"THE OPAQUE WINDOW"
VOICE-OVER = Helen Borel, R.N.,Ph.D.
I invite you to visit this
"Art-in-Progress"/"Art-in-Process"
Visual and Aural Experience
Yes, yes...the artist recorded me in a session
(deleting the patient's expressions
that elicited the therapeutic and
creativity interventions)
Experience it here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THEIkkIE_zc
Friday, August 21, 2015
Saturday, August 1, 2015
NEW BLOOD TEST PREDICTS SCHIZOPHRENIA
NOBEL-LEVEL BREAKTHROUGH
IDENTIFIES FUTURE SCHIZOPHRENIA
ALLOWING ADVANCE NEUROPROTECTION
By Helen Borel, R.N.,Ph.D.
According to Reuters Health Information via Medscape.com, a panel of 26 blood "biomarkers" can PREDICT SCHIZOPHRENIA in patients "years before symptoms appear". The University of Cambridge (U.K.) scientist who developed this test, Dr. Sabine Bahn along with her research colleagues said, "The biomarker panel...represents a validated set of biomarkers from which a definitive signature for diagnosis and prediction of schizophrenia ...could be developed. [T]he use of such a test in conjunction with a psychiatric assessment will help position schizophrenia among other biological disorders, such as diabetes and heart disease...providing hope for better diagnostic and treatment approaches."
This, to all healthcare professionals who've ever treated and taken care of patients with
schizophrenia, is marvelous news. Also, in recent years, the concept of NEUROPROTECTION (advance treatment of a known brain condition to forestall severe and worsening symptoms, particularly in the case of impending schizophrenia) has been put forth...and I believe it's in practice when some psychiatrists are treating with psychotropic protection patients who haven't even manifested the disease yet, but who are identified as future schizophrenics.
Because of the advent of this panel of 26 biomarkers for impending schizophrenia...
And because of the REVOLUTION IN THE CARE OF SCHIZOPHRENICS and in
the potential to ward off this awful brain disease altogether by pre-empting via
NEUROPROTECTIVE PHARMACEUTICALS, even the manifestation of this illness...
HERE IS MY RESPONSE at the Medscape site TO THIS WONDERFUL NEWS:
This report of biomarkers for incipient schizophrenia represents a significant breakthrough in
anticipating the approach of schizophrenia in a patient BEFORE this severe brain disorder
manifests. It will be wonderful when doctors and other healthcare professionals can intercept,
with prophylactic pharmaceuticals, this dire disease by providing what has been called, by others, "NEUROPROTECTION".
The proposal that schizophrenia may soon be managed "like other biological disorders" such as
diabetes mellitus and cardiac disease...more in approaches that ward off drastic symptoms
(e.g. excess blood glucose, e.g. bradycardia or atrial fibrillation) such as protecting identified
vulnerable patients from the development of delusions and hearing voices and disordered
behaviors...seems like a miracle to us who trained and worked in a time when "schizophrenia"
meant "hopelessly forever mentally deranged" and lifetime protective care was essential.
The scientists who imagined and developed this kind of "pre-diagnostic"
tool for predicting schizophrenic propensity with its promise for directing
"pre-treatment prophylaxis" against this tragic illness should be candidates for
The Nobel Prize in Medicine.
Helen Borel,RN,PhD...Medical/Psych/Pharm and Fiction Writer and PsychoTherapist
© copyright 2015 Dr. Helen Borel. All rights reserved.
For permissions and rights, email me: medical-healthalerts@earthlink.net
For Interactive, Interventional, Creative PsychoTherapy - by this author of
Journey Into Self: Holistic Interactive Integrative Psychoanalysis - that
gets your life, your career, and your love relationship away from suffering
and on to fulfillment, contact me: emotional_health@earthlink.net
...and You can call me Dr. Helen
IDENTIFIES FUTURE SCHIZOPHRENIA
ALLOWING ADVANCE NEUROPROTECTION
By Helen Borel, R.N.,Ph.D.
According to Reuters Health Information via Medscape.com, a panel of 26 blood "biomarkers" can PREDICT SCHIZOPHRENIA in patients "years before symptoms appear". The University of Cambridge (U.K.) scientist who developed this test, Dr. Sabine Bahn along with her research colleagues said, "The biomarker panel...represents a validated set of biomarkers from which a definitive signature for diagnosis and prediction of schizophrenia ...could be developed. [T]he use of such a test in conjunction with a psychiatric assessment will help position schizophrenia among other biological disorders, such as diabetes and heart disease...providing hope for better diagnostic and treatment approaches."
This, to all healthcare professionals who've ever treated and taken care of patients with
schizophrenia, is marvelous news. Also, in recent years, the concept of NEUROPROTECTION (advance treatment of a known brain condition to forestall severe and worsening symptoms, particularly in the case of impending schizophrenia) has been put forth...and I believe it's in practice when some psychiatrists are treating with psychotropic protection patients who haven't even manifested the disease yet, but who are identified as future schizophrenics.
Because of the advent of this panel of 26 biomarkers for impending schizophrenia...
And because of the REVOLUTION IN THE CARE OF SCHIZOPHRENICS and in
the potential to ward off this awful brain disease altogether by pre-empting via
NEUROPROTECTIVE PHARMACEUTICALS, even the manifestation of this illness...
HERE IS MY RESPONSE at the Medscape site TO THIS WONDERFUL NEWS:
This report of biomarkers for incipient schizophrenia represents a significant breakthrough in
anticipating the approach of schizophrenia in a patient BEFORE this severe brain disorder
manifests. It will be wonderful when doctors and other healthcare professionals can intercept,
with prophylactic pharmaceuticals, this dire disease by providing what has been called, by others, "NEUROPROTECTION".
The proposal that schizophrenia may soon be managed "like other biological disorders" such as
diabetes mellitus and cardiac disease...more in approaches that ward off drastic symptoms
(e.g. excess blood glucose, e.g. bradycardia or atrial fibrillation) such as protecting identified
vulnerable patients from the development of delusions and hearing voices and disordered
behaviors...seems like a miracle to us who trained and worked in a time when "schizophrenia"
meant "hopelessly forever mentally deranged" and lifetime protective care was essential.
The scientists who imagined and developed this kind of "pre-diagnostic"
tool for predicting schizophrenic propensity with its promise for directing
"pre-treatment prophylaxis" against this tragic illness should be candidates for
The Nobel Prize in Medicine.
Helen Borel,RN,PhD...Medical/Psych/Pharm and Fiction Writer and PsychoTherapist
© copyright 2015 Dr. Helen Borel. All rights reserved.
For permissions and rights, email me: medical-healthalerts@earthlink.net
For Interactive, Interventional, Creative PsychoTherapy - by this author of
Journey Into Self: Holistic Interactive Integrative Psychoanalysis - that
gets your life, your career, and your love relationship away from suffering
and on to fulfillment, contact me: emotional_health@earthlink.net
...and You can call me Dr. Helen
Monday, July 20, 2015
BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER - Article 2
A FOLLOW-UP WARNING
By Helen Borel, R.N.,Ph.D.
Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a life-long psychological illness where the patient has nearly zero sense of self. Such an emotionally erratic individual doesn’t feel self-grounded, feels loose emotionally, and so crosses your psychological space, time and time again, due to trouble recognizing that the You that Is YOU is not the She that is SHE. (Males have this disorder, too.)
In other words, the Borderline Personality IS BOUNDARY-LESS. In a relationship with others, the borderline exhibits frequent anger and rage both of which are way out of proportion to anything the normal person in the relationship did or said. A relationship with a borderline is doomed from the outset. This is because...proven by varied and in-depth neuropsychiatric research...there is volumetric brain loss (decrease in imperative brain elements) and other decrements...and the source of these deficits, relative to causation of the cerebral defects, has not been as yet determined.
Suffice to point out, there’s less brain tissue in Borderlines, compared to normal brains, in the regions that regulate unpleasant emotions. So, the Borderline can’t calm herself down; everything she’s feeling that’s uncomfortable is someone else’s fault. And if you’re her significant other, her rage will routinely be directed at you.
To let you, the normal person in the relationship, down easy: A borderline can’t change this unreasonable, irritating, demanding, relationship-destructive behavior because there’s a glitch in her brain that, so far, no one has come up with a specific medication or a neurosurgical operation nor an eletroshock-type zapping that could alter and improve the Borderline’s incapacity to regulate anger and rage.
“Borderlines” were originally labeled thus because the malignancy of the emotional disruptions in their own lives and those they cause within the emotional lives of their family members and lovers is so severe as to appear to reside on the border between psychotic illnesses like schizophrenia and neurotic illnesses like chronic anxiousness. Borderlines do, at times, slip into unreality, a feature of insanity. Caught up in troubled feelings that their brains can’t modulate as normal brains can, they wreak havoc on themselves (sometimes cutting themselves and having to be psychiatrically hospitalized) and are a disaster for the recipient of their rages.
Borderlines don’t tend to benefit from Psychotherapy. Because they either storm out of sessions
due to some imagined slight, or even a direct compliment can elicit anger. Baffling behaviors
for professionals to deal with. Therefore, don’t blame yourself if you find your borderline’s
behavior incomprehensible and unnerving. And don’t look for any change toward improvement.
Outbursts will continue. Except you’ll usually be blindsided by them due to their unpredictable
timing and due to the lability of the borderline’s emotional states.
You can’t, therefore, rely on a peaceful, predictable relationship of love and acceptance and growth and in-depth understanding. The borderline is all for herself . In the equation of life, you don’t matter. It’s “I need to feel better fast or I’ll cause immediate trouble and disruption in others’ lives.”
Contrary to what others in the fields of psychology and psychiatry have said, leaning
toward sympathy for the borderline and her imagined issues and slights, it’s difficult to
sympathize with a person who does nothing but destroy friendships, destroy work
relationships and destroy love relationships...not to mention what destructive outbursts and
calumny they inflict on their own close family members from their childhoods onward.
Also, contrary to many presumed “experts” in psychiatry: I believe (of course due to the abnormalities lately being found in the brains of borderlines from varied neuroscience sources) that not only do the parents of the borderline have nothing to do with creating this emotional “monster,” [similar to the disproven accusatory misnomer by psychiatrists decades ago, blaming the maternal parent for the advent of schizophrenia in her child...mislabeling these beleaguered women “SCHIZOPHRENOGENIC MOTHERS]...
but that, you can be sure THE BORDERLINE CAUSED A GREAT DEAL OF DISRUPTION IN THE FAMILY AND EMOTIONALLY-VICTIMIZED HER PARENTS AND SIBLINGS FROM TODDLERHOOD ONWARD.
Any hypothesis about parental causation in the advent of Borderline Personality Disorder is utterly false! The child is born with a brain deficit. The fault, dear Doctor, lies in the faulty brain. A neurologic condition which will, I believe, one day be treated with a very specific, targeted chemical medicine that may help the brain modulate distressing feelings. Or a neurosurgeon will come up with a way to restore lost brain volume or perform some surgical magic that will mask the emotional dyscontrol deficit. Or one of our physiologic psychiatric treatments, such as ECT (electroshock) or other cerebral-electrical therapies or something else maybe on the horizon will zap the brain into more normal functioning, more normal capacity to regulate unpleasant feelings.
In the meantime, we don’t have these miraculous chemical cures or lifetime treatments for Borderline Personalities. So my advice is, steer clear of these troubled types. They feel better when you attend to THEIR needs. They become distraught, accusatory, rageful and emotionally destructive to you when you are seeking a balanced relationship. If you choose to stay in a relationship with such a brain-disordered person, expect periodic chaos, disruption in your peace of mind, inexplicable attacks, yelling and screaming, storming out, begging to come back, promising to act more mature from then on...but NEVER BEING ABLE TO GET BEYOND THESE, SO FAR, UNCHANGEABLE DEFICITS IN THINKING AND BEHAVIORS.
Trying to make peace with a Borderline type is futile. The negative, painful behavior toward you is guaranteed to repeat itself over and over again. Listen: If your lover were diagnosed with
Tuberculosis, even if on Isoniazid, it’s a bad idea to kiss and intermingle that person’s saliva with
your own because of the tubercle bacillus. You want to avoid infection.
I warn you: Nothing you’re going to do will soften the Borderline's ways of dealing with inner feelings they don’t like. In her mind, whatever occurs that she doesn’t approve of will always be YOUR FAULT...at which she’ll justify her outlandish rageful words and behaviors.
LISTEN: It’s not only dating and “love” relationships I’m referring to here. My expertise
arises mostly from patients in my psychotherapy practice who’ve suffered...and are often still suffering
well into their 40s and 50s...from a RAGING BORDERLINE MOTHER. And so, they tend to
pick their dates and spouses from that familiar pool of screaming manipulative females
whose counterparts still live rent-free in their heads.
When you first meet such an individual, she will tend to get too close too fast. Be wary. This is a sign of LACK OF BOUNDARIES, of inability to see you as a separate individual, a being
unto yourself. Do not mistake seeming immediate warmth for maturity and potential for mature love and emotional growth. Also, never mistake a high intelligence and/or a creative talent for
emotional maturity. These do not equate!!! A person can be highly intelligent and may be gifted in some art or other; beware though, the person can still be an emotional infant. That’s the case with borderlines. So don’t be fooled. Be wary too, because this kind of personality is destructive as a parent to the emotional well-being of any children they may give birth to. Woe unto you if you’re the normal parent in such a family. You’ll not be able to shield your offspring from the
rages and diatribes of your Borderline spouse. And those children will be forever wounded by
such a defective parent.
Be smart. There are safer lovers out there for you to choose among. They’ve a mature view of
themselves and they take full responsibility for their own feelings and don’t play the blame game against you, nor blanket you with frequent destructive rages and dysphoric feelings. As soon as you realize you’re in a relationship with a Borderline, get out of it. The longer you put up with the uncontrollable behaviors, the deeper you’ll be hurt, the more distant will be your chances to be open to a real, mature love relationship.
(If you’re asking me, a healthcare and psychiatric professional, why it’s hard to fully empathize with Borderlines, here’s my answer: Because, though I know their brains can’t help it, they wreak such havoc, cause so much pain in others who only mean them well, and destroy what good and what love does come their way, that it feels like an exercise in futility to sympathize with them when I must have empathy for their victims, MY PATIENTS and all the others out there in the world who Borderlines’ misbehaviors harm.)
© Copyright 2015 Dr. Helen Borel. All rights reserved.
You may reach me at medical-healthalerts@earthlink.net
for permissions and quotations from this original article.
To reprint this article in full for the benefit of other
readers of other publications, kindly contact me to
arrange to pay a modest fee to help support this psych site.
To reprint this article in full for the benefit of other readers of
other publications,
By Helen Borel, R.N.,Ph.D.
Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a life-long psychological illness where the patient has nearly zero sense of self. Such an emotionally erratic individual doesn’t feel self-grounded, feels loose emotionally, and so crosses your psychological space, time and time again, due to trouble recognizing that the You that Is YOU is not the She that is SHE. (Males have this disorder, too.)
In other words, the Borderline Personality IS BOUNDARY-LESS. In a relationship with others, the borderline exhibits frequent anger and rage both of which are way out of proportion to anything the normal person in the relationship did or said. A relationship with a borderline is doomed from the outset. This is because...proven by varied and in-depth neuropsychiatric research...there is volumetric brain loss (decrease in imperative brain elements) and other decrements...and the source of these deficits, relative to causation of the cerebral defects, has not been as yet determined.
Suffice to point out, there’s less brain tissue in Borderlines, compared to normal brains, in the regions that regulate unpleasant emotions. So, the Borderline can’t calm herself down; everything she’s feeling that’s uncomfortable is someone else’s fault. And if you’re her significant other, her rage will routinely be directed at you.
To let you, the normal person in the relationship, down easy: A borderline can’t change this unreasonable, irritating, demanding, relationship-destructive behavior because there’s a glitch in her brain that, so far, no one has come up with a specific medication or a neurosurgical operation nor an eletroshock-type zapping that could alter and improve the Borderline’s incapacity to regulate anger and rage.
“Borderlines” were originally labeled thus because the malignancy of the emotional disruptions in their own lives and those they cause within the emotional lives of their family members and lovers is so severe as to appear to reside on the border between psychotic illnesses like schizophrenia and neurotic illnesses like chronic anxiousness. Borderlines do, at times, slip into unreality, a feature of insanity. Caught up in troubled feelings that their brains can’t modulate as normal brains can, they wreak havoc on themselves (sometimes cutting themselves and having to be psychiatrically hospitalized) and are a disaster for the recipient of their rages.
Borderlines don’t tend to benefit from Psychotherapy. Because they either storm out of sessions
due to some imagined slight, or even a direct compliment can elicit anger. Baffling behaviors
for professionals to deal with. Therefore, don’t blame yourself if you find your borderline’s
behavior incomprehensible and unnerving. And don’t look for any change toward improvement.
Outbursts will continue. Except you’ll usually be blindsided by them due to their unpredictable
timing and due to the lability of the borderline’s emotional states.
You can’t, therefore, rely on a peaceful, predictable relationship of love and acceptance and growth and in-depth understanding. The borderline is all for herself . In the equation of life, you don’t matter. It’s “I need to feel better fast or I’ll cause immediate trouble and disruption in others’ lives.”
Contrary to what others in the fields of psychology and psychiatry have said, leaning
toward sympathy for the borderline and her imagined issues and slights, it’s difficult to
sympathize with a person who does nothing but destroy friendships, destroy work
relationships and destroy love relationships...not to mention what destructive outbursts and
calumny they inflict on their own close family members from their childhoods onward.
Also, contrary to many presumed “experts” in psychiatry: I believe (of course due to the abnormalities lately being found in the brains of borderlines from varied neuroscience sources) that not only do the parents of the borderline have nothing to do with creating this emotional “monster,” [similar to the disproven accusatory misnomer by psychiatrists decades ago, blaming the maternal parent for the advent of schizophrenia in her child...mislabeling these beleaguered women “SCHIZOPHRENOGENIC MOTHERS]...
but that, you can be sure THE BORDERLINE CAUSED A GREAT DEAL OF DISRUPTION IN THE FAMILY AND EMOTIONALLY-VICTIMIZED HER PARENTS AND SIBLINGS FROM TODDLERHOOD ONWARD.
Any hypothesis about parental causation in the advent of Borderline Personality Disorder is utterly false! The child is born with a brain deficit. The fault, dear Doctor, lies in the faulty brain. A neurologic condition which will, I believe, one day be treated with a very specific, targeted chemical medicine that may help the brain modulate distressing feelings. Or a neurosurgeon will come up with a way to restore lost brain volume or perform some surgical magic that will mask the emotional dyscontrol deficit. Or one of our physiologic psychiatric treatments, such as ECT (electroshock) or other cerebral-electrical therapies or something else maybe on the horizon will zap the brain into more normal functioning, more normal capacity to regulate unpleasant feelings.
In the meantime, we don’t have these miraculous chemical cures or lifetime treatments for Borderline Personalities. So my advice is, steer clear of these troubled types. They feel better when you attend to THEIR needs. They become distraught, accusatory, rageful and emotionally destructive to you when you are seeking a balanced relationship. If you choose to stay in a relationship with such a brain-disordered person, expect periodic chaos, disruption in your peace of mind, inexplicable attacks, yelling and screaming, storming out, begging to come back, promising to act more mature from then on...but NEVER BEING ABLE TO GET BEYOND THESE, SO FAR, UNCHANGEABLE DEFICITS IN THINKING AND BEHAVIORS.
Trying to make peace with a Borderline type is futile. The negative, painful behavior toward you is guaranteed to repeat itself over and over again. Listen: If your lover were diagnosed with
Tuberculosis, even if on Isoniazid, it’s a bad idea to kiss and intermingle that person’s saliva with
your own because of the tubercle bacillus. You want to avoid infection.
I warn you: Nothing you’re going to do will soften the Borderline's ways of dealing with inner feelings they don’t like. In her mind, whatever occurs that she doesn’t approve of will always be YOUR FAULT...at which she’ll justify her outlandish rageful words and behaviors.
LISTEN: It’s not only dating and “love” relationships I’m referring to here. My expertise
arises mostly from patients in my psychotherapy practice who’ve suffered...and are often still suffering
well into their 40s and 50s...from a RAGING BORDERLINE MOTHER. And so, they tend to
pick their dates and spouses from that familiar pool of screaming manipulative females
whose counterparts still live rent-free in their heads.
When you first meet such an individual, she will tend to get too close too fast. Be wary. This is a sign of LACK OF BOUNDARIES, of inability to see you as a separate individual, a being
unto yourself. Do not mistake seeming immediate warmth for maturity and potential for mature love and emotional growth. Also, never mistake a high intelligence and/or a creative talent for
emotional maturity. These do not equate!!! A person can be highly intelligent and may be gifted in some art or other; beware though, the person can still be an emotional infant. That’s the case with borderlines. So don’t be fooled. Be wary too, because this kind of personality is destructive as a parent to the emotional well-being of any children they may give birth to. Woe unto you if you’re the normal parent in such a family. You’ll not be able to shield your offspring from the
rages and diatribes of your Borderline spouse. And those children will be forever wounded by
such a defective parent.
Be smart. There are safer lovers out there for you to choose among. They’ve a mature view of
themselves and they take full responsibility for their own feelings and don’t play the blame game against you, nor blanket you with frequent destructive rages and dysphoric feelings. As soon as you realize you’re in a relationship with a Borderline, get out of it. The longer you put up with the uncontrollable behaviors, the deeper you’ll be hurt, the more distant will be your chances to be open to a real, mature love relationship.
(If you’re asking me, a healthcare and psychiatric professional, why it’s hard to fully empathize with Borderlines, here’s my answer: Because, though I know their brains can’t help it, they wreak such havoc, cause so much pain in others who only mean them well, and destroy what good and what love does come their way, that it feels like an exercise in futility to sympathize with them when I must have empathy for their victims, MY PATIENTS and all the others out there in the world who Borderlines’ misbehaviors harm.)
© Copyright 2015 Dr. Helen Borel. All rights reserved.
You may reach me at medical-healthalerts@earthlink.net
for permissions and quotations from this original article.
To reprint this article in full for the benefit of other
readers of other publications, kindly contact me to
arrange to pay a modest fee to help support this psych site.
To reprint this article in full for the benefit of other readers of
other publications,
Tuesday, June 16, 2015
OVERCOMING NEEDINESS by FOCUSING ON YOU, YOUR SELF
Self-Focus Heals Neediness
by Helen Borel, R.N.,Ph.D.
Summing up from my companion article "Neediness Hurts. Self Focus Heals." :
Neediness on your part arises out of insecurities and confusion about mixed messages and lack of feedback from others. These disturbing, disrespectful and often out-of-the-blue behaviors by others evoke - in you - core vulnerabilities from a time you were too young to fully feel secure about who you are and about your loveability and acceptability to others beyond your childhood family.
When LOVE turns to REJECTION When a seeming "love relationship" turns to the pain of rejection, you can't allow your anger and anxiety to cause you to fall apart. Instead, you must unearth what your partner's distancing behavior echoes inside of you. Then you should recognize that your true, full Self has nothing do with his awful-feeling behavior. And you can't demean your Self by allowing your emotional pain to dictate what you'll do next.
His Distancing Actions are Not Your Fault Not that you did or said anything wrong in the first place that would have driven a mentally healthy man, sure of his own needs and character, away! It's also possible that you never acted needy at all, at least at first...but that, if you find yourself with a guy whose initial facade hid an insecure personality, or his behavior makes it clearer and clearer that you remind him of his mother (who must have had both positive and negative traits) who made him anxious, and so forth, he's going to become distant at some point anyway.
Maybe He's Looking to be Rejected by You And maybe he wants you to reject him due to some paradoxical need to have you do so because, for some unexamined reason from his childhood, he feels rejectable. So he'd rather do something to push you away early in the "relationship," before he invests more of his love into it and ends up being rejected by you...a final blow he may feel he couldn't suffer easily.
In other words, his fear of rejection by you may cause him to unconsciously provoke rejection by you...the very thing he may believe he doesn't want, but that his counterproductive behavior induces in others, particularly when he gets involved in a "love relationship."
Clear Communications Let Others Feel Your Strengths Clear communications come from knowing what you want, knowing what and who you don't want in your life, knowing what you will absolutely not put up with.
Not begging, cajoling, arguing, accusing, blaming. Not comparing now with before. Not asking, "Why?" The other person usually doesn't know why they are acting badly either, so asking why only confuses him more and often precludes a coherent answer. Certainly, you're better off not expecting one that, you may imagine, will satisfy your "needs" of the moment.
Stop Being a Doormat...and Get Back Up on Your Pedestal Haven't you learned yet that you really can't figure other people out? (The first person who is able to do that will, most surely, win a Nobel Prize in Archeology of the Mind.)
It's not sane to think we can figure someone else out when not a one of us can figure ourselves out. Partially perhaps, a little bit most likely, but never fully. We never fully know our Selves throughout our lives. We can only get somewhat better at this Self-knowing as time passes.
So, you certainly can't change others - who you can never fully know - or mold them into some fantasy of what you'd like them to be. The only one you can change is Your Self...but being not fully known to your Self, that may not even be wise, that is if you are considering re-molding your Self to please some other person.
Don't become a Caricature of Your Real Self Again, don't twist your Self into an emotional caricature of who You really are. It's never worth it. Not for any reason! Not for anyone!
When you force your Self to be compliant, available, loving without loving support in return, giving without a true balance of giving forthcoming from the other person, and the like, you will appear needy. You will be a doormat.
And nobody likes a doormat...except to wipe their muddy shoes on and then ignore. So don't be subordinate this way, or ever in any way. But, if you should take on this needy role, you will pay a high price for it in unrelenting anxiety (due to the true ANGER simmering inside you at being mistreated), sadness, tearfulness, hopelessness...an agglomeration of symptoms that, if they continue, can lead to depressive mood states.
These low moods will alter the balance of your neurotransmitters (your brain chemicals), making you more vulnerable to even lower moods which will automatically make you feel more needy, more confused, more unsure of your Self. A vicious cycle you should do everything in your power to avoid.
Don't let another person's distancing behavior egg you on to becoming someone you are not - a sniveling, demanding, lonely, uncertain waif - waiting for the other person to respond in a mature and loving way. It won't happen!
The Main Principle to Combat Neediness: TAKE CARE OF YOUR SELF FIRST When you take care of your SELF and your real needs FIRST, everything else works. And believe me, HE is not your real need. Even if he should turn out to behave himself and be the person you at first believed him to be, he is STILL NOT what you really need.
Another person is only a part, and often only a small part of what each of us needs in our lives! No one can fill gaps or holes that we perceive in our existence to make us feel filled up and all better all the time. Only you can do that, to some degree, for your Self. Yes, others will play roles, some more important and some less often, in your life. But NO ONE CAN GIVE YOU EVERYTHING!
So, being and acting needy (and sometimes, if you're honest with your Self, you'll realize you are not truly "needy," you just think you are) are behaviors that interfere with your real reality.
Don't do it anymore and your life will be better. Take a chance. Let the person, who has distanced himself from you, go. Do everything you want to do to make your Self feel good and whole. Don't ever rely on any one individual for your feelings of Self worth and Self-deserved love.
Get various kinds of love from various life situations, from work you care about, and from varied friends and family. When you put the spotlight back on your own Self, fully focusing on You, you won't need to be needy anymore!
What is Neediness? How Does It Feel When You’re Suffering with It? You'll find the answers in Part One of this series: "Neediness Hurts You...Part One of Causes and Cures”
Note: "Neediness" can come from some perceived "lack" or "loss" in childhood. Which can be easily worked through to a more secure level of functioning and feeling with a gifted psychotherapist. Welcome, then, to My PsychoTherapy Zone.
© copyright 2008-2015 Dr. Helen Borel. All rights reserved.
For permissions and rights, email me: emotional_health@earthlink.net
For interactive, interventional, Creative PsychoTherapy - by this author of Journey Into Self: Holistic Interactive Integrative Psychoanalysis - that gets your life, your career, and your love relationship away from suffering and on to fulfillment, contact me at: emotional_health@earthlink.net
...and You can call me Dr. Helen
NEEDINESS HURTS YOU...Part One of Causes and Cures
Neediness Hurts. Self-Focus Heals.
by Helen Borel, R.N.,Ph.D.
[This is a two-part series. This first article deals mostly with the pain of neediness' feelings, thoughts and behaviors. The follow-up article, "Self-Focus Heals Neediness," deals mostly with causes of neediness, how to combat it, and remain a whole person, true to your Self. You can access it right next to this article.]
Feeling so "needy" that you lose relationships? So needy that you scare away lovers and friends? Therefore, you know that "neediness" behavior destroys relationships. So how can you deal with it? First acknowledge that feeling and acting needy never gets you what you want.
Following is a discussion of what stirs up the "neediness" gremlin and how you must think and behave in order to get your feelings back in balance so you can be happy and peaceful again.
For easy flow of reading, I'm going to present these problems and their solutions from a "needy" female's perspective. But male readers, don't kid yourselves. Just switch the genders, in your mind, as you read what comes next because men, you too can feel and act needy.
So You're Boyfriend or Girlfriend has Morphed from Attentive Lover to Distant Sour Puss, then to Absent Stranger. For a while, this new relationship seemed terrific. You felt happy and comfortable. But now things don't seem to be going so well and you're feeling uneasy. "What happened?" you're thinking to yourself. "Did this guy misrepresent himself to me just to get me into bed with him?
Or, "Did I say something, or do something, that turned him off?" Or, "Maybe he's just a dog!"
As the Tide Turns and the Pain Begins You haven't a clue. This is not unusual. How could you know what's going on in his head when he isn't communicating anything to you? When he behaves aloof. Distant. Silent. Here's where your pain begins...because you can't pry him out of his remoteness. If you try, he'll hide himself farther inside, like a turtle pulling back into its shell. So, now, in addition to your pain you feel helpless. If you say something, it doesn't work. If you say nothing, nothing changes.
You care about him - at least you thought you did up to the uncertainty and anxiety you are going through now. Arguing with him about what his withdrawn behavior and silence is doing to you and your "relationship," you've noticed, only makes things worse. He can't really explain what's going on with him. He may not even know how he really feels about you, about himself, about whether yours is a relationship he truly wants. So putting pressure on him to explain his change in attitude, mood and engagement in this "relationship," you've noticed, only serves to push him away even more. What to do?
Now's the Time to Check on What's Going on Inside Yourself Were you truly, fully your Self during this "relationship" when it seemed to be going well? Or, once the bloom was off the honeymoon phase, and he seemed to be needing some more "freedom" from you, did you notice your Self becoming nervous? Worried? Jittery? Your very Self becoming less sure of your true Self?
When these insecurities emerged, did you then find your Self getting somewhat "demanding?" Feeling so bad that you were having these thoughts: "I can't live without this man." "What will I do if he leaves me?" "I'm nothing if he isn't in my life."
And did you then embark upon a concerted program of "self-improvement?" New hair-do? Losing some poundage you'd put on from the dinners you'd cooked for him during those happier times? Buying new clothes, especially new nightwear? Reading pop psych books to find a set of rules with which you could lure back his undivided interest in you?
Should You Really Care Where He's Coming from to Validate Your SELF?Well, it may be a good idea, in general, to have an intuitive feel about certain behaviors that may encourage men to want to be with you. But, it's a very bad idea to think you have to turn your very Self into a twisted emotional pretzel in order to keep someone in your life who may be drifting away from you for whatever reason.
What's Making You Feel So Needy? To begin with, the hot-and-heavy early phase of your "relationship" has obviously passed. Now reality is setting in and he (as well as you, if you are honest with your Self) is wondering, "Is this the relationship I want for life? Or is this a life sentence that won't do either of us any justice?"
But, because you have come to feel you are half a person if he is not in your life, you now begin feeling like a defective little child, unsure of your social skills, thinking you're basically unattractive and, "I'd better find a way to hang onto this guy because no one else will want me because of all my faults."
Whatever family or career obligations he has, or has mentioned or whined to you about, that seem to have gotten in the way of his behaving as accepting of you and as affectionate to you as before...these are no excuse for his noncommu-nicative behavior toward you. And you should not put up with it a minute longer.
In fact, you should never have put up with it in the first place when it began.
If this distancing behavior, or not phoning as before, or not writing when he's away on a job responsibility as he'd done before (in other words, not doing...anymore or as usually expected...the things lovers do to assuage the loneliness of being apart) continues for more than a brief period, you absolutely need to take care of your Self and stop seeing him until his better behavior and respect for you returns.
But, if it turns out you've merely been used for a fling on his part, and you are honest with your Self and can see this, then get rid of him immediately - even if it hurts. This kind of pain will only hurt for a short while, compared to the pain you'll feel if you stick with a person who is shortchanging you emotionally on a regular basis.
Any other kind of words or actions on your part will only rob you of what Self-comforting feelings you have left - and will force you to act in a very needy way. Because that's what anxiety, feeling abandoned, feeling betrayed, getting no feedback and similar distresses can engender in the person on the receiving end of what appears to be a withdrawal of investment in what had seemed to be a solid "love relationship."
How Does Your Neediness Manifest Itself? Well, instead of planning your time to do things you always enjoyed before you met "Prince Charming," like calling and hooking up with friends (male and female), taking pleasure in being alone with great music and a good book, cooking up a new recipe, getting tickets for yourself and a friend to a show, visiting a museum, going to a house of worship, whatever...anything that gets you thinking about YOUR life filled with what YOU love and enjoy...your neediness shows in the following ways:
(1) Anxiously calling him when he's obviously avoiding you (2) Anxiously emaling him when he hasn't emailed you much, or at all, lately (3) Not paying attention to your own misgivings about contacting him and doing it anyway, then feeling worse afterward (4) Telling yourself you did something wrong and torturing your Self to try to pull it out of your psyche (5) Telling yourself you said something wrong and now watching every word you're about to utter so you can't relax (6) Ignoring your friends who could give you support during this trying period (7) Or talking too long to your friends about your needy distress, going on-and-on repetitively about your sorrows and what you did and said wrong and how can you get him back, and how can you inspire him to act toward you the way he used to - enough of such one-sided conversations and you will drive your usually dependable, sympathetic friends away.
How Should You Counteract Your Neediness? You'll find the answers in Part Two of this series: "Self-Focus Heals Neediness".
Note: "Neediness" can come from some perceived "lack" or "loss" in childhood. Which can be easily worked through to a more secure level of functioning and feeling with a gifted psychotherapist. Welcome to My PsychoTherapy Zone.
© copyright 2008-2015 Dr. Helen Borel. All rights reserved.
For permissions and rights, email me: emotional_health@earthlink.net
For interactive, interventional, Creative PsychoTherapy - by this author of Journey Into Self: Holistic Interactive Integrative Psychoanalysis - that gets your life, your career, and your love relationship away from suffering and on to fulfillment,
contact me at: emotional_health@earthlink.net
...and You can call me Dr. Helen
Sunday, June 7, 2015
SILENT SOUL, SENTIENT SOUL
By Helen Borel, R.N.,Ph.D.
BEING REAL. BEING YOU.
The unspoken speaker who runs Your Life is the Prime Actor in your life. Your Silent Self.
This profound “Speaker” (Your Real Self) is silent to the world outside your physical boundaries,
usually lying silently, in wait, for your inner world to grow fully conscious before it reveals its deeply
sentient essence. Even to You.
Even to You, Your Very Self is Silent. Paradoxically, profoundly influencing your whole life, all
your choices, your every experience. But in muffled, rarely and barely recognizable undertones.
Still, the innate thrust, that pulsating aliveness of this all-encompassing Life Force surges to the
surface every so often.
Impelled by its own universal power to speak a breath of human life into You, to seek exposure
to Your Awareness. It is at these momentary fleetings of Otherness that you can catch a glimpse
of Your Sentient Soul, that feeling entity that creates and pilots your life whether you are aware of
it or not.
Our Goal in Your Therapy is to access this sentient being which contains
ALL Your Experience, ALL Your Passions, ALL your Creativity on a regular,
less evanescent agenda.
Self + Empathy = Your Sentient Soul
Empathy for Self First is Essential in order to Truly Care about Others
Just how does this unpredictable Experiential Soul become manifest? Self manifests in waves of
good feelings, unaccustomed joy, deep compassion for others, overwhelming caring about the
world and all its inhabitants, exquisite longing for artistic expression, embracing love, appreciation
for the works of other artists, respect for cultural and religious icons, awe at expressions of diverse
traditions, and a passionate sense of responsibility to contribute your gifts of Self to others. And:
~ In Sudden Joy in seeking new and advanced learning
~ In even more along these profoundly human paths of empathy
~ In Depth acknowledgment of Self, then Others
For that fleeting sense of Otherness, sometimes felt in a moment of strangeness, tingling eeriness
coupled with a feeling of familiarity sometimes glimpsed in a flash of recognition, is Your innate
knowing that we are them. That You are the other. That the other is you.
Releasing Your Feelings from the Prison of Silence
To emerge your Sentient Self more fully, more often, there are simple practices to master.
These are the stuff of rapid-feedback interactive interventional psychotherapy that I invented
(in my opposing response to what I call “The Silent Treatment,” that old-fashioned analytic
stance of just letting the patient talk without ever intervening with any help or feedback or honest interpretations that the patient can use to alter his/her thinking, feelings and behaviors right now).
The blessing of “free association,”saying whatever comes into your mind without editing, is that
wonderful tool from the Old Master Psychoanalyst. However, “The Silent Treatment” prevents
any growth on the patient’s part. He/She may just as well talk to the wall and save therapy fees.
On the other hand, giving rich, relevant feedback and disabusing patients of pathologic thoughts
that screw up their feelings which dictate inappropriate behaviors is the absolute professional duty
of Your psychotherapist...allowing you to enjoy improved emotional states and emboldening you
to try new behaviors that get you more of what you really want out of your life more often.
This kind of psychotherapy is imperative to your full participation in your life. It simply requires
you to diligently open Your Self to this kind of exploration. To trying on new ideas to compete
with the old ones that have been holding you back in Your Life. It requires you to try enjoying
the wonderfulness of life by first finding out and acknowledging the wonderfulness of You...from
Your Sentient Self.
Otherwise, the You who exists is not fully alive.
And when you fully engage in your own life, happiness comes easily to you.
For a dormant, mostly unawakened Self is stoically silent – protecting itself from perceived ex-
ternal assault by what it experiences as the impurities of negativism, toxic events, difficult prob-
lems, impossible challenges. This silence is pervasive and persistent. Only when this silence
becomes more unbearable to Your Core Being than do the threats of damage from external
forces – real or imagined – does Your Sentient Soul (Your Very Self) break through from its
shadowy depths, exposing itself to the Surface of Your Being.
You can learn to evoke feelings, conversations, love, creativity out of the depths of You. From
now on, to accomplish the emergence of Your Valuable Self, You will emerge out of the depths
of that fear-driven soundless state.
But be forewarned!
When your whole Sentient Soul grows ecstatic upon integrating into your
Daily Conscious Life, your Emotional and Behavioral gains will expand to
the outer reaches of unnamed galaxies.
No more, from then on will Your Unbound Self be able to squeeze back into that
prison of the unknown, that tiny, hidden “tragic lamp” from which the silent one sprung, from
which Your New Awareness Practices have released it and coaxed it out into the sunlight of
Self-Knowledge, Self-Awareness, Self-Expression, Self-Giving, Self-Acceptance, Self-Love.
No longer silent, Your Sentient Soul is Self with a capital S.
And now that Your SELF Feels Fully, you can Live Fully.
Silent no more. Awake! Alert! Conscious! Now able to face the world and all that
comes at you with the Sentient Soul of Your Self Emerged.
Now able to know Who You Are, what You Want in Life, Who You Want in Your
Life, What and Who you must let go of to move forward and upward. Now free of
that gnawing silence about Who You Really Are.
Sentient means Alive Every Moment and bravely handling what distresses come your way
and Shamelessly Elating over the joys you experience.
Sentient means FEELINGS. When You’re Feeling, You’re REAL.
When you’re Real, YOU ARE SELF. And SELF IS BOUNDLESS.
© copyright 1999-2015 Dr. Helen Borel. All rights reserved.
For permissions and rights, email me: medical-healthalerts@earthlink.net
For Interactive, Interventional, Creative PsychoTherapy - by this author of
Journey Into Self: Holistic Interactive Integrative Psychoanalysis -
that gets your life, your career, and your love relationship away from
suffering and on to fulfillment, contact me: emotional_health@earthlink.net
...and You can call me Dr. Helen
BEING REAL. BEING YOU.
The unspoken speaker who runs Your Life is the Prime Actor in your life. Your Silent Self.
This profound “Speaker” (Your Real Self) is silent to the world outside your physical boundaries,
usually lying silently, in wait, for your inner world to grow fully conscious before it reveals its deeply
sentient essence. Even to You.
Even to You, Your Very Self is Silent. Paradoxically, profoundly influencing your whole life, all
your choices, your every experience. But in muffled, rarely and barely recognizable undertones.
Still, the innate thrust, that pulsating aliveness of this all-encompassing Life Force surges to the
surface every so often.
Impelled by its own universal power to speak a breath of human life into You, to seek exposure
to Your Awareness. It is at these momentary fleetings of Otherness that you can catch a glimpse
of Your Sentient Soul, that feeling entity that creates and pilots your life whether you are aware of
it or not.
Our Goal in Your Therapy is to access this sentient being which contains
ALL Your Experience, ALL Your Passions, ALL your Creativity on a regular,
less evanescent agenda.
Self + Empathy = Your Sentient Soul
Empathy for Self First is Essential in order to Truly Care about Others
Just how does this unpredictable Experiential Soul become manifest? Self manifests in waves of
good feelings, unaccustomed joy, deep compassion for others, overwhelming caring about the
world and all its inhabitants, exquisite longing for artistic expression, embracing love, appreciation
for the works of other artists, respect for cultural and religious icons, awe at expressions of diverse
traditions, and a passionate sense of responsibility to contribute your gifts of Self to others. And:
~ In Sudden Joy in seeking new and advanced learning
~ In even more along these profoundly human paths of empathy
~ In Depth acknowledgment of Self, then Others
For that fleeting sense of Otherness, sometimes felt in a moment of strangeness, tingling eeriness
coupled with a feeling of familiarity sometimes glimpsed in a flash of recognition, is Your innate
knowing that we are them. That You are the other. That the other is you.
Releasing Your Feelings from the Prison of Silence
To emerge your Sentient Self more fully, more often, there are simple practices to master.
These are the stuff of rapid-feedback interactive interventional psychotherapy that I invented
(in my opposing response to what I call “The Silent Treatment,” that old-fashioned analytic
stance of just letting the patient talk without ever intervening with any help or feedback or honest interpretations that the patient can use to alter his/her thinking, feelings and behaviors right now).
The blessing of “free association,”saying whatever comes into your mind without editing, is that
wonderful tool from the Old Master Psychoanalyst. However, “The Silent Treatment” prevents
any growth on the patient’s part. He/She may just as well talk to the wall and save therapy fees.
On the other hand, giving rich, relevant feedback and disabusing patients of pathologic thoughts
that screw up their feelings which dictate inappropriate behaviors is the absolute professional duty
of Your psychotherapist...allowing you to enjoy improved emotional states and emboldening you
to try new behaviors that get you more of what you really want out of your life more often.
This kind of psychotherapy is imperative to your full participation in your life. It simply requires
you to diligently open Your Self to this kind of exploration. To trying on new ideas to compete
with the old ones that have been holding you back in Your Life. It requires you to try enjoying
the wonderfulness of life by first finding out and acknowledging the wonderfulness of You...from
Your Sentient Self.
Otherwise, the You who exists is not fully alive.
And when you fully engage in your own life, happiness comes easily to you.
For a dormant, mostly unawakened Self is stoically silent – protecting itself from perceived ex-
ternal assault by what it experiences as the impurities of negativism, toxic events, difficult prob-
lems, impossible challenges. This silence is pervasive and persistent. Only when this silence
becomes more unbearable to Your Core Being than do the threats of damage from external
forces – real or imagined – does Your Sentient Soul (Your Very Self) break through from its
shadowy depths, exposing itself to the Surface of Your Being.
You can learn to evoke feelings, conversations, love, creativity out of the depths of You. From
now on, to accomplish the emergence of Your Valuable Self, You will emerge out of the depths
of that fear-driven soundless state.
But be forewarned!
When your whole Sentient Soul grows ecstatic upon integrating into your
Daily Conscious Life, your Emotional and Behavioral gains will expand to
the outer reaches of unnamed galaxies.
No more, from then on will Your Unbound Self be able to squeeze back into that
prison of the unknown, that tiny, hidden “tragic lamp” from which the silent one sprung, from
which Your New Awareness Practices have released it and coaxed it out into the sunlight of
Self-Knowledge, Self-Awareness, Self-Expression, Self-Giving, Self-Acceptance, Self-Love.
No longer silent, Your Sentient Soul is Self with a capital S.
And now that Your SELF Feels Fully, you can Live Fully.
Silent no more. Awake! Alert! Conscious! Now able to face the world and all that
comes at you with the Sentient Soul of Your Self Emerged.
Now able to know Who You Are, what You Want in Life, Who You Want in Your
Life, What and Who you must let go of to move forward and upward. Now free of
that gnawing silence about Who You Really Are.
Sentient means Alive Every Moment and bravely handling what distresses come your way
and Shamelessly Elating over the joys you experience.
Sentient means FEELINGS. When You’re Feeling, You’re REAL.
When you’re Real, YOU ARE SELF. And SELF IS BOUNDLESS.
© copyright 1999-2015 Dr. Helen Borel. All rights reserved.
For permissions and rights, email me: medical-healthalerts@earthlink.net
For Interactive, Interventional, Creative PsychoTherapy - by this author of
Journey Into Self: Holistic Interactive Integrative Psychoanalysis -
that gets your life, your career, and your love relationship away from
suffering and on to fulfillment, contact me: emotional_health@earthlink.net
...and You can call me Dr. Helen
Thursday, June 4, 2015
CO-DEPENDENCY PRINCIPLES: Foundation for Emotional Growth
By Helen Borel, R.N.,Ph.D.
Co-Dependency is a disease of negative attitudes and the distorted behaviors they induce. In turn, such behaviors reinforce and perpetuate pessimistic expectations about life, oneself and others. But no baby is born negativistic, fearful and unhappy. Such a perception of life forms growing up
in dysfunctional families or in abandonment, as in orphanages or foster homes. A child in a dysfunctional system is exposed to repeated sick interactions with parents and siblings.
An abandoned child has limited or no opportunity to interact with blood relatives at all.
The Co-Dependency Syndrome is characterized by ignoring one’s own needs in order to take care of others’. This self-sacrificial life-view comes from the person’s urgent need as a child to master
all aspects of an abandoning or unpredictable environment. Thus, the panic of a fearful childhood is carried into adulthood where co-dependents live on an emotional precipice trying for the impossible in human relationships. They must compulsively keep their loved one comfortable and happy so the person won’t abandon them, either literally, or by becoming emotionally unavailable
for normal interactions, as in alcoholic stupor or rages, or by depressive withdrawals.
Some of the symptoms and problems plaguing people raised to expect abuse, neglect or abandonment include repeated failed love relationships, inability to make or keep friends, approval-seeking, people-pleasing, being harshly self-critical, alternating low self-esteem with grandiose self-inflation, denying a troubled or lonely childhood, feeling alien,
defective and not good enough to be loved, being perfectionistic, staying in
relationships that don’t work, apologizing for “bothering” people, and fearing rejection if anger comes up at all. These are only a few crippling effects of co-dependency, a progressive disease which, untreated or inappropriately treated, terminates in depression, isolation, hopelessness, violence, physical ills, addictive disorders and suicide.
Originally, the word “co-dependent” referred only to a person compulsively enmeshed in a family rela-tionship with an alcoholic. It is still said by Al-Anon members, “The alcoholic has his
arms around the bottle while the co-dependent has her arms around the alcoholic,” each
holding on for dear life to the chemical or person to which he or she is addicted. But in the last three to
five years, codepen-dency has taken on a much broader meaning and is now widely
recognized by specialists as an epidemic whose causes extend well beyond parental alcoholism.
Ultimately, what troubled families produce are children who enlarge into physical adulthood without the child they were ever having been given a chance to grow up.
Aptly, the other name for co-dependent is “Adult Child”. In this state of developmental arrest, the damaged child Self goes around, housed in the adolescent and later adult body, still secretly yearning and seeking to have its unmet early needs for love and approval filled. If all this seems alien, here’s more
shocking news. According to John Bradshaw, a leader in the field and director of the Life
Plus Co-Dependency Treatment Center in Los Angeles, nearly 100% of Americans are afflicted to
one degree or another, depending on the severity of dysfunction in their childhood lives.
Bradshaw, who conducts co-dependency workshops all over the country, who also co-founded the Center for Recovering Families in Houston, stressed in my recent in-person interview with him, “Abandonment is the rock bottom fear for co-dependents. Their pain and loneliness are medicated with alcohol and drugs or by denial of feelings and needs.” In his new book, Healing
the Shame that Binds You, he describes the kinds of “shame-based thinking” that shape co-dependent behaviors including “catastrophizing, mind-reading, personalizing, overgeneralization, either-or thinking, having to be right, “should” thinking, control thinking and blaming.
These thought patterns are instilled by a family in heavy denial of emotions. For example, a
child must not be angry, is not allowed to speak of his father’s alcoholism, or is not permitted to
know why mother went to the mental hospital. Society’s rules contribute to the family’s
dysfunction, Bradshaw says, because “Society’s perfectionism has no boundaries – you must be the
perfect ten, be big enough, make no mistakes. There are rigid rules for ‘success’ but no measurement
for being. So we become human doings, not human beings. [He also meant and said, in our
discussion, "We are humans doing when we should be humans BEING."] What is needed is somebody
to be there for you. Children need their parents’ time, attention and direction.”
When a parent is physically abusive or verbally scornful, or inaccessible due to depression,
hospitalization, abandonment or death, the child adopts rigid emotional defenses that preclude healthy personality development. He or she turns into a virtual survival machine, becoming
hypervigilant, ever watchful for further loss or abuse. At the same time, an automatic mechanism renders the real Self inoperative. It submerges long before intrapsychic development is complete, becoming almost totally unconscious and unavailable for further growth.
Ironically, the child has now become inaccessible to him/herself.
Forced to focus on what others think of them, what others need from them, rather than what they
need for themselves and how to meet these needs, ever-watchful co-dependents operate with
a “false self.” At this superficial level, theh are always anticipating hurt or rejection, ever ready to
muster primitive defenses against real or imagined pain or loss. This constant state of readiness
accounts for the myriad stress-related physical and emotional diseases they suffer.
In his book, Healing the Child Within, Dr. Charles Whitfield, another co-dependency pioneer, emphasizes that stuffing feelings, blowing up, substance abuse or emotional numbness are “...not
nearly so effective as ventilating the pain when it happens or ‘comes up’ with a person who is safe and supportive.” And Bradshaw points out, “The ideal co-dependency therapist must be
someone in his or her own process of recovery.”
Recovery from co-dependency involves the emergence of the Real Self, which surfaces when
feelings and needs of both the present and past are made known. Out loud! Mourning for what
is lost and can never be retrieved ensues. Angers surface, tears flow; anxiety, pain and emptiness
set in. But only for a while. Relief comes. Letting go of the old hurts and unfilled needs becomes
possible. And paradoxically, when the co-dependent can feel whole in the absence of others
to cling to, he or she becomes capable of intimate friendships and love not founded on
infantile expectations, hurts or losses, but based on true acceptance of oneself and others as separate, valuable human beings.
Successful treatment heals “the Child Within” through a combination of intensive individual
therapy, group therapy, and attendance at meetings of programs such as Al-Anon or CODA
(Co-dependents Anonymous). Contrary to popular notions, Al-Anon is for all co-dependents,
not just families of alcoholics. The healing process requires a Self-love that begins when
co-dependents become no longer willing to live on the fringes of life as bystanders to their own
painful existence.
To learn more about co-dependency, here are some new books in the field: John Bradshaw’s
On the Family, Melody Beattie’s Codependent No More, Robert Subby’s Lost in the Shuffle,
Anne Wilson Schaef’s Co-Dependency: Misunderstood-Mistreated and Laurie and Jonathan B.
Weiss’ Recovery from Co-Dependency: It’s Never too Late to Have a Happy Childhood.
Helen Borel, R.N., Ph.D., who writes fiction as well as medical and psychological nonfiction, is a psychoanalyst in private practice in NYC. Her recent book is Journey Into Self: Holistic
Interactive Integrative Psychoanalysis.
***
© Copyright 1989-2015 Dr. Helen Borel. All rights reserved.
For permissions and rights, email me: medical-healthalerts@earthlink.net
For Interactive, Interventional, Creative PsychoTherapy - by this author of
Journey Into Self: Holistic Interactive Integrative Psychoanalysis - that
gets your life, your career, and your love relationship away from suffering and
on to fulfillment, write to me at emotional_health@earthlink.net
...and You can call me Dr. Helen
CO-DEPENDENCY: Fundamentals of Diagnosis, Treatment and Recovery
[Under the title “Co-Dependency: An Emerging Epidemic,” this article was first published in The Women’s Record (April 1989), a monthly newspaper in which I wrote a regular book review column titled “Books for the Record”.]Co-Dependency is a disease of negative attitudes and the distorted behaviors they induce. In turn, such behaviors reinforce and perpetuate pessimistic expectations about life, oneself and others. But no baby is born negativistic, fearful and unhappy. Such a perception of life forms growing up
in dysfunctional families or in abandonment, as in orphanages or foster homes. A child in a dysfunctional system is exposed to repeated sick interactions with parents and siblings.
An abandoned child has limited or no opportunity to interact with blood relatives at all.
The Co-Dependency Syndrome is characterized by ignoring one’s own needs in order to take care of others’. This self-sacrificial life-view comes from the person’s urgent need as a child to master
all aspects of an abandoning or unpredictable environment. Thus, the panic of a fearful childhood is carried into adulthood where co-dependents live on an emotional precipice trying for the impossible in human relationships. They must compulsively keep their loved one comfortable and happy so the person won’t abandon them, either literally, or by becoming emotionally unavailable
for normal interactions, as in alcoholic stupor or rages, or by depressive withdrawals.
Some of the symptoms and problems plaguing people raised to expect abuse, neglect or abandonment include repeated failed love relationships, inability to make or keep friends, approval-seeking, people-pleasing, being harshly self-critical, alternating low self-esteem with grandiose self-inflation, denying a troubled or lonely childhood, feeling alien,
defective and not good enough to be loved, being perfectionistic, staying in
relationships that don’t work, apologizing for “bothering” people, and fearing rejection if anger comes up at all. These are only a few crippling effects of co-dependency, a progressive disease which, untreated or inappropriately treated, terminates in depression, isolation, hopelessness, violence, physical ills, addictive disorders and suicide.
Originally, the word “co-dependent” referred only to a person compulsively enmeshed in a family rela-tionship with an alcoholic. It is still said by Al-Anon members, “The alcoholic has his
arms around the bottle while the co-dependent has her arms around the alcoholic,” each
holding on for dear life to the chemical or person to which he or she is addicted. But in the last three to
five years, codepen-dency has taken on a much broader meaning and is now widely
recognized by specialists as an epidemic whose causes extend well beyond parental alcoholism.
Ultimately, what troubled families produce are children who enlarge into physical adulthood without the child they were ever having been given a chance to grow up.
Aptly, the other name for co-dependent is “Adult Child”. In this state of developmental arrest, the damaged child Self goes around, housed in the adolescent and later adult body, still secretly yearning and seeking to have its unmet early needs for love and approval filled. If all this seems alien, here’s more
shocking news. According to John Bradshaw, a leader in the field and director of the Life
Plus Co-Dependency Treatment Center in Los Angeles, nearly 100% of Americans are afflicted to
one degree or another, depending on the severity of dysfunction in their childhood lives.
Bradshaw, who conducts co-dependency workshops all over the country, who also co-founded the Center for Recovering Families in Houston, stressed in my recent in-person interview with him, “Abandonment is the rock bottom fear for co-dependents. Their pain and loneliness are medicated with alcohol and drugs or by denial of feelings and needs.” In his new book, Healing
the Shame that Binds You, he describes the kinds of “shame-based thinking” that shape co-dependent behaviors including “catastrophizing, mind-reading, personalizing, overgeneralization, either-or thinking, having to be right, “should” thinking, control thinking and blaming.
These thought patterns are instilled by a family in heavy denial of emotions. For example, a
child must not be angry, is not allowed to speak of his father’s alcoholism, or is not permitted to
know why mother went to the mental hospital. Society’s rules contribute to the family’s
dysfunction, Bradshaw says, because “Society’s perfectionism has no boundaries – you must be the
perfect ten, be big enough, make no mistakes. There are rigid rules for ‘success’ but no measurement
for being. So we become human doings, not human beings. [He also meant and said, in our
discussion, "We are humans doing when we should be humans BEING."] What is needed is somebody
to be there for you. Children need their parents’ time, attention and direction.”
When a parent is physically abusive or verbally scornful, or inaccessible due to depression,
hospitalization, abandonment or death, the child adopts rigid emotional defenses that preclude healthy personality development. He or she turns into a virtual survival machine, becoming
hypervigilant, ever watchful for further loss or abuse. At the same time, an automatic mechanism renders the real Self inoperative. It submerges long before intrapsychic development is complete, becoming almost totally unconscious and unavailable for further growth.
Ironically, the child has now become inaccessible to him/herself.
Forced to focus on what others think of them, what others need from them, rather than what they
need for themselves and how to meet these needs, ever-watchful co-dependents operate with
a “false self.” At this superficial level, theh are always anticipating hurt or rejection, ever ready to
muster primitive defenses against real or imagined pain or loss. This constant state of readiness
accounts for the myriad stress-related physical and emotional diseases they suffer.
In his book, Healing the Child Within, Dr. Charles Whitfield, another co-dependency pioneer, emphasizes that stuffing feelings, blowing up, substance abuse or emotional numbness are “...not
nearly so effective as ventilating the pain when it happens or ‘comes up’ with a person who is safe and supportive.” And Bradshaw points out, “The ideal co-dependency therapist must be
someone in his or her own process of recovery.”
Recovery from co-dependency involves the emergence of the Real Self, which surfaces when
feelings and needs of both the present and past are made known. Out loud! Mourning for what
is lost and can never be retrieved ensues. Angers surface, tears flow; anxiety, pain and emptiness
set in. But only for a while. Relief comes. Letting go of the old hurts and unfilled needs becomes
possible. And paradoxically, when the co-dependent can feel whole in the absence of others
to cling to, he or she becomes capable of intimate friendships and love not founded on
infantile expectations, hurts or losses, but based on true acceptance of oneself and others as separate, valuable human beings.
Successful treatment heals “the Child Within” through a combination of intensive individual
therapy, group therapy, and attendance at meetings of programs such as Al-Anon or CODA
(Co-dependents Anonymous). Contrary to popular notions, Al-Anon is for all co-dependents,
not just families of alcoholics. The healing process requires a Self-love that begins when
co-dependents become no longer willing to live on the fringes of life as bystanders to their own
painful existence.
To learn more about co-dependency, here are some new books in the field: John Bradshaw’s
On the Family, Melody Beattie’s Codependent No More, Robert Subby’s Lost in the Shuffle,
Anne Wilson Schaef’s Co-Dependency: Misunderstood-Mistreated and Laurie and Jonathan B.
Weiss’ Recovery from Co-Dependency: It’s Never too Late to Have a Happy Childhood.
Helen Borel, R.N., Ph.D., who writes fiction as well as medical and psychological nonfiction, is a psychoanalyst in private practice in NYC. Her recent book is Journey Into Self: Holistic
Interactive Integrative Psychoanalysis.
***
© Copyright 1989-2015 Dr. Helen Borel. All rights reserved.
For permissions and rights, email me: medical-healthalerts@earthlink.net
For Interactive, Interventional, Creative PsychoTherapy - by this author of
Journey Into Self: Holistic Interactive Integrative Psychoanalysis - that
gets your life, your career, and your love relationship away from suffering and
on to fulfillment, write to me at emotional_health@earthlink.net
...and You can call me Dr. Helen
Monday, June 1, 2015
HOW PSYCHOTHERAPY WORKS
By Helen Borel, R.N.,Ph.D.
For most people, the psychotherapeutic process is shrouded in mystery, seeming to emanate from an occult realm of uncertainty, of unseen happenings - as well as from the wild theories of erudite analytic practitioners. The latter, who are, too often, elevated to a status, in suffering patients' eyes, beyond what they are actually able to accomplish with their patients' real current symptoms, interpersonal needs, and future goals in mind.
Fantastical or leadenly boring depictions of therapy sessions, in films and on television, do little to help viewers grasp what really occurs on many levels for patients in actual therapy.
Your Initial Expectations
So patients seeking emotional treatment often attribute to the analyst or therapist certain magical powers that can swiftly wipe away the tears of grief, immediately lift the down mood of a years-long depression, disappear - finger-snappingly - all anxiety attacks, rapidly materialize a fabulous career, and absolutely guarantee a quality love relationship in a heartbeat.
Examine Your True Needs
There are many good reasons to enter into psychotherapy. These include:
. Severe mental illness, such as the psychoses of schizophrenia
. The mania and depressive phases of bipolar disorder
. Delusional states such as paranoia
. Chronic dysphoria (low mood state)
. Insomnia
. Writer's block or Career stagnation
. Social inhibitions
. Relationship problems
. Childhood abuse...sexual, verbal, emotional neglect, physical assault
. Job loss
. Grief
. Unrelenting sadness
. Depression
. Anxiety or Panic Attacks
. Alcohol or Drug addiction
. Spousal battery
. Exploring and Expanding One's Creativity
The Reality of the Process
Think of your psychotherapist's space as an ICU (Intensive Care Unit) where nearly every aspect of your being is being monitored - by both you and your therapist. Where minute-by-minute shifts in your intrapsychic condition are being recognized, recorded and swiftly addressed and attended to. Where healing ensues at a pace each patient's condition can best tolerate.
I use the ICU, as the prototype here, to also emphasize my particular concept of the "immediacy perspective" from which therapists must view their patients' emotional needs and the urgency of grappling with these sufferings in each session, as they arise. Just as in the ICU, vitals are monitored, some occurrences are anticipated with treatments at the ready, and other signs and symptoms are observed and treated with haste, as they arise. All geared toward healing of the acute condition, preventing chronicity, and saving a life.
My Therapeutic Philosophy is Based on My "Urgency" Model
Except for certain not-too-common conditions, where virtually life-long supportive therapy is required to keep certain personalities...such as borderlines...on a relatively even keel, most psychotherapy patients benefit from a process that gets their lives moving in healthy directions as swiftly as they are motivated to participate in such Self evolution.
In other words, being "in therapy" for decades with minimal-to-thuddingly slow emergence from pathologic states of emotional suffering, career blockades and relationship failures is a tragic waste of your time, your money, and your life.
The Multi-Stratified Therapeutic Process
Therefore, I see this process as an emergency that must be handled, yes with skill and compassion, but as expeditiously as possible as the patient's tolerance for Self-change will permit. With this foundation in mind, be aware that your treatment and healing processes take place on many levels simultaneously - within you and in your relationships and activities in your outside world.
In sessions, realizations ("aha" moments) happen often and crying sometimes pours forth. Out in the "real" world, difficult family members are better dealt with, destructive "love" relationships are dropped, toxic "friends" are gotten rid of, career options open up and are widely expanded, and depressive and anxious states are modulated or eradicated.
What Else You Should Really Expect from Your Therapy
An "objective," what I consider an "aloof," professional appears to me to be too removed (and feeling too superior to the patient) to be of the fullest help possible to you. This supposed "objectivity" may be due to certain stiff personal traits of such therapists, coupled with a stubborn adherence to academic theories with little flexibility or imagination to go out on an emotional and creative limb in the patient's behalf.
The most valuable psychotherapy, I believe, comes from a healthy mix of creativity, psychological risk-taking, intuitive interactions, and compassionate feedback interventions - all emanating from your therapist's subjective perspective that nearly equalizes the status of therapist and patient.
To be more precise, this kind of highly-involved therapist is working in the very sensitive area of intersubjectivity - where both your deepest Self, its images, experiences, concerns and your therapist's deepest Self are interacting in the most dynamic ways to your greatest benefit.
Much is accomplished in patients' lives using these skills, talents and other behavioral tools to positively impact patients' emotional growth, relationship interactions, work lives, and overall life happiness.
Some of the processes that go on in your "therapy sanctuary" (the confidential, empathic space you share with your therapist during sessions - and that you often visualize mentally, in feeling states between sessions) include:
(1) free association (saying everything that comes to mind without editing anything out), (2) dream reporting and interpretation, (3) revisiting painful childhood happenings and learning new ways to cope with these memories, (4) working on specific and current relationship and career problems, (5) learning ways to know your real Self more fully and clearly, (6) being guided in specific techniques, thought process controls and newer behaviors that will assure you're more likely to get what you want out of your life - instead of being mired in uncertainty, timidity, anxiety, sadness, creativity blockades and loneliness.
Your high-quality psychotherapist helps you in many ways by taking on multiple roles - either proactively, or that you the patient assign to her knowingly or unconsciously - based on your particular needs at various times or phases in your psychotherapy process.
She may seem like a parent, an instructor, a guide, an archeologist (helping you dig into your past), a magic dream interpretator, a relationship arbiter, a friend, a sister, a confidante, a grandparent, a rescuer, a career counselor, a minister. Whatever your imminent state of being requires, your caring psychotherapist easily slips into these roles in order to help you, interactively, deal adaptively with problems that can be handled in no other way and by no other means outside of this, your therapeutic "holding" environment.
Your Role in Your Therapy Process
So, now you know some of what to expect in therapy from your therapist. In a companion article, "Participating Wholeheartedly in Your Psychotherapy," I'll discuss the things you can do to enrich your therapeutic experiences and interactions with your therapist. Because, when you both take your very Self seriously, with the same determined focus on your overall well-being, this therapeutic alliance will be so strong that, feeling fully supported, you are bound to take exponential leaps forward in your emotional and creative growth.
Other of my articles are coming here soon on the subjects of Alcohol Dependence, Social Anxiety Disorder, and on Insomnia. After that, you can read my discussions "Are there Advantages to Madness? Part I PSYCHOSIS" and "Are there Advantages to Madness? Part II ANGER".
© Copyright 2008-2015 Dr. Helen Borel. All rights reserved.
For permissions and rights, email me:medical-healthalerts@earthlink.net
For Interactive, Interventional, Creative PsychoTherapy - by this author of Journey Into Self: Holistic Interactive Integrative Psychoanalysis - that gets your life, your career, and your love relationship away from suffering and on to fulfillment, contact me: emotional_health@earthlink.net
...and You can call me Dr. Helen
PostPartum Depression and PostPartum Psychosis
POSTPARTUM VULNERABILITY: What Every
Pregnant Woman Should Know about DEPRESSION
and PSYCHOSIS After Childbirth
By Helen Borel, R.N.,Ph.D.
This article is addressed specifically to you, the pregnant woman or the new mother.
As well, it is imperative reading for the father-to-be or the new father. Ideally, too,
prospective or new grandparents and extended family should also become
familiar with the facts, professional treatments and supportive strategies about the
two major mental illnesses associated with post-childbirth.
Please read my article (below)
“DEPRESSION: SYMPTOMS AND TREATMENTS” to learn, in easy-to-read
language, about what depression is and the many ways it can be treated.
As for PSYCHOSIS, usually this designation refers to schizophrenia where
patients hear voices, see visions; to the mania of Bipolar episodes; to ultra-severe
depressive delusional states, where patients' thinking is distorted and bizarre beliefs
emerge; or to drug-induced psychotic behaviors of some addicts. In the case of
psychosis arising post-childbirth, it is possible this is a temporary, curable state.
Particularly valuable to realize because the earlier such a condition is diagnosed
and treated, the better the prognosis (outcome).
In many psychotic conditions, patients must be hospitalized for their own safety and
for the safety of others. This is because delusional thinking and psychosis-induced
voices may instruct the patient to do something dangerous to herself or to kill
her infant.
It’s not necessary to here go into the many psychopharmacologic and physiologic
treatments for psychotic states. Fortunately, we’ve graduated from only the one
antipsychotic medication of decades ago for schizophrenia – Thorazine(R)
(chlorpromazine) – to a wide array of pharmaceutical options prescribed by
psychopharmacologists (MD-Psychiatrists who specialize in the Rx psychotropic
treatment of mental illnesses, including the psychoses). And these treatments must
be begun stat! (immediately!) in the hospital. And the postpartum psychotic new
mother must remain in the hospital, not sent home on strong psychotropic meds
unmonitored.
Not sent home without Psych-RN care and supervision. Never sent home because
of Insurance Company Nonpayment. Never sent home...until no longer psychotic.
Never discharged from the Psych Hospital or the Psych Unit of the General
Hospital until healthy and able to safely care for her newborn and her other
children.
I am mindful of the fact that the prospect of a new baby is usually joyously anticipated.
By no means is this article meant to dampen that happiness or to scare you. However,
among all the popular books for new parents with their many helpful instructions for
pregnancy post-birth self-care and newborn care, the two major mental health crises of
new mothers are either glossed over or never brought up at all. And you can’t protect
yourself from what you know nothing about. So, you can anticipate the new baby’s life
while remaining aware of signs and symptoms that should send you for immediate
professional help.
Psychiatrists and Obstetricians Have a Duty to Discuss in-depth
Postpartum Psychosis and Postpartum Depression with Child-Bearing
and Postpartum Mothers...AND TO DISCUSS THESE IN PUBLIC
MEDIA so everyone is prepared and can take appropriate medical action
before a catastrophe such as maternal suicide or infanticide.
I’ve always felt that all behavioral and mental health conditions should be openly
addressed, by medical professionals, to the public. And where issues specific to
psychiatry are concerned, psychiatrists should speak up!
The Silence of the Doctors Who Should Speak Publically
Unfortunately, in the case of the two major postpartum mental illnesses, even
when a tragedy like the Andrea Yates case screams in the headlines, MDs
are maddeningly silent.
In her severely psychotic state and just recently wrongly-discharged by a
a misguided hospital psychiatrist (probably due to insurance company
noncoverage) from badly needed hospitalization, on antipsychotic medication,
with no psych RN in her home to care for her, Mrs. Yates killed
all 5 of her babies and children.
‘Though prime news at the time, I was astounded by the LOUD SILENCE FROM
THE OBSTETRICAL AND PSYCHIATRIC COMMUNITIES about this
tragedy and how the healthcare professions, specifically obstetricians and
psychiatrists can and must do better than this. Especially since, in many cases,
both postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis may be temporary
conditions probably attributable to drastic hormonal shifts in the estrogen-
progesterone balance immediately and subsequently to childbirth.
Why psychiatrists contribute little-to-nothing to public awareness of obstetrical-
related mental illnesses, necessary to mount timely preventive measures....And
why obstetricians contribute even less to what should be maternal-family and
ongoing, in-depth public discussion, public health awareness and prophylaxis
against the two post-childbirth mental health downward roller coasters
...is a mystery.
There has always been a societal stigma attached to mental illness. Today,
however, with wide-ranging research demonstrating the biologic basis for many
mental illnesses – such as Bipolar Disorder, Chronic Depression, Panic Attacks,
yes and even schizophrenia, the mentally ill have begun to be embraced as
“one of us” after all.
Furthermore, it’s impossible to extricate your mind from your body (our brains
are bathed in neurochemicals similar to those that impact our immune systems
for illness or wellness). So, the interplay between bodily-brain physical processes
and the functions of the mind – thoughts, feelings, experiential memories, dreams,
nightmares, griefs, etc. – is inescapable. Awareness of this interaction is crucial
to this new century’s scientific and societal grasps of mental illness as
biopsychologic or psychobiologic. And that it’s to everyone’s benefit to
publicize the advent of improved diagnostic tools and the many new physical,
pharmaceutical and psychotherapeutic treatments now available to significantly
improve the lives, the general health and the emotional health of patients with
health conditions that manifest as thought and behavioral distortions.Many of
which can now be ameliorated to varying degrees, some even to cures.
Therefore, with these thoughts and imperatives in mind, let the elements of this
article heighten everyone’s awareness to two physically-caused mental illnesses
that can be diagnosed early when obstetricians and obstetrical RNs heighten
their awareness levels of the signs and symptoms the new mother and/or family
members should immediately report to them upon having them, feeling them,
hallucinating them, etc. Early diagnosis or suspect diagnosis should result in
immediate referral to a psychiatrist who will evaluate and usually prescribe
appropriate antidepressant or antipsychotic medication and hospitalization.
The latter essential in the case of postpartum psychosis.
© Copyright 2006-2015 Dr. Helen Borel. All rights reserved.
For permissions and rights, email me: medical-healthalerts@earthlink.net
For Interactive, Interventional, Creative PsychoTherapy - by this author of
Journey Into Self: Holistic Interactive Integrative Psychoanalysis - that
gets your life, your career, and your love relationship away from suffering
and on to fulfillment, contact me: emotional_health@earthlink.net
...and You can call me Dr. Helen
Pregnant Woman Should Know about DEPRESSION
and PSYCHOSIS After Childbirth
By Helen Borel, R.N.,Ph.D.
This article is addressed specifically to you, the pregnant woman or the new mother.
As well, it is imperative reading for the father-to-be or the new father. Ideally, too,
prospective or new grandparents and extended family should also become
familiar with the facts, professional treatments and supportive strategies about the
two major mental illnesses associated with post-childbirth.
Please read my article (below)
“DEPRESSION: SYMPTOMS AND TREATMENTS” to learn, in easy-to-read
language, about what depression is and the many ways it can be treated.
As for PSYCHOSIS, usually this designation refers to schizophrenia where
patients hear voices, see visions; to the mania of Bipolar episodes; to ultra-severe
depressive delusional states, where patients' thinking is distorted and bizarre beliefs
emerge; or to drug-induced psychotic behaviors of some addicts. In the case of
psychosis arising post-childbirth, it is possible this is a temporary, curable state.
Particularly valuable to realize because the earlier such a condition is diagnosed
and treated, the better the prognosis (outcome).
In many psychotic conditions, patients must be hospitalized for their own safety and
for the safety of others. This is because delusional thinking and psychosis-induced
voices may instruct the patient to do something dangerous to herself or to kill
her infant.
It’s not necessary to here go into the many psychopharmacologic and physiologic
treatments for psychotic states. Fortunately, we’ve graduated from only the one
antipsychotic medication of decades ago for schizophrenia – Thorazine(R)
(chlorpromazine) – to a wide array of pharmaceutical options prescribed by
psychopharmacologists (MD-Psychiatrists who specialize in the Rx psychotropic
treatment of mental illnesses, including the psychoses). And these treatments must
be begun stat! (immediately!) in the hospital. And the postpartum psychotic new
mother must remain in the hospital, not sent home on strong psychotropic meds
unmonitored.
Not sent home without Psych-RN care and supervision. Never sent home because
of Insurance Company Nonpayment. Never sent home...until no longer psychotic.
Never discharged from the Psych Hospital or the Psych Unit of the General
Hospital until healthy and able to safely care for her newborn and her other
children.
I am mindful of the fact that the prospect of a new baby is usually joyously anticipated.
By no means is this article meant to dampen that happiness or to scare you. However,
among all the popular books for new parents with their many helpful instructions for
pregnancy post-birth self-care and newborn care, the two major mental health crises of
new mothers are either glossed over or never brought up at all. And you can’t protect
yourself from what you know nothing about. So, you can anticipate the new baby’s life
while remaining aware of signs and symptoms that should send you for immediate
professional help.
Psychiatrists and Obstetricians Have a Duty to Discuss in-depth
Postpartum Psychosis and Postpartum Depression with Child-Bearing
and Postpartum Mothers...AND TO DISCUSS THESE IN PUBLIC
MEDIA so everyone is prepared and can take appropriate medical action
before a catastrophe such as maternal suicide or infanticide.
I’ve always felt that all behavioral and mental health conditions should be openly
addressed, by medical professionals, to the public. And where issues specific to
psychiatry are concerned, psychiatrists should speak up!
The Silence of the Doctors Who Should Speak Publically
Unfortunately, in the case of the two major postpartum mental illnesses, even
when a tragedy like the Andrea Yates case screams in the headlines, MDs
are maddeningly silent.
In her severely psychotic state and just recently wrongly-discharged by a
a misguided hospital psychiatrist (probably due to insurance company
noncoverage) from badly needed hospitalization, on antipsychotic medication,
with no psych RN in her home to care for her, Mrs. Yates killed
all 5 of her babies and children.
‘Though prime news at the time, I was astounded by the LOUD SILENCE FROM
THE OBSTETRICAL AND PSYCHIATRIC COMMUNITIES about this
tragedy and how the healthcare professions, specifically obstetricians and
psychiatrists can and must do better than this. Especially since, in many cases,
both postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis may be temporary
conditions probably attributable to drastic hormonal shifts in the estrogen-
progesterone balance immediately and subsequently to childbirth.
Why psychiatrists contribute little-to-nothing to public awareness of obstetrical-
related mental illnesses, necessary to mount timely preventive measures....And
why obstetricians contribute even less to what should be maternal-family and
ongoing, in-depth public discussion, public health awareness and prophylaxis
against the two post-childbirth mental health downward roller coasters
...is a mystery.
There has always been a societal stigma attached to mental illness. Today,
however, with wide-ranging research demonstrating the biologic basis for many
mental illnesses – such as Bipolar Disorder, Chronic Depression, Panic Attacks,
yes and even schizophrenia, the mentally ill have begun to be embraced as
“one of us” after all.
Furthermore, it’s impossible to extricate your mind from your body (our brains
are bathed in neurochemicals similar to those that impact our immune systems
for illness or wellness). So, the interplay between bodily-brain physical processes
and the functions of the mind – thoughts, feelings, experiential memories, dreams,
nightmares, griefs, etc. – is inescapable. Awareness of this interaction is crucial
to this new century’s scientific and societal grasps of mental illness as
biopsychologic or psychobiologic. And that it’s to everyone’s benefit to
publicize the advent of improved diagnostic tools and the many new physical,
pharmaceutical and psychotherapeutic treatments now available to significantly
improve the lives, the general health and the emotional health of patients with
health conditions that manifest as thought and behavioral distortions.Many of
which can now be ameliorated to varying degrees, some even to cures.
Therefore, with these thoughts and imperatives in mind, let the elements of this
article heighten everyone’s awareness to two physically-caused mental illnesses
that can be diagnosed early when obstetricians and obstetrical RNs heighten
their awareness levels of the signs and symptoms the new mother and/or family
members should immediately report to them upon having them, feeling them,
hallucinating them, etc. Early diagnosis or suspect diagnosis should result in
immediate referral to a psychiatrist who will evaluate and usually prescribe
appropriate antidepressant or antipsychotic medication and hospitalization.
The latter essential in the case of postpartum psychosis.
© Copyright 2006-2015 Dr. Helen Borel. All rights reserved.
For permissions and rights, email me: medical-healthalerts@earthlink.net
For Interactive, Interventional, Creative PsychoTherapy - by this author of
Journey Into Self: Holistic Interactive Integrative Psychoanalysis - that
gets your life, your career, and your love relationship away from suffering
and on to fulfillment, contact me: emotional_health@earthlink.net
...and You can call me Dr. Helen
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