When you want to receive therapy, you have to drive
far! Psychiatries are buildings, hidden behind unknown villages and cut off
from civilization in order to prevent human beings from understanding the mystery
of humans working on their mental troubles. Psychiatry is a place we learned
about in movies such as ‘One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest’ – and let’s be honest
Jack Nicholson is still the exemplary patient, when thinking about psychological
disorders. Because we don’t know it better.
recovering
reality
Psychiatry is a place which allows you to quit your
normal daily life and reflect and restructure yourself. It creates a safe and
careful environment to encourage patients in working on new experiences and
different perspectives.
Reading through clinical studies – I’ve always noticed
that many patients will pass through a backslide after being officially cured.
Diagnosis doesn’t matter. The result is: after leaving the clinical environment
and returning back to where they came from, many people collapse, fall back
into old patterns and from there – restart the problematic behavior provoking regressions.
Clinical psychologist state that the disorder itself
causes the regression, but – isn’t that way too easy?
transit times
Of course patients obtain ambulant therapy at home,
but compared to the density of a clinical environment, a two hours conversation
at some therapist’s place is not comparable to what they’ve received before.
Plus, the environment itself could decrease the therapeutically effect. While
the clinical world is structured and mostly prevented from negative affections,
the quotidian life is filled with unaware family member, job routines, possibly
bad living conditions and unexpected events.
I have an example which might sound crucial to you,
but it underlines my train of thoughts: remember last time when you came back
from a long and intense holiday. You’ve skipped out your daily habits, met new
people and also changed yourself in some ways. You return, full of optimism and
curiosity – but compared to you, the faces on the street haven’t changed and other
people’s attitude towards you might be the same. And then, your first day at
work, you feel overwhelmed and confused. Imagine that plus suffering mental
disorders.
Some weeks ago I experienced exactly that situation. A
friend sent a friend of his to me and asked what to do. The friend is suffering
from depression for ages and just returned home from a clinical period. Now,
two month later, he is confronted with his daily life: an empty bank account, a
sick and old mother and his properties are about to be removed from the state.
Even for people without depression, that would be a hard job to do!
What is my personal conclusion after seeing that? I
think psychiatry and society are two distinct worlds and the problem is – they don’t
touch each other at all! That is what we have to change!
One ideal solution could be, that people leaving
psychiatry receive daily monitoring and support from qualified therapists, who
also interact with family and friends and arising problems. But of course –
that is impossible to organize from states side, financial aspects and many
more.
And then, I propose an even more ideal approach: WE
have to do it!
My ideal would be, that psychiatry and people who are
a part of it, are integrated in our lives. Imagine, someone leaving psychiatry
would not just go home, but move into sort of a more generation house. There
would be students, families with children and other people surrounding this
person. They would look after him, maybe ask the right question or just share a
meal together. Released patients would find support and integration into a
daily life, in which they could follow a job and find help where they need it.
Integration of psychological issues into our daily
lives would impact many aspects: if we share our life with people having
disorders, we create more awareness and a normality towards them. To see that
it’s okay if people don’t function might decrease the pressure on every one of
us, to be perfect. And that might influence the number of disorders in total,
which are caused by unrealistic expectations and inaccurate images of people’s
biographies.
And the second point is, many disorders are caused by
feelings of loneliness and disconnection. Sending people back into these
circumstances would not support their healing process. Sharing our houses and
time with them, is the first step towards an existence without word 'disorder'!
Dear Alex,
AntwortenLöschenI love the style of your writing, the topics you choose, and the insights you share. Reading your blog, I sense a deep and compassionate person.
Regarding this article, I would like to share my solution to the underlying problem. When I read your later article about sports in school, I already felt that we have a similar assessment as to what is wrong in this world.
Surprising and also quite upsetting to me, this is not a complicated problem. Quite the opposite - we could have solved it long ago, and I really do not understand why we haven't.
The problem is simply that nobody is accepted and good as they are. There is no love in our system. Especially not in school, and neither in professional therapy, which can never replace a true relationship of unconditional (unpaid...) love - the only thing that can help people to heal from the core, or rather: from the heart. To me, and broadly speaking, any mental disorder is a symptom of missing self-love, ultimately. Or putting it even simpler (I love learning to put things simple): The ability to feel good without conditions.
So, what's missing is love, or more precisely: self-love. And I completely agree, we must not separate the spheres of "therapy" (some that acually helps, preferably) and people's everyday life. This is just the old atomistic, mechanistic thinking. Healing must be a part of our life - or rather: Our lives itself must be healed from the one root disease of "I am bad as I am, I am not enough".
However, as already pointed out, the system is the very problem. In any society, the individual finds themselves under enormous pressure to comform and (in capitalism) perform, to strive for instead of just being okay, and not to question the system in which they suffer so much. And instead of relieving this pressure on the individual on a systemic level, we create these separate spaces (!) where everything will be alright and fine. Only that actually, it won't.
And at this point, I 1) despair of therapists, sociologists and everyone else who should have an understanding of spiritual issues BUT will not, god forbid, use their gifts to change the system itself (and, this is essential and rare: To find out how do it smartly and effectively) - but instead submit to it and use it to their own benefit, effectively and systematically using people with mental disorders as their own personal cash cows and feeding the cycle by disregarding the one root cause, never giving people what they REALLY need, and 2) absolutely cannot accept this state of affairs and have to consecrate my life to radically change the system at its deepest foundation.
This is why I tempt and help people to obtain this one crucial thing, which acually isn't an thing at all: To feel loved, unconditionally - while & by giving love, unconditionally. This is more important than anything else I have ever done before, and will be my cause for the rest of my life: Move Meta. It is everything you wished for in your article, and even better: It is not a therapy. It is a fascinating story that people want to be part of, circumventing the whole problem-centered approach of psychotherapy that "normal" people fear, loathe and hate, and (in my opinion) do so in deep understanding of what's actually going on.
Disclaimer - I hope you will not take offense at my comment! It is not meant as an affront. Just as an honest and razor-sharp analysis that I would usually keep to myself, because even kind people regularly answer them by cutting me out of their lives. Because if I stayed in, and reminded them of what they know is true, they would have to change (to reduce cognitive dissonance). And they won't do that. Because they are good as they are. Only that they aren't. And they never, never want to hear about that again. Which is why it is such an art to still tell people about it, and getting them to listen.
Love,
Manuel