Psychology vrs faith

[Entangled]

I saw a thread.

It says that psychology/psychiatry is just a waste of time. The people in the profession are just out to get you and you are wasting your time with them. Yet there was no answer to what you should actually doin replacement?

I can only assume that this person meant that your Faith in God should help or cure you with this?

What do you believe?

That psychiology is a waste of time and just your Faith in God can help you the best?

Or, that Psychology is OK and is something to be used in our society… and God can work through Psychology to help you?

What do you think?

 

[AlanFromWichita]

Psychology, psychiatry, medicine, and faith all work together.

Much of it is in fact, garbage. Or it’s good but it’s not applied well. Once in 1987 I paid $80 to a therapist who, after meeting my wife for less than 30 minutes, diagnosed that her problem was me, and recommended she gets out of the house immediately, and files for divorce. And we had two young children. You see, this woman had recently been divorced and was happy for it so I guess she thought it was good for everyone. In fact, we had zero problems between us. We were both mentally ill and we were supportive of each other, and have been to this day – tremendous love and support between us. Therapists like this are destroying the fabric of society, IMO. Soon after that incident, the psychiatrist she works for (whom we really liked) fired her. Last I heard she was working in Maine, probably screwing up people’s lives there.

I had a severe, disabling psychosis with onset June 8, 2001. I “declared” it completely over October 3, 2001. This time period and what happened are totally aligned with both Dark Night of the Soul, in the spiritual realm, and severe bipolar disorder in the medical realm.

I have so much to say, and I’ve told and retold the story, but it was an amazing roller coaster. One advantage to losing my engineering career was that I was able to focus nearly 100% of my waking hours, to getting better. A conservative estimate is 50,000 hours I spent searching, testing, reading, listening, thinking, praying, taking meds, etc. I listened to philosophers, both religious and secular. I listened to preachers, both Catholic and non-Catholic. I considered both eastern and western ways of looking at things. I learned contemplative prayer and non-dualistic thinking. I watched a lot of comedy, at the urging of both my psychiatrist and my spiritual director. Basically, I hit this thing with ideas from all sides. Plus I was showered with love from a few good friends (the ones who didn’t desert me when I became no fun to be around – or not like my ex-pastor who banned me from parish property except to play piano for Mass) and my wife and kids … I cannot tell you how significant a factor love is, in the equation for healing.

I call the Holy Spirit, the Divine Therapist. He has given me total healing, and just this year opened my eyes into the kingdom … a prize that makes me not even miss the estimated $1.5 million loss in wages and benefits from my disability. But that was chump change, to because it turns out while I was busy being angry and confused, God was helping me purchase the field where the real treasure lay.

Being healed by the Lord is far better than never having been broken in the first place. I’ve experienced nothing except peace, serenity, joy, and basically fruit of the spirit, for over a month now. :heaven: The only disturbances in my peace were maybe twice, and they lasted less than five minutes until the “reverse gravity” I call it, that one finds in the kingdom, restored the peace. My own psychiatrist told me that the calmness and clarity in my mind now, exceeds medical expectations and even his best hopes for me. He said this condition is rare even among those – including doctors – who have no history of mental illness. I say these things not to brag, but to show that I have authority from personal experience in the areas of healing, psychology, and spirituality. What can I say? When the Lord heals, He doesn’t go half way! :nunchuk:

I’ll leave you with what I learned from my first spiritual director, whom I met for the first time (having never before even heard of “spiritual direction” at age 42) a month after the onset of my illness – that is, I met him July 11, 2012. Fr. Gerry Pecht, a Redemptorist.

Fr. Pecht asked if I had any questions. I said how come the psychiatrists are so crazy (referring the low-rent interns where I was involuntarily hospitalized, not the good doctor I have had since getting out) and why they can’t understand the answers I give them to their questions.

Fr. Pecht smile and said, “because they are all too specialized. A person has six major components: physical, mental, spiritual, emotional, sexual (tied to self identity), and social. Experts are only trained one, or maybe two areas. So no matter what is wrong, they all tend to see it from their own expertise, and think they can fix it using their own tools.”

One reason my doctor is so good, is he listens to me. He doesn’t even mind having a discussion about my beliefs. Some doctors don’t want to hear that; religion is messy and crazy and random. But he isn’t looking for a label or my beliefs, he looks at symptoms. When I am manic, he gives me tranquilizers to keep me out of trouble and help me sleep. When I was depressed, antidepresants, etc. These are the symptoms, not the problem. The real healing was at the hand of the Divine Therapist. :bible1:

My doctor explains it like this. Medicine does not heal my mind; it manages the symptoms. Medicine is like a cast on a broken leg. It holds things in place to avoid further damage and to allow the leg to heal itself. :crutches:

So IMO if one has a serious issue that needs to be addressed, they would do well to look at it from all sides.

Alan

 

[Tingo]

All medicine should be based on science. In general you should be able to identify multiple studies published in peer-review publications that demonstrate the extent to which any treatment (from talk therapy to drugs) is effective. Many of the symptoms of ‘mental’ illness are self-reported and can be known only to the patient. This inevitably makes treatment difficult. None of this has anything at all to do with faith or religion.

 

[AlanFromWichita]

All medicine should be based on science. In general you should be able to identify multiple studies published in peer-review publications that demonstrate the extent to which any treatment (from talk therapy to drugs) is effective. Many of the symptoms of ‘mental’ illness are self-reported and can be known only to the patient. This inevitably makes treatment difficult. None of this has anything at all to do with faith or religion.

What role do you think spirituality has in the healing process?

I’m not talking about determining medicine; that’s done by the symptoms. Preferably symptoms the doctor can observe, but as you say much is self-reported.

Do you see a connection between improving one’s spiritual life and taking medicine under doctor’s orders, as far as the mental illness healing process?

Alan

 

[Entangled]

"My doctor explains it like this. Medicine does not heal my mind; it manages the symptoms. Medicine is like a cast on a broken leg. It holds things in place to avoid further damage and to allow the leg to heal itself.

So, IMO if one has a serious issue that needs to be addressed, they would do well to look at it from all sides."

Alan

Nicely done… impressive…

Thanks Alan!

As you know I am completley and utterly pro-psych. We all have our faults

But, I like this part you put down! See above on his statement.

Meds can not cure you… I think of it as 50% of the way. Even psychology helps. Yet, I can not argue with this.

God is the best strength you can ever have. Just knowing that Jesus suffered for us so much and rose to life, just to show us he did that for you? Realizing in the process that if Jesus dies on the Cross and he was God, through the Trinity, which means that God himself the Father experienced all that just to let us know how we are important and loved, just to let us know through that anquish… that…

He loves us so much? And, through it have a relationship with him to the end of time, just by realizing this and helping others to do the same.

That surely isn’t half bad is it?

 

[TheHolyTrinity]

I do believe that psychology is still in its infancy.

I believe that psychology was born making unwarranted assumptions about the nature of consciousness in order to assert that it was susceptible to scientific method; I think it’s probably more responsible for more bad science and damage to the public understanding of science than any other academic field. My understanding is that most psychologist use inductive logic instead of deductive logic.

Psychologists are in a field, which is still in its infancy because we have very little understanding of the cognitive functions of the brain, therefore psychologists with a level of discipline expected as a professional. I also am aware of psychologists who are concrete thinkers and stay with one particular theory.

I do wonder sometimes if some of the reasons people enter the mental health field is because they have a history of psychological difficulties. I have seen many mental health workers with rather unusual behaviours, burnt out, anxious and perhaps there is a group of well-meaning but slightly damaged practitioners. Supportive counselling and debriefing has been known to result in higher rates of PTSD. Poor Freud had his own dilemma too.

Some of my colleagues feel that those in psychiatry and psychology, have a desire to conform and therefore search for normality. Food for thought?

There is also a lot of concerns about corruption of psychiatry by the large drug companies. There are many concerns that psychiatric have little with understanding of their patients, trend to over diagnose, trend in over drugging, Psychiatrists have very little understanding of the human brain and its functioning at the neurobiological level; this still remains a mystery to science.

There are growing concerns over psychiatrists who continue to use the monoamine hypothesis – read the book called The Emperor’s New Drugs: Exploding the Antidepressant Myth by Irving Kirsch Ph.D. to understand the faulty science behind antidepressants. Research on drugs are often funded by the drug companies themselves and therefore are biased.

Conflict of interests in psychiatry; monetary gain has reached a critical level whereby the credibility of the profession is being questioned. The degree of deceit and fraudulent behavior by pharmaceuticals over the last couple of years is not surprising to me.

In reality a psychiatry diagnosis in not science. Very little solid science goes into the formation of categories of psychiatric diagnosis or the application of them to patients leaving every conceivable kind of bias can enter in to decision making.

There you go - my two bobs worth.

 

[Ohana]

Alan, I really like your discussion of how your doctor looks at the role of faith in healing of psych disorders. Medication can be a support, but only that.

As an older mental health professional, I came up in the era when there was a lot of discussion of nature or nurture. In a teaching hospital, nurture always got the nod back then. Actually, there were few psych drugs back then. I must say that people suffered for months before obtaining a relief of their symptoms - often following the natural rhythm of depression. In the meantime, they were stigmatized, taken out of their home environments for months, and not helped a lot except for the fact - and this is a big one - that their treatment people really got to know them much better.

With the advent of improved psychiatric drugs, there is a moral dilemma. Does one give the medication and relieve that suffering, or does one not do that and use talk therapy alone. I would go with choice 1, but add talk therapy to relieve the “tag along” suffering - blaming oneself for the illness, I always thought it absurd that people would not only suffer depression, but suffer from blaming themselves for being depressed. Yes, there are sometimes some real life concerns that one has to work through, but blaming oneself is not at all helpful. A spiritually concerned treatment can be a great assistance in diminishing the damage done by “blame”.

I am glad you have a wise physician. God Bless and keep you in your struggle for health. It sounds like you have finally gotten to a place where you are content and joyful.

I am not going to demonize mental health professionals, Yes, there are good ones and ones not so good. On any given day these may be the same people. We are all flawed in this life. Most I have met though, have a real concern for their patients,clients, or however they are designated.

 

[AlanFromWichita]

Yes, there are sometimes some real life concerns that one has to work through, but blaming oneself is not at all helpful. A spiritually concerned treatment can be a great assistance in diminishing the damage done by “blame”.

Frankly, IMO, bad religion substituted for spiritual guidance, is often the cause of this very problem, even among Catholics. We get into the notion that we’re always not worthy, always coming up short, no chance we’ll ever be as good as we are supposed to be but we’ll kill ourselves trying… and meanwhile it’s All Our Fault that Jesus suffered the wounds He did… and … we … should … be … ashamed … of … ourselves. Guilt, fear, trepidation. I know I got some of that in Catholic grade school in the around 1970.

One psychiatrist my wife really liked, told her to read a book called “Toxic Faith.” I don’t know what the book is about, exactly, but the title describes what I’m thinking about.

Thank God for the Internet and for good spiritual directors, and for the written Word itself. I think (at least I hope) that with younger Catholic especially, we begin to realize Jesus didn’t come to make us grovel all the time and be miserable and feel guilty. Be a servant, yes … but not a piece of trash. But Jesus also said not to judge, and that means to me that you should learn not to judge yourself either, or at least to be able to forgive yourself from real or imagined transgressions of the past.

Alan

 

[centurionguard]

IMHO too many put excessive great faith in science and medicine.
I think many shrinks need shrinks themselves.

There are numerous scholarly articles on debunking Psychiatry and Psychology that are worth investigating. But like any man made medical science there’s the good and the bad.
Funny how many see absolutes on the good side in the practice of medicine while being more aptly blinded by the negative side of medicine.

One thing is for sure the world is hooked on a drug culture, but I not speaking here about illegal drugs. That’s another topic of debate.

Of all drugs used by society, psychotropic drugs account overwhelmingly more used than any other drug category. A staggering 330 Billion dollar industry by Multinational Pharmceutical companies. This is no small thing to sneeze at.

Methinks you would see nearly half the number of Shrinks in their career field if it were not for a $330 Billion Psychotrophic drug industry. Given that reality I think they do more harm than good.

And rarely is secular Psychiatry and Psychology based on a philosophy embracing Moral Christian precepts.

Shrinks never offer a cure to mental illness only a bandage fix.

Here’s an interesting video worth watching. You decide for yourself.
**Making a Killing: The Untold Story of Psychotropic Drugging - Full Movie (Documentary) ** youtube.com/watch?v=UDlH9sV0lHU

 

[RPRPsych]

Psychology, psychiatry, medicine, and faith all work together.

…

Being healed by the Lord is far better than never having been broken in the first place. I’ve experienced nothing except peace, serenity, joy, and basically fruit of the spirit, for over a month now. :heaven: The only disturbances in my peace were maybe twice, and they lasted less than five minutes until the “reverse gravity” I call it, that one finds in the kingdom, restored the peace. My own psychiatrist told me that the calmness and clarity in my mind now, exceeds medical expectations and even his best hopes for me. He said this condition is rare even among those – including doctors – who have no history of mental illness. I say these things not to brag, but to show that I have authority from personal experience in the areas of healing, psychology, and spirituality. What can I say? When the Lord heals, He doesn’t go half way! :nunchuk:

I’ll leave you with what I learned from my first spiritual director, whom I met for the first time (having never before even heard of “spiritual direction” at age 42) a month after the onset of my illness – that is, I met him July 11, 2012. Fr. Gerry Pecht, a Redemptorist.

Fr. Pecht asked if I had any questions. I said how come the psychiatrists are so crazy (referring the low-rent interns where I was involuntarily hospitalized, not the good doctor I have had since getting out) and why they can’t understand the answers I give them to their questions.

Fr. Pecht smile and said, “because they are all too specialized. A person has six major components: physical, mental, spiritual, emotional, sexual (tied to self identity), and social. Experts are only trained one, or maybe two areas. So no matter what is wrong, they all tend to see it from their own expertise, and think they can fix it using their own tools.”

…

My doctor explains it like this. Medicine does not heal my mind; it manages the symptoms. Medicine is like a cast on a broken leg. It holds things in place to avoid further damage and to allow the leg to heal itself. :crutches:

So IMO if one has a serious issue that needs to be addressed, they would do well to look at it from all sides.

Alan

What a wonderful post.

As a psychiatrist myself, I have to agree with most of it.

A lot of what is practiced in the name of psychiatry is questionable. This is because of three main reasons:

1. Psychiatry evolved as a spin-off from medicine and neurology, in which signs, symptoms (and now, laboratory tests) are quite objective, and a diagnosis is easy. However, applying a “medical model” to emotional distress or abnormal behaviour is possible only in a small minority of cases (“organic psychiatry”) where there is actually a medical or neurological problem. In most others, this model (“biological psychiatry”) yields unimpressive results. In the 1970s, George Engel suggested fixing this by proposing a “bio-psycho-social” model for disease; Scott Peck extended this (as you have done) to a “bio-psycho-socio-spiritual” model. Unfortunately, professionals have been slow to pick up on this; it takes them too far out of their comfort zone, and it sounds too little like “medicine” to them.
2. Any branch of medicine is only as good as the science on which it is based. In the case of, say, infectious diseases or cardiology, we already understand a good deal of the biology involved, and even there, we have problems (bacteria become “resistant” to antibiotics; cardiac surgeries don’t always work as well as they ought to.) The “basic science” of the mind and brain is still very much in its infancy, as is the study of individual variations in thought, emotion, perception, “meaning-finding” (an awkward construction of mine!) and so on. Because of this, the “applied science” has also lagged behind, and most of the drugs we have in this decade are just refinements of older ones.
3. Medicine works best when it is free of conflicts of interest. In the case of psychiatry, fields such as law, politics, and (worst of all) business impinge on its moral and intellectual freedom. “Legal experts” want to prove at all costs that a defendant is either sane or insane, science be damned. Politicians want to solve mental health issues through social engineering, or (as in the former USSR) use psychiatry as a vehicle for coercion (they used to admit people who disagreed with Communism, diagnosing them as having “Reform-Seeking Schizophrenia”) And worst of all, pharmaceutical companies and publishers want to make $$$$, even if that means publishing sub-standard books, suppressing data from trials, or launching drugs on the market for dubious indications. To fight this, medicine must stop talking in terms of weak terms such as “ethics” and “professionalism” and reclaim its moral roots, which are slowly eroding.

(continued…)

 

[RPRPsych]

(continued…)

All this has its effect on the training of a psychiatrist. What he or she ends up doing, from a very early age, is either:

1. Spending a lot of time in “research” that is often of dubious validity, and over-intellectualizing everything, so as to avoid having to deal with deeper issues,
2. Assuming an authoritarian stance, in which he is a demi-god and the patients are mere mortals,
3. Becoming an ideologue, and believing that psychoanalysis / biological psychiatry / childhood trauma / genetics / etc. is the Grand Unified Theory of Everything,
4. Clinging to authority, by using their “expert” teachers - or worse, a professional body such as the APA (or, in India, the IPS*)
5. All of the above.

How do I know this? Because I came perilously close to becoming one of them myself; it’s no exaggeration to say that it was a renewal of my bond with the Catholic faith that pulled me away from the pit.

I’m still far from finding answers to the “hard” problems of psychiatry, but I believe that (God willing) I can try to tackle some of them, either by asking the right questions, or looking in different places. And that’s something I intend to do for a long time, if the Lord permits.

I’ll end with this quote from our Holy Father, Benedict XVI: it’s one of my personal favourites -

(continued!)

• Indian Psychiatric Society. You haven’t lived until you’ve been to one of their [del]carnivals[del] conferences.

 

[RPRPsych]

“One aspect of the contemporary technological mindset is the tendency to consider the problems and emotions of the interior life from a purely psychological point of view, even to the point of neurological reductionism. In this way man’s interiority is emptied of its meaning and gradually our awareness of the human soul’s ontological depths, as probed by the saints, is lost. The question of development is closely bound up with our understanding of the human soul, insofar as we often reduce the self to the psyche and confuse the soul’s health with emotional well-being. These over-simplifications stem from a profound failure to understand the spiritual life, and they obscure the fact that the development of individuals and peoples depends partly on the resolution of problems of a spiritual nature. Development must include not just material growth but also spiritual growth, since the human person is a “unity of body and soul”[156], born of God’s creative love and destined for eternal life. The human being develops when he grows in the spirit, when his soul comes to know itself and the truths that God has implanted deep within, when he enters into dialogue with himself and his Creator. When he is far away from God, man is unsettled and ill at ease. Social and psychological alienation and the many neuroses that afflict affluent societies are attributable in part to spiritual factors. A prosperous society, highly developed in material terms but weighing heavily on the soul, is not of itself conducive to authentic development. The new forms of slavery to drugs and the lack of hope into which so many people fall can be explained not only in sociological and psychological terms but also in essentially spiritual terms. The emptiness in which the soul feels abandoned, despite the availability of countless therapies for body and psyche, leads to suffering. There cannot be holistic development and universal common good unless people’s spiritual and moral welfare is taken into account, considered in their totality as body and soul.”

(Caritas in Veritate, 76)

Thank you and God bless you all!

 

[AlanFromWichita]

And worst of all, pharmaceutical companies and publishers want to make $$$$, even if that means publishing sub-standard books, suppressing data from trials, or launching drugs on the market for dubious indications. To fight this, medicine must stop talking in terms of weak terms such as “ethics” and “professionalism” and reclaim its moral roots, which are slowly eroding.

There! You did it. That’s a big hot topic for me. :banghead:

If I have my intelligence put together right, drug companies actually gather and publish statistics on how doctors prescribe medicine. The doctors who use the latest and greatest brand name drugs get higher ratings than those who don’t.

My own psychiatrist looks out for us, because we don’t have any money to spend. He gives us various samples to use, if he has them. Or if there is a generic or low cost solution he gives us that. He helps us that way, and he also keeps me out of the hospital (which is more damaging than helpful but it’s nice for people who are intimidated by my behavior so they get rid of me under the guise that it’s for my own protection – yeah, protection against them that is) when many doctors would have thrown away the key based on how bad I sounded.

If a doctor uses the good old, tried and true drugs, he is looked upon with scorn. My doctor gave me diazepam (generic for Valium) for anxiety. He says to take up to four a day, but I was using maybe one or two at most per day, but haven’t now for many months. But on one occasion, when I was being treated in a hospital and I told them I was taking diazepam, they shriveled up their noses and said, “what doctor still prescribes THAT?” :tsktsk:

The reasons “they” say it’s bad, is it’s addictive (well duhhh and the doc had talked to us about that and was nowhere near a reasonable threat at any time) and that it has a street value (to which I ask, so what? I’m not selling it.).

But I think the Real Real reason is that it’s very inexpensive. For 12 dollars I can buy what would have cost $350 using the “good doctor” drugs.

Another time my wife was in a medical office and a nosy nurse commented to the one taking my wife’s information, “oh I’ve heard that doctor overmedicates.” Out of the blue. Next time we saw our doc we told him that and he was livid. He wanted names and details, but unfortunately we didn’t get any more information than just that comment. Turns out careless remarks like that can bite him in the rear and cause him serious problems at no fault of his own. Well I’ll tell you what. I’ll bet my doctor’s actual results with patients over any of those intellectual snobs who have been brainwashed by Big Drugs any day. Just get any one of them in front of me and I’d give them what for, I’ll tell you. :knight2:.

Am I anywhere near on target with this rant? I’d hate to think I misdirected all that negative energy.

Alan

 

[RPRPsych]

There! You did it. That’s a big hot topic for me. :banghead:

If I have my intelligence put together right, drug companies actually gather and publish statistics on how doctors prescribe medicine. The doctors who use the latest and greatest brand name drugs get higher ratings than those who don’t.

My own psychiatrist looks out for us, because we don’t have any money to spend. He gives us various samples to use, if he has them. Or if there is a generic or low cost solution he gives us that. He helps us that way, and he also keeps me out of the hospital (which is more damaging than helpful but it’s nice for people who are intimidated by my behavior so they get rid of me under the guise that it’s for my own protection – yeah, protection against them that is) when many doctors would have thrown away the key based on how bad I sounded.

If a doctor uses the good old, tried and true drugs, he is looked upon with scorn. My doctor gave me diazepam (generic for Valium) for anxiety. He says to take up to four a day, but I was using maybe one or two at most per day, but haven’t now for many months. But on one occasion, when I was being treated in a hospital and I told them I was taking diazepam, they shriveled up their noses and said, “what doctor still prescribes THAT?” :tsktsk:

The reasons “they” say it’s bad, is it’s addictive (well duhhh and the doc had talked to us about that and was nowhere near a reasonable threat at any time) and that it has a street value (to which I ask, so what? I’m not selling it.).

But I think the Real Real reason is that it’s very inexpensive. For 12 dollars I can buy what would have cost $350 using the “good doctor” drugs.

Another time my wife was in a medical office and a nosy nurse commented to the one taking my wife’s information, “oh I’ve heard that doctor overmedicates.” Out of the blue. Next time we saw our doc we told him that and he was livid. He wanted names and details, but unfortunately we didn’t get any more information than just that comment. Turns out careless remarks like that can bite him in the rear and cause him serious problems at no fault of his own. Well I’ll tell you what. I’ll bet my doctor’s actual results with patients over any of those intellectual snobs who have been brainwashed by Big Drugs any day. Just get any one of them in front of me and I’d give them what for, I’ll tell you. :knight2:.

Am I anywhere near on target with this rant? I’d hate to think I misdirected all that negative energy.

Alan

Well, believe me when I say that I share your frustration! And in fact, as a hobby, I often enjoy taking the mickey out of pharma representatives if they ever barge into me (they don’t; they’re generally warned about my unsympathetic nature ) by pointing out errors and misrepresentations in their brochures and handouts.

And I’m grateful that I’m pretty much free to prescribe as I want, because I work for a Government-run hospital that only supplies basic, generic drugs free of cost. If I think anything else is needed, I fortunately have the freedom to choose what I think is best, and my job is secure because the Government just needs me to be available; they’re not bothered by the ratings of pharmaceutical companies. (And yes, because it’s free in our hospital, I do use a lot of diazepam. Reports of its misuse are grossly overrated, especially by companies who want to sell you alprazolam, zolpidem, or any of the other “me-too” drugs of this family.)

But even in India, it’s much worse for those in private practice, who often are forced to work very closely with these companies, or choose to do so against their better judgement. The Indian Psychiatric Society, and its official journal, are both deeply beholden to a few companies, and advertise them prominently at the smallest opportunity. (For a recent example of IPS-related nonsense, they have tried to publish guidelines about using unmodified electroconvulsive therapy, even though the Government is trying to crack down on it. Guess why.) It’s an iniquitous situation, and one that I will try hard to change once they accept me as a member of the IPS (provided they don’t give me the boot first!)

 

[Lady_Love]

One thing I don’t like about psychology is “labels.” Labels allow a person to create an “identity” out of their condition or mental state and can be held bound by this definition. Often, many conditions of the mind are temporary and conditional and subject to change.

I have been in states of “extreme” mental and emotional stress before and the one thing that helped me to heal was unconditional love and acceptance. I had a good friend who NEVER criticized me and NEVER let me feel or think of myself as “crazy” or abnormal. This person created a safe space for me to go where I felt accepted and cared for, therefore, I was able to “let down my guard.” Which in most cases of mental illness there is an overactive “guard,” they are feeling threatened or unsafe in some fashion. My friend knew all my fears and patiently and lovingly helped me combat my fears by consistently telling me and showing me the truth, that I am valuable, precious, loved, beautiful, unique, and special. All the things that God wants me to believe about myself. That I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

I also believe that in many cases chemical imbalances are caused by fear and overproduction of adrenaline from the fight or flight response. As soon as I felt loved and safe, the chemicals in my body balanced out.

The other cause is conscience. I think having a conscience that is not clear can cause all kinds of disorders and insecurities and they get compounded over time. People createall kinds of survival tactics to not be “seen” for who they really are.

These are the two things Jesus came to relieve us of: Fear and the burden of sin. He says,“Do not be afraid.” “Your sins are forgiven.” “Love as I have loved you.” If you take these three statements/realities and integrate them into your life, you will have the answer for most, if not all, mental disorders.

 

[AlanFromWichita]

I also believe that in many cases chemical imbalances are caused by fear and overproduction of adrenaline from the fight or flight response. As soon as I felt loved and safe, the chemicals in my body balanced out.

Thank you. I get so annoyed when I hear “chemical imbalance” used as some sort of Ultimate Cause for Whatever I Have. I maintain that chemical imbalances are caused by emotional/mental problems, much more often than the other way around.

In general, LL, I really think your posts are great, and each new one seems like the best yet! I really enjoy reading them.

Alan

 

[Julia_Mae]

I saw a thread.

It says that psychology/psychiatry is just a waste of time. The people in the profession are just out to get you and you are wasting your time with them.

In my experience there are few very good therapists. But when you you find one, it can be very useful. I think the Freudian model is pretty worthless but, it’s very helpful to understand the way things work, what the system is you have developed for dealing with things and see how that either assists you or gets in your way. It’s useful to see yourself objectively and know you can make different choices about what you do, think and even feel (somewhat).

Do what works for you and keep an active prayer practice and go to Mass as much as possible. The Eucharist is our best medicine.

 

[Lady_Love]

In general, LL, I really think your posts are great, and each new one seems like the best yet! I really enjoy reading them.

Alan

Thanks Alan!

 

[Justicia_et_Pax]

Personally, having experience of both mental health services and spiritual direction/confession from a lovely priest, I think both fields have their merits and their potential pitfalls. I think some counsellors, psychologists and psychiatrists are too quick to think that they and their fields alone have THE answers… but I’d say that’s more a personality flaw with the individual themselves, rather than arrogance of the whole system. I have had very bad counselling - to the extent that a counsellor caused me to develop complex PTSD! - but I have also experienced the devastation that is being basically deemed a complete crazy person by a priest So there are definitely faulty people on both sides of the fence.

I have no doubt that the Good Lord could completely cure me of my illness and suffering, should He wish to… but I feel that for many of us, He wants to take us on a journey and that journey falls along the path of illness. Illness can be a time of growth, if only we are able to treat it as such. So I do think that psychiatry and psychology are very necessary.

All this said, I understand that many of you are writing from a US perspective and I understand the medical/counselling culture is very different over there. Over here in the UK, there are certainly people who just want to throw medication at you as a quick fix… but at the same time, the National Health Service has to subsidise all these expensive drugs, so many doctors (including my GP ) are hugely reluctant to give you any medication or tests unless it is deemed absolutely necessary.

Oh, talking of medication, that reminds me: I do think, regardless of what has been said above, that there are some conditions where medication really should be taken. For example, I’m schizoaffective and the antipsychotic we finally stumbled upon after months and months of trying different things, has been an absolute Godsend. 90% of all schizoaffective symptoms are completely gone That’s not to say that one shouldn’t pray though. Prayer is very important too. I feel blessed to have a psychiatrist interested in my faith journey and an SD who used to be a mental health social worker. So both parties understand - or at least, are fascinated - by “the other side”

 

[AlanFromWichita]

Personally, having experience of both mental health services and spiritual direction/confession from a lovely priest, I think both fields have their merits and their potential pitfalls. I think some counsellors, psychologists and psychiatrists are too quick to think that they and their fields alone have THE answers… but I’d say that’s more a personality flaw with the individual themselves, rather than arrogance of the whole system. I have had very bad counselling - to the extent that a counsellor caused me to develop complex PTSD! - but I have also experienced the devastation that is being basically deemed a complete crazy person by a priest So there are definitely faulty people on both sides of the fence.

Yes. My ex-pastor banished me from parish property because some brand new idiot teacher thought I was scary. The teachers who knew me, loved me.

The pastor I have now has been supportive from day 1, is very brilliant with people skills and counseling skill as well as theology, and has been of great help in my own healing.

I have no doubt that the Good Lord could completely cure me of my illness and suffering, should He wish to… but I feel that for many of us, He wants to take us on a journey and that journey falls along the path of illness. Illness can be a time of growth, if only we are able to treat it as such. So I do think that psychiatry and psychology are very necessary.

I’m here to tell you that complete healing is possible, because I received it. It was beyond medical hopes for me, much less expectations. It all made sense, but very little of it made sense until it was all over, my mind went calm and clear, and I felt totally in the kingdom. It’s been this way over a month now, with not a trace of symptoms. For the past 11 years, one day without symptoms was pretty miraculous.

I appreciate that you are taking the journey the way the Lord leads you. When I myself let go of the steering wheel, so to speak, it felt a lot like what you are describing. I think such a surrender puts you in a good position for being able to follow the path the Lord is leading you, and IMO you are right on target with your perspective on it.

All this said, I understand that many of you are writing from a US perspective and I understand the medical/counselling culture is very different over there. Over here in the UK, there are certainly people who just want to throw medication at you as a quick fix… but at the same time, the National Health Service has to subsidise all these expensive drugs, so many doctors (including my GP ) are hugely reluctant to give you any medication or tests unless it is deemed absolutely necessary.

I used to converse with a lady from Australia who said they are very advanced there with peer counseling, and have had a lot of success with that. I think it’s excellent, because honestly I would love to be a peer counselor. Not only could I help people, I think that the other people would help me. When I talk to someone who is having a hard time, I try to feel their experience just a little bit at least.

Oh, talking of medication, that reminds me: I do think, regardless of what has been said above, that there are some conditions where medication really should be taken. For example, I’m schizoaffective and the antipsychotic we finally stumbled upon after months and months of trying different things, has been an absolute Godsend. 90% of all schizoaffective symptoms are completely gone That’s not to say that one shouldn’t pray though. Prayer is very important too. I feel blessed to have a psychiatrist interested in my faith journey and an SD who used to be a mental health social worker. So both parties understand - or at least, are fascinated - by “the other side”

What your saying closely aligns with my own thoughts on the matter. It makes me feel like maybe there is someone who might understand me. Plenty of people love me, and without that I wouldn’t have found health. But understanding? These experiences are clearly outliers on many scales. I think extreme experiences of all sorts are forms of passion and can help empathize with each other and our Lord.

Alan