Getting well is tough. Getting well emotionally is tough. It can take years. II

Getting well is tough. 

Getting well emotionally is tough. 

It can take years. II

 Brian Lynch, M.D.

It is often said you have to be “ready” to get help.  “The person is not ready.”

I deal with many people that are addicted to drugs and in this area of treatment, it is very common to say that the person was or was not ready or not ready to change.

If one is not ready to get help what can anyone do to?

An important perspective to take to help anyone is that why should the person think they need help when the reason they are having trouble is not their fault?

Yes, there is the “abuse excuse.” It is the only excuse. People are “bad” because they have been treated badly. There is a great deal of “proof” now that this is indeed fact. There is in fact an “abuse excuse.”

At some level, we know that we have been harmed and many of us know that we have been severely damaged. Now what are our responses to this harm? 

We have been able to classify these responses into some generic reactions. It seems that humans can only do one of five things we can try and run away from the problem, we can abuse ourselves even to the point of suicide, we can lose ourselves in addiction, we can blame others, and hate others. Finally, we can face the problem, and the pain, and try and solve the problem.

Now, if you have been harmed it is very hard to see the need to “solve” the problem as you did not cause the problem. But then what? Well, what we do not know is that we are simply left with our pain and if left with our pain and with the four not-so-good responses mentioned above. These not-so-good responses will throw us into more confusion.

Basically, the logic here is that most people do not have much of a chance if the abuse is significant. I like to say how do you get a “positive” out of a “negative?” Well, for the most part, you don’t. 

 Many give the retort “Well I had it bad and I am ok.” I say you're not ok just because you say that it. Yes, we can overcome adversity because we want to connect but the argument is like saying a wiring system in a house is always going to work without being maintained. That you can abuse it all you want and the current will flow. Not true. So too with humans, human interest will not continually flow if it is abused sufficiently.

So it is quite a thing to “be ready.” Magnificent in fact. The person is having a birth. They somehow are able to birth into an independent world. How this can take place is somewhat miraculous. They have to trust themselves in what is a completely unknown world. Indeed “Better the devil you know than the angle you don’t.” That is until it isn't.

Joy, love, kindness, and trust have to be lived and experienced. Because you have enjoyed them does not mean that person next to you has any concept of that experience. And so why should they trust you or me if we ask them to change?

Once again staying the course, not punishing, not being negative, not confirming their world is the only way to help.

Copyright 2009


References:

Tomkins, Silvan S.: Affect Imagery Consciousness NY: Springer Publishing Company, 1963.

Shame and Pride: Affect, Sex, and the Birth of the Self by Donald L. Nathanson Paperback (March 1994)

W.W. Norton & Company; ISBN: 0393311090

How To Get Where You Want To Go Brian Lynch, M.D. 2000 PageFree

Getting well is tough Getting wel emotion is tough It can take years. I

Getting well is tough. 
Getting well emotionally is tough. 
It can take years. I

By Brian Lynch M.D.

I hope I can be of some help here through a simple thought. I speak a lot about “feelings”, and “emotions”.

In psychology, we have been missing a valuable tool that has been right under our noses. I have just mentioned it and it is our feelings. We live in a world of images and we get caught up in those images. These images can control our lives.

In psychology, we often focus on those things that make us feel bad. We have all experienced unpleasant moments in our lives. Many of us have experienced horrible moments. All types of abuse have been experienced by any number of readers. To name them might only serve to upset some.

Some abuse is intentional. Sometimes things happen to us and we are just there. That is horrible things happen and nothing at all was intended. For example, maybe we were in a natural disaster or were in a war, or were exposed to someone else’s violence. Mostly we were little and had no control. No control at all over what was going on.

What stays with us is the picture, the video clip, and the image. This is “trauma.”

I say that what we do not understand is that the image has feeling behind it. What are we feeling when we are experiencing the video clip?

Think of going to a movie. Movies almost always have a score. The music accompanies the movie. Most of the time we are not aware of the music except subconsciously.

This is the way we live most of our lives We are, unfortunately, often controlled by traumatic images that are driven by fear, terror, shame, disgust, contempt, startle, and rage that we pay no attention to. No attention at all to feeling because we are so focused on the “image.” The image is always there. The image continually recalls the negative emotion and moves us to act in ways we have learned to act from very early times. Usually, these actions are quite “dysfunctional.” They often control our lives.

We feel that much can be done if we focus on the feelings instead of the image.

The image, unfortunately, will never go away. What can change is how we feel about it. If we get “interested” in the image we will start to move aside the negative feeling and start to “understand” what went on. Understanding leads to healing. We, in short, replace, anger, fear, shame, contempt, and disgust, with interest.

Copyright 2009

References:

Tomkins, Silvan S.: Affect Imagery Consciousness NY: Springer Publishing Company, 1963.

Shame and Pride : Affect, Sex, and the Birth of the Self by Donald L. Nathanson Paperback (March 1994)

W.W. Norton & Company; ISBN: 0393311090

How To Get Where You Want To Go Br

“A Sept Forward and Three Back”

By Brian Lynch, M.D.

Why is it that we do not progress in life? Why is it that we might take a step forward, maybe three and fall back? Is it that the world is just overwhelming?

That is an important question. Many times it is just overwhelming. Presently we are in very difficult economic times. Is there any individual’s fault? Not entirely and often not at all. One lost their house and they “did everything right” or everything they could.

But we do come from a family; we do have an inner psychological world that can play tricks on us.

Some years ago a teacher of mine said to me, “You know Brian it is often very difficult for children to do better than their parents.” I understood this to have a great deal to do with shame and humiliation. That it might be understood by all that it would be humiliating to the parent if the son became more than the father. Many works of art demonstrate this. The father does everything to sabotage the son’s efforts to leave the farm or not stay on at the family business. “What boy you think you’re better than me?”

Shame can “bind” us to the family. We can feel it is wrong or bad to improve ourselves. We see a better world out there, but if I leave will I not hurt my parents? Will I not disrupt all the family? After all, it is “the family.” Even those that do leave and are successes oft times will struggle for years with guilt and addiction because of their betrayal. If these thoughts seem insane they might just indeed be the basis of a great deal of what we call “insanity."

We know and see the “the good” and the healthy, but we cannot bring ourselves to achieve it for to do so would be to break the bond with our primary caregiver. With that which was the healthiest and loving and giving, to begin with. But what happens when we quickly learn “the family” as a whole is not so loving and healthy? There are many types of intelligence and any one of these can inform us that there is a “better life over the hill” but again “how do I leave this life for that life?” “Who is my guide? Who can be my guide?” Today I would think it is more and more difficult to find those guides as “pop culture” is devoid of “heroes”, for the most part, and the act of “humiliating” others in public is now taught nightly on Television.

Who do we turn to, to be taught to be interested in each other?

So it is quite a bind; I continue terrible, brutal family traditions of abuse and unhealthy habits all the time knowing there is a better way. I continue this out of “love.” But this love, although it is genuine and healthy at its core, as these are your primary caregivers it is now a love based greatly on guilt. There needs to be a new birth through, yes, interest, and self-interest to bring about a rebirth. Today it seems we have to be our heroes and find like-minded souls, like-minded heroes. They do exist. Then we can return to the family and not change them, but be their model, their “hero” even though they at first might “hate” us for it.

Brian Lynch

Copyright 2008

"Getting Back to the Good Times"

"Getting Back to the Good Times"

By Brian Lynch, M.D.

I would suspect that most people would not know that most of what is practiced in what is called clinical psychology or psychotherapy has not been proven. That is when doctors and therapists treat patients the methods they use have not been “tested” in any rigorous way. Are you surprised?

Well, this whole business of trying to help people in this way is barely a hundred years old and the idea of having organized systems of doing and paying for research on a large scale is much less than that. Then realize that we are mostly dealing with face-to-face, one-on-one encounters, and conversations between two people. How do you compare one conversation with another and decide if one is better than another? It is pretty difficult. But we have made some progress.

I have talked a great deal about two positive emotions, joy and interest, mainly interest and about “testing.”

The exciting news is that it seems that there is some “proof” that these ideas are indeed valid. Through a therapy called “Control Mastery Theory” (don’t bother about the strange name) they have been able to do studies through which they conclude that people in therapy are indeed trying their best despite many, many things they might do to demonstrate the opposite. Like, do what! Like calling the therapist names, leaving therapy, and not paying the bill. The conclusion in all of these cases is that the person is “testing” the therapist. They are testing whether or not it is “safe” to move forward in life. Now, I just say we all do these things, these "tests" with everyone in our lives if we are not acting in a healthy way toward them.

We start in life with a good deal of “interest” and “joy.” These feelings are not attached to much “thinking” or reasoning for a very long time. They are attached to “doing” things. To “play” for example, again enjoyment in the world. But through much of history and much of our own lives, there has been much interruption of this “interest” and “joy” that from an early age has taught us that the world can hurt and can “hurt” a lot. Here I can only suggest that what the theory suggests is that we have a deep subconscious master plan to get “back to the good times.” We will charge forward wanting and hoping for love and connection, but will then “test” the environment, the desired object” to see if they or the environment is safe. I say often too, it is “just” that what happens is that old memories of the bad times, of the old hurt of pain and abandonment come back. The feelings of fear of more loss, the feelings of shame and distress return and they are too much and we either runway into a pit of self-hate and blame and often addiction or we strike back.

That is, each human is innately “healthy” due to innate “interest.” That is, we are born with the absolute biological need to connect with other people through “interest.” That is this is not the Freudian sex drive. This is “I am interested in you.” This is our healthy state. We can never lose this except in extreme cases ( This is what I call the most damaged of us such as Sadam Hussien. His mother tried to abort him and he knew this!). So we subconsciously are trying always to recover this primary interest even though in any given family, we might have learned many, many rules that teach us that to connect is not healthy or is dangerous. Again, we learn the dysfunctional rules that connecting is not healthy and is dangerous. This causes great internal conflict as these thoughts and feelings are always fighting our biological nature to connect and to be healthy.

We Have to Learn to Give

By Brian Lynch M.D.

Whenever I write I wish not to be “pointing the finger at others” although it is natural to first see “wrong” in others,,  but very often I will write something and then be so surprised to be thinking about what I wrote and find that I remember doing a similar thing to someone just recently.

Today I am thinking about stories I have heard and experiences I have heard concerning people that just seem to be unable to, well, share very much.

In extreme form, it might be that you could not expect them to walk across the room and get you a glass of water.

People who might live with you for a week and maybe, just maybe wash the dish that they ate from. Otherwise, they feel that they need every last cent they have as “who knows what might happen tomorrow?”

People who know all about a given profession, are professional and yet after 20 years and claim you as their “best” friend, but I bet you, you have not gotten one bit of “free” advice from them. You might be “picking their brain!" Yet you have freely given of your knowledge as you see this as part and parcel of “friendship”, of sharing.

Over and over you hear, “I’d love to help you out” with this or that. I know how to do this or that. “You really should get this organized.” etc., but nothing ever comes of it.

A relative is full of advice. You’re desperate for tuition money but you just hear criticism. Had you done this or that? They are going to give all their savings to the poor in India when they die. That is the only solution they can see. “Otherwise, people just hurt you?”

So why are “we” like this so much of the time? Well, the last statement says it all. “Otherwise, people just hurt you?” If we are not creating the good times now, today. Why is it that we are not creating the good times now today? It must only be because we have learned to be cautious. A little logic must tell us that there should be a balance to this but then who is to tell us what that balance is? Where do we go to find out?

If we have been severely abused how do we even know we have been severely abused and we are overreacting? How do we know that we should be more giving and if we were more giving we would be better off? The thought is those that don’t know don’t know and are not “evil”, “mean” or “doing it on purpose” they just do not know. Those that can give in the moment and experience the “interest” and the resulting “joy” of giving and hopefully of receiving only know it through doing. The receiving part is very important because the downside is that is almost as dangerous and “sick” to give and give without receiving as to not give. We need balance the year-round.

Copyright 2008