BUMMERS, BREAKDOWNS AND BREAKTHROUGHS

We all know that difficult life experiences can often help us to grow, deepen, and learn. Many of the wisest people we know are those who have gone to some very dark and challenging places and returned wiser, clearer, more resilient, more loving, and more spiritual, their suffering seemingly having transformed them. These positive changes after traumatic events are known as posttraumatic growth.

And then we know others who withered from their challenges, becoming smaller, hardened, and embittered. We don’t know all the factors that lead to a breakdown in one person and a breakthrough in another, but research by Ullrich and Lutgendorf offers some clues as to how we can help ourselves to a bit more growth and a little less breakdown.

In a 2002 study, Ullrich and Lutgendorf gave college students who were struggling with a personal trauma the following instructions:

“We would like you to keep a journal of your deepest feelings about this topic over the next month.”

            This may sound familiar to us. Many of us keep journals, some of us have been doing so religiously for years. 

Ullrich and Lutgendorf found that these students, “reported more physical illness.”

That’s more, not less, physical illness.

They also found that with these students, “posttraumatic growth over time…showed no change.”

            Physical illness reports increased. Posttraumatic growth unchanged.

Wait a second. Isn’t journaling supposed to be good for us?

Wait, there’s more.

A second group of students were given the same instructions as the first group, plus they were told, “We are particularly interested in understanding how you tried to make sense of this situation and what you tell yourself…to help you deal with it and…describe how you are trying to understand it”[.]

They were asked to write, and therefore think, about the trauma in a constructive or instructive manner, and to find meaning in it.

These participants “reported increases in positive growth from trauma over time”[.]

            So, contrary to what a lot of us, professionals included, might think, spilling your guts by itself won’t do it—it can actually make it worse, since it increases the liklihood you’ll get sick.

The study also concluded that, “The passage of time alone does not seem to facilitate positive growth from a traumatic event.”.

But writing, and possibly sharing in general, about your deepest emotions about a traumatic event plus thinking about it in a way that helps you to understand it, deal with it, and find some meaning in it, leads to positive posttraumatic growth and increases the liklihood of you becoming that wise old granny you’ve always secretly longed to be.

         

JOEY PANTS SHOWS HOW IT'S DONE

He’s known as Joey Pants in the industry, as Ralphie on the Sopranos, as Joey Pantoliano on his driver's license. He's a husband, a dad, a recovering depress-a-holic, and he's got `em big, real big. Joey Pants has made a powerful movie where he shares the intimate details of his struggles with depression and the unhappiness and havoc it brought him and his family.

The term 'mental illness', no matter how you slice it, carries so much unnecessary baggage that you just wish we could come up with new labels, or somehow de-stigmatize the old ones.

Play with me for a minute. Let’s re-brand mental illness as mental diabetes. Watch what happens.

There are different kinds of diabetes, but in general the problem is regulating blood-sugar levels.

Mental diabetes comes in different forms, but in general has to do with problems regulating thoughts and emotions.

Some cases of diabetes can be controlled with medication. Some cases can be controlled by diet. Some can be controlled by a combination of both.

Same goes for mental diabetes. Some cases need medication. Some cases need therapy or coaching, which is a diet of healthy thoughts and behaviors. Some cases need both.

Which would you rather have, mental illness, or mental diabetes?

The challenge is we feel we are mentally ill, rather than we have a mental illness. It’s one thing to say, “My foot is broken.” It’s something radically different to say, “I am broken.”

The opportunity and the stigma of mental illness both stem in part from our astonishing ability to change and heal. The brain can change in ways the pancreas cannot. If we can't change, is it our fault?

We don’t ask this of someone with physical diabetes. 

That’s why it’s so hard and so brave to come forwards and tell your story and do what you need to do to make your life work. It’s not just about the heavy stuff like depression, anxiety and mental illness. It’s about joy, love, awe and gratitude. It’s about being a love machine and a light to those around you. It’s about telling the truth and setting yourself free, and helping those around you to do the same.

Check out Joey Pants and help yourself to a great day.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/health/an-actors-battle-with-mental-illness/3904/

The Agony, the Ecstasy, and Therapy

A husband and wife team of psychiatrists, Michael and Annie Mithoefer, have published a study in the Journal of Psychopharmacology showing that psychotherapy done with patients while they were high on Ecstasy, the drug MDMA, was quite effective in treating difficult cases of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Mithoefer proposes that Ecstasy increases the clients' abililty to handle the difficult and traumatic material that must be processed to successfully work through and resolve the issues associated with PTSD.

One of the most successful therapeutic approaches for working with PTSD, and a number of other trauma-related conditions, is known as somatic experiencing (SE). SE is part of the burgeoning field of somatic, or body-focused, psychology, that looks at how difficult psychological material is experienced in the body, and  then uses the body's resources to restore the client to better physical and emotional health.

A key practice of SE is to 'resource' the client, to give them a felt sense of integrity, possibility, groundedness, and a sense of their  own power and ability to heal and flourish. This is done before ever approaching difficult material. In a sense, you work to make sure the client is high enough before you take them low--if you get my meaning. Then you work slowly, so the client can process the challenging material without feeling overwhelmed.

You have a good bit of ecstatic circuitry built into your nervous system. If you didn't, Ecstasy wouldn't work. So, you don't need to be high on Ecstasy to process difficult and even traumatic material. You just need to be high enough, and you've been blessed with a nervous system that can do just that, though sometimes it may need a little help from a good friend, or a coach, or in very extreme situations, a white pill.