Therapists

[ElectricMonk]

I would like to know just what exactly makes anyone qualified to determine, with absolute certitude, what constitutes normal?

Is acceptance of the current human condition sane or insane? From what perspective could you argue each point and sound credible?

Is avoidance of the pain of others indicative of systematic traumatization or is it cold sociopathy?

Walking past a slum on the way to Starbucks....

Yelling at the guy outside your car window to 'get a job!' when you just survived the third round of layoffs at McCorporation....

Slapping your children because the pain of your own past is to great to bear....sending the kids to therapy to adjust to their world and be more respectful....

Watching the forests felled, the air polluted, the water damned up, the creatures dying in streams, fields and roadways....

Humans burning, corpses rotting, cities destroyed, children on fire in the streets.....

Just what is normal? Just who is qualified to pass judgement?

The sanctified halls of the mighty university, the court of public opinion, the hallowed grounds of the media all preach the same message......

THOU SHALT!

Who says so? Is your must more important than mine? Is my inner voice, my spirit, my essence that screams out ENOUGH! is that sane or insane?

We don't have to destroy to change. The burdens we carry, once set aside will appear just as they are....chains that bind, our own creation, our minds the jailer of our desires to just be

And become

[mobil1]

I would like to know just what exactly makes anyone qualified to determine, with absolute certitude, what constitutes normal?

IMO, there IS NO "normal" or "sane".

Many of the greatest artists, thinkers, scientists, engineers etc. throughout human history have been those the majority would consider "off their rockers".

That said, if YOU are unhappy with YOUR life, then YOU should seek happiness and solace. YOU, are, first and foremost, responsible for YOU.

If YOU find it through religion, meditation, drugs, therapy or whatever, then IMO go for it...

Personally, myself, I long avoided shrinks, therapy, etc. and used mostly illegal drugs, such as marijuana to find whatever peace I could. To seek mental health was to admit mental issues and that was, in my world, SHAMEFUL.

Then I had problems that my drugs could no longer help me with. And a good friend told me about his very helpful and mind expanding experience with a therapist. I got the therapists name from him when my problems hit a new high, and I started seeing that therapist.

My therapy was very difficult, once all my life long suppressed emotions of sadness started coming out. But it made me, IMO, a much better person, more aware of my issues, AND the perfectly logical reasons for them. I am now a MUCH happier person, thanks to this therapy.


So once again, YES, nobody but you can define "normal" or "sane" in the context of yourself. But for those suffering from depression and other mental issues, a good therapist can be a life saver, perhaps even literally.

[BenjaminTheDonkey]

Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet tint ends and the orange tint begins? Distinctly we see the difference of the colors, but where exactly does the one first blendingly enter into the other? So with sanity and insanity. In pronounced cases there is no question about them. But in some supposed cases, in various degrees supposedly less pronounced, to draw the exact line of demarcation few will undertake tho' for a fee some professional experts will. There is nothing nameable but that some men will undertake to do it for pay.

Herman Melville, Billy Budd, Ch. 21
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Herman_Melville

[ElectricMonk]

I would like to know just what exactly makes anyone qualified to determine, with absolute certitude, what constitutes normal?

IMO, there IS NO "normal" or "sane".

Many of the greatest artists, thinkers, scientists, engineers etc. throughout human history have been those the majority would consider "off their rockers".

That said, if YOU are unhappy with YOUR life, then YOU should seek happiness and solace. YOU, are, first and foremost, responsible for YOU.

If YOU find it through religion, meditation, drugs, therapy or whatever, then IMO go for it...

Personally, myself, I long avoided shrinks, therapy, etc. and used mostly illegal drugs, such as marijuana to find whatever peace I could. To seek mental health was to admit mental issues and that was, in my world, SHAMEFUL.

Then I had problems that my drugs could no longer help me with. And a good friend told me about his very helpful and mind expanding experience with a therapist. I got the therapists name from him when my problems hit a new high, and I started seeing that therapist.

My therapy was very difficult, once all my life long suppressed emotions of sadness started coming out. But it made me, IMO, a much better person, more aware of my issues, AND the perfectly logical reasons for them. I am now a MUCH happier person, thanks to this therapy.


So once again, YES, nobody but you can define "normal" or "sane" in the context of yourself. But for those suffering from depression and other mental issues, a good therapist can be a life saver, perhaps even literally.

I am glad to hear it Mobil. Having someone to hash things out with, who can get into You without damaging You is a real blessing. I didn't mean to construe my post as beating on therapy or assistance but the certitude with which so much of society has regarding normality. Its a sham that there is one "correct" state of emotional being and anything outside of that needs to be treated.

I studied Psychiatry at university then realized (strangely, my professors were the ones who made it clear) that it was, in large part, pushing drugs to mask and make acceptable. I went on to study Behaviorism and, again, a lot of it is about making patients (the focus was on developmental psychology) manageable for caretakers.

Perhaps this is too harsh a judgment but it still seems wrong headed to me. Of course, in all fairness, I was burned out at the time as well so I was probably not in the best state to objective (big quotes around that word).

In many cases, I feel that psychiatry and therapy have attempted to replace what was once the role of family, community and long term human relationships that have all but disappeared in out "civilization". People are pack animals, that we choose solitude in many instances seems more as reaction to the state of being.....disconnected in a teeming mass of somnambulist humanity.

[mobil1]

In many cases, I feel that psychiatry and therapy have attempted to replace what was once the role of family, community and long term human relationships that have all but disappeared in out "civilization". People are pack animals, that we choose solitude in many instances seems more as reaction to the state of being.....disconnected in a teeming mass of somnambulist humanity.

Yes, to some extent I can agree.

I tend to think that psychiatrists are more useful to those who are TRULY messed up, regardless of my argument that nobody can define "sane" or "insane". For example, I tend to think that any mass murderer IS truly nuts, and I tend to think it is more humane to imprison and treat such people for life, than to simply execute them. (That said, legal expenses aside, from a purely societal efficiency perspective, execution is much cheaper.)

For more average people with problems, I tend to think therapists are more effective than psychiatrists.

Regarding family, I DO believe there are, and have always been, MANY families that create dysfunction in their children, simply because of the way that their parents raised them. Children are very pliant, and tend to associate love and good with the environment they grew up in.

For example, the child who is regularly beaten will tend to seek out similar partners when they mature. That IMO is THE reason certain women always uncannily seem to end up with, and stay with, abusive partners. They are subconsciously seeking out a partner that is abusive like their father. There are many, many similar examples with other forms of abuse or dysfunction.

Such people can IMO benefit greatly from good therapy, to recognize these issues, and seek ways to resolve them, leave abusive partners and find new ones who are not abusive.


In my particular case, I always seemed to end up with girlfriends who were just as nutty as my mother was and still is. I was just naturally attracted to such women and couldn't help myself.

My therapy continues to be an on-going process, but I credit it for finding myself attracted to my wife, who is much more like the very loving and patient grandmother I knew as a child. She and we continue to have issues, but I'm happy to say that I feel they are resolvable, and that she is MUCH more emotionally healthy than my previous girlfriends.

[flycreeper]

Just as an aside... after training as a therapist and finding out about PO, I have quit the profession and gone to studying attitudes about energy deployment and use, and climate change, at least temporarily. A large part of this was that most of my fellow therapists had no more interest or willingness to believe or research PO than anybody else you know. I found it difficult to carry on working with these people, and if I return to working as a therapist, it will be as part of an environment that incorporates things like PO and climate change into the way of working.

Considering the impact on relationships and mental health of people in future who will be hit by PO and climate change, I was initially staggered that this was the case. Let it be known though, that I came to realize that most therapists are like a lot of other people. They want and are committed to the status of the "sheeple" life that they get form the current system: mortgage, plasma TV, white wedding, kids, and retirement funds, in their life away from work. Even the thought of considering whether there might be factors that will affect this, or the kind of work they do, terrifies the majority of them in my own experience. I'm not trying to be derogatory by way, and I don't consider myself as superior to them in any way. I just find it sad though: the people who try and affect change and growth in others' lives in our society can be the people who have the most trouble in changing their own.

[BenjaminTheDonkey]

They want and are committed to the status of the "sheeple" life that they get form the current system: mortgage, plasma TV, white wedding, kids, and retirement funds, in their life away from work. Even the thought of considering whether there might be factors that will affect this, or the kind of work they do, terrifies the majority of them in my own experience.

Fantastic point! Absolutely! Reminds me of an “anti-psychiatry” slogan from the sixties: “Therapy means change, not adjustment.”

if I return to working as a therapist, it will be as part of an environment that incorporates things like PO and climate change into the way of working.

Exactly! Good luck!

[Cutbank]

Therapy, in my experience, is about emotional freedom. Identify those things that are emotionally keeping you for being at peace or doing at whim/will that which will bring you more peace and dissolve them.

Whenever  a sentence includes the notion of fear or doubt we are held captive by emotional scars.

From that perspective, a "good" therapist is one that can help mitigate fear and encourage the client to reach their full potential. Unfortunately I think the ratio of healthy therapists to not-so-healthy therapists is about 1 in 20. Which means if you have a trauma you want to work through you really have to break a sweat to find someone to work with. A therapist who helps unlock the fears can be a life-changing blessing unlike anything else. One who wants to hash the daily crap will keep you mired in the swamp.

When I was searching for a therapist, the first one I went to started our session by saying in a sympathetic voice "life is hard..."

Really? Is it? No, HER life was hard. My life isn't hard. My life is complicated, but not hard. I don't want to see my life as hard, I want to see my life as joyful. Easy and hard are not adjectives to describe life. Avoided or explored, that's how I judge my life.

Some people are bio-chemically tilted, but 99% of the rest of us have an unnatural amount of stress and artificial fear piped into our brains 24/7. We no longer are capable of determining real threats from imaginary ones. We are trained to think terrorists are an imminent threat when statistically we're more likely to be struck by lightening. We fret over Wall Street falling while chain smoking.

Dogs, children, music you make by hand, cooking from scratch, dirt in my garden, stars that I watch deep into the night, those are the therapists I listen to. And they are surprisingly affordable.