Tag: mental health

Being Here and There

November 18, 2014

As we become adults, most of us gain the ability to have self-awareness – being able to look at ourselves from the outside, the equivalent of seeing ourselves from another’s perspective. And many of us know that when you do this sort of self-analysis ad infinitum, you can get lost inside yourself. This is partly because when you are doing your own self-analysis, you don’t need the perspective of others. It causes a serious drag on our processing, though, and it fatigues us from ...  Keep reading

Dark Nights (Plural)

April 15, 2014

You have heard it talked about that most people go through some kind of “dark night of the soul” at some point in their lives. Well I don’t know about you, but I feel like I go through some kind of depression/darkness almost monthly (if not more often) when I feel depressed and it feels like there was no way to avoid it. I just need to be depressed, something needs to die.

My wife told me last week too that babies go through a fussy period when they are getting ready to move through ...  Keep reading

Compulsions

February 22, 2014
So much of our depression and anxiety occurs because of our constant compulsive behavior. We feel badly and our compulsions crop up to try to help neutralize our pain and help us feel better. It is like our bodies and brains instantly want to heal us, but since these compulsive behaviors have their genesis in our brokenness, they do not help. They only serve to produce more of the feelings we sought to neutralize in the first place and more unwanted behavior is produced.  Compulsions could be defined as anything that is produced unthinkingly out of our guilt, fear, discomfort or pain. What’s amazing is that you can enact the same behavior and if you do it in thoughtfulness rather than compulsivity, it can be life-giving. The goal of the healing arts is enhancing our thoughtfulness about our pain. The thoughtfulness means we will again become present to the pain, but ignoring pain and relying on our compulsions will not help. The more we can do thoughtfully (and not compulsively), the more we will be able manage anxiety and emotion. The goal is that brokenness will be healed and we will be able to live out of our wholeness.

Getting Stuck

November 20, 2012

There is this diagnostic category in the DSM (the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual: the tool by which mental health professionals diagnose) which contains the personality disorders. What defines personality disorders is that the people who have them have basically organized themselves toward the world in a certain way. They interact with many different people in many different situations in a “maladaptive” way. You could say their personalities have “crystallized” in this ...  Keep reading