Home » Articles posted by Randolph Harris II International Institute (Page 295)
Author Archives: Randolph Harris II International Institute
Banana Muffins and Lemon Cupcakes for Sale—I though Your Birthday was Today?
On one is to blame for suffering an evil he cannot avoid. The extraordinary capacity of the human mind to rewrite memory is a great healer. With the passage of time, events have been bleached of their intense horror. In contrast, those who have been traumatized and subsequently developed Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) did not modify their accounts; their memories are preserved essentially intact. Whether we remember a particular event at all, and how accurate our memories of it are, largely depends on how personally meaningful it was and how emotional we felt about it at the time. The key factor is our level of arousal. We all have memories associated with particular people, songs, smells, and places that stay with us for a long time. Most people who were alive at the time still have precise memories of where we were and what we saw on Tuesday, 11 September 2001, but only a fraction of us recall anything in particular about 10 September 2001.
We are all God’s children, let us do the best to make the good experiences outweigh the bad. Most day-to-day experience passes immediately into oblivion. On ordinary days, we do not have much to report when we get back to the house in the evening. The mind works according to schemes or maps, and incidents that fall outside of the established pattern are most likely to capture our attention. If we get a rise or a friend tells us some exciting news about selling banana muffins and lemon cupcakes, we will retain the details of the moment, at least for a while. We remember insults and injuries best: The adrenaline that we secrete to defend against potential threats helps to engrave those incidents into our minds. Even if the content of the remark fades, our dislike for the person who made it usually persists.
When something terrifying happens, like seeing a child or friend get hurt in an accident, we will retain an intense and largely accurate memory of that event for a long time. The more adrenaline you secrete, the more precise your memory will be. However, that is true only up to a certain point. Confronted with horror—especially the horror of inescapable shock—this system becomes overwhelmed and breaks down. We cannot monitor what happens during a traumatic experience, but we can reactivate the trauma. When memory traces of the original sounds, images, and sensation are reactivated, the frontal lobe of the brain shuts down, including, as we have seen the region necessary to put feelings into words, the region that creates our sense of location in time, and the thalamus, which integrates the raw data of incoming sensations. At this point the emotional brain, which is not under conscious control and cannot communicate in words, takes over.
The emotional brain (the limbic area and the brain stem) expresses its altered activation through changes in emotional arousal, body physiology, and muscular actions. Under ordinary conditions these two memory systems—rational and emotional—collaborate to produce an integrated response. However, high arousal not only changes the balance between them, but also disconnects other brain areas necessary for the proper storage and integration of incoming information, such as the hippocampus and the thalamus. As a result, the imprints of traumatic experiences are organized not as coherent logical narratives, but in fragmented sensory and emotion traces: images, sounds, and physical sensations. Julian saw someone he thought was his son, with a young lady, and he felt a sensation like his heart was about to stop—a panicked sense of dread. However, there was little or no story. There are decisions which people can make even now that are quite independent of such broadly based philosophical issues. There are steps that individual can take to combat loneliness at the individual level.
Even in an idealized social utopia, every individual would most likely experience some type of loneliness during their lives. Thus, far more problematical than a person’s initial experiences with loneliness is his response to it. Even in its milder forms, loneliness hurts. It creates an uncomfortable feeling from which people almost immediately try to escape. The problem is that loneliness can be like a spider’s web; if a person struggles to escape, he may become all the more enmeshed, until he becomes so entangled that escape is impossible. Many reactions to loneliness lead inexorably to greater isolation. Many of us are actively battling against the lack of love in our society, and yet their struggle leads to more loneliness because they equate love with objects. They try to find lobe through the use of objectivity, an intellectual response that can only lead to greater isolation. So enjoy your freedom, family, and friends, and be kind to others. Have a great weekend.
You are the Closet thing to God in My Neighborhood
Care and suffering are devils—secret, stealthy, undermining devils—who tread down the brightest flowers in Eden, and do more havoc in a month then Time does in a year. Since loneliness that involves pain is denied cultural status, many people no longer feel a need to protect themselves from its ravages. Since out mass media now continually suggest that it is good to become independent of other humans, many enthusiastically try to construct a World free of the tyranny of human bonds. Just as the iron-lung machine was quickly discarded once polio was no longer considered a threat to health, so many people have discarded basic social supports that once provided companionship. As already stated, so many traditions, cultural practices, and beliefs that one provided relief from loneliness have been eroded in the past few decades that a person cannot assume that human companionship will be available when he needs it. #RyanPhillippe 1 of 5
This means that the burden rests upon each individual to find the support that will help him survive the cyclical disruptions of human bonds that are an inevitable part of life. While this advice appears to be bland enough, it is a sweeping mandate. It suggests that people consider their investments in human companionship as of even greater importance than their investments in other aspects of their lives. As you know, human companionship is quite literally an important form of life insurance. When Julian entered my office almost a year later, I saw a handsome, young man, who looked happy. He told me that he was doing fine and feeling well, and that he was writing to build a career, and he always received excellent evaluation. He loved the challenges, the individual work, and loved the self-imposed structure of his military like lifestyle. #RyanPhillippe 2 of 5
The goal of a good medical professional in treating people with a legacy of trauma, is not to determine exactly what happened to them, nor blame them, but to help them tolerate the sensations, emotions, and reactions they have experienced without being constantly hijacked by them. When the subject of blame arises, the central issue that needs to be addressed is usually self-blame—accepting that the trauma was not their fault, that it was not caused by some defect in themselves, and that no one would have could ever have deserved what happened to them. Once a legal case is involved, however, determination of culpability becomes primary, and with it the admissibility of evidence. However, most people choose to subsequently accept an out-of-court settlement because they do not want to talk about what happened in public, nor have their character ripped to shreds and possible suffer even more. #RyanPhillippe 3 of 5
Before a case goes to trial, the judge holds a so-called Daubert hearing to set the standards for expert testimony to be presented to the jury. It is common for traumatized people to lose all memories of the event in question, only to regain access to them in bits and pieces at a much later date. The same standards would apply in Julian’s case. While my report to his lawyer remains confidential, it is based on decades of clinical experience and research on traumatic memory, including the work of some of the great pioneers of modern psychiatry. We all know how fickle memory is; our stories change and are constantly revised and updated. Just like when brothers and sisters talk about childhood memories, their constructions of reality do not always match, even when it is a pleasant memory. Such Autobiographical memories are not precise reflections of reality; they are stories we tell to convey our personal take on our experience. The soul’s life has seasons of its own; periods not found in any calendar, times that years and months will not scan. #RyanPhillippe 4 of 5
Time subdues all things. Time, the great healer of the unfortunate mind. Avoiding loneliness on an individual level within a society that fosters uprootedness, disconnectedness, alienation, and depersonalization is by no means an easy task. Decisions about moving, for instance, are often brutally simple—either move or lose your job. In many facets of our lives, events seem to be out of control. Taking stock of one’s current social network therefore requires some recognition of the relationship between alienation and loneliness and a rapidly changing society. Moreover, certain rather abstract ideas about health and human relationships must be incorporated into medical practice before a significant shift can occur in society as a whole. How tedious is time, when his wings are loaded with expectation! #RyanPhillippe 5 of 5
1,000 Paper Cranes and King Loneliness had No Clothing Yet
Keep pretending you do not hear. Time is the best physician of the mind. Those who will not keep a strict account of their time seldom long keep any. We live in a society which King Loneliness has no clothing, yet, because everyone believes he is the only one who feel lonely, we tell ourselves that loneliness must be a mirage. I was reading a case about a young man who had suffered abuse, and he had repressed his memories for a decade, until it broke news that the abuser was being charged with a crime. Although the name of the young man was in public record, and his memories were credible, the psychologist used a pseudonym because he wanted the young man to regain some privacy and peace with the passage of time. Over the past few decades our society has refined a response to human loneliness that can be described as a cultural pact of ignorance. This is a peculiar type of conspiracy in which some of the victims of loneliness are the perpetrators of their own suffering. #RyanPhillippe 1 of 7
Many people recognize that loneliness exists in our society, and yet, in spite of all the talk about loneliness, the word “loneliness” often seems to be completely detached from feelings, and especially detached from the idea that it involves suffering. (“if you do not tell me you are suffering from loneliness, then I will not tell you I am suffering either.”) With the meanings of words changed or impoverished, the impression is created that loneliness is no longer really an issue; no one is really suffering, everyone is liberated and free to do their own thing. Anyone who wants a “relationship” can have one, and that is cool; and anyone who wants to meditate alone can do so, and that is cool; in fact, everything is cool. Many lonely people do not appear to be lonely at all—they so not look like they are suffering—and so the truly lonely individual is forced to believe that he is the only one suffering and therefore should not talk about it. I think it is so embarrassing when you are a young man and being abused and have no way to escape and no one to help you. #RyanPhillippe 2 of 7
The conspiracy involves a subtle denial of certain aspects of loneliness. The experience of Julian, the young man who was abused by an authority figure for years, illustrates the complexities of traumatic memory. On 11 February 2015, Julian was serving as a student when his girlfriend Aaliyah called him and she mentioned a lead article she had read that morning in the Oakland Tribune about an authority figure, who he had worked with as a child, was under suspicion for abusing children. Julian recalled he once told Aaliyah about this authority figure, who comforted him after he was disowned by his father. And as the conversation went on, Julian started to go into a panic. He suddenly saw the authority figure silhouetted in a doorframe, his hands stretched out forty-five degrees, staring at him as he showered. Overwhelmed by emotion, he told Aaliyah, “I have got to go.” #RyanPhillippe 3 of 7
After rushing off the phone, Julian called his flight chief, who came over accompanied by the first sergeant. After he met with the two of them, they took him to the psychiatrist. Julian recalls telling him about the breaking news and said it happened to him, too. He felt extremely embarrassed about being so emotional; he had always been a strong kid, who kept to himself. That night, Julian sat in on the corner of his bed, hunched over, thinking he was losing his mind and terrified that he would be locked up. Over the subsequent week, images kept flooding into his mind, and he was afraid of breaking down completely. Julian thought about taking a knife and plunging it into his heart to stop the mental pictures. Then the panic attacks started to be accompanied by seizures, which he called “epileptic fits.” He would wake from his sleep several times a night shaking as if there was an Earthquake in his body, and scratched his body until he bled. He constantly felt hot, sweaty, and agitated. #RyanPhillippe 4 of 7
Between panic attacks he felt like a zombie; he was observing himself from a distance, as if what he was experiencing were actually happening to somebody else. In April, Julian received an administrative discharge, just ten days short of being eligible to receive full benefits. Our common plight is that it is becoming increasingly difficult to share the most basic of all human truths: that people desperately need each other, that we really are dependent on one another. Instead, many people console themselves with clichés such as: I am okay, so you must be okay. However, all the time they are not okay. When you are abused for a decade and there are a group of them who find the physical and emotional abuse fun to, as a group, inflict on an individual, even if they person is not acting out, they may feel like they are dying inside and suffer physiological (biological activities, and function) symptoms. #RyanPhillippe 5 of 7
Julian’s abusers would do thinks like kick on his front door when they thought he was having sex (he is celibate), strangers would enter his apartment with keys, and sometimes when he was not home and cut the furniture, they would make jokes about his bathroom habits, physically assault him in public, and try to get him fired from his job, and get him kicked out of his house, and when they hurt him, they would tell him not to go to the doctor or else he would end up in a mental hospital. When he did go to the doctor, people would post notes about how they were going to sale him. Feelings of isolation are massaged with slogans that only serve to make people all the more lonely, and they would call him crazy so no one would believe what was going on, despite all the threatening text messages, blood, and serious injuries, which have been documented by photographs and in medical reports. #RyanPhillippe 6 of 7
In a conspiracy of silence about their true loneliness, people deceive each other, and so make loneliness and isolation all the more prevalent. It is just a game to the abusers. The reason they did not want Julian to go to the doctor is the abusers did not want factual evidence to prove that something was going on with this young man. He never had mental problems in the past, but all of the sudden, he is being seriously injured and reporters and the management team are calling him crazy to ruin his credibility. He has been trying for years to escape the abuse, but still is going through it. In fact, his doctor asked him, “Are you in an abusive relationship?” and he replied “No.” Which is actually true because his spouse is not the one abusing him. Julian tries to pretend that everything is normal and nothing is happening to him, and he keeps reaching out for help, but no one has been able to stop the abuse yet. He tells himself is not lonely, self-sufficient, and does not need anyone, which makes it hard for him to understand why he is experience physical symptoms. It comes out in some way. #RyanPhillippe 7 of 7
We Love Oakland and the Heart Knoweth
Those who are not loved and taught tolerance of others, will have none themselves, reports We Love Oakland. It is a strange thing that all the memories have these two qualities. They are always full of quietness, that is the most striking thing about them; and even when things were not like that in reality, they still seem to have that quality. They are soundless apparitions, which speak to me by looks and gestures, wordless and silent—and their silence is precisely what disturbs me. Is not happiness like another circulating medium? When we have a very great deal of it, some poor hearts are aching for what is taken away from them. When we have gone out and seized it on the highways, certain inscrutable laws are sure to be at work to bring us to the criminal bar, sooner or later. Nothing is perhaps more dangerous to the future happiness of men of deep thought and retired habits, than the entertaining an early, long, and unfortunate attachment. We do not always have to have closure, just accept things as they are, and life will get better.
In the most general sense, neither the problem of human loneliness nor its cure is particularly new. Even Adam, wandering about as a solitary create in the Garden of Eden, was not happy until he had a companion in his own likeness. And that beautiful creature Satan sure did want companionship, no one wants to be alone. The Book of Life hardly begins before the Creator of Paradise states that it is not good for man to be alone. Paradise itself was imperfect without companionship. Even God could not create a Paradise devoid of companionship. Many bereaved individuals or anxious divorcees do not need advice at all. What they need is human compassion, human friendship—they just need you to be there and truly care and be respectful. Your counsel is often far less important than your mere presence.
Throughout the history of mankind, this point has been readily acknowledged. Over the course of centuries, a large number of elaborate rituals, cultural traditions, and religious ceremonies have been developed to provide generalized sources of human contact and friendship for the lonely, those who has suffered human loss, and people who just like to socialize. These folk traditions have been a source of comfort for uncounted millions in the past. And yet, in spite of this long historical experience of dealing with loneliness, there are more and more people who no longer seem able to find companionship within our society. How many we see in the street, or sit with in church, or dance with at the nightclub, whom through silently, we warmly rejoice to be with! Read the language of those wandering eyebeams. The heart knoweth.
For if social institutions are to be downgraded in importance or even eliminated, we must recognize that their disappearance will create a social vacuum that will not automatically be filled by the creation of new institutions. Social requirements diffuse and nonspecific and can best be summarized as the desire simply to be with other people. The agenda of all groups, irrespective of their ostensible reasons for meeting together, includes the satisfaction of this requirement of people simply to be with one another. Beyond its impact on traditional social institutions, the new objectivity toward emotion has led many people to adopt a peculiar attitude toward companionship and loneliness. Great value is placed on independence, individualism, and new-found freedom, and correspondingly less value is placed on dependency.
In a World of 7.6 billion people, to need someone else is viewed as a sign of weakness, a social sin. The free spirit, it appears, should not relate with someone else out of necessity, but only out of choice. Those who lack companionship are inadvertently encouraged to suffer in silence or, in the most subtle manner, to give up their quest for human companionship, accept the status quo, and revel in their aloneness. To be unattached and independent of everyone else is, according to this definition, to be truly free, truly liberated. In this context, loneliness is currently being packaged in an entirely new way—as the price of freedom. A second implication also emerges quite forcefully: feelings of loneliness are a sign of weakness. If a person is truly independent, then he should be happy rather than suffer from loneliness. The new individuals should rejoice in the knowledge that they are unattached and “have come a long way, baby!” The lonely are not the victims of malevolent governmental propagandist, but rather the victims of their own penchant for self-deception.
Judge Ye Not, that Ye be Not Judged
A light heart and a thin pair of breeches goes through the World. Some people are unfortunate and suffer repeated and often serious traumas—everything from abuse and neglect to persistent community violence and harassment. Developmental Trauma Disorder (DTD) is the exposure to multiple, chronic traumas, which has a much more pervasive and long-range influence on an individual’s self-concept, on their sense of the World, and on their ability to regulate themselves. If people who suffered from DTD were accurately diagnosed, this would make research and treatment of chronically traumatized children and adults who suffer from pervasive biological and emotional dysregulation, failed or disrupted attachment, problems staying focused and on track, and a hugely deficient sense of coherent personal identity and competence easier to fix. These issues transcend and include almost all diagnostic categories, but treatment that does not put them front and center is more than likely to miss the goal of mental health. With healing mental health issues, our goal is to reduce the amount of stress placed on the person and to apply the lesson of neuroplasticity, the flexibility of brain circuits, to rewire the brains and reorganize the minds of people who have been programmed by life itself to experience others as threats and themselves as helpless. Social support is a biological necessity, not an option, and this reality should be the backbone of all prevention and treatment. Recognizing the profound effects of trauma and deprivation on child development need not lead to blaming parents. We can assume that parents do the best they can, but all parents need help to nurture their kids. Nearly every industrialized nation, with the exception of the United States of America, recognizes this and provides some form of guaranteed support to families. Quality early-childhood programs that involve parents and promote basic skills in disadvantaged children more than pay for themselves in improved outcomes.
Also, speaking of programs to help the disadvantaged, does it make sense to feed antiquated people cookies and cakes for breakfast, and keep them up at all hours of the day and night with fights, loud noise, and blasting music? We could probably save the system money and the individual money by providing them with healthy foods and making sure they are in a relaxing environment where they can rest and enjoy their lives, instead of feeling like they are being held hostage by a dysfunctional building management agency. Many of these people did not come from houses wracked by poverty, domestic violence, nor drug abuse, but in their retirement are forced to live around those types of situations, which scares them and stressed them out beyond belief. We need to improve their living conditions, as they have more than paid their dues to society. In some communities there are house-visitation programs in which skilled nurses help to provide a safe and stimulating environment for seniors to make sure no one is milking them for their Social Security retirement, nor feeding them sugar, drugs, or soaking them in beer. When people are shown love, they imagine a better future for themselves, instead of fearing that this could be their last day on Earth. When tried with children, from at risk houses, twenty years later the nurse house-visitation system reported that not only were the children were healthier and were less likely to report being abused or neglected than a similar group whose mothers had not been visited. They also were more likely to have finished school, to have stayed out of jail, and to be working in well-paying jobs.
Economist, instead of reading celebrity gossip, have calculated that every dollar invested in high quality home visitation, day care, and preschool programs results in seven dollars of savings on welfare payment, health-care costs, substance-abuse treatment, and incarceration, plus higher tax revenues due to better paying careers. When I go to Europe to teach, I often am contacted by officials at the ministries of health in the Scandinavian countries, Canada, Asia, United Kingdom, Germany, and the Netherlands and asked to spend an afternoon with them sharing the latest research on the treatment of traumatized children, adolescents, seniors, and their families. The same is true for many of my colleagues. These countries have already made a commitment to universal health care, ensuring a guaranteed minimum wage, paid parental leave for both parents after a child is born, and high-quality childcare for all working mothers. Could this approach to public health, preventative maintenance and services to help people stay healthy, have something to do with the fact that the incarceration rate in Norway is 71 per 100,000 people, in the Netherlands 81 per 100,000 people, and the United States of American 781 per 100,00 people, while the crime rate in those countries is much lower than in ours, and the cost of medical care about half? Seventy percent of prisoners in California spent time in foster care while growing up. The United States of America spends $84 billion per year to incarcerate people at approximately $44,000.00 per prisoner (which is almost as much as the average American taxpayer makes in a year); the average American makes $53,657.00 a year. The northern European countries spend a fraction of that amount. Instead, they invest in helping parents to raise their children in safe and predictable surroundings. Their academic test scores and crime rates seem to reflect the success of those investments. Will men prefer the happiness of others at the neglect of their own?
Stop Looking at Me Swan!
Happy are they who are blessed with the power of making happy. Many people, instead of getting upset about trauma and abuse, tend to numb out the pain. However, the consequences of numbing is that teachers, friends, and others are not like to notice that the individual is upset; he may not even register it himself. By numbing out, one no longer reacts to distress the way they should. Lacking friends makes a crucial difference. Today, we are aware how cruel people can be. It is a complex and rocky social life because friends can suddenly turn on one another and alliances dissolve in exclusions and betrayals. However, through the journey of life, people began to master a whole set of social skills, including being able to identify what they feel, negotiating relationships with others, pretending to like people they do not, and so on. And many have built a fairly steady support group who becomes their stress-debriefing team. As one gradually enters the World of communicating and dating, these relationships provide reflection, storytelling, and discussion of the social construction of reality. #RyanPhillippe 1 of 8
Nonetheless, people who have been abused have an entirely different developmental pathway. They do not have friends of either gender because they cannot trust; they hate themselves, and their biology is against them, leading them to overact or numb out. They cannot keep up in the normal envy-driven inclusion/exclusion games, in which players have to stay cool under stress, because they are authentic and do not like to deal with people who are pumping them for information, plotting, or trying to use them for other purposes. They usually do not want much to do with people because others are acting and not being real. Many of these people articulate what they want, need, and know how to protect themselves in the face of danger. They know you do not smoke dope, nor run away, nor get into a car with people you do not truly know. People who are recovering from trauma know what is going on with them, but sometimes cannot find the words to express that or do not want to. #RyanPhillippe 2 of 8
People who are healing like to plan things out, and are good at protecting themselves and their loved ones. However, they can sense when people are not being authentic and this makes them feel uneasy and like they are testifying in court. And because many diseases are caused by bacteria that is not visible to the unassisted eye, many people who are in recovery many abstain or become celibate. Diagnostic reliability is not an abstract issue: If doctors cannot agree on what ails their patents, there is no way they can provide proper treatment. When there is no relationship between diagnosis and care, a mislabeled patient is bound to be a mistreated patient. You would not want to have your appendix removed when you are suffering from a kidney stone, and you would not want somebody labeled as “oppositional” when, in fact, his behavior is rooted in an attempt to protect himself against real danger. #RyanPhillippe 3 of 8
In a statement recently released, the British Psychological Society complained to the American Psychiatric Association (APA) that sources of psychological suffering in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 5 (DSM-V) were identified as “located within individuals” and overlooked the “undeniable social causation of many such problems.” This was in addition to a flood of protest from American professionals, including leaders of the American Psychological Association and the American Counseling Association. Why are relationships or social conditions left out? If you pay attention only to faulty biology and defective genes as the cause of mental problems and ignore abandonment, abuse, and deprivation, you are likely to run into as many dead ends as a bleach blonde, who gets a permanent, and goes swimming, and does not deep condition afterwards, and as previous generation did blaming it all on terrible mothers. There is nothing so slipperily alluring as sadness; we become sad in the first place by having nothing stirring to do; we continue in it, because we have found a sung sofa at last. #RyanPhillippe 4 of 8
Could the fact that the American Psychological Association (APA) had earned $100 million on the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 4 (DSM-IV) and is slated to take in a similar amount with the DSM-V (because all mental health practitioners, many lawyers, and other professionals will be obligated to purchase the latest edition) be the reason we have this new diagnostic system? The most stunning rejection of the DSM-V came from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), which funds most psychiatric research in America. In April of 2013, a few weeks before DSM-V was formally released, NIMH director Thomas Insel announced that his agency could no longer support DSM’s “symptom-based diagnosis.” Instead the institute would focus its finding on what are called Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) to create a framework for studies that would cut across current diagnostic categories. For example, one of the NIMH domains is “arousal/Modulatory Systems (Arousal, Circadian Rhythm, Sleep and Wakefulness),” which are disturbed to varying degree in many patients. #RyanPhillippe 5 of 8
Like the DSM-V, the RDoC framework conceptualizes mental illnesses solely as brain disorders. This means that future research funding will explore the brain circuits and other neurobiological measures what underlie mental problems. This is the first step toward the sort of precision medicine that has transformed cancer diagnosis and treatment. Mental illness, however, is not at all like cancer: Humans are social beings, and mental problems involve not being able to get along with other people, not fitting in, not belonging, and in general not being able to get on the same wavelength. Enforcement of the laws and the United States Constitution would drastically reduce the number of mental health problems in society because many are not caused by a brain disorder, but the symptoms are caused by the way people treat others. For instance, someone that is bullied constantly, for a long period of times might be labeled as having a mental issue for speaking up for their rights because the law is not around to protect them. #RyanPhillippe 6 of 8
Also, many people use mental health terms as a way to belittle people, or make them feel isolated. If you tell everyone someone is crazy, and many others agree, even though you have never met this person, no one will want to hire them. The crazy term is not something employers are willing to take a risk on. What I think is mentally ill is when a lot of working professional gang up on one person and physically assault him and slander him for a decade without seeing that something is wrong with their behavior. “It is a well-known fact in the community that he is mentally ill.” “Well, how do you know, have you ever met him or talked to his doctor?” “No, but that is what all these reporters tell me.” Everything about us—our brains, our minds, and our bodies—is geared toward collaboration in social systems. This is our most powerful survival strategy, the key to our success as a species, and it is precisely this that breaks down in most forms of mental suffering. The neural connections in brain and body are vitally important for understanding human suffering, but it is important not to ignore the foundations of our humanity: relationships and interactions that shape our minds and brains when we are young and that give substance and meaning to our entire lives. #RyanPhillippe 7 of 8
People with histories of abuse, neglect, or severe deprivation will remain mysterious and largely untreated unless we heed this admonition: To fully understand how we become the persons we are—the complex, step-by-step evolution of our orientations, capacities, and behavior over time—requires an understanding of the process of development, how all of these factor work together in an ongoing way over time. Frontline mental health workers—overwhelmed and underpaid social workers and therapists alike—seem to agree that the way people evaluate mental health can be very sneaky and deceptive. And many people who run around calling others crazy and setting them up and harassing them problem have deeply rooted mental illnesses that they need to analyze in themselves and seek help for and learn to leave others alone. I do not want to get political BUT, it seems likely that underpaid workers might be willing to cook the books on mental health for a boost in their paychecks and label someone incorrectly for financial gain. One can be very happy with much less trouble, than very wise. (www.thedeedle.com) #RyanPhillippe 8 of 8
Interruptions in Human Dialogue are Painful
Although interruptions in human dialogue may be very painful, at least they are clear-cut. Individuals may suffer acutely when they lose a loved one, but they usually realize they are suffering, and they know why. The vital force missing in their lives is recognized and acknowledged. There is, however, another dimension to human dialogue that is far more subtle and often quite difficult to recognize. For if dialogue can grow, it can also deteriorate, slowly and subtly, to the point where an individual can be trapped in a totally impoverished relationship without even being able to recognize what happened nor why. This process is very similar to the way the body grows and ages, on a day-to-day basis, without any visible change. The very fact that a person can tolerate deteriorated dialogue and sometimes even encourage it is something that we would often prefer to deny, for reflecting on the implications is not pleasant. Since dialogue involves reciprocal sharing with other human beings, its deterioration must also be reciprocal, and each person must share part of the responsibility. An individual can only receive to the extent that he gives, and, in that sense, dialogue is a mirror of his personality. This idea is neither particularly new nor radical. Psychoanalysts spend years in personal analysis trying to understand their own personalities, because they recognize that if they are not aware of their own anxieties, then their own insecurities will block them from listening to their patients. In the dialogue of psychotherapy, the patient can only communicate those thoughts and feelings that therapist is willing to share, and this reciprocity can be burdensome, anxiety provoking, depressing, or exhilarating. The psychoanalyst tried not to indulge in the delusion that all the difficulties in psychotherapy arise from the fact that the patient has problems.
The National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors served 6.1 million people annually, with a budget of $29.5 billion. If the patient flees from the therapy or terminates the therapeutic dialogue prematurely, psychotherapists reflexively begin to search for their own unconscious contributions to this disruption. A similar situation exists in all human relationships. Take, for example, the erosion and dissolution that occurs in so many marriages. Problems seldom emerge unilaterally from the behavior of only one of the partners; usually both contribute to the deterioration. This is not a particularly easy idea to accept, especially for those who have gone through the trauma of divorce, for it is always easier psychologically to blame the other person for problems than to search for one’s own contributions. Children who were regularly pushed over the edge into over arousal and disorganization did not develop proper attunement of their inhibitory and excitatory brain systems and grew up expecting that they would lose control if something upsetting happened. This was a vulnerable population, and by late adolescence half of them had diagnosable mental health problems. There were clear patterns: The children who received consistent caregiving became well-regulated kids, while erratic caregiving produced kids who were chronically physiologically aroused. The children of unpredictable parents often clamored for attention and became intensely frustrated in the face of small challenges. Their persistent arousal made them chronically anxious. Constantly looking for reassurance got in the way of playing and exploration, and, as a result, they grew up chronically nervous and nonadventurous. Early parental neglect or harsh treatment led to behavior problems in school and predicted troubles with peers and a lack of empathy for the distress of others. This set up a vicious cycle: Their chronic arousal, coupled with the lack of parental comfort, made them disruptive, oppositional, and aggressive. Disruptive and aggressive kids are unpopular and provoke further rejection and punishment, not only from their caregivers but also from their teachers and peers.
By far the most important predictor of how well people coped with life’s inevitable disappointments was the level of security established with their primary caregiver during the first two years of life. Resilience in adulthood could be predicted by how lovable mothers rated their kids at age two. Understanding the life-threatening nature of the lack dialogue makes it easier to comprehend the radical, often violent manner in which many people flee from situations of deteriorated dialogue. Sometimes individuals who have been married for years suddenly up and leave without warning, to live with another person. Frequently, they leave at great personal cost. They may be drained financially; often they are cut off from their own children and their social circle; their careers are placed in jeopardy and sometimes ruined; material possessions that they slaved for years to acquire are quickly cast aside. At the same time, the person left behind is often totally shocked, left with a profound sense of rejection, resentment, or even hatred. Crushed beyond the point of recovery, the abandoned mate may even die. We have encountered such. Much how Prince’s girlfriend Vanity died at age 57, of kidney failure, and two months after then Prince died at age 57 also. Dialogue has deteriorated blew a certain critical threshold, until one of the partners can no longer tolerate the isolation. If he only left because of money, the sex, or emotional disturbance, then the one mate’s flight might not be so crushing to the one left behind. If it were only some-thing that caused him to leave, then it all would be easier to accept emotionally. However, usually it is not some-thing that causes the disruption—it is some-one. Both individuals contribute to the breakdown in dialogue, and no idea can be more painful than that, no idea can be more threatening.
Hearts Hardening Towards One’s Father—what Kind of Man are you?
Human communication is fragile. Interruptions in human dialogue can range all the way from very brief absences from loved ones to the permanent loss of dialogue through death. By monitoring the occurrence of disease and even the occurrence of death, these investigators have been able to weigh numerically the effects of death of a spouse, separation, divorce, death of a close family member, children leaving the house, and death of a close friend. All of these disruptions were followed by a significant increase in disease and death. These statistical relationships between human loss, disease, and death suggest that those who experience interruptions and disruptions in the dialogue of life require help and support. While it is true that only individuals can love and participate in dialogue, such interactions, like chemical reactions, require the proper social milieu in order to flourish. Thus, an individual’s grief, insecure ego, inability to love, shattered dialogue, or entanglement in loneliness traps is also a collective problem for society. If children lose their parents or are abused, neglected, or abandoned by their parents, it seems obvious that someone else must help them. It is generally recognized that children require love, and if they do not receive it from their biological parents, society has an obligation to help them. The debate here centers on how such love can be effectively provided. Similarly, when adults suffer from interruptions in the dialogue of life—when they are bereaved, experiencing divorce or separation, living alone or lonely—they too require help, and it is in society’s collective interest to provide it. The problem, then, is how? I once knew this guy who really looked up to his father, but after spending a year getting to know him, he started to strongly dislike his father to the point he wanted to forget he ever existed. He looked at his dad as being a desperate coward, who has no control over his life, would do anything for a dollar, and someone who was not really a man.
Psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, and other health professionals do know a great deal about bereavement and loss, and they are on the whole quite cognizant of the physical and emotional impact of disruptions in dialogue. An entire new discipline called crisis intervention has developed within the past few decades specifically designed to begin immediately helping those experiencing interruptions in dialogue. These professional groups are performing a vital, and in many cases, absolutely essential, service. What is at issue here is the usefulness of an exclusively objective approach to assisting people in trouble. Ironically, the most problematic aspect of these professional efforts is that they now seem to be so necessary. They seem to be filling a void that is constantly growing. One is left to conclude that perhaps individuals, who suffered interruptions of dialogue a few decades ago were not cared for properly, or that the sources of support that once existed have now been eroded and are no longer viewed by society as particularly helpful. There is a new diagnosis of Developmental Trauma Disorder: Children who develop in the context of ongoing danger, maltreatment and disrupted caregiving systems are being ill served by the current diagnostic systems that lead to an emphasis on behavioral control with no recognition of interpersonal trauma. Studies on the sequel of childhood trauma in the context of caregiver abuse or neglect consistently demonstrate chronic and severe problems with emotion regulation, impulse control, attention and cognition, dissociation, interpersonal relationships, and self and relational schemas. In absence of a sensitive trauma-specific diagnosis, such children are currently diagnosed with an average of 3-8 co-morbid disorders. The continued practice of applying multiple distinct co-morbid diagnoses to traumatized children has grave consequences: it defies parsimony, obscures etiological clarity, and runs the danger of relegating treatment and intervention to a small aspect of the child’s psychopathology rather than promoting a comprehensive treatment approach.
It is my opinion that in much the same way that medicine slowly abandoned its appreciation for the healing role of bedside manner, society has abandoned its appreciation for the healing capacity of human contact. Emotional support that once came from families, neighbors, friends, ministers, rabbis, and priests is now purchased from psychiatrists, psychologist, and various social service agencies. While delivering needed support to people, these professional helping groups have also tended to usurp our functions and relieve us of our sense of personal responsibility. Understanding the nature of human dialogue and the degree to which an individual’s very existence is sustained by other human beings helps us explain why the loss of a loved one or the lack of love can be so devastating. It also suggests why those who are suffering interruptions in the dialogue are often avoided. To engage a bereaved person in dialogue means sharing his or her pain. What emerges from the eyes of a bereaved individual is grief, what emerges from the eyes of those who live alone is loneliness; what emerges from the eyes of the unloved adolescent is frightened anger. These people all need to share these painful aspects of the lives through dialogue. The dialogue of pain, anxiety, anger, and loneliness is also part of life, but it is a dialogue that can be both frightening and painful. How convenient to label these as scientific-medical problems and therefore have others look into their eyes. And remember, if you have spent a year abusing and depending on your son, I am sure you noticed he is starting to like you less and less and no longer sees you as a man, but a punk. You may want to do something kind before his heart hardens towards you and he grows to hate you.
What if One of the Problems is Officially Lack of Love and Lack of Dialogue?
Dreams are generally the effects of excesses, or of feverish hearts. That vivid dreaming which makes the margin of our deeper rest. This morning I was laying in bed wishing we had more dark hours so I could sleep without the sun blasting in my eyes. Day too often destroys an air-built castle at the moment of its completion, without the least ceremony or remorse. The whole cosmos is in a man’s brains; perhaps it is nowhere else. And when sleep relaxes the will, and there are no Earthly surroundings to distract attention—no duty, pain, or pleasure to compel it—riderless Fancy takes the bit in his teeth, and the whole cosmos goes mad and has its wild will of us. The scientific approach to aliments specifics that if certain life situations such as divorce increase one’s chances of developing coronary heart disease, ten aspects of these situations which contribute to the problem ought to be identified and individuals “immunized” or prepared to take some sort of remedial action to protect their health. #RyanPhillippe 1 of 5
On the surface, trying to protect your heart from pain is an eminently reasonable (rational) approach that offers great hope. However, what is some of the aspects of divorce or social isolation that lead to increased coronary heart disease cannot be measure? What if one of the problems is officially lack of love, lack of dialogue? To asset that there are unmeasurable aspects of human relationships which affect our healthy is a very uncomfortable position for any scientist to assume; it suggests an endorsement of irrationalism, mysticism, or, even worse, of witchcraft and voodoo. And yet, the issue itself is required to be faced. Dialogue does involve a process that cannot be totally measured with scientific instruments. Such an acknowledgement is not required to be particularly startling or controversial. The fact is that many, if not most, scientists could readily agree with it. The gleam in a young child’ eyes involves more than light quanta. #RyanPhillippe 2 of 5
Many scientists do not study emotions because the topic is hopelessly bogged down in phenomena that could not be measured. On the contrary, their attempts to define the limits of their sciences served to guide the way in which they conducted their research and applied it to everyday life situations. Similarly, admitting that human relationships may involve nonmeasureable processes does not mean that one should abandon further scientific study. Nor does it mean that advice cannot be given or that people cannot be helped. It is, instead, a call for a return to a more balanced view that recognizes both what can be and what cannot be known scientifically about human relationships. Do not ask us how we make our dream tally with facts. The glory of a dream is this—that it despises facts, and makes its own. Our dream saves us from going mad; this is enough. #RyanPhillippe 3 of 5
![Catch Hell[(007674)18-33-54]](https://harrishistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/catch-hell00767418-33-54.jpg)
The requirement for such a balanced view seems self-evident. When we look into the eyes of another human being we are not just looking at the flashing lights of another fancy computer; people are not programmed robots. A purely reflex pet would please little even the fondest of us; indeed the fondest least. Human relationships are no different. No one wants another human being to be totally predictable, totally programmed, any more than we would buy a dog or cat that was totally programmed. The joy, beauty, and power of human relationships reside precisely in the fact that the process is unique. And dialogue is the process that differentiates us from robots and programmed machines. We are sparks, we are shadows, we are pollen, which the next wind will carry away into the hearts of someone who loves us. Tell me what a man dreams, and I will tell you what he loves. #RyanPhillippe 4 of 5
The dialogue between humans is also fragile. In order to establish resiliency, the inner resource vortex must build a center of gravity that can balance the pull of trauma vortex. Bringing awareness to resources as they spontaneously arise in the body strengthens the inner vortex. These resources include organic movements from the nervous system that support the discharge of traumatic stress. Examples of the appearance of these resources are a deep breath, a smile, or a defensive gesture trying to complete itself. The inner vortex is also strengthened by bringing awareness to the beneficial sensations associated with experiences such as being in nature with loved ones. To heal from trauma is simply about creating enough safety to be with what is in the moment. Anything that helps a person maintain a sense of inner safety and integrity in the face of threat or disruption with help you heal. Have you ever just sat back and thought about how amazing WiFi is, or how cool it is that the sky is blue and planes can fly, and you can buy things you like? Life is great! (www.thedeedle.com) #RyanPhillippe 5 of 5
Living Together in Bonds of Love—Someone has to Care
The broken heats of the bereaved and the terrible agony of loneliness, as well as the mortality data, gives ample testimony to no material substitute—no simple thing—can fill the human need for dialogue. In what would perhaps be an extreme extension of the position, I would go on so far to suggest that married couple who like together in bonds of hatred may be physically healthier than those who live together without dialogue. The total lack of dialogue between a couple living together may be the official form of hatred because not only do they lack love, but there is a total lack of any response from another living creature. Other characteristics of the process of dialogue are that is it reciprocal, spontaneous, often nonverbal, and alive. These characteristics explain why dialogue cannot be packaged, codified, or described by a neat set of rules, laws, or classifications. #RyanPhillippe 1 of 6
With good dialogue, a friendly, serene, comfortable ambience weaves into your happy life, and the wonderful scene of reunion seems to be just before your eyes, which allows our hearts to be linked together. Dialogue is something that is continually changing so that it cannot be fixed in time or predicted, then it becomes apparent that dialogue could never be captured in a microscope or quantified on a scale, for that would destroy its spontaneity. Trying to objectify dialogue in order to examine it would destroy the process. These characteristics of dialogue also explain why we cannot raise children with surrogate (lifeless) parents, or satisfy each other as adults with material substitutes for dialogue. Toys and teddy bears, blue blankets and new 20-inch chrome wheels on your car, television and tape recorders, these can never be adequate substitutes for the dialogue we require. #RyanPhillippe 2 of 6
When a child “goos” or smiles, it is vitally important that someone else—someone alive say “ga” or smile back. Someone must respond. These responses cannot be programmed. Since no one can predict when a child will “goo” or smile, someone simply has to be there, ready to respond appropriately. Someone has to care. The Bell System notwithstanding, even devices such as the telephone will never quite be the next best thing to being there, because most of the dialogue of life is nonverbal. I was talking to my mother and she says, when I do not get to see you for months, it makes me sad because it is like you are dead. And so I try to visit more often. Also, my dad does not like to talk much, but he communicates with his eyes and facial expressions, he is very symbolic and when I go awhile without seeing him, I always remember his intense eyes and facial expressions and it makes me happy, and miss him even more. #RyanPhillippe 3 of 6
Since the process of dialogue is not exclusively in you or the other person, but rather between people as a reciprocal, spontaneous, and mutually flowing process, deviousness, fraud, or artificiality will only cause static that will disrupt dialogue. Like, I strongly dislike it when people pretend to like me and are only talking to me to pump me for information, insult me, or simply to make a joke. While we are alive, therefore, what we have to give to each other is at one and the same time the simplest yet most sublime gifts—our true and authentic self. Material substitutes like cars and diamonds are in the end only surrogates that cannot sustain us. Even objective knowledge by itself is a lifeless surrogate that only has meaning in human dialogue. What secret of happiness is greater than to follow your illusions? Be sure to call your parents or grandparents and thank them for something wonderful you remember them doing, or call them or visit and talk about something you thought was beautiful. It will really lift their spirits and make them proud. #RyanPhillippe 4 of 6
As already emphasized there are no specific potions nor magical formulas that can help an individual achieve dialogue with other people, any more than there are serums that will create love. Dialogues such as love are processes that move beyond and outside the realm of science. Knowledge about dialogue is, by itself, no guarantee that a person will be able to communicate with others or help them out of their loneliness. Indeed, knowledge about dialogue may even keep people at a distance. What often are sold in our society as guidelines for communication—rules on how you should engage your friends, how you should act toward your mate, or how you should speak to your child—seem to be the very way to disrupt dialogue. Many of the cookbook-objective rules instructing people on how to communicate with another only seem to serve to keep people all the more isolated and lonely. #RyanPhillippe 5 of 6
The child at the park with his father contains all the elements of perfect dialogue, and neither the father nor the child have to work to achieve this reciprocal relationship. This does not mean that dialogue always flows naturally. One cannot be oblivious to the fact that there are children who are battered and abandoned, and clearly many human relationships are far from perfect. Mortality statistics also bear mute testimony to the fact that dialogue is a process that can be lost. What it does mean, however, is that the knowledge about dialogue can only be usefully employed when the inherent limitations of objective solutions are recognized and other, frankly nonscientific approaches are appreciated. The pleasure you have brought about, the assistance you have offered, the love you have showed and the life you have lived—all these make you more amiable and respectful with every passing year in our hearts. (www.thedeedle.com). #RyanPhillippe 6 of 6
