized that he is being followed. A follower who reports back to his handlers that his quarry has recognized that he is being followed states “I’ve been made.” So what does “ram” rhyme with? He goes nuts trying to figure out and never does. Needless to say the deer herd is now long gone. When he goes hungry back to the other lions, they berate him for not figuring out their rhyming slang fast enough. Sure, he got the “she made” part but he never figured out what rhymed with ram. The old lion then admits it was a rhyme followed by an association, not an association followed by a rhyme. They were trying to say “she sees you,” referring to the deer he was stalking. “You” was replaced by “ram” because “you” rhymes with “ewe” and the old lion was born under the sign of Aries so of course he put a little self congratulatory “insider’s joke” by linking you-ewe-ram.
Do you notice that no one freaking cares about actually catching the meal that they need to survive?
This is what millions of people, as best as I can tell from my observation (which is pretty thorough) are doing, as yes that many seem to subscribe to cult beliefs and activities that include such highly symbolic, with often reverse meaning and plenty of weird agenda, secret lingo.
They not only add weird layers to what they are trying to say, but they exercise the “unreal” circuitry of the brain, rather than the reality based circuitry. Whenever they hear individual words or phrases in their secret language they no longer have the original content and meaning of any of the plain words, but they also have infested, like with cobwebs, using weird agenda the simple thing that they were trying to say, presumably, in the first place.
For those of you who are not part of this mess, understand that those who use this weird form of acting out and “communications” have filled much of modern media (TV, films, music) with such secret language, messages and phraseology. I have found that many of them grind to a halt in speech when I talk to them as they are, like the lion with the earpiece stalking the would be deer meal, trying to “decode” what I am “really” saying. Um, but I’m just saying what I am saying. They have reprogrammed their own minds to lose all survival instinct because they no longer actually seamlessly process reality: word=what it really means + word=what it really means + word=what it really means resulting in sentence or phrase=what it really means. Over the years I have routinely knocked people I’ve spoken too off of their scripts and secret language because they actually are flustered trying to have a simple exchange of straightforward reality based sentences. I watch them as their eyes flicker and they look away when they wonder if I meant something other than “Nice day today, isn’t it?” And even if they decide I really mean that I think it is a nice day today, they struggle to use some of their secretive agenda driven symbolic “language” to reply. It would be funny if it was not so awful and so lonely. Part of what I hope to do is to teach people to speak simple words that mean simply what they mean to each other again. It’s pathetic and dangerous when I say “nice” day and they are thinking, “she must mean the spice girls” or, rather, to rhyme and word associate the “spice boys.”
I’ve talked about the dangers to mentality, biology and emotions of these secret languages and their warped agendas. You can also infer that the spirit of the authentic human being is damaged by this. As spiritual director I also have to discuss sin with you. Secret languages are a violation of the Commandment that prohibits false witness. Each use of a secret language is an commission of this sin of false witness. Repent and convert before it is too late to even pick up the pieces, the scraps, of what remains of what humanity should and could have been. Young people: if you don’t do it, fix these problems and reclaim your humanity, no one will.
Showing posts with label mental illness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mental illness. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
It has been a while since I blogged regarding PTSD and other mental or emotion distresses. By the way, I prefer the term “distress” instead of “disorder” or “mental illness.” Many mental conditions are perfectly natural responses by the body and the mind to terrible circumstances, and thus I prefer that people do not think of them as “wrong wiring” or “mental imbalance.” PTSD, for those victims of trauma who suffer from it, are the body and the mind’s efforts to deal with something so radical and scarring that a painful set of symptoms occur, but that is not the same as being mentally disordered or biologically or mentally flawed.
I want to address myself to all PTSD sufferers but most especially to those in the military or law enforcement. I am thinking most especially of the Vietnam War veterans who suffer to this day, and now the Afghanistan and Iraq War veterans who must also deal with PTSD in such great numbers. I want to give you two tools to help you when you read this. One is a way to explain PTSD in a way that I believe is much more accurate an analogy or images than you’ve probably heard before. Military people can relate that you must “know the enemy before you can defeat him.” I think this analogy will help you to better understand exactly what PTSD is and how I recommend one can alleviate much of the distress, while never being, of course, able to deny or erase what happened, nor should you. The second tool I want to give to you is a way to work on the PTSD dreams and nightmares that I have found very helpful when I have given sufferers direction in these matters.
The best way to think of PTSD is that you are in the jaws of an alligator or a crocodile. Let’s say crocodile since it’s a global animal that everyone is familiar with. When one has PTSD one can think of one’s self as being firmly in the mouth grip of a crocodile, and each of the croc’s teeth has a hold on you. The crocodile represents the source of the PTSD (such as trauma during war service). In other words, there was nothing wrong with you before you had the trauma. Then something very real happened, where you are bitten by the croc and held in its mouth so you cannot pull free, and the teeth represent the types and severity of the psychological and emotional wounds you have received and the ongoing symptoms.
Now, this is how you can understand the prescription medications that you receive that may or may not help you. The prescription medications do not free you from the croc’s jaws; they only dull the pain so that you can function more gracefully and comfortably as if you were not feeling the pain of the bite. But of course despite what doctors say, the medications cannot erase the cause of the trauma as if it never happened, nor can it restore you to what you were before. This is where the analogy is helpful because each tooth mark leaves a scar, even if one was, using our analogy, completely free of the jaw’s grip.
When one “self medicates” through addictive substances, such as alcohol and drugs, or other addictive behaviors such as risky behavior, compulsive behavior, or other means of “escapism,” one is trying to do the same thing the doctors who prescribe do, which is dull the pain of being bitten by the traumatic event or events. But like the prescribed medications, self medication only attempts to dull the pain of being continually bitten.
So how do I recommend that a PTSD sufferer deal with PTSD, using this analogy? First of all, yes, be sure, of course, to stay on any medication that the doctor prescribes because you cannot work on any sort of remedy or cure if you are in pain and engaging in risky behavior due to the PTSD. Everyone knows that it is harder to heal something like a broken arm if you are in continual pain. So yes, if you have one or more prescriptions that ease your pain and symptoms, be sure to continue to faithfully take what a reputable and conscientious doctor prescribes.
However, I invite you to think about how one actually tackles the PTSD itself. Think of your status as being in the grip of the croc’s jaws and all its teeth. You cannot pull yourself out of the grip, so you are stuck. But are you? What if you had a set of pliers and pulled out the teeth one at a time?
Suppose one of your symptoms is having recurrent traumatic dreams and nightmares. Those dreams represent one of the teeth of the croc. In other words, if you are able to work on alleviating the stress of the dreams, and even reducing their occurrences, that would be as if you pulled out that tooth from the croc. This also helps you to understand why some in distress of PTSD have the bad dreams while others do not. That particular symptom of “tooth” just is not biting down as hard on some folks as it is on others. That is part of how each individual is unique, as is each trauma. You might be someone who was bitten and held by a small croc, with a trauma that, while painful and real, has a smaller “bite mark,” a smaller less severe pattern of symptoms. On the other hand, those who served in the Vietnam War, for example, I have noticed have all been bitten by a huge croc with many deep biting teeth. This is because Vietnam was “not just another war.” It was a shattering experience on so many levels and had few mitigating circumstances of comfort and many simultaneous types of trauma.
Just for one example, the United States had previously fought only open conflicts, never a guerilla war. So while there were vets traumatized by World War II and Korea, Vietnam was a warfare tactic that neither the military institution nor the individuals serving had any experience or preparation for. So being in a guerilla war is, again using that analogy, one tooth of the bite and holding of PTSD that those in other wars did not so much experience (except, for example, those who fought on the ground against dug in Japanese in World War II).
So the individual teeth of the croc are made up of two ways of looking at it: the symptoms that you feel and the reasons that trauma was received. An example of a “symptom tooth” is the bad dreams. An example of the “cause tooth” is being totally unprepared for a guerilla style of warfare.
Military folks who suffer from PTSD tend to be able to list their symptoms, so the “symptom teeth” will probably not be too difficult for you to recognize (though often people do not see how much they have changed until they are home and have difficulties). You’ve probably all had to list the symptoms in the doctor appointments and endless paperwork. But here is what I am suggesting. I have had some very good success at turning it a bit on its head, where instead of the one block being “PTSD” and all the symptoms hanging off of it, to be treated as a whole, try breaking the symptoms down into individual components that you might address one or two at a time. PTSD, like most mental distresses, is not something that one can tend to treat as a whole and people in the profession have become a bit too charmed with that idea, and then are disappointed when they cannot “cure” or alleviate PTSD. It’s not like getting rid of a cold or the flu. But that is a useful comparison so let’s explore it for a minute.
If you have a cold or the flu you have one cause (bacteria or a virus) and many possible symptoms (sneezing, sore throat, fever, runny nose, coughing, sore chest, body aches, nausea, fatigue, etc.) In general when one is dealing with physical illnesses, when the illness passes or is “cured,” all the symptoms go away, obviously, since you are no longer sick with that illness. People for a variety of reasons think of mental and emotional distress the same way: if you treat the overall “type of distress,” such as PTSD, then the symptoms should all together gradually improve. It’s perfectly natural that everyone tends to think of mental illnesses as being just like physical illnesses, except of the mind and nervous system instead of the body. Medical schools, scholars and insurance and medical reimburerses all tend to think that way. We fill out your form with your “diagnosis,” PTSD, list your symptoms as “proof” that you are indeed suffering from PTSD so you can be treated and the provider is reimbursed, and then the “treatment plan” for PTSD is developed, which is usually prescription medications with some group therapy. That is fine and that is the way the system is established, but I believe that it leads to slower, and often nil, results. I believe that in addition to the overall treatment of the overall condition of PTSD that each symptom should be separately addressed using non-prescription drug techniques of counseling, therapy and self help.
The way the medical system is established there is little access, and none of it reimbursable, to what I am suggesting. When I was an intern I was able to treat a number of patients via counseling only because since I was a “free body” (student interns are not paid). Thus while I was there during my nearly nine month internship I was able to provide “talking” treatment to patients who would not have otherwise received it. This is one reason I have spent a fair amount of time thinking about ways that those in distress, such as those with PTSD, and their families and friends, and church groups and others who donate services, can listen to some of my suggestions and try them in addition to their regular treatment. This is why I blog on these types of subjects and would like to be able to help through some future venue.
Suppose that you are a PTSD sufferer with a number of symptoms and you were able to eliminate or control one of those symptoms? I think that would be a relief if, for example, you are troubled by the symptom of bad dreams and you were able to mitigate that one symptom, even if the others remain. It tends to have a mutually beneficial and cascading effect anyways; if you improve one thing you become more at ease and more comforted and when you feel better in that one area you can deal with the other symptoms better, and perhaps address them too, one at a time. So I’m suggesting that while you, of course, continue your medical course of treatment, you draw up an action plan for addressing one of the symptoms as a targeted effort on it and it alone.
So here’s what you do. Make a list of your croc’s teeth. These are both “symptom” teeth and “cause” teeth. The idea of the “cause teeth” may be new to you, but it’s easy to understand once you start thinking about it that way. What made Vietnam so particularly unique and scarring? I gave one example, which is that it was a guerilla war rather than conventional conflict, which the military command and training gave no preparation for, and which shocked the combatants mightily. So while your symptom teeth list what you are suffering from now, your cause teeth list each thing that contributed to the shock, damage and scarring, and many of them will be cultural. I can speak with some experience and authority because I am only a few years younger than many Vietnam veterans, since I was a teenager during the height of the war. Further, my family had extensive World War II experience, in all the theaters, so I observed the differences as they were happening. So let me give you some help in thinking about what some of the “cause teeth” might be in your particular list.
O Being drafted for a war whose purpose was difficult to understand, as the USA was not being invaded, nor was there a clear cut enemy such as Japan (who had bombed Pearl Harbor) or Germany (with Nazi global domination clearly an objective).
O Culture shock, where Vietnam seemed very alien and uncomfortable compared to your upbringing, whereas Europe or even Japan (shipboard) in World War II was less jarring a transition.
O Exposure to vices, such as drugs and prostitution.
O Lack of training and preparation for guerilla warfare, which included devices of terror as booby traps.
O Hostility toward the military, including service men and women, by fellow citizens at home.
O Having a close buddy killed, particularly in a brutal way.
O Witnessing atrocities from either side.
O Inexperienced commanders and chains of command that resulted in errors and losses.
O Tactics and strategies that resulted in battles for which there seemed no point or overall plan.
O Being captured.
I could list more but I think you see my point. So let’s look at two examples of Vietnam veterans with PTSD. I’m just making these two up as examples so you can see that while everyone “shares” the PTSD experience, it is indeed unique to each person and must be treated accordingly.
Example One: Symptom teeth: bad dreams, startles easily, distressed by loud and sudden noises, emotionally withdrawn from loved ones. Cause teeth: many “close calls” in the battlefield, witnessed bad orders causing unnecessary loss of life, close buddy captured, and “social scene” that one was too young to handle.
Example Two: Symptom teeth: bad dreams, addictions (list each one), drawn to conflict and violence, suicidal thoughts. Cause teeth: lack of support from home, found gun was only response to guerilla and cultural violence, forced to give bad orders.
See, these are just with a few words two people that while they share the “PTSD Vietnam vet” label are obviously two very different people with very different experiences. Medicine, like all aspects of our sad culture and society today, try to lump people together into cookie cutter categories and treat them accordingly. PTSD, however, is if anything the example of how individual PTSD distress really is and how customized and unique to the individual that treatment must be.
What I would do if I was counseling one or a group of Vietnam vets with PTSD to apply the technique I’ve introduced them to today is to (and remember, this is in addition to all conventional medical treatment):
1. Draw up your list of symptom and cause teeth. Help each other out in thinking of items to put on the list, but only put them on the list if they really affect you individually.
2. Select one symptom tooth and one cause tooth that you want to specifically gain treatment for.
3. For the symptom tooth, your approach is to work on that one symptom as if it were an illness. For example, when one has a cold one might sneeze or have sore throat. Select “sneeze” or “sore throat” and act as if that is an individual standalone illness. You are going to cure yourself of “sneeze,” to use that example, rather than wait for the sneeze to go away when the cold goes away. Therefore you might select to stop or at least ease the “bad dreams” as if it were a standalone illness, rather than wait for them to go away, if ever, if the PTSD “goes away,” which it rarely does.
4. For the cause tooth you use a different approach, but with the same objective of wanting to cure or at least ease the one “illness” represented by the cause tooth.
Before I explain how to approach 4 in specific detail, let me make a broad point. Vietnam vets, understandably, tend to do one of two things. They either withdraw from talking about their experience, for all the obvious reasons, or they tend to read material or have conversations that validate and revalidate their own experiences. For example, they tend to view movies, read books, or have conversations that parallel and validate their own experiences. That is understandable and seems intuitive to do (as part of “you are not alone” therapy), but it often, as logically as it seems, hinders a cure to one or more symptoms. It tends to reinforce the “what’s done is done” and “it happened to all of us” and it “can’t be changed” mindset. Catharsis and validation of one’s own experience have actually been proven to be among the least effective of techniques used in self or professional therapy. All patients, and the society as a whole, loves “let it all out” and “catharsis,” for example, feeling it is “healthy,” but the literature in group therapy shows that while it gives temporary emotional satisfaction to the client or patient, catharsis is the least helpful of the dozen or so techniques used in therapy. I’m not saying to bottle it up, but I am saying to be more skeptical of one’s own human nature tendency to want to hear one’s own story told time after time, either by one’s self or others, without there being a targeted, curative purpose and technique behind its telling.
So suppose that the “cause symptom” that you select to address is the “lack of support from home.” Suppose that your own family had mixed feelings about your service, that you had few friends or buddies back home who could write and support you (younger readers: remember there was no cheap phone calls and this was way before the Internet and email, so traditional letter writing and spotty delivery was one’s only real contact with home, just like in World War II and Korea). And suppose that you were one of those service people who was actually spit on and protested against when you returned home. What if that was a “cause tooth” that aches you still today and contributes to your symptom teeth? How would you address it?
Well, like I said, a lot of people think that is water over the dam and can’t be fixed or undone. And it is true that we cannot go back in time and pretend things went otherwise. But there is an amazing amount of resilience and desire to heal in the human heart and brain, and there is “reprogramming” that one can do to fill in that deficit that was originally created by the lack of support for your service. For example, rather than revisiting through your own memories or the media how bad it was during those times, avoid reinforcement of the feelings of betrayal and abandonment. So do not indulge in “walks down memory lane” of the pain of that “cause tooth.” Here is what you do instead.
You create a “new history” for your brain and your heart in the here and now. For example, you could get a recommendation from someone about a current service member, say in Afghanistan or Iraq, who may not have any family or friends and you become his or her pen pal. In other words, you give today to someone that which you were deprived of. While it does not change time or events, you’ll be surprised at how as far as your brain and heart impulses are concerned, what happens today starts to converge back in time with what had happened to you in the past. In a way it is like you are the new service person today that you start to correspond with. By giving him or her in their need what you did not have, you actually start to put in your heart and memory “bank” what was empty before. Your brain, your heart, and eventually your symptoms will lessen being fueled by what had happened to you, with the lack of support and even hostility that you have received, and instead, the email that you write and receive today with a current service member will be like the support you yourself lacked and that you are now receiving.
It does not have to be, nor can it be, an “exact match.” These are different times where, thankfully, our service people are not being protested against and spat on by anti-war demonstrators. But being lonely and lacking support is universal in all times, and those feelings are the same everywhere. If you find that you can locate a service person who had little or no family or friends, you can make the difference both for him and her and, more importantly for pulling that cause tooth, yourself.
Here’s another idea. Become a self taught “loneliness expert” by reading literature about that condition and studying ways to alleviate it in others, whether military or not. There are two benefits of this kind of approach. One is to learn more about your own condition as you read about it, not in the Vietnam context, but as a general social condition. Rather than reinforcing what you and others experienced in Vietnam, you learn more about why it hurt and scarred by studying the general condition in all aspects of life. That is a lead in to the second benefit which is that it un-bottles the inwardness of the existing PTSD condition and redirects it outward in a productive way. Instead of recycling what has happened to you in your mind, you are now gathering new material in new contexts and could even go so far as to shift from that cause tooth being a scar of Vietnam to a new proactive activity, such as writing articles and blogging about abandonment, loneliness, lack of support, betrayal and ways to cope with them in general. Again, it is not denying what happened to you, but it is a mighty ability to rechannel what was a painful memory into a potentially pleasurable and rewarding here and now activity.
I could give more examples of how to address that particular “cause tooth,” but want to keep this article as an introduction to a technique to get you thinking in these new directions. Now let us discuss my ideas regarding the specific symptom tooth, “bad dreams.”
Remember how I said that humans and societies tend to want to lump things together into one cookie cutter category? Well, people tend to do it to themselves without realizing it. Suppose a Vietnam vet with PTSD is plagued by a particular dream about a specific trauma that he or she endured. They have these dreams “over and over” or at least regularly or, if not too severe, an occasional eruption of that dream. The reaction is, of course, to think “not again” and “it’s that bad dream again.” It is discouraging and thought of as being a repeat of a repeat.
That is an example of the distressed dreamer, quite understandably, tending to lump all of the occurrences of the dream into the same category, which is a repeat of an unpleasant phenomenon, a bad repeating bad dream. But no dream is exactly the same, even if you think that it is; there is always a subtle difference. So the first thing to do is, even though it is painful to have the dream, as soon as you awake think about one thing different about the dream than the last time that you had it and write it down. Keep a pad of paper and pen by your bed if necessary and as soon as you wake, train yourself to think, before pushing the bad dream from your mind, is there something different about this dream? Look for even subtle differences: longer or shorter in duration? Are there any differences in the setting of the dream, the characters in the dream, and the action of the dream, no matter how small?
For example, suppose that your dream normally involves someone, a buddy for example, being killed. The dream tends to reenact the actual event plus some pattern that your dream takes over and over. But suppose in the actual event your buddy was wearing a helmet, and most dreams show him that way, but one night you dream the same dream except that one time he is not wearing a helmet. Or suppose that it was a daytime attack and you accordingly dream of a daytime attack time each time, but one night you dream that it was nighttime. Or you may even have a shorter or longer version of the dream, or a really subtle difference such as the number of people standing around. Don’t rewrite the whole dream on your pad of paper but make a note each time you have “that dream” to identify just one thing about it that was different from the last time, even if you dreamed it while napping instead of while during your overnight sleep. But trust me, once you get used to observing you will notice at least one subtle, or even large, difference in the dream from one time to the next, even if you’ve automatically thought of it as that “repeat dream.”
Again, it’s beyond the scope of this article to right now to do dream interpretation and explain why the dream changes in even that small way. But it is almost not important to know a full out dream interpretation of the “meaning” of that change as it is to train yourself just to notice it and just to write it down. Here is why.
Dreams are, among other things, a self healing mechanism. Just as when you have a scratch or a cut and the body naturally knits together the skin and heals the injury, dreams, even very bad dreams, are trying to “fix you where it hurts.” That memory hurts you and rather than punishing you, your body is trying to “fix it” and its doctor’s office is your dream. That is why I made the point earlier that bad dreams are not something ‘broken’ or ‘flawed.’ Bad dreams are your body trying to fix what is hurting it, in that case, a specific memory of an experience that you had. I know it seems illogical at first, where you think, how does it fix me to revisit it over and over? But your mind is not trying to revisit it over and over; it is repeating an invitation over and over to go into the doctor’s office about this event. That is why responsible dream interpretation by credible and conservative therapists is a hugely powerful therapeutic tool, because dream interpretation “accepts” the invitation offered by your mind to heal the event that caused the PTSD pattern of dreaming.
Lacking any other input your subconscious mind offers up the invitation, through another reoccurrence of the bad dream, and while the dream looks the same at first glance each time, your subconscious mind is trying a different “dab of medicine” through the subtle change I’ve explained to you to watch for. The subconscious mind is enormously powerful and attempts to be helpful, even when it seems otherwise. But it is limited in how helpful it can be unless you make what it does to be recognized and thought about by you and therefore no longer unconscious but conscious. This is why you can gain benefit even by not knowing, since you have no dream interpreter available perhaps, the meaning of a particular change. Just by noticing the change and thinking about it for a minute or two and writing it down you have moved that unconscious dream “dab of medicine” from the unconscious to the conscious.
You know what it is like? Have you ever gone a long time without having a glass of orange juice or a fruit and then you have a craving? You don’t need to know “why,” which is that your body is alerting you to a vitamin C deficit. You just have the fruit or the glass of orange juice. Likewise you don’t really need to know why your dream always involved the buddy having a helmet on, but one time the dream occurs without the helmet. You just have to notice and record on your notepad that you noticed that this dream differed from previous versions because instead of having his helmet on this time he did not.
Now, I could interpret why your unconscious might try that “dab of medicine,” but if I start writing about the specifics and examples of dream interpretation this will be a long diversion from the point of this article. If readers are interested I’ll of course write more and explain how a responsible and conservative dream interpreter would recognize the healing attempt and meaning of the helmet motif changing, for example. But there is a lot of new information to absorb here and I’d like to keep it manageable. I sincerely hope that you have found this article useful and that this and further work will bring some real relief to those with PTSD and other distresses.
It has been a while since I blogged regarding PTSD and other mental or emotion distresses. By the way, I prefer the term “distress” instead of “disorder” or “mental illness.” Many mental conditions are perfectly natural responses by the body and the mind to terrible circumstances, and thus I prefer that people do not think of them as “wrong wiring” or “mental imbalance.” PTSD, for those victims of trauma who suffer from it, are the body and the mind’s efforts to deal with something so radical and scarring that a painful set of symptoms occur, but that is not the same as being mentally disordered or biologically or mentally flawed.
I want to address myself to all PTSD sufferers but most especially to those in the military or law enforcement. I am thinking most especially of the Vietnam War veterans who suffer to this day, and now the Afghanistan and Iraq War veterans who must also deal with PTSD in such great numbers. I want to give you two tools to help you when you read this. One is a way to explain PTSD in a way that I believe is much more accurate an analogy or images than you’ve probably heard before. Military people can relate that you must “know the enemy before you can defeat him.” I think this analogy will help you to better understand exactly what PTSD is and how I recommend one can alleviate much of the distress, while never being, of course, able to deny or erase what happened, nor should you. The second tool I want to give to you is a way to work on the PTSD dreams and nightmares that I have found very helpful when I have given sufferers direction in these matters.
The best way to think of PTSD is that you are in the jaws of an alligator or a crocodile. Let’s say crocodile since it’s a global animal that everyone is familiar with. When one has PTSD one can think of one’s self as being firmly in the mouth grip of a crocodile, and each of the croc’s teeth has a hold on you. The crocodile represents the source of the PTSD (such as trauma during war service). In other words, there was nothing wrong with you before you had the trauma. Then something very real happened, where you are bitten by the croc and held in its mouth so you cannot pull free, and the teeth represent the types and severity of the psychological and emotional wounds you have received and the ongoing symptoms.
Now, this is how you can understand the prescription medications that you receive that may or may not help you. The prescription medications do not free you from the croc’s jaws; they only dull the pain so that you can function more gracefully and comfortably as if you were not feeling the pain of the bite. But of course despite what doctors say, the medications cannot erase the cause of the trauma as if it never happened, nor can it restore you to what you were before. This is where the analogy is helpful because each tooth mark leaves a scar, even if one was, using our analogy, completely free of the jaw’s grip.
When one “self medicates” through addictive substances, such as alcohol and drugs, or other addictive behaviors such as risky behavior, compulsive behavior, or other means of “escapism,” one is trying to do the same thing the doctors who prescribe do, which is dull the pain of being bitten by the traumatic event or events. But like the prescribed medications, self medication only attempts to dull the pain of being continually bitten.
So how do I recommend that a PTSD sufferer deal with PTSD, using this analogy? First of all, yes, be sure, of course, to stay on any medication that the doctor prescribes because you cannot work on any sort of remedy or cure if you are in pain and engaging in risky behavior due to the PTSD. Everyone knows that it is harder to heal something like a broken arm if you are in continual pain. So yes, if you have one or more prescriptions that ease your pain and symptoms, be sure to continue to faithfully take what a reputable and conscientious doctor prescribes.
However, I invite you to think about how one actually tackles the PTSD itself. Think of your status as being in the grip of the croc’s jaws and all its teeth. You cannot pull yourself out of the grip, so you are stuck. But are you? What if you had a set of pliers and pulled out the teeth one at a time?
Suppose one of your symptoms is having recurrent traumatic dreams and nightmares. Those dreams represent one of the teeth of the croc. In other words, if you are able to work on alleviating the stress of the dreams, and even reducing their occurrences, that would be as if you pulled out that tooth from the croc. This also helps you to understand why some in distress of PTSD have the bad dreams while others do not. That particular symptom of “tooth” just is not biting down as hard on some folks as it is on others. That is part of how each individual is unique, as is each trauma. You might be someone who was bitten and held by a small croc, with a trauma that, while painful and real, has a smaller “bite mark,” a smaller less severe pattern of symptoms. On the other hand, those who served in the Vietnam War, for example, I have noticed have all been bitten by a huge croc with many deep biting teeth. This is because Vietnam was “not just another war.” It was a shattering experience on so many levels and had few mitigating circumstances of comfort and many simultaneous types of trauma.
Just for one example, the United States had previously fought only open conflicts, never a guerilla war. So while there were vets traumatized by World War II and Korea, Vietnam was a warfare tactic that neither the military institution nor the individuals serving had any experience or preparation for. So being in a guerilla war is, again using that analogy, one tooth of the bite and holding of PTSD that those in other wars did not so much experience (except, for example, those who fought on the ground against dug in Japanese in World War II).
So the individual teeth of the croc are made up of two ways of looking at it: the symptoms that you feel and the reasons that trauma was received. An example of a “symptom tooth” is the bad dreams. An example of the “cause tooth” is being totally unprepared for a guerilla style of warfare.
Military folks who suffer from PTSD tend to be able to list their symptoms, so the “symptom teeth” will probably not be too difficult for you to recognize (though often people do not see how much they have changed until they are home and have difficulties). You’ve probably all had to list the symptoms in the doctor appointments and endless paperwork. But here is what I am suggesting. I have had some very good success at turning it a bit on its head, where instead of the one block being “PTSD” and all the symptoms hanging off of it, to be treated as a whole, try breaking the symptoms down into individual components that you might address one or two at a time. PTSD, like most mental distresses, is not something that one can tend to treat as a whole and people in the profession have become a bit too charmed with that idea, and then are disappointed when they cannot “cure” or alleviate PTSD. It’s not like getting rid of a cold or the flu. But that is a useful comparison so let’s explore it for a minute.
If you have a cold or the flu you have one cause (bacteria or a virus) and many possible symptoms (sneezing, sore throat, fever, runny nose, coughing, sore chest, body aches, nausea, fatigue, etc.) In general when one is dealing with physical illnesses, when the illness passes or is “cured,” all the symptoms go away, obviously, since you are no longer sick with that illness. People for a variety of reasons think of mental and emotional distress the same way: if you treat the overall “type of distress,” such as PTSD, then the symptoms should all together gradually improve. It’s perfectly natural that everyone tends to think of mental illnesses as being just like physical illnesses, except of the mind and nervous system instead of the body. Medical schools, scholars and insurance and medical reimburerses all tend to think that way. We fill out your form with your “diagnosis,” PTSD, list your symptoms as “proof” that you are indeed suffering from PTSD so you can be treated and the provider is reimbursed, and then the “treatment plan” for PTSD is developed, which is usually prescription medications with some group therapy. That is fine and that is the way the system is established, but I believe that it leads to slower, and often nil, results. I believe that in addition to the overall treatment of the overall condition of PTSD that each symptom should be separately addressed using non-prescription drug techniques of counseling, therapy and self help.
The way the medical system is established there is little access, and none of it reimbursable, to what I am suggesting. When I was an intern I was able to treat a number of patients via counseling only because since I was a “free body” (student interns are not paid). Thus while I was there during my nearly nine month internship I was able to provide “talking” treatment to patients who would not have otherwise received it. This is one reason I have spent a fair amount of time thinking about ways that those in distress, such as those with PTSD, and their families and friends, and church groups and others who donate services, can listen to some of my suggestions and try them in addition to their regular treatment. This is why I blog on these types of subjects and would like to be able to help through some future venue.
Suppose that you are a PTSD sufferer with a number of symptoms and you were able to eliminate or control one of those symptoms? I think that would be a relief if, for example, you are troubled by the symptom of bad dreams and you were able to mitigate that one symptom, even if the others remain. It tends to have a mutually beneficial and cascading effect anyways; if you improve one thing you become more at ease and more comforted and when you feel better in that one area you can deal with the other symptoms better, and perhaps address them too, one at a time. So I’m suggesting that while you, of course, continue your medical course of treatment, you draw up an action plan for addressing one of the symptoms as a targeted effort on it and it alone.
So here’s what you do. Make a list of your croc’s teeth. These are both “symptom” teeth and “cause” teeth. The idea of the “cause teeth” may be new to you, but it’s easy to understand once you start thinking about it that way. What made Vietnam so particularly unique and scarring? I gave one example, which is that it was a guerilla war rather than conventional conflict, which the military command and training gave no preparation for, and which shocked the combatants mightily. So while your symptom teeth list what you are suffering from now, your cause teeth list each thing that contributed to the shock, damage and scarring, and many of them will be cultural. I can speak with some experience and authority because I am only a few years younger than many Vietnam veterans, since I was a teenager during the height of the war. Further, my family had extensive World War II experience, in all the theaters, so I observed the differences as they were happening. So let me give you some help in thinking about what some of the “cause teeth” might be in your particular list.
O Being drafted for a war whose purpose was difficult to understand, as the USA was not being invaded, nor was there a clear cut enemy such as Japan (who had bombed Pearl Harbor) or Germany (with Nazi global domination clearly an objective).
O Culture shock, where Vietnam seemed very alien and uncomfortable compared to your upbringing, whereas Europe or even Japan (shipboard) in World War II was less jarring a transition.
O Exposure to vices, such as drugs and prostitution.
O Lack of training and preparation for guerilla warfare, which included devices of terror as booby traps.
O Hostility toward the military, including service men and women, by fellow citizens at home.
O Having a close buddy killed, particularly in a brutal way.
O Witnessing atrocities from either side.
O Inexperienced commanders and chains of command that resulted in errors and losses.
O Tactics and strategies that resulted in battles for which there seemed no point or overall plan.
O Being captured.
I could list more but I think you see my point. So let’s look at two examples of Vietnam veterans with PTSD. I’m just making these two up as examples so you can see that while everyone “shares” the PTSD experience, it is indeed unique to each person and must be treated accordingly.
Example One: Symptom teeth: bad dreams, startles easily, distressed by loud and sudden noises, emotionally withdrawn from loved ones. Cause teeth: many “close calls” in the battlefield, witnessed bad orders causing unnecessary loss of life, close buddy captured, and “social scene” that one was too young to handle.
Example Two: Symptom teeth: bad dreams, addictions (list each one), drawn to conflict and violence, suicidal thoughts. Cause teeth: lack of support from home, found gun was only response to guerilla and cultural violence, forced to give bad orders.
See, these are just with a few words two people that while they share the “PTSD Vietnam vet” label are obviously two very different people with very different experiences. Medicine, like all aspects of our sad culture and society today, try to lump people together into cookie cutter categories and treat them accordingly. PTSD, however, is if anything the example of how individual PTSD distress really is and how customized and unique to the individual that treatment must be.
What I would do if I was counseling one or a group of Vietnam vets with PTSD to apply the technique I’ve introduced them to today is to (and remember, this is in addition to all conventional medical treatment):
1. Draw up your list of symptom and cause teeth. Help each other out in thinking of items to put on the list, but only put them on the list if they really affect you individually.
2. Select one symptom tooth and one cause tooth that you want to specifically gain treatment for.
3. For the symptom tooth, your approach is to work on that one symptom as if it were an illness. For example, when one has a cold one might sneeze or have sore throat. Select “sneeze” or “sore throat” and act as if that is an individual standalone illness. You are going to cure yourself of “sneeze,” to use that example, rather than wait for the sneeze to go away when the cold goes away. Therefore you might select to stop or at least ease the “bad dreams” as if it were a standalone illness, rather than wait for them to go away, if ever, if the PTSD “goes away,” which it rarely does.
4. For the cause tooth you use a different approach, but with the same objective of wanting to cure or at least ease the one “illness” represented by the cause tooth.
Before I explain how to approach 4 in specific detail, let me make a broad point. Vietnam vets, understandably, tend to do one of two things. They either withdraw from talking about their experience, for all the obvious reasons, or they tend to read material or have conversations that validate and revalidate their own experiences. For example, they tend to view movies, read books, or have conversations that parallel and validate their own experiences. That is understandable and seems intuitive to do (as part of “you are not alone” therapy), but it often, as logically as it seems, hinders a cure to one or more symptoms. It tends to reinforce the “what’s done is done” and “it happened to all of us” and it “can’t be changed” mindset. Catharsis and validation of one’s own experience have actually been proven to be among the least effective of techniques used in self or professional therapy. All patients, and the society as a whole, loves “let it all out” and “catharsis,” for example, feeling it is “healthy,” but the literature in group therapy shows that while it gives temporary emotional satisfaction to the client or patient, catharsis is the least helpful of the dozen or so techniques used in therapy. I’m not saying to bottle it up, but I am saying to be more skeptical of one’s own human nature tendency to want to hear one’s own story told time after time, either by one’s self or others, without there being a targeted, curative purpose and technique behind its telling.
So suppose that the “cause symptom” that you select to address is the “lack of support from home.” Suppose that your own family had mixed feelings about your service, that you had few friends or buddies back home who could write and support you (younger readers: remember there was no cheap phone calls and this was way before the Internet and email, so traditional letter writing and spotty delivery was one’s only real contact with home, just like in World War II and Korea). And suppose that you were one of those service people who was actually spit on and protested against when you returned home. What if that was a “cause tooth” that aches you still today and contributes to your symptom teeth? How would you address it?
Well, like I said, a lot of people think that is water over the dam and can’t be fixed or undone. And it is true that we cannot go back in time and pretend things went otherwise. But there is an amazing amount of resilience and desire to heal in the human heart and brain, and there is “reprogramming” that one can do to fill in that deficit that was originally created by the lack of support for your service. For example, rather than revisiting through your own memories or the media how bad it was during those times, avoid reinforcement of the feelings of betrayal and abandonment. So do not indulge in “walks down memory lane” of the pain of that “cause tooth.” Here is what you do instead.
You create a “new history” for your brain and your heart in the here and now. For example, you could get a recommendation from someone about a current service member, say in Afghanistan or Iraq, who may not have any family or friends and you become his or her pen pal. In other words, you give today to someone that which you were deprived of. While it does not change time or events, you’ll be surprised at how as far as your brain and heart impulses are concerned, what happens today starts to converge back in time with what had happened to you in the past. In a way it is like you are the new service person today that you start to correspond with. By giving him or her in their need what you did not have, you actually start to put in your heart and memory “bank” what was empty before. Your brain, your heart, and eventually your symptoms will lessen being fueled by what had happened to you, with the lack of support and even hostility that you have received, and instead, the email that you write and receive today with a current service member will be like the support you yourself lacked and that you are now receiving.
It does not have to be, nor can it be, an “exact match.” These are different times where, thankfully, our service people are not being protested against and spat on by anti-war demonstrators. But being lonely and lacking support is universal in all times, and those feelings are the same everywhere. If you find that you can locate a service person who had little or no family or friends, you can make the difference both for him and her and, more importantly for pulling that cause tooth, yourself.
Here’s another idea. Become a self taught “loneliness expert” by reading literature about that condition and studying ways to alleviate it in others, whether military or not. There are two benefits of this kind of approach. One is to learn more about your own condition as you read about it, not in the Vietnam context, but as a general social condition. Rather than reinforcing what you and others experienced in Vietnam, you learn more about why it hurt and scarred by studying the general condition in all aspects of life. That is a lead in to the second benefit which is that it un-bottles the inwardness of the existing PTSD condition and redirects it outward in a productive way. Instead of recycling what has happened to you in your mind, you are now gathering new material in new contexts and could even go so far as to shift from that cause tooth being a scar of Vietnam to a new proactive activity, such as writing articles and blogging about abandonment, loneliness, lack of support, betrayal and ways to cope with them in general. Again, it is not denying what happened to you, but it is a mighty ability to rechannel what was a painful memory into a potentially pleasurable and rewarding here and now activity.
I could give more examples of how to address that particular “cause tooth,” but want to keep this article as an introduction to a technique to get you thinking in these new directions. Now let us discuss my ideas regarding the specific symptom tooth, “bad dreams.”
Remember how I said that humans and societies tend to want to lump things together into one cookie cutter category? Well, people tend to do it to themselves without realizing it. Suppose a Vietnam vet with PTSD is plagued by a particular dream about a specific trauma that he or she endured. They have these dreams “over and over” or at least regularly or, if not too severe, an occasional eruption of that dream. The reaction is, of course, to think “not again” and “it’s that bad dream again.” It is discouraging and thought of as being a repeat of a repeat.
That is an example of the distressed dreamer, quite understandably, tending to lump all of the occurrences of the dream into the same category, which is a repeat of an unpleasant phenomenon, a bad repeating bad dream. But no dream is exactly the same, even if you think that it is; there is always a subtle difference. So the first thing to do is, even though it is painful to have the dream, as soon as you awake think about one thing different about the dream than the last time that you had it and write it down. Keep a pad of paper and pen by your bed if necessary and as soon as you wake, train yourself to think, before pushing the bad dream from your mind, is there something different about this dream? Look for even subtle differences: longer or shorter in duration? Are there any differences in the setting of the dream, the characters in the dream, and the action of the dream, no matter how small?
For example, suppose that your dream normally involves someone, a buddy for example, being killed. The dream tends to reenact the actual event plus some pattern that your dream takes over and over. But suppose in the actual event your buddy was wearing a helmet, and most dreams show him that way, but one night you dream the same dream except that one time he is not wearing a helmet. Or suppose that it was a daytime attack and you accordingly dream of a daytime attack time each time, but one night you dream that it was nighttime. Or you may even have a shorter or longer version of the dream, or a really subtle difference such as the number of people standing around. Don’t rewrite the whole dream on your pad of paper but make a note each time you have “that dream” to identify just one thing about it that was different from the last time, even if you dreamed it while napping instead of while during your overnight sleep. But trust me, once you get used to observing you will notice at least one subtle, or even large, difference in the dream from one time to the next, even if you’ve automatically thought of it as that “repeat dream.”
Again, it’s beyond the scope of this article to right now to do dream interpretation and explain why the dream changes in even that small way. But it is almost not important to know a full out dream interpretation of the “meaning” of that change as it is to train yourself just to notice it and just to write it down. Here is why.
Dreams are, among other things, a self healing mechanism. Just as when you have a scratch or a cut and the body naturally knits together the skin and heals the injury, dreams, even very bad dreams, are trying to “fix you where it hurts.” That memory hurts you and rather than punishing you, your body is trying to “fix it” and its doctor’s office is your dream. That is why I made the point earlier that bad dreams are not something ‘broken’ or ‘flawed.’ Bad dreams are your body trying to fix what is hurting it, in that case, a specific memory of an experience that you had. I know it seems illogical at first, where you think, how does it fix me to revisit it over and over? But your mind is not trying to revisit it over and over; it is repeating an invitation over and over to go into the doctor’s office about this event. That is why responsible dream interpretation by credible and conservative therapists is a hugely powerful therapeutic tool, because dream interpretation “accepts” the invitation offered by your mind to heal the event that caused the PTSD pattern of dreaming.
Lacking any other input your subconscious mind offers up the invitation, through another reoccurrence of the bad dream, and while the dream looks the same at first glance each time, your subconscious mind is trying a different “dab of medicine” through the subtle change I’ve explained to you to watch for. The subconscious mind is enormously powerful and attempts to be helpful, even when it seems otherwise. But it is limited in how helpful it can be unless you make what it does to be recognized and thought about by you and therefore no longer unconscious but conscious. This is why you can gain benefit even by not knowing, since you have no dream interpreter available perhaps, the meaning of a particular change. Just by noticing the change and thinking about it for a minute or two and writing it down you have moved that unconscious dream “dab of medicine” from the unconscious to the conscious.
You know what it is like? Have you ever gone a long time without having a glass of orange juice or a fruit and then you have a craving? You don’t need to know “why,” which is that your body is alerting you to a vitamin C deficit. You just have the fruit or the glass of orange juice. Likewise you don’t really need to know why your dream always involved the buddy having a helmet on, but one time the dream occurs without the helmet. You just have to notice and record on your notepad that you noticed that this dream differed from previous versions because instead of having his helmet on this time he did not.
Now, I could interpret why your unconscious might try that “dab of medicine,” but if I start writing about the specifics and examples of dream interpretation this will be a long diversion from the point of this article. If readers are interested I’ll of course write more and explain how a responsible and conservative dream interpreter would recognize the healing attempt and meaning of the helmet motif changing, for example. But there is a lot of new information to absorb here and I’d like to keep it manageable. I sincerely hope that you have found this article useful and that this and further work will bring some real relief to those with PTSD and other distresses.
Friday, January 9, 2009
Very extreme mental illness/addict case study
Violent mental illness and addiction is a complicated topic with much nuance and a myriad of complexities, and thus it is a difficult subject to productively talk about, say nothing about its actual treatment or legal adjudication. This is one reason why I keep repeating one universal formula, one tool that one must always keep in mind and that applies to all such situations.
When a person has a mental illness and you have a conversation with them, you are not speaking to that core person, but you are having a conversation with the mental illness. When a person is an addict and you have a conversation with them, you are not speaking to that core person, but you are having a conversation with the addictive substance. For example, if you are speaking to a crack addict, you are speaking "to the crack" not to the person "Mr or Ms Whoever."
This is true even for a long time after the addict has, hopefully, become clean and sober and kicked their addiction. This is because the substance has left its programming in the person's brain, nervous system and spirit, and it takes a long time and much acutely aware corrective reinforcement to revert away from the substance's remaining presence and toward the authentic person's core.
This is also true about mental illness, even mild forms of it. When you are speaking to your friend or loved one who has depression, for example, you are having a conversation with "depression." This is something that you, the sufferers of mental illness and strain, must become more aware of. When you have depression, in a way you have designated an ambassador to act on your behalf, and the name of that ambassador is "depression." When you are successfully treated for depression, you have taken back your own identity and no longer allow "depression" to be your ambassador in everyday speech and actions, but remember that the "ambassador" has left his rule book behind and it takes you a while to stop following the formulas.
One way to spot this is to be self aware of how often in a day you do the following: Are you assessing either consciously or unconsciously every event and conversation in your day as being something to give you an excuse to be depressed again, or something that helps you not to be depressed? I am not being unkind here, any more than if I helped someone to understand if when they are hungry if they need a snack or they need a full meal. This is non judgmental help in self diagnosis. So, if you are still looking at each event in your day in a help/hurt your depression viewpoint, you are still allowing depression to be your ambassador. If you get through the average day without having those thoughts of assessing your depression quotient, you are successfully banishing the depression ambassador from your "court."
I first explained this years ago to a friend with bipolar. As I got to know her I very quickly spotted what she did not see in herself, which is that her bipolar, even though successfully treated, was still her "ambassador." This is because she parsed every event and conversational sentence and facial expression, etc in her day according to what I explained to her is almost a "bank account" ledger mentality. She, or rather, the legacy of her active bipolar ambassador, was hyperattentive to every item of her day and slotted words, expressions, deeds and the moods of others as being "debits" and "credits" to that person's worth, to that experience's worth and to her own worth. Thus if you had a conversation with her and used a phrase she didn't like, her bipolar ambassador would issue an alert that you "might be an enemy."
I think that analogy had a great impression on her, and gave her a tool to be productively self examining and not unproductively hyperattentive. The road to sanity and joy does not travel through a country where you are obsessed with every brick in the road and the direction of every breeze.
So these are examples of how a mental disorder, even a relatively benign one, such as mild depression, has a serious and universal rule that one must remember, which is that the illness takes over control of much of one's interface with the world and one's own interior dialogue, much as if you have your authority seized by an ambassador who now operates on your behalf, both to your "liking" but also very much against what you would really want, in theory.
I wanted to remind people of this teaching of mine and introduce new readers to it before looking at our extreme case study. When one has a mental disorder, from mild to severe, one has ceded one's own authenticity over to that disorder who then proceeds to act as your ambassador. When one has an addiction one has not only ceded authority to the addictive ambassador, but the substance itself is now in control. I am only slightly exaggerating, for example, when I say that if you speak to a crack addict, you are actually having a conversation with the chemical compound "crack." That is MUCH worse than the ceding of your identity to your mental disorder ambassador. A mental disorder is still grounded in reality in the extent that it is an emotional situation (even if biologically caused) where one has normal desires even as they have been warped. An addiction is a substance that is a chemical, not a set of human emotions. Thus your addiction "ambassador" is not even human.
Suppose that you have depression. Well, whatever the cause of the depression, your ambassador is "Mr or Ms Depression." But suppose you are a crack addict. Your ambassador is "Mr or Ms Crack." Depression is a set of human qualities. Crack is a chemical.
Thus someone who speaks to your ambassador "depression" speaks to "sad, listless, tired, spiritually drained" etc. Someone who speaks to your ambassador crack speaks to "methylbenzoylecgonine."
Someone who speaks to your ambassador "schizophrenia" speaks to "hears voices, cannot see clearly, feels hunted, hurt, angry" etc. Someone who speaks to your ambassador heroin speaks to "diacetylmorphine hydrochloride."
Alright, now imagine the problem of treating someone with a severe mental illness, especially one that is violent, and also is addicted. At the very least imagine a crack addict schizophrenic. They have ceded their core selves to ambassador schizophrenia and ambassador crack. Imagine, worse, someone who suffers from childhood abuse, schizophrenia, multiple substance addictions, using both drugs and alcohol.
These ambassadors do not "work together." Rather, one has a multiple personality ambassador problem, and they war among themselves. Psychiatrists are only part way toward understanding this, according to my observation of them and their treatment methods. They do understand, profoundly, the problem of what they call "multiple diagnoses." However, psychiatry is far behind in understanding that they are not speaking with the person but speaking with the illness and/or the addictive substances. Thus they turn too quickly toward prescribing more 'benign' ambassadors, a psychiatric prescription drug without recognizing that this is what they are doing.
That is the heart of the problem of prescribing drugs to children with "behavioral" disorders. You have added a drug ambassador to a child who was struggling with only a behavioral ambassador, and now you have real trouble.
See, in a way the ancients who thought that all illness was "possession" by evil spirits were shrewd and accurate in one and only one aspect. They recognize that as we say nowadays "it was the liquor that was talking." The ancients recognized that those with mental illness no longer spoke for themselves. When Jesus cast out demons he was casting out the possession of the person by their illness. Not only was Jesus curing the mental disorder but he was also banishing the programming of the mental illness as ambassador on the human, thus cure was instantaneous and total.
But humans have to cure themselves now and Jesus can help in the spirit, but it is still a secular problem of how to avoid mental illness where possible (such as halting child abuse immediately and fully, the source of much mental illness) and to avoid addiction totally, as there is never "justifiable" addiction.
Now, when you have an extreme case such as in this incredibly sad news story, you have a hardening of heart on both sides (kill him or cure him) but both sides miss the point and everyone in between is baffled.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/6202701.html
OK, now that you've read the story I'll bet you would tell me that if we were conversing that you read this story with a greater understanding of the problem. This does not mean that we necessarily have the ideal solution, but at least we all share an understanding.
This guy obviously, despite what the judge ruled, had at least one severe mental disorder. He then commits an incredibly heinous crime, and now has another layer of trauma and mental disorder (once someone commits their first violent act a "violence ambassador" is empowered). So he has mental disorders, an extreme violence and depravity action, and attempts suicide (recognizing his own depth of loss of humanity). He also, according to the lawyer, had both alcohol and drug addiction.
Many who read about crimes and pleas of insanity say, "How do we know who is really crazy?" Well, I've just given you a tool to better understand. The cynic who says he is crazy but coldly plans a crime and covers it up is hardly actually insane. But an eye plucking psycho with untreated mental illness and ruled by substance abuse is obviously insane. He has demonstrated a multiple year record of being controlled by his untreated illnesses and his legacy addictions AND the guilt of the violence ambassador (who is still active as he tried to attack fellow inmates).
This man is about the most extreme case we can find and this is why he is such a valuable case study. I'm not being cold; actually, I'm trying to help all of you see with compassion what is going on inside the wreckage of such a person and the crimes he commits.
So the case study helps you to see the layers of conflicting ambassadors that are within those who have more than one problem of mental disorder or substance. So you see how easy it is to recognize that a person with simple depression has a painful problem, but one that can be recognized as being a singular ambassador problem. The same is true of someone who in theory has no problems but drinks too much.
But as soon as you have two conditions, two addictions, two mental disorders, a mental disorder and an addiction, it is much more than twice as hard. It is like ten times as hard to treat. Then when you have someone with a handful or more of mental disorders and addictions, it is essential that everyone recognize that the core person is lost, overlaid by possessive ambassadors that speak for him or her, and some of those ambassadors have no human feelings but are chemicals making decisions and having "human" speech.
All I've explained will only assist each side of the "kill him" or "cure him" debate. The "cure him" side has better understanding of the layers of the problems and how throughout the cure they will rarely IF EVER actually speak to him... they will only speak to the illnesses and the addictions. This then helps the "kill him" side to understand that he is really lost under all the layers of his humanity destroying conditions. The "kill him" side can legitimately argue that no one can cure such a total wreckage of a person, one who would kill babies and cut their hearts out.
My point is not to assist either the "cure him" or "kill him" sides. My point is to educate how to navigate through understanding of mental disorder and addiction by this one simple rule, which is that the authentic person cedes part or all of their self to the disorder or substance "ambassador," and no cure works without understanding that at some level and helping the client to understand that in turn.
The first step in self empowerment is to tell the client or patient the facts, which is that substance or disorder "takes over" even when they are clean, sober or not feeling symptoms of their mental disorder. True self empowerment is diminished by victim mentality (or "chemical imbalance so it's not your fault" mentality) because you are having that mentality conversation with the disorder or the substance, not the person you are trying to help. You must first tell the person that the disorder or the substance has too much authority on their behalf, and teach them how to recognize those occurrences and take back their power from the disorder or substance ambassadors. When psychiatrists dispense drugs, even when helpful and necessary, they should explain it in those terms, that the drugs are a "best that we have" way to regain control of a more benevolent and authentic personal interface and that their constant objective should be to work toward an authentic and reality based being.
Keeping faith out of the psychiatric and other counseling arenas has been an incredibly bad mistake. I've blogged about this before. Here I will just join that observation to this blogging post by explaining that cultivating the patient's own faith is a way to wrest control away from the disorder or addiction ambassador and back to the person's core being. Far from 'believing in a myth' as loud mouth atheists charge, helping a person to strengthen their own cultural faith, whether Christian or not, is a means by which humane and authentic perspective is restored in the person who has been troubled by controlling ambassadors of disorders or substance.
I also hope that you really think twice about needless medication to children for simple behavioral problems. Behavior is behavior; it is not a mental disorder that has resulted in a disorder ambassador yet. Before imposing a benevolent (supposedly) prescription drug ambassador on your child, try to be more realistic about the sources of the behavioral issues in the first place and address them with traditional means.
Most important, those of you who suffer from depression, anxiety, bipolar, borderline, post traumatic stress disorder, attention deficit and other of the common conditions that are so frustrating and painful, remember that it is not your fault but it is a fact that the condition is only enhanced as their ambassadors retains control of your core being. Try to be aware when you let the condition "speak" or "think" for you and stop it by redirecting it. For example, if something minor happens but you find yourself thinking that this event "adds" to your condition, halt that thought in its tracks and examine it. Take control back from that ambassador thinking and think for yourself. Did the event really matter? Can you visualize that thousands of others have had the same thing happen to themselves today and they do not assume that it is reinforcement of their own burdens, but just a "stuff happens" moment?
For example, attention deficit people can be so tiresome in thinking that every racing thought that they have is "an ADD moment." Um, guess what? Normal creative people also have racing thought moments! Stop feeding your ADD ambassador by instantly labeling every racing thought or going off on a tangent moment as "an ADD moment." Sheesh. That's part of that bank account problem mentality that I explained to my bipolar friend. Your disorder ambassador is constantly racking up credits and debits to your account and that's erroneous and unhealthy. Understand that the things that you are hyperattentive of are, for the large part, part of normal human character. For example, I spend a lot of my time thinking rather dull and singular thoughts, plodding along in my world of constancy. However, I have spurts of ideas that can be very intense and multitasking and that's cool and creative, and sometimes I have to jot the ideas down on paper to keep track of them all, or pick just one and go with it. That's normal. But if that happens to an ADD person he or she immediately trumpets it in a mixed pride/self flagellating "ADD moment." It's not an ADD moment; it's being normal. But if you let your ADD ambassador rule your life your ADD ambassador will keep you in a constant state of disordered hyperattention.
I hope a lot of people with different perspectives and personal situations have found this case study and general discussion helpful.
When a person has a mental illness and you have a conversation with them, you are not speaking to that core person, but you are having a conversation with the mental illness. When a person is an addict and you have a conversation with them, you are not speaking to that core person, but you are having a conversation with the addictive substance. For example, if you are speaking to a crack addict, you are speaking "to the crack" not to the person "Mr or Ms Whoever."
This is true even for a long time after the addict has, hopefully, become clean and sober and kicked their addiction. This is because the substance has left its programming in the person's brain, nervous system and spirit, and it takes a long time and much acutely aware corrective reinforcement to revert away from the substance's remaining presence and toward the authentic person's core.
This is also true about mental illness, even mild forms of it. When you are speaking to your friend or loved one who has depression, for example, you are having a conversation with "depression." This is something that you, the sufferers of mental illness and strain, must become more aware of. When you have depression, in a way you have designated an ambassador to act on your behalf, and the name of that ambassador is "depression." When you are successfully treated for depression, you have taken back your own identity and no longer allow "depression" to be your ambassador in everyday speech and actions, but remember that the "ambassador" has left his rule book behind and it takes you a while to stop following the formulas.
One way to spot this is to be self aware of how often in a day you do the following: Are you assessing either consciously or unconsciously every event and conversation in your day as being something to give you an excuse to be depressed again, or something that helps you not to be depressed? I am not being unkind here, any more than if I helped someone to understand if when they are hungry if they need a snack or they need a full meal. This is non judgmental help in self diagnosis. So, if you are still looking at each event in your day in a help/hurt your depression viewpoint, you are still allowing depression to be your ambassador. If you get through the average day without having those thoughts of assessing your depression quotient, you are successfully banishing the depression ambassador from your "court."
I first explained this years ago to a friend with bipolar. As I got to know her I very quickly spotted what she did not see in herself, which is that her bipolar, even though successfully treated, was still her "ambassador." This is because she parsed every event and conversational sentence and facial expression, etc in her day according to what I explained to her is almost a "bank account" ledger mentality. She, or rather, the legacy of her active bipolar ambassador, was hyperattentive to every item of her day and slotted words, expressions, deeds and the moods of others as being "debits" and "credits" to that person's worth, to that experience's worth and to her own worth. Thus if you had a conversation with her and used a phrase she didn't like, her bipolar ambassador would issue an alert that you "might be an enemy."
I think that analogy had a great impression on her, and gave her a tool to be productively self examining and not unproductively hyperattentive. The road to sanity and joy does not travel through a country where you are obsessed with every brick in the road and the direction of every breeze.
So these are examples of how a mental disorder, even a relatively benign one, such as mild depression, has a serious and universal rule that one must remember, which is that the illness takes over control of much of one's interface with the world and one's own interior dialogue, much as if you have your authority seized by an ambassador who now operates on your behalf, both to your "liking" but also very much against what you would really want, in theory.
I wanted to remind people of this teaching of mine and introduce new readers to it before looking at our extreme case study. When one has a mental disorder, from mild to severe, one has ceded one's own authenticity over to that disorder who then proceeds to act as your ambassador. When one has an addiction one has not only ceded authority to the addictive ambassador, but the substance itself is now in control. I am only slightly exaggerating, for example, when I say that if you speak to a crack addict, you are actually having a conversation with the chemical compound "crack." That is MUCH worse than the ceding of your identity to your mental disorder ambassador. A mental disorder is still grounded in reality in the extent that it is an emotional situation (even if biologically caused) where one has normal desires even as they have been warped. An addiction is a substance that is a chemical, not a set of human emotions. Thus your addiction "ambassador" is not even human.
Suppose that you have depression. Well, whatever the cause of the depression, your ambassador is "Mr or Ms Depression." But suppose you are a crack addict. Your ambassador is "Mr or Ms Crack." Depression is a set of human qualities. Crack is a chemical.
Thus someone who speaks to your ambassador "depression" speaks to "sad, listless, tired, spiritually drained" etc. Someone who speaks to your ambassador crack speaks to "methylbenzoylecgonine."
Someone who speaks to your ambassador "schizophrenia" speaks to "hears voices, cannot see clearly, feels hunted, hurt, angry" etc. Someone who speaks to your ambassador heroin speaks to "diacetylmorphine hydrochloride."
Alright, now imagine the problem of treating someone with a severe mental illness, especially one that is violent, and also is addicted. At the very least imagine a crack addict schizophrenic. They have ceded their core selves to ambassador schizophrenia and ambassador crack. Imagine, worse, someone who suffers from childhood abuse, schizophrenia, multiple substance addictions, using both drugs and alcohol.
These ambassadors do not "work together." Rather, one has a multiple personality ambassador problem, and they war among themselves. Psychiatrists are only part way toward understanding this, according to my observation of them and their treatment methods. They do understand, profoundly, the problem of what they call "multiple diagnoses." However, psychiatry is far behind in understanding that they are not speaking with the person but speaking with the illness and/or the addictive substances. Thus they turn too quickly toward prescribing more 'benign' ambassadors, a psychiatric prescription drug without recognizing that this is what they are doing.
That is the heart of the problem of prescribing drugs to children with "behavioral" disorders. You have added a drug ambassador to a child who was struggling with only a behavioral ambassador, and now you have real trouble.
See, in a way the ancients who thought that all illness was "possession" by evil spirits were shrewd and accurate in one and only one aspect. They recognize that as we say nowadays "it was the liquor that was talking." The ancients recognized that those with mental illness no longer spoke for themselves. When Jesus cast out demons he was casting out the possession of the person by their illness. Not only was Jesus curing the mental disorder but he was also banishing the programming of the mental illness as ambassador on the human, thus cure was instantaneous and total.
But humans have to cure themselves now and Jesus can help in the spirit, but it is still a secular problem of how to avoid mental illness where possible (such as halting child abuse immediately and fully, the source of much mental illness) and to avoid addiction totally, as there is never "justifiable" addiction.
Now, when you have an extreme case such as in this incredibly sad news story, you have a hardening of heart on both sides (kill him or cure him) but both sides miss the point and everyone in between is baffled.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/6202701.html
OK, now that you've read the story I'll bet you would tell me that if we were conversing that you read this story with a greater understanding of the problem. This does not mean that we necessarily have the ideal solution, but at least we all share an understanding.
This guy obviously, despite what the judge ruled, had at least one severe mental disorder. He then commits an incredibly heinous crime, and now has another layer of trauma and mental disorder (once someone commits their first violent act a "violence ambassador" is empowered). So he has mental disorders, an extreme violence and depravity action, and attempts suicide (recognizing his own depth of loss of humanity). He also, according to the lawyer, had both alcohol and drug addiction.
Many who read about crimes and pleas of insanity say, "How do we know who is really crazy?" Well, I've just given you a tool to better understand. The cynic who says he is crazy but coldly plans a crime and covers it up is hardly actually insane. But an eye plucking psycho with untreated mental illness and ruled by substance abuse is obviously insane. He has demonstrated a multiple year record of being controlled by his untreated illnesses and his legacy addictions AND the guilt of the violence ambassador (who is still active as he tried to attack fellow inmates).
This man is about the most extreme case we can find and this is why he is such a valuable case study. I'm not being cold; actually, I'm trying to help all of you see with compassion what is going on inside the wreckage of such a person and the crimes he commits.
So the case study helps you to see the layers of conflicting ambassadors that are within those who have more than one problem of mental disorder or substance. So you see how easy it is to recognize that a person with simple depression has a painful problem, but one that can be recognized as being a singular ambassador problem. The same is true of someone who in theory has no problems but drinks too much.
But as soon as you have two conditions, two addictions, two mental disorders, a mental disorder and an addiction, it is much more than twice as hard. It is like ten times as hard to treat. Then when you have someone with a handful or more of mental disorders and addictions, it is essential that everyone recognize that the core person is lost, overlaid by possessive ambassadors that speak for him or her, and some of those ambassadors have no human feelings but are chemicals making decisions and having "human" speech.
All I've explained will only assist each side of the "kill him" or "cure him" debate. The "cure him" side has better understanding of the layers of the problems and how throughout the cure they will rarely IF EVER actually speak to him... they will only speak to the illnesses and the addictions. This then helps the "kill him" side to understand that he is really lost under all the layers of his humanity destroying conditions. The "kill him" side can legitimately argue that no one can cure such a total wreckage of a person, one who would kill babies and cut their hearts out.
My point is not to assist either the "cure him" or "kill him" sides. My point is to educate how to navigate through understanding of mental disorder and addiction by this one simple rule, which is that the authentic person cedes part or all of their self to the disorder or substance "ambassador," and no cure works without understanding that at some level and helping the client to understand that in turn.
The first step in self empowerment is to tell the client or patient the facts, which is that substance or disorder "takes over" even when they are clean, sober or not feeling symptoms of their mental disorder. True self empowerment is diminished by victim mentality (or "chemical imbalance so it's not your fault" mentality) because you are having that mentality conversation with the disorder or the substance, not the person you are trying to help. You must first tell the person that the disorder or the substance has too much authority on their behalf, and teach them how to recognize those occurrences and take back their power from the disorder or substance ambassadors. When psychiatrists dispense drugs, even when helpful and necessary, they should explain it in those terms, that the drugs are a "best that we have" way to regain control of a more benevolent and authentic personal interface and that their constant objective should be to work toward an authentic and reality based being.
Keeping faith out of the psychiatric and other counseling arenas has been an incredibly bad mistake. I've blogged about this before. Here I will just join that observation to this blogging post by explaining that cultivating the patient's own faith is a way to wrest control away from the disorder or addiction ambassador and back to the person's core being. Far from 'believing in a myth' as loud mouth atheists charge, helping a person to strengthen their own cultural faith, whether Christian or not, is a means by which humane and authentic perspective is restored in the person who has been troubled by controlling ambassadors of disorders or substance.
I also hope that you really think twice about needless medication to children for simple behavioral problems. Behavior is behavior; it is not a mental disorder that has resulted in a disorder ambassador yet. Before imposing a benevolent (supposedly) prescription drug ambassador on your child, try to be more realistic about the sources of the behavioral issues in the first place and address them with traditional means.
Most important, those of you who suffer from depression, anxiety, bipolar, borderline, post traumatic stress disorder, attention deficit and other of the common conditions that are so frustrating and painful, remember that it is not your fault but it is a fact that the condition is only enhanced as their ambassadors retains control of your core being. Try to be aware when you let the condition "speak" or "think" for you and stop it by redirecting it. For example, if something minor happens but you find yourself thinking that this event "adds" to your condition, halt that thought in its tracks and examine it. Take control back from that ambassador thinking and think for yourself. Did the event really matter? Can you visualize that thousands of others have had the same thing happen to themselves today and they do not assume that it is reinforcement of their own burdens, but just a "stuff happens" moment?
For example, attention deficit people can be so tiresome in thinking that every racing thought that they have is "an ADD moment." Um, guess what? Normal creative people also have racing thought moments! Stop feeding your ADD ambassador by instantly labeling every racing thought or going off on a tangent moment as "an ADD moment." Sheesh. That's part of that bank account problem mentality that I explained to my bipolar friend. Your disorder ambassador is constantly racking up credits and debits to your account and that's erroneous and unhealthy. Understand that the things that you are hyperattentive of are, for the large part, part of normal human character. For example, I spend a lot of my time thinking rather dull and singular thoughts, plodding along in my world of constancy. However, I have spurts of ideas that can be very intense and multitasking and that's cool and creative, and sometimes I have to jot the ideas down on paper to keep track of them all, or pick just one and go with it. That's normal. But if that happens to an ADD person he or she immediately trumpets it in a mixed pride/self flagellating "ADD moment." It's not an ADD moment; it's being normal. But if you let your ADD ambassador rule your life your ADD ambassador will keep you in a constant state of disordered hyperattention.
I hope a lot of people with different perspectives and personal situations have found this case study and general discussion helpful.
Saturday, January 3, 2009
A few words about epilepsy and seizures
There is a lot of discussion about seizures due to the death of Jett Travolta. I do not have a lot of detail to offer, but I know that some are interested in any people I've known with similar problems.
One of my college roommates, in the early 1970's was diagnosed as a child with epilepsy. Diagnosis was easy because epilepsy is the condition of having what used to be called "epileptic fits," now called "seizures." Because she had epilepsy as she grew older she could not risking a seizure while operating a car and thus could not learn to drive, obviously, but that was the only restriction placed upon her. She grew up on a farm and had a very healthy traditional upbringing and food habits, what is looked down upon by many today, but was a blessing in the times when people appreciated farm fresh food including milk and beef, eggs, bacon etc. One of her cooking specialties was a great rich chipped beef. Some people just develop epilepsy, it's one of the more puzzling medical conditions that humans have experienced for much of their history. She was not on any medications, since that just was not common back then, and actually she didn't even bother telling us "what to do" in any detail in case she had a seizure, just to make sure she didn't harm herself by thrashing around and wait it out. So most of the time the three of us who were her roommates just forgot about it.
Well, here is what is interesting. She never had a seizure in the four years in college, and it seems to have gone away on its own. Apparently it in some forms is something that can be outgrown. As the years went by we just kind of noticed one day, hey, you haven't had any seizures ever while you were in college, and she said "Yep." That's when she told us that sometimes it is outgrown.
Now, years later when I interned in a psychiatric outpatient facility I observed that I had no patients with epilepsy, but that symptoms of some illnesses include seizures. Those patients received medication for their underlying illness and for control of the seizures, and they did very well. I share this so you who are new to this subject realize that there is a disorder that is called epilepsy that is diagnosed as being the state of having epileptic seizures, and there are separate unrelated illnesses that have a range of symptoms, one of which may be seizures. I saw someone with epilepsy who grew up on a farm (lots of dirt but lots of healthy living) outgrow it, and I've seen patients with mental illnesses who have as one of their range of symptoms seizures, who benefited greatly from their medication, which basically gives them their life back.
So those are my first hand observations. I hope this was helpful to those of you new to this type of subject, and that you realize when you read the press you have to try to distinguish between the condition of having seizures and seizures as a symptom of other conditions. My roommate had a lot of class; she really was about the opposite of an obsessive drama queen that you could imagine and she was a totally cool role model for others. By the way, "back then" this type of thing was diagnosed and treated by your family doctor. Now it's pretty much assumed that it becomes a huge psychiatric thing. I think that is reasonable progress, but I'm just helping you to know that there was a time when people were much more blase about the childhood forms of it. The key was to maintain normal supportive life conditions for the child and not to do anything different in terms of food, living conditions and certainly not mental quakery of trying to "change" or "turn off" the seizures as it seems $cientology does with its toolkit of quakery and abuse.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epilepsy
One of my college roommates, in the early 1970's was diagnosed as a child with epilepsy. Diagnosis was easy because epilepsy is the condition of having what used to be called "epileptic fits," now called "seizures." Because she had epilepsy as she grew older she could not risking a seizure while operating a car and thus could not learn to drive, obviously, but that was the only restriction placed upon her. She grew up on a farm and had a very healthy traditional upbringing and food habits, what is looked down upon by many today, but was a blessing in the times when people appreciated farm fresh food including milk and beef, eggs, bacon etc. One of her cooking specialties was a great rich chipped beef. Some people just develop epilepsy, it's one of the more puzzling medical conditions that humans have experienced for much of their history. She was not on any medications, since that just was not common back then, and actually she didn't even bother telling us "what to do" in any detail in case she had a seizure, just to make sure she didn't harm herself by thrashing around and wait it out. So most of the time the three of us who were her roommates just forgot about it.
Well, here is what is interesting. She never had a seizure in the four years in college, and it seems to have gone away on its own. Apparently it in some forms is something that can be outgrown. As the years went by we just kind of noticed one day, hey, you haven't had any seizures ever while you were in college, and she said "Yep." That's when she told us that sometimes it is outgrown.
Now, years later when I interned in a psychiatric outpatient facility I observed that I had no patients with epilepsy, but that symptoms of some illnesses include seizures. Those patients received medication for their underlying illness and for control of the seizures, and they did very well. I share this so you who are new to this subject realize that there is a disorder that is called epilepsy that is diagnosed as being the state of having epileptic seizures, and there are separate unrelated illnesses that have a range of symptoms, one of which may be seizures. I saw someone with epilepsy who grew up on a farm (lots of dirt but lots of healthy living) outgrow it, and I've seen patients with mental illnesses who have as one of their range of symptoms seizures, who benefited greatly from their medication, which basically gives them their life back.
So those are my first hand observations. I hope this was helpful to those of you new to this type of subject, and that you realize when you read the press you have to try to distinguish between the condition of having seizures and seizures as a symptom of other conditions. My roommate had a lot of class; she really was about the opposite of an obsessive drama queen that you could imagine and she was a totally cool role model for others. By the way, "back then" this type of thing was diagnosed and treated by your family doctor. Now it's pretty much assumed that it becomes a huge psychiatric thing. I think that is reasonable progress, but I'm just helping you to know that there was a time when people were much more blase about the childhood forms of it. The key was to maintain normal supportive life conditions for the child and not to do anything different in terms of food, living conditions and certainly not mental quakery of trying to "change" or "turn off" the seizures as it seems $cientology does with its toolkit of quakery and abuse.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epilepsy
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Candid talk about sex mental disorder
When I was doing some counseling and spiritual direction some years ago, I met some people, "online" who have an increasingly common sexual mental disorder.
(If you are sensitive, and I totally understand, as I'm sure tired of talking about it, don't read any further, as this will be a candid and somewhat shocking blogging).
These people are totally obsessed with oral sex, both homosexual sex and heterosexual sex. They are obsessed in two ways. One is that they are unable to put genuine encounters that they have had in context. For example, they cannot forget or move on past youthful (or drug fueled) experimentation. They "rerun" the tape of each encounter over and over, and insist on hinting about it to everyone they meet, but don't actually come right out and discuss it. I spent months of very frustrating time online with them, based on friendship and genuine concern, and I tell you, at this point, I don't even want to see a cat licking itself, I grew so sick of the subject. Here's what is strange and rather incestuous. Their families, including parents and aunts, encourage and participate in the oral sex episode obsession and reiteration. The Bible has something about that, about aunts who ought to keep themselves covered around their nephews, but hey, these aren't Bible geniuses. My point is that obsessing about oral sex, especially the homosexual kind, totally overwhelmed large parts of these adult men's lives, encouraged by "intimate" relatives. I'd worry about any children around them. Am I worried about molesting? Nope. What I would worry about is that they would see a caution sign for a railroad crossing and think that it is a picture of a big dick. Really, they have filters on their eyes and brains, and an inability to process normal life and thoughts, without including some obsession about oral sex.
One day... and this would be a funny story if it was not so pathetic... I was out hiking in upstate New York, and was in sparsely populated farm area. I "ran into" a middle aged woman on the path (to my surprise, as few but the occasional bicyclists were around) and she promptly steered the conversation to her son being "gay" and "what would God think of that." Um, like I said, the pee pee organ being used for yum yum is constantly on their minds and of their enabling relatives. I explained that God is not thrilled, but it's far worse if they promote that activity, rather than keeping it to themselves. She was actually unhappy with that answer. Um, would you like your mom or your auntie thinking about what sex organ you stick where? If my parents ever gave any thought about any part of my intimate life, it would give me the creeps. Anyway, so that is the first point, that these people, the men I talked to and the women who enable these obsessions about behavior that every generation of human has had to struggle with, only increases mental illness, not decreases or "eases" it. I've even blogged that Jesus didn't care what sex positions the sinners had (like the woman by the well with "five husbands). Nothing gets through to them (except, I guess, constant oral sex images).
The second problem is, not surprisingly, they are in the "communications" business. Yep, you guessed it. They "work out" their obsession by including meat pole (pardon my bluntness, but that's a terminology I actually had to learn in the course of trying to help these people) allusions in commercials, videos, advertisements, music, talk show and every little thing they get their mitts on. Since I know these people I have to cringe now, on just about a daily basis, as I see "well, where did they work the meat pole reference in today? oh yeah, 'there it is!'" The problem is, while they "work out their problems," they are flooding young people with subliminal (and not so subtle) sucky sucky on the big thang messages.
Please pray for these people. Really, I've been able to do nothing to help and if anything, all I am is a target for the enablers to obsess more and more (like I said, I can't even 'take a hike' without a dirty mommy wanting to talk gobble gobble about her son). Yeah, right on time, I just heard a reference from one of them on one of their regular radio shows.
(If you are sensitive, and I totally understand, as I'm sure tired of talking about it, don't read any further, as this will be a candid and somewhat shocking blogging).
These people are totally obsessed with oral sex, both homosexual sex and heterosexual sex. They are obsessed in two ways. One is that they are unable to put genuine encounters that they have had in context. For example, they cannot forget or move on past youthful (or drug fueled) experimentation. They "rerun" the tape of each encounter over and over, and insist on hinting about it to everyone they meet, but don't actually come right out and discuss it. I spent months of very frustrating time online with them, based on friendship and genuine concern, and I tell you, at this point, I don't even want to see a cat licking itself, I grew so sick of the subject. Here's what is strange and rather incestuous. Their families, including parents and aunts, encourage and participate in the oral sex episode obsession and reiteration. The Bible has something about that, about aunts who ought to keep themselves covered around their nephews, but hey, these aren't Bible geniuses. My point is that obsessing about oral sex, especially the homosexual kind, totally overwhelmed large parts of these adult men's lives, encouraged by "intimate" relatives. I'd worry about any children around them. Am I worried about molesting? Nope. What I would worry about is that they would see a caution sign for a railroad crossing and think that it is a picture of a big dick. Really, they have filters on their eyes and brains, and an inability to process normal life and thoughts, without including some obsession about oral sex.
One day... and this would be a funny story if it was not so pathetic... I was out hiking in upstate New York, and was in sparsely populated farm area. I "ran into" a middle aged woman on the path (to my surprise, as few but the occasional bicyclists were around) and she promptly steered the conversation to her son being "gay" and "what would God think of that." Um, like I said, the pee pee organ being used for yum yum is constantly on their minds and of their enabling relatives. I explained that God is not thrilled, but it's far worse if they promote that activity, rather than keeping it to themselves. She was actually unhappy with that answer. Um, would you like your mom or your auntie thinking about what sex organ you stick where? If my parents ever gave any thought about any part of my intimate life, it would give me the creeps. Anyway, so that is the first point, that these people, the men I talked to and the women who enable these obsessions about behavior that every generation of human has had to struggle with, only increases mental illness, not decreases or "eases" it. I've even blogged that Jesus didn't care what sex positions the sinners had (like the woman by the well with "five husbands). Nothing gets through to them (except, I guess, constant oral sex images).
The second problem is, not surprisingly, they are in the "communications" business. Yep, you guessed it. They "work out" their obsession by including meat pole (pardon my bluntness, but that's a terminology I actually had to learn in the course of trying to help these people) allusions in commercials, videos, advertisements, music, talk show and every little thing they get their mitts on. Since I know these people I have to cringe now, on just about a daily basis, as I see "well, where did they work the meat pole reference in today? oh yeah, 'there it is!'" The problem is, while they "work out their problems," they are flooding young people with subliminal (and not so subtle) sucky sucky on the big thang messages.
Please pray for these people. Really, I've been able to do nothing to help and if anything, all I am is a target for the enablers to obsess more and more (like I said, I can't even 'take a hike' without a dirty mommy wanting to talk gobble gobble about her son). Yeah, right on time, I just heard a reference from one of them on one of their regular radio shows.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Read about this standoff in Wisconsin
Fortunately it did not go the way the Knoxville attack did, and this guy seems more disturbed and less violent. Yet, if this summary is to be believed, he thought that angelic beings were telling him to kill congress people on behalf of humanitarian, liberal and constitutional values?
All I can say is that insanity and mental defect has become a very complex and shady situation in this modern society. I hope the "angelic beings" aren't samples of the "aliens" that a former astronaut is jabbering about. That ain't so helpful if so, no?
http://www.jsonline.com/watch/?watch=1&date=7/29/2008&id=44008
snip
UPDATE: 'Angelic beings' drove standoff
The man who claimed to have a bomb inside a public restroom in the City of Pewaukee Police Department told police that "angelic beings" told him to start a war against his own government.
snip
Richards, whose standoff with police Monday lasted 2 1/2 hours, is accused of demanding a squad car and a gun so he could go to Madison and then Washington D.C. to shoot congressmen and senators, according to the criminal complaint.
snip
According to the criminal complaint, at 9:20 a.m. City of Pewaukee Police Officer Kristen Bast found a piece of paper on the floor outside the unisex restroom door. The computer-generated note stated he had a bomb strapped to him, he demanded a weapon, a police vehicle and to be brought to the vehicle. The note states that he did not want to hurt police officers but his intent was to arrest the government for failing to protect children, war vets, the helpless, for failing to fight greed and corruption, and for violating all constitutional amendments.
The man had been in the bathroom for five hours before the note was discovered, the complaint says. Police checked a video surveillance camera in the lobby and saw a man dressed in camouflage enter the bathroom at 4:15 a.m. While officers were investigating the first note, a second note, identical to the first was slipped out from under the door, the complaint says.
All I can say is that insanity and mental defect has become a very complex and shady situation in this modern society. I hope the "angelic beings" aren't samples of the "aliens" that a former astronaut is jabbering about. That ain't so helpful if so, no?
http://www.jsonline.com/watch/?watch=1&date=7/29/2008&id=44008
snip
UPDATE: 'Angelic beings' drove standoff
The man who claimed to have a bomb inside a public restroom in the City of Pewaukee Police Department told police that "angelic beings" told him to start a war against his own government.
snip
Richards, whose standoff with police Monday lasted 2 1/2 hours, is accused of demanding a squad car and a gun so he could go to Madison and then Washington D.C. to shoot congressmen and senators, according to the criminal complaint.
snip
According to the criminal complaint, at 9:20 a.m. City of Pewaukee Police Officer Kristen Bast found a piece of paper on the floor outside the unisex restroom door. The computer-generated note stated he had a bomb strapped to him, he demanded a weapon, a police vehicle and to be brought to the vehicle. The note states that he did not want to hurt police officers but his intent was to arrest the government for failing to protect children, war vets, the helpless, for failing to fight greed and corruption, and for violating all constitutional amendments.
The man had been in the bathroom for five hours before the note was discovered, the complaint says. Police checked a video surveillance camera in the lobby and saw a man dressed in camouflage enter the bathroom at 4:15 a.m. While officers were investigating the first note, a second note, identical to the first was slipped out from under the door, the complaint says.
Sunday, July 20, 2008
URGENT mental health/addiction reminder
I call this a reminder because I blogged about it before. I have also explained this to my patients when I was an intern in a psychiatric outpatient facility back in 2002.
Regardless of the trauma or mental illness, the type or its origins, once the person with the mental health disorder becomes addicted ALL BETS ARE OFF. You can no longer treat the mental illness first, and assume the addiction is secondary. The addiction has now overcome and imprinted the mental illness. Everyone and I mean everyone, both professional and amateur, have this completely in reverse. Because they assume the addiction is the sufferer's reaction to the mental disorder (true) and they are "self medicating" (true), people assume that is a sign of increased urgency to treat the underlying mental disorder (not true). The minute the sufferer becomes an addict to any substance, including "huffing" as this poor man in the linked article, or "minor" substances such as weed or beer, treating the substance must be the NUMBER ONE PRIORITY.
There are two reasons for this. One is that the addiction now changes the nature of the underlying causal mental illness. Here's an analogy. Suppose you get a thorn stuck in your finger. It hurts but you refuse or are mentally incapable of going to a doctor to get the thorn removed. So in your mental distress you set fire to your finger, figuring that it will "get the thorn out." You now have a charred, infected second or third degree burn on your finger. So what do your friends and family do? Hire someone to "get the thorn out." Um, you now have a charred thorn inside a charred finger. You need a burn specialist, not the original prescribed "thorn remover."
So the addiction now fundamentally changes the underlying illness and causal factors and the odds are YOU CAN NO LONGER FIX THE ORIGINAL ILLNESS OR DISORDER BEFORE FIXING THE ADDICTION. In an ideal set up you can do both at the same time, but that almost always involves complete long term hospitalization, and there are very few facilities for this nor does the mental health profession, or the public at large, understand this. The guy in this article would have needed what we used to call a "sanitarium," where he is placed in a locked down low stress place (no PTSD inducing potential noises, visuals or surroundings) and treated for both the PTSD and the huffing or other substances. And this would be long term, for example a year or more, not a few weeks in the free wheeling revolving door.
So here is the second reason that the addiction must be treated first. I have told people this over and over and you MUST start believing me. When you speak to a person who has an active addiction, you are no longer having any conversation with that person; you are speaking to the actual substance, even if they are sober or not drugging at the moment. Yes, you read this right. When you speak to someone hooked on weed, for example, you are having a conversation with the weed. You are asking the weed who he is going to vote for. You are asking the weed who he thinks will win American Idol. You are asking the weed what he is doing the next day, and what his plans are. You are absolutely literally having a conversation with the weed, not with the person, no matter how sensible any one answer may be or how sober or clean the person is at that moment. So long as they are actively addicted you are literally-do not think I am exaggerating or using symbolism-you are literally having a chat with a pile of mind or mood altering green leaves. This is because the substance changes the brain wiring and also the person's perception of reality, even when they are not drinking, huffing, puffing, snorting or injecting at that moment. In fact, it takes months or years after being completely clean that you stop having conversation with the substance, and the original person starts to re-emerge. So the poor family and friends of this sad medic in the linked article were having conversations with the gas he was huffing, even during the days or hours he was not huffing. Once he began an addict he stopped being the person on the other side of the conversation, and the huffing gas took over 24x7.
Regardless of the trauma or mental illness, the type or its origins, once the person with the mental health disorder becomes addicted ALL BETS ARE OFF. You can no longer treat the mental illness first, and assume the addiction is secondary. The addiction has now overcome and imprinted the mental illness. Everyone and I mean everyone, both professional and amateur, have this completely in reverse. Because they assume the addiction is the sufferer's reaction to the mental disorder (true) and they are "self medicating" (true), people assume that is a sign of increased urgency to treat the underlying mental disorder (not true). The minute the sufferer becomes an addict to any substance, including "huffing" as this poor man in the linked article, or "minor" substances such as weed or beer, treating the substance must be the NUMBER ONE PRIORITY.
There are two reasons for this. One is that the addiction now changes the nature of the underlying causal mental illness. Here's an analogy. Suppose you get a thorn stuck in your finger. It hurts but you refuse or are mentally incapable of going to a doctor to get the thorn removed. So in your mental distress you set fire to your finger, figuring that it will "get the thorn out." You now have a charred, infected second or third degree burn on your finger. So what do your friends and family do? Hire someone to "get the thorn out." Um, you now have a charred thorn inside a charred finger. You need a burn specialist, not the original prescribed "thorn remover."
So the addiction now fundamentally changes the underlying illness and causal factors and the odds are YOU CAN NO LONGER FIX THE ORIGINAL ILLNESS OR DISORDER BEFORE FIXING THE ADDICTION. In an ideal set up you can do both at the same time, but that almost always involves complete long term hospitalization, and there are very few facilities for this nor does the mental health profession, or the public at large, understand this. The guy in this article would have needed what we used to call a "sanitarium," where he is placed in a locked down low stress place (no PTSD inducing potential noises, visuals or surroundings) and treated for both the PTSD and the huffing or other substances. And this would be long term, for example a year or more, not a few weeks in the free wheeling revolving door.
So here is the second reason that the addiction must be treated first. I have told people this over and over and you MUST start believing me. When you speak to a person who has an active addiction, you are no longer having any conversation with that person; you are speaking to the actual substance, even if they are sober or not drugging at the moment. Yes, you read this right. When you speak to someone hooked on weed, for example, you are having a conversation with the weed. You are asking the weed who he is going to vote for. You are asking the weed who he thinks will win American Idol. You are asking the weed what he is doing the next day, and what his plans are. You are absolutely literally having a conversation with the weed, not with the person, no matter how sensible any one answer may be or how sober or clean the person is at that moment. So long as they are actively addicted you are literally-do not think I am exaggerating or using symbolism-you are literally having a chat with a pile of mind or mood altering green leaves. This is because the substance changes the brain wiring and also the person's perception of reality, even when they are not drinking, huffing, puffing, snorting or injecting at that moment. In fact, it takes months or years after being completely clean that you stop having conversation with the substance, and the original person starts to re-emerge. So the poor family and friends of this sad medic in the linked article were having conversations with the gas he was huffing, even during the days or hours he was not huffing. Once he began an addict he stopped being the person on the other side of the conversation, and the huffing gas took over 24x7.
So yes, he needed to be treated for PTSD before he became addicted. However, I'm willing to bet that he became addicted very quickly and it is difficult for underfunded mental services anywhere, whether armed forces or civilian, to get a full treatment of mental illness diagnosed and run before the person is addicted to something. I've told all of you repeatedly that drug and substance abuse are the fifth column scourge that is destroying individuals and this country, and much of the world. I've warned about this since the 1960's, even as a teenager I warned adults about this. Once a person with a mental illness has an addiction you are no longer discussing your love for him or her, and their treatment options with that person. You are discussing your love for him or her and their treatment options with a pile of junk, a syringe, a nose full of substance, the alcohol waiting to be drunk, even if that person is not actually imbibing at that moment. The conversation is lost the moment they become an addict because like I said in my example, an addict thinks that setting fire to his finger to remove a splinter makes perfect sense.
What would I have done if I could? The minute he started reading his Bible I would have had him committed in a sanitarium like setting (if one still exists), and not because he is Bible reading but because that's a sign that he was overcome by forces he could no longer control and was turning to God. And God has created smart and caring people who presumably can then render the best medical care. Oh, wait, that's right. Underfunded and misunderstood psychiatric treatment ruled by insurance companies and "do gooders" who do not understand either mental illness or addictions. And yeah, I know all about not being able to afford the best; I've had no medical insurance for around seven years now. And yes, the pharmaceuticals have manipulated public health so that while vital and life saving medication is developed and provided, they have stomped out the long term residential talking and behavior oriented treatment that is ALSO needed. They would want to drug a guy like this soldier, yet still allow him to roam around in what he perceived as Iraq in his hometown.
This country MUST go back to the concept of sanitariums, but kindly and good ones (not Victorian flashbacks, so don't accuse me of advocating that.) But PTSD, for example, cannot be treated in a PTSD inducing environment, which is basically all of society right now. A PTSD guy cannot even turn on the TV or radio without it screaming at him, and forget actually driving on the roads. A PTSD guy or gal must be put in a serene lock down and be treated for all their problems at once in an environment that does not reinforce ANY of the stimuli at all. How about some tax and oil money going to THAT instead and actually saving some lives, souls and sanity? Sheesh. And those who say "exposure based therapy" is right for PTSD are totally wrong and irresponsible. Exposure to trauma was what "broke" them in the first place. They need to be returned to an anti-trauma setting to allow their internal wiring to mend. Then they can gradually return to environments with potentially trauma inducing stimuli. Let me use an example. A hurricane broke the levee in New Orleans. Gosh, I guess that levee needs more and more hurricanes to hit in after that, you know, to "cure it" by "exposure." You know, get the levee "used" to be broken by a hurricane. Instead of oh, you know, actually first rebuilding the levee when there is NOT a hurricane roaring? I mean, some common sense people, please. But medicine has become all about ego and money and secular measures of "satisfaction", nothing else. [Reminder of special place in hell for bad doctors and their enablers. Oh it's not nice there, really].......
Families, you must understand what I am telling you. Do not be taken in by phony counselors who tell you the propaganda that the underlying must be treated before the addiction. Don't let them only dig for the thorn once your loved one has burned his finger to char.
http://news.aol.com/article/soldier-in-famous-photo-never-defeated/90519?cid=12
***
Another thought to fill those of you in on the "stinking thinking" (to use an AA term) that is rife among both addicts and their erstwhile counselors. Many addicts who do not attend AA meetings but do go to addiction counseling (or who refuse to go) will insist that they "be treated by a former addict because if you ain't been addicted you don't have no cred with me." Wha? How stupid is that? But the perception of the addict thinks (burn the finger of that thorn) and the counselors co-dependent and enable them (so they can get employment) and also because "the stoned patient is always right" mentality. I fully understand addicts who are cured and who want to give back to the community, and think they have some solutions that "worked for them." Fine, give back to your community in an area other than substance abuse counseling, and share your ideas offline with non-addict counselors. I'm sorry that sounds hard but your setting yourself up as "teachers" and "guides" and "counselors" by virtue of being "ex addict" feeds the stinking thinking of the addict. They receive reverse validation when they think that "well, see, everyone is a reformed addict; no one can resist addiction." They need to hear loud and proud from people who NEVER WERE addicts, in order to learn how to live like fully functional and healthy human beings again. I'm sooooooooooooo fed up with well meaning AND self serving "recovered addicts" who "give back" by "being counselors." Give back in a food bank and get out of the way. Stop enabling recovery chic. And don't call me a racist or bigot. A woman of color, one of my grad school professors, told me about this, as she was undermined by her patients because she had never been an addict herself. Wow, that's stinking thinking in action, but like I said, be compassionate and understand that it is the substance telling her that she has no street cred to counsel addiction, not the person whose lips were moving. The addictive substances are making those accusations, not the person who "was" before the addiction. It's the same logic that makes recovered addicts think they are the best addiction counselors. Their ex-substance is still doing the "thinking" for them. Give it a rest and don't allow the substances to have all of the conversation themselves, or this world is a goner for sure; trust me on that.
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Deplorable attack in Israel
Read this story about two babies who are saved from the maniac doing rampage with the front loader in Jerusalem, although one of the mothers was crushed to death, just after she flung the baby outside her car to a stranger, a Brit, who rescued the infant.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1214726194375&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Now, this is a very strange attack. No attack is ever good, whether it is the man who rampaged this weekend killing eight people here in the USA, or a "Palestinian or East Jerusalem" against a "Jew" attack, as this seems to be. But I say it is strange because the perp seems to have a criminal record, not a political record. Read this article as the research into his past and connections begins.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1214726194381&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
According to this article he had no terrorist connections that are known as of yet, he was working a construction job, he had children, and he even reportedly lived with a Jewish woman for a while, and had normal relationships with Jews on the job. But here's a disturbing thought... he had a criminal record, he may have been a drug user, and he "snapped," as in taking this vehicle from work, rather than doing some sort of premeditated bombing or shooting thing.
What I'm concerned about is whether Israel is now going to start to see what looks on the surface to be political or religious attack, but could be USA style rampaging of someone, often a drug user, with a rage problem who snaps. As the paper commented in another article on this subject, this is the hardest type of terrorist attack and/or crime to predict and defend from.
There's no excuse. This maniac ran down women with their babies. There's no excuse for killing the innocent, I don't care which side you are on, what your provocation is, or what stupid issues you have and certainly not if you are a drug user who is not seeking treatment.
In the USA we see such rage and maniacal, even diabolical, behavior that is criminal in nature. I hope that Israel does not start to have this type of problem on top of the political terrorism that has been a scourge, causing both sides to suffer, for decades.
Israel, watch your back. Do not make the mistake of thinking that you are the "holy land," yet ignore secularization that brings with it the break down of the family, depravity, drug addiction and mental illness in your quest to be a fully modern nation. There's a lot of rage in the USA that erupts against the most innocent (murders of babies by their own parents over things like they are crying too much, they distract the parents from their self indulgent activities like video games, or the horror of infant sex abuse). These factors will break down your entire society if allowed to do so, and denying citizenship or walling off non-Jewish residents will not hold back the overall societal implications if both Jewish and non-Jewish families break down, use drugs, have rage issues, and so forth. You have your hands full with terrorism. Watch out for growing issues of criminal rage as this strange case MAY (we don't know yet) be an example.
Prayers for the wounded and suffering families.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1214726194375&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Now, this is a very strange attack. No attack is ever good, whether it is the man who rampaged this weekend killing eight people here in the USA, or a "Palestinian or East Jerusalem" against a "Jew" attack, as this seems to be. But I say it is strange because the perp seems to have a criminal record, not a political record. Read this article as the research into his past and connections begins.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1214726194381&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
According to this article he had no terrorist connections that are known as of yet, he was working a construction job, he had children, and he even reportedly lived with a Jewish woman for a while, and had normal relationships with Jews on the job. But here's a disturbing thought... he had a criminal record, he may have been a drug user, and he "snapped," as in taking this vehicle from work, rather than doing some sort of premeditated bombing or shooting thing.
What I'm concerned about is whether Israel is now going to start to see what looks on the surface to be political or religious attack, but could be USA style rampaging of someone, often a drug user, with a rage problem who snaps. As the paper commented in another article on this subject, this is the hardest type of terrorist attack and/or crime to predict and defend from.
There's no excuse. This maniac ran down women with their babies. There's no excuse for killing the innocent, I don't care which side you are on, what your provocation is, or what stupid issues you have and certainly not if you are a drug user who is not seeking treatment.
In the USA we see such rage and maniacal, even diabolical, behavior that is criminal in nature. I hope that Israel does not start to have this type of problem on top of the political terrorism that has been a scourge, causing both sides to suffer, for decades.
Israel, watch your back. Do not make the mistake of thinking that you are the "holy land," yet ignore secularization that brings with it the break down of the family, depravity, drug addiction and mental illness in your quest to be a fully modern nation. There's a lot of rage in the USA that erupts against the most innocent (murders of babies by their own parents over things like they are crying too much, they distract the parents from their self indulgent activities like video games, or the horror of infant sex abuse). These factors will break down your entire society if allowed to do so, and denying citizenship or walling off non-Jewish residents will not hold back the overall societal implications if both Jewish and non-Jewish families break down, use drugs, have rage issues, and so forth. You have your hands full with terrorism. Watch out for growing issues of criminal rage as this strange case MAY (we don't know yet) be an example.
Prayers for the wounded and suffering families.
Monday, May 5, 2008
Autistic kids/mental ill parents, some linkage
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/05/AR2008050500736.html
***
More shoes will drop in studying this complicated correlation. After all, if people are mentally ill there are now implications for the meds they take, both prescribed and self medicating, effecting the baby.
***
More shoes will drop in studying this complicated correlation. After all, if people are mentally ill there are now implications for the meds they take, both prescribed and self medicating, effecting the baby.
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