Living Sanely In An Insane World

Let's start with a premise: the world as we know it macro-cosmically is pretty messed up.

By this I mean that so called civilized humans throughout known history have not behaved much better, or at all better, than we do now. Greed, hatred, genocide, unspeakable violence, have been the rule, and not the exception. Wars are "normal" and constant throughout the world, and throughout history. Politicians are almost universally corrupt and duplicitous ("diplomatic"). Business (empire) leaders are universally corrupt and duplicitous ("self interest"). The so called strong take lethal advantage of the so called weak. None of this is new, or uncommon, or "abnormal" or aberrant. The fact that we are surprised by these things is astounding, given their virtually universal repetition throughout time and place.

So, it is perhaps not surprising then that people draw the conclusion that it is human nature that makes it impossible for things to be any different. So it would seem. I'll propose a different view: it is not human nature that leads to the repetition of all of this madness. It is in fact the shared delusion that we are in line with human nature that causes it. Human nature, if it be known, would give us the opposite of what we typically see. It would give us kindness, love, generosity, compassion, kinship, collaboration and cooperation, tolerance and appreciation.

The question then becomes: How can we live sanely, in genuine alignment with our real human nature, in an insane world? The world at large is insane. Leaders are insane with power and greed and control and avarice. Ordinary people buy into this insanity and conduct their lives as though they were models of health and goodness.
The real madness continues and spreads.

Doing something different then will not be an easy task, or a lightly assumed responsibility. Who will rise to the occasion?

mdavid-lpcc.com

What Do People Want From Psychotherapy?

Why seek out a psychotherapist? What do people want and expect from such a thing? Here's what I think are the two reasons people seek therapy:

1) Relief of distressing emotional, behavioral or psychological symptoms; 2) help getting troubled relationships on track toward happiness and fulfillment.

That's about it. If there are no distressing symptoms (difficult/challenging/painful/confusing feelings; problematic/destructive/dangerous/self defeating behaviors; or some kind of serious and frightening distortion in one's thinking or perceptual processes), and if relationships are happy ones, people do not seek therapy. Why would they? It would be analogous to going to the doctor for treatment of a healthy body with no symptoms of illness.

In the broad field of psychotherapy generally, we like to use words like "distress", or "difficulty", or "self-defeating", rather than always saying "mental illness". This is pretty easy to understand, isn't it? People don't like to be identified as mentally ill. There's way too much stigma attached to this condition. Of course, sometimes it may be an appropriate term. I tend to think it should be reserved for extremely serious conditions. Otherwise, there is no need to overly pathologize people, or their states of being.

It is possible to expand the scope and meaning of psychotherapy to include explorations of distress from a more philosophical perspective. That is, something more analogous to wholistic healing, as distinct from conventional, symptom/crisis oriented allopathic medicine, which generally fails to consider the "whole person", and can thereby potentially create as many problems as it appears to resolve.

A more wholistic approach to psychotherapy would want to look at underlying psycho-spiritual causes of distress, as well as attempting to temporarily relieve symptoms
with partial remedies.

For example, is a person experiencing depression because of a chemical imbalance only, or might there be other important factors involved, like their world view, or unacknowledged, unrecognized, and unaddressed trauma or grief? One could take anti-depressants alone, and may or may not experience real relief, either temporarily or perhaps even more long term. Usually, however, anti-depressants alone won't do the trick. The combination of drugs and therapy has been shown in numerous research studies to provide the best outcomes.

But then we run into the problem that many people, maybe most people, want that all mighty Quick Fix, and then the prospect of self reflection, of self inquiry, of self knowledge elicits anything but enthusiasm. Oh what to do?

mdavid-lpcc.com

"Start Where You Are"

One Buddhist(American) teacher, Pema Chodron, has a book called Start Where You Are.
This title says quite a lot about the nature of a psycho-spiritual approach to well being and wisdom that is in some fundamental way radically different - and I would say much healthier - from our more familiar way of experiencing the world and ourselves.

In this Buddhist view, the implication is that we can well afford to stop and look closely at ourselves, and that if we do this, we will probably not find something essentially evil or corrupt or bad. This is very different from our Western/Christian view of ourselves, which often is precisely the opposite; that is, that if we stop and look closely at ourselves, we will indeed find something evil and corrupt and bad. In the Buddhist view, we are essentially good, though ignorance and mis-guidedness can make things appear differently. In the Christian view, often, we are essentially corrupt, evil, "fallen", and our very existence is an affront to God.

It may not be too difficult to grasp the different psycho/spiritual/emotional implications of each of these world views. I have routinely seen the devastating results of the Western view in my work. Imagine the difference inherent in a more positive view of man, or get to know someone who's world view includes a more positive view of man, and a new world of psychic possibilities opens up. It might be appropriate to actually relate lovingly toward yourself, for example, instead of being burdened with a bottom line experience of self hatred.

What would change in your world if you were worthy, and felt that you were worthy, of love? What would change in your world if you were absolutely worthy and deserving of, and felt that you were worthy and deserving of nothing less than respect and consideration?

We like to think that our psychological and emotional makeup is difficult to understand. In fact, it is rather easy to understand. A follows B, so to speak. The implications of being treated this way or that way, of internalizing these messages or those about ourselves, of believing this or that about the world and about ourselves, are very clear. If you believe that you are most fundamentally bad, cosmically bad, bad in the eyes of God, you will feel and behave in certain fairly predictable ways, and these ways will not be conducive to your health and well being or to the health and well being of anyone or anything else.

Start where you are, even if where you are is pretty awful. The implication is that you can, ultimately, trust that because you are in fact good, good will come from your humble, confused, terrified starting place.

mdavid-lpcc.com