Kellevision

On Tolerance

It seems to me that tolerance for others is closely related to tolerance for ourselves.  It we are compassionate and forgiving of ourselves, we tend to be the same way with others.  If we are hypercritical and judgmental of ourselves, we tend to be the same way with others.  That inner critic who criticizes everyone else is a reflection of the inner dialogue we are having with ourselves.

Learning to accept ourselves may be the first step in accepting others.

Likewise, I think people are less tolerant of people who engage in behaviors which they find repugnant in themselves.  I'm reminded of the cliche of the newly sober man or woman who is intolerant of anyone drinking around them.  I once asked my mother what she disliked most in other people.  She spent 3 minutes telling me how much she disliked people who talked and talked and talked, repeating themselves over and over and over.   And I smiled.

Working on our own program and addressing our own shortcomings may be the key to accepting the fallibility of others.

 

How Could I Be So Stupid?

Have you been manipulated, lied to, controlled by a toxic person?  The person may be a psychopath (antisocial), a narcissist or a borderline.  They've betrayed, exploited and misled you.  They've seduced you with their charm and beguiled you with their lies.  They've stolen your money, your life, your heart.  And you're left wondering, "How could I have been so stupid?"

The Drugging of Abused Children

Foster children, traumatized by abuse and/or neglect, are frequently prescribed psychiatric medications at a much higher rate and at much higher doses than children in the general population.  But psychiatric medication is not the treatment for trauma, psychotherapy is.  

As these children grow up and age out of the foster care system, what will they have to say about their psychiatric treatment and the medications they were given?   

Documentary film makers Karen De Sa and Dai Sugano asked that very question in their film, "Drugging Our Kids".   The documentary examines the over-prescribing of psychiatric medications for children in California's foster care system.  The issues discussed in this film are not isolated to California.  Texas, the state in which I practice, has one of the highest rates of psychiatric medication prescribed for children in foster care.  This is a problem across the United States.   

The film examines the practice of using psychiatric medications as a chemical straight jacket to tranquilize problem behaviors.  I have seen the very long lists of medications prescribed to these children, as well as, the long lists of diagnoses that are given to them.  Rarely do these diagnoses contain Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).  For children who have been removed from their homes due to abuse and neglect you would expect PTSD to be the primary diagnosis.  However, I more frequently saw;  ADHD, bipolar disorder, conduct disorder, oppositional behavior disorder, depression and anxiety disorders.  Rarely is consideration given that the behavior these children are exhibiting is most a result of the violence and neglect they have experienced.  They are simply labeled as behavior problems and medicated.  

Antidepressants May Cause Depression?

There's an interesting article on the CNCNews website discussing the lack of scientific research behind the chemical imbalance model for explaining depression.  

“And as early as 1998, the American Psychiatric Association in its textbook says we’re not finding that people with depression have any abnormality in their serotonin, but because it’s such an effective metaphor for getting people to take the drugs and sell the drugs, it’s continued to be promoted.”

Not only are antidepressants not effective, but taking them may actually exacerbate symptoms of depression...

"while people suffering from depression may not have low serotonin levels to begin with, the use of SSRIs reduces the brain’s capacity to produce serotonin on its own, leading to a worsening of symptoms when patients stop taking the drugs."

An interesting read indeed.

 

 

 

Learned Helplessness and Depression

While working with a depression support group it became apparent that many of the clients struggled with very negative ways of thinking about things and very negative ways of viewing the world.  This was interesting to me, because I battled depression myself for years.  I spent many years taking antidepressants without a significant relief from symptoms.  I eventually decided to stop and pay attention to the negative thinking in my own head.  As I researched it, I found it had a name:  Learned Helplessness.  

Learned helplessness is a concept developed by the psychologist, Martin Seligman.  Seligman worked with dogs who were exposed to electrical shocks.  Dogs who were allowed to push a button with their nose to stop the shocks learned to act to stop the shocks.  Dogs who were unable to escape the shocks learned to do nothing and wait for it to abate.  They gave up.  The conditioning taught the latter group they were unable to help themselves. 

This same behavior can be seen in some children and adults who endured traumatic childhoods.  Children who grow up in households where the parents' behavior is erratic and harmful will eventually stop trying to figure out a coping mechanism and just hunker down and endure the violence.  Imagine a child with a parent who is struggling with drug addiction.  Sometimes mom is unconscious, sometimes violent, sometimes pleasant.  The child never knows what they are going to get.  And the mother's behavior with the child is heavily influenced by the drugs, not the child.  What kind of behavior the mother displays depends on whether she; has drugs, is running out of drugs or is unable to get more drugs.  None of this is in the child's control.  And nothing the child tries to do to get the care they need from the mother will work if the mother is high from using drugs or raging because she can't find money to buy drugs.  So the child learns not to try to change their mother's behavior, because their efforts are futile.  Some of these children will space out or dissociate.  Some, like Seligman's dogs, will hunker down in the house and just endure the mother's abuse.  They learn they are helpless.  They learn not to try to change anything.

As adults they often adopt the same coping behavior.  They believe life is to be endured and feel they have no ability to act to change things.  Life is an endurance test, a series of mishaps that must be endured.  They can have a "Chicken Little" type of mentality, constantly feeling, "The sky is falling!  The sky is falling!"  These folks often view themselves as too helpless, too incompetent or too depressed to change the events in their life.  This creates a way of behaving and thinking that will result in pessimism and depression.  If this is the problem, medications will have little effect.  The problem is learned behavior, not biochemical. 

Finding that medications will not help can be disheartening.  But it can also be empowering.  A learned behavior can be unlearned.  The trick is to determine what the thinking is and learn how to think like a happier person does.

Seligman also studied naturally happy people and found the opposite of learned helplessness was learned optimism.  Seligman studied the differences between people who were basically pessimistic and people who were naturally optimistic and found three primary differences in their thinking patterns:  permanence, pervasiveness and personalization.  In a nutshell, optimistic people look at a failure as "I may have been thwarted at this goal (not their entire life), but it's a temporary setback (not a permanent failure) and it was just bad luck (nothing to do with them personally)".  

 

Learned Helplessness/Pessimism	Learned Optimism
Permanence
Believe bad events are permanent Believe good events are temporary	Believe bad events are temporary Believe good events are permanent
Pervasiveness
Failure in one area means is interpreted as meaning they are a failure in their entire life or as a person in general. Success, or happiness, in one area does not spill over into other areas.	Failure in one area does not mean they are a failure as a person or a failure in their life.   Conversely, happiness in one arena may brighten all other areas.
Personalization
Blame themselves for bad events. Attribute good events to external factors, i.e. "luck".	Take credit for good events.   Blame bad events on external factors.

 Some people would say the optimist's outlook is not entirely realistic, and they would be right.  Research has shown that people struggling with depression more accurately assess the outcomes of events than people who are more optimist.   Happier people tend to incorrectly assume that things will be all right when they won't.

In the end, happiness may be the result of a little bit of self delusion.  But does that make it bad?

Thoughts?

 

Narcissistic Rage: The Scorpion and the Frog

Narcissistic rage is like no other.  The intensity is palpable.  Logic and reason falls by the way side.  They have no limits.  They do not stop at the edge.  They do not care if they destroy themselves, as long as they take you with them.  They are willing to go to extremes and commit atrocities you could never imagine.  And this is why you can't beat them.  Why?  I'm reminded of an old fable.

Where the Practice of Medicine Fails

 A friend went to the doctor with ear pain and was told it was caused by grinding her teeth.  The doctor recommended a mouth guard, some muscle relaxers at night or a referral to an oral surgeon to inject Botox into her jaws.  But the doctor asked nothing about the stressors in her life which were causing the grinding.  

Why does modern medicine continue to separate the physical from the psychological as if they existed in two different bodies?