copyright ed young, PhD 1 PART XIV DEALING WITH INTOLERABLE OR DISORIENTING FEELINGS A NATURAL SYSTEMS VERSUS A MEDICAL MODEL APPROACH.

copyright ed young, PhD

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PART XIV

DEALING WITH INTOLERABLE OR DISORIENTING FEELINGS

A NATURAL SYSTEMS VERSUS

A MEDICAL MODEL APPROACH


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4. Bizarre, Chaotic - Illusions and Delusions. Thought totally under the control of emotion.

4 3

-3. Escalating Irrational

As emotions, such as anger, passion, fear, increase in intensity, temporal and social

perspectives diminish and thinking becomes

more irrational and less grounded in

reality.

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4..Escalating -Eruption

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3. .Escalating -Out of control

The Disorganization of Thought Processes Under the Influence of Intense Emotion

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2..Intense -Biased

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2..Escalating -Intense

1. Initial emotional experience

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1. Thinking: Cool, Rational


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Discerning PatternsThe Telescopic Perspective

1. By imagining you are looking from afar and recalling events and behavior through time, you can begin to discern patterns.

2. By imagining the accompanying circumstances through time, you can begin to discern the relationship between changing circumstances and behavioral changes.

3. Giving names to emotion underlying the behavior, you can begin to discern the relation between changing circumstances and changing moods and emotions.


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We Have Compassion We don’t want our loved ones to suffer.

How can we help the sufferer without resorting to drugs?1. We, too, want their pain to go away quickly.2. We also, typically, really have very little understanding of the roots

of the pain.3. We also, typically, have no clues as to how to make it go away

right now. 4. We especially have no clue as to how to make it go away over the

long term. 5. Nevertheless, we make attempts to come up with quick and easy

advice we hope will help.6. We, too, give up in exasperation and suggest drugs.7. Taking the path of empathizing seems like a pitiful excuse for help.8. And, taking the long road of attempting to help them find causes

and help them develop new ways of seeing, feeling, thinking, reacting, and behaving that free them from the unbearable discomfort seems cruel and futile.


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The Right-Now-Relief-Medicine Versus Enduring Suffering and Learning to Grow

I’manxious!

I’m angry!

I’m depressed!

I’m keyed up!

I have painful longing!

I’m confused!

I need relief from this intolerable psychological discomfort right away. I’ll ask my doctor for a pill.

Ahhh! Relief at last. Now we don’t have to cope with those awful feelings anymore. We don’t have to try to make our egos grow and understand the situation causing the discomfort, what it is about us that makes us react that way, get a perspective on experiencing feelings like that, or learn, practice, and master strategies for handling the situation and our feelings. All that takes so much work and takes so long. We’d rather take the pill the rest of our lives than to have to go through all that growth stuff first and gain mastery and then get relief.


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Observing a person from the outside and at a distance, we do

not see nor understand their feelings and the processes that are going on inside their head or mind.

We never can gain that understanding from afar and

maybe not under any circumstances.

TAKING A MICROSCOPIC LOOK AT THE PROCESSES INSIDE THE MIND

Liste

ning

and

obse

rvin

g ca

refu

lly

and

deep

ly, o

ver t

ime,

we b

egin

to u

nder

stand

thei

r inn

er p

roce

sses

.

Magnifying by careful listening and observation


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At whatever level of perspective we take, we can check repeatedly with the person to see if our guess as to what is going on is correct, if their pattern is repeated, if they see the world in the same way, have the same feelings and moods, and so on, in order to try to understand the other person more deeply and correctly. It is then that we may begin to empathize with them.

CHOOSING OUR LEVEL OF PERSPECTIVE FOR UNDERSTANDING OTHERSThe Microscopic Perspective

Perceptions, feelings, reactions, thoughts, projections, strategizing, intentions, feedback and evaluating, self correcting, and storing in memory all occur together, usually in sequence, and flow in patterns. These patterns are ‘written large and written small’. Larger patterns are repeated but always include the finer detail of smaller patterns. We choose the level of perspective, global or minute, from which we try to understand the other person.


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Altering One’s World View and Conceptions of Spheres and Patterns of Causation So As To Change One’s Behavior/Symptoms

1. Altering conceptions of causation and thus altering patterns of attributing causation for one’s behavior/symptoms.

1. Detecting incorrect or counterproductive patterns of blaming/attributing causes for one’s behavior or symptoms.

2. Facing incorrect or counterproductive patterns of attribution/blame.3. Exploring alternative spheres of possible causes and modes of discovering

causes.4. Facing the implications of new and different views of the causes of one’s

behavior or symptoms.2. Changing one’s behavior and dealing with symptoms based on new, more

plausible understandings causation.1. Taking an experimental approach to cause candidates and remedies.2. Developing new strategies for dealing with new possible causes of

behavior/symptoms.3. Understanding and coping with the difficulties of dealing with new and

different but more likely causes.4. Altering former negative behavior/symptoms by implementing strategies for

dealing with realistic causes and developing new positive behaviors as replacements for the old and seeing one’s self as a self-aware and capable agent.


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SELF AUTHORED BLAME OR CAUSAL ATTRIBUTIONS FOR PROBLEMSPROBLEMSSELF AUTHORED BLAME OR CAUSAL ATTRIBUTIONS FOR PROBLEMSPROBLEMSThings for which TO ATTRIBUTE CAUSES OR BLAME:

Lack of motivation, lack of energy, impulsivity, inattentiveness, feeling ill or bad, failure, accidents or harm to self or others, substandard performance, rejection, forgetting and missing cues or schedules, depression or aggression, being unprepared, etc.

Taught or learned styles of ATTRIBUTING OR SHIFTING BLAME OR CAUSE: 1. Attribute to or Blame others, circumstances, the situation, cosmic or supernatural forces.2. Attribute to or Blame self.3. Attribute to or Blame body or ingested elements

BodySelfExternal

A. COSMIC OR SUPERNATURAL FORCES, SITUATION, CIRCUMSTANCE, OTHER PEOPLE

B. SELF C. BODY OR INGESTED ELEMENTS

1. If you can not dealwith attributing to causesoutside yourself

then 2. Attribute to Self or 3. Body

or 3. Something outsideyourself

1. If you can not dealwith attributing to causesin your self

then 2. Attribute to Body

or 3. Something outsideyourself

then 2. Attribute to Self 1. If you can not deal with attributing to causes in your body

Its their (his/her), its, fault.Its my fault, I am to blame. I’m sick, it is some disease I have.

They (he/she), it, made me do it.

There is something wrong with my body or brain chemistry.

They (he/she), it, did it.

I unintentionally caused it. I could have controlled it or done different.

Its genetic, it’s the way humans evolved.It is some medicine, or food, I am or am not taking or eating.

I thought it or wished for it so I am really, or just as much, to blame.

SHIFTSHIFT

SHIFT SHIFTSHIFT

SHIFT

They or it had nothing to do with it. I had nothing to do with it. There is nothing wrong with my body I am not sick.

SHIFTING THE BLAME OR MAKING THE EASY BUT ERRONEOUS ATTRIBUTION PREVENTS THE PERSON FROM ADDRESSING, DEALING WITH, AND CORRECTING THE TRUE CAUSES OF THE PROBLEM.

Absolving or denying

cause

Examples of attributions of blame or

causeI have this personality quirk that makes me do it.


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CAUSATION AND THE INTERACTION AND RELATIONS BETWEEN EVENTS OR TYPES OF CAUSES

AND THEIR CONSEQUENCES FOR GAINING SELF KNOWLEDGE,

DEVELOPING EGO STRENGTH

Attributed Supernatural Cause

Failure to Examine Natural Causes or Causes Amenable To Change

Long Term Consequence: Lack Of Development Of The Ego, Repetition Of Problematic Behavior

EVENT-PERSON INTERACTION

Attributed Genetic Cause

Failure to Examine Self-Ego Related Causes Or Social Environmental CausesAmenable To Change

Long Term Consequence: Lack Of Development Of The Ego And Lack Of Learning Of Social Skills; Repetition of Problematic Behavior

WHEN:THE SHORT TERM CONSEQUENCES

ARE:

THE LONG TERM CONSEQUENCES

ARE:


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Thoughts keep cycling in patterns. Sometimes, under

painful or terrifying emotions, thoughts wildly whirl and one’s mind seems out of control. This magnifies the terror. Thoughts are no longer capable of being

rational or in one’s best interest. Behavior becomes impelled by

the painful emotions.

What Happens When We Do Get Inside the Head of Another? What do we see and understand about the person?

This is

what we see!


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Sometimes thoughts plummet down in despair, becomes ponderous, then sink into a black hole of

nothingness and despair. This also magnifies the terror. Yet, now, the

painful, numbing emotions immobilize the person as though

one were dead.

Getting inside the mind of another who is experiencing turbulent emotions is somewhat like seeing a galaxy through a Hubbell telescope. Sometimes you see a whirling mass of

chaos and sometimes you see a black hole.

Fueled by Emotion


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Relating to the Intolerable Emotion

Emotions becoming

intolerable and overwhelming, welling up from

the unconscious.

Thoughts whirling into extreme confusion or blanking out completely from the intensity of the emotion.


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Current trends:Medicate, Medicate, Medicate!

The sufferer’s agony, our compassion,

pressure of family, pressure of friends,

school, work, enticements of media ads

all combine and result in a rush to psychotropic-medication.


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One Very Important Step: Understanding the Life-history Cause

Winding Road of Life Is Fraught With Critical Events

• Critical events from life history can leave a person with permanent reactions to future similar events.– Fear and terror– Social anxiety– Insecurity– Worry – Despair and depression– Frustration, confusion– Anger, rage, resentment– Desperate longing– Unbearable emptiness– Merciless pressure– Unreasonable elation – Unrealistic expectations –

superstitious reasoning– Frenetic, ceaseless activity– Unrelenting rumination– Loss of appetite– Libido disturbance– Inability to sleep

PAST EXPERIENCE INTRUDES UNCONSCIOUSLY INTO PRESENT REACTIONS:

• Traumas

• Losses

• Failures

• Rejections

• Humiliation and embarrassment

• Unbearable circumstances

• Impossible living conditions

• Reversal of fortune

• Events that defy ordinary notions of causality


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Understanding the Relation Between the Current Situations and the Past

A. The big question now becomes, how does one handle, deal with, cope with, respond to

these highly uncomfortable and life disrupting

current incidents and conditions?

1. With medication?With therapy that assists the person uncover the

relation between the past and the present?

2. With training in new techniques and skills for coping with these reactions?


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When in later life situations similar to earlier traumas are repeated, similar reactions tend to be evoked.

Life crises

Unbearable life

conditions

Traumatic events

Soul

cru

shin

g re

latio

nshi

ps

Life crises

Unbearable life

conditions

Traumatic events

Soul

cru

shin

g re

latio

nshi

ps

Earlier life historyCurrent situations that have important features similar to the prior disturbing events and conditions

Similar reactions evoked


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Enticements and Persuasions of the Media Ads

“I’m so anxious I

could die!”“I’m so

depressed I can’t work!”

I’m Mr. Rx. Do as millions have I’m Mr. Rx. Do as millions have done and take my instant, done and take my instant, magical, happy pill. This will magical, happy pill. This will turn you into a new man turn you into a new man overnight. Everyone will love overnight. Everyone will love you for it.you for it.

I’m Mr. Rx. Do as millions have I’m Mr. Rx. Do as millions have done and take my instant, done and take my instant, magical, happy pill. This will magical, happy pill. This will turn you into a new man turn you into a new man overnight. Everyone will love overnight. Everyone will love you for it.you for it.


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RESORTING TO A NON PERSONAL SOLUTION OR TREATMENTThe sense of powerlessness over the dysfunctional patterns of thinking and emotion makes one feel as though something outside oneself must stop the madness. That something outside must not be anyone who is a part of the problem, like family members. In this state, the person wants no intruders that might judge or advise. This is highly frustrating to close family and friends who, then, turn to mechanical or chemical antidotes.

Ego getting weaker and weaker and more and

more fragile. Dependency and withdrawal pain

increase, confirming the need for the medicine.

Thank goodness that now I don’t have to worry about how to

cope and grow. I can just take something

quick and no one will be bent out of shape

over the way I’m feeling, thinking, or

acting!!!

Fam

ily

Please, if you

won’t listen to us, go to a doctor and take a pill so we can relax!!


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Escape to the Pill versus Growth• As one’s self seems to be getting more and more out of control and the fear of loss of control and the possibility of

dissolving into insanity accelerates, the person orients to the dominant, prevalent messages in our culture that suggest that the only way and the quickest way out of this nightmarish condition of life to to turn to mood altering medications.

• When taking the medications does relieve and control the uncomfortable, painful, frightening symptoms, the person becomes afraid of the ‘self without medication’, their seemingly natural but mal-formed self.

• Before medication, when the symptoms overtook the self and left it with such disturbing feelings and thoughts regardless of the person’s attempts to exercise will power, the person came to feel that their natural self was driven by some unknowable, unstoppable ‘mystery force’.

• Medication came to seem like it was the only force that was powerful enough to counteract this ‘mystery force’.• Therefore, to remove or deny oneself the medication was tantamount to opening the self to complete vulnerability to the

terrifying ‘mystery force’. This was like voluntarily throwing oneself into chaotic, whirling tornado. This was like voluntarily abandoning and incapacitating the natural self and leaving it at the mercy incomprehensible demonic forces.

• Ironically, this impending sense of loss of control and vulnerability and anticipation of subsequent terror that comes when the medication is not ready-to-hand so lowers the person’s defenses against the real ‘source’, which is their underlying, repressed drives and feelings, that these very repressed forces actually are activated. When the person is engulfed by the raging flood welling up from below, proof of the implicit hypothesis that only medication is the ‘silver bullet’ seems to be proven. When they take the medication and the raging flood subsides, the belief in this hypothesis seems completely validated. Thus, they become convinced of the absolute necessity of depending upon the medication.

• The belief in the irresistible power of the mystery force and the efficacy of the medication, together with the surrender or decommissioning of the coping efforts of their ego leaves them with a permanent disbelief in the self and a perpetual sense of powerlessness: a condition that assures their continuing vulnerability to an illusory ‘mystery force’ and natural growth processes of the ego and forever stunted.

• The person never gets the chance to realize their potential for growth had they been assured that it was safe to allow themselves to be exposed to the terror and assisted to find ways to face the source and develop appropriate understanding and coping powers.


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A Second Very Important Step:Learning Coping Skills

Developing New Response Patterns

1. Past situation

2. Past reaction

3. Understanding the past

1. Current situation

2. Current reaction

3. Understanding the present and rooted in the past.

4. Differentiating the present situations and present reactions from the past.

5. Learning and testing new responses to these types of situations and reactions.

6. As new coping improves, old reaction patterns also fade.


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Learning to Gradually Simmer Down.

I’m starting to calm down a little. I bet if I keep this up and then start focusing on something non threatening outside of myself, I will really calm down. Then I can start over and try to think the situation through rationally.

Oh god! I’m about to explode. I’m going to stop and focus on the emotion. Really sense what it is like. Really

think about what it is like, why I am having it, what it

is doing to me.

And now I’m going to stop and realize this

emotion is not going to kill me and is not going to last forever. The causal situation is not going to

last forever, or I will eventually be able to cope with it, or to live

with it, but I can survive it! Life will go on.


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Escalating Emotions and Irrationality Vs. Deescalating and Rationality

..

I’m getting angry. How can I

communicate what I feel?

..

Listen, please. I want you to hear what I am going to say

and to understand what I feel. I’ll say it as calmly and clearly

as I can.

..

OK. Now that you understand what I am getting angry about, can we try to work something out, negotiate a compromise? I feel better about this already.

Two scenarios for dealing with anger. The first case focuses outside of the self on the external source of the anger. The second case focuses on one’s feelings and trying to communicate clearly about the issue to the other person.

In the first case, anger (and other extreme emotions) escalates and nothing is communicated or solved. Hard feelings will be lurking in wait for the next encounter. In the second case, anger is understood and communicated, deescalates, and the problem is resolved.

..

Stop it! You’re making me angry.

..

*#@~`>+=%*”&! I’m really getting mad.

I hate you! Get out. *#@~`>+=%*”&! I’m breaking everything.

..

First

Second

Learning to cope and develop a stronger ego.


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A Third Very Important Step:ALTERNATIVE WAYS OF DEALING WITH

INTOLERABLE OR DISORIENTING FEELINGS

ALTERING EXTERNAL STRUCTURES AND LIFE PATTERNS

•If in Therapy, Temporarily Increase Psychotherapy Visits.•Stay In Close Contact With A Friend Or Relative, Who Is Not A Part Of The Problem, As A Supporter, Especially Evenings And Nights.•Work Out A Regimen To Help In Getting Through The Tough Time.

•Make As Few Additional Major Changes As Possible until the stress diminishes.•Temporarily Avoid Being Around Disturbing Family, Friends, Or Associates.•Keep Up A Healthy Diet and Take Mega Vitamins, Minerals, And Amino Acids Daily.•Take Time, Several Times A Day, For 15 To 20 Minutes Each Time, To Engage In Relaxation.•Exercise Fairly Vigorously for at Least Thirty Minutes and at Least Three Times a Week. Don’t Overdo.•Do Light Exercises Before Going To Bed, Followed By A Warm Shower Ending With Luke Warm.•De-escalate the Anger and Anxiety, the Adrenaline Surges.•Regularly Write About Feelings And Situations In A Journal, Especially Before Going To Bed.•Whether you sleep well or not, be sure and get plenty of rest.•Use Relaxation Techniques And Tapes In Bed At Night To Relax, Do Not Try To Sleep, Do Not Try To Control Thoughts. Briefly Write Disturbing Thoughts In Journal And Then Lie Back Down To Relax.

•Accept The Fact That You Will Have To Expend Great Energy And Time On Your Therapy At This Time And Will Have To Endure The Discomfort Until You Grow, Gain Understanding of the Root Causes, Gain Mastery in Coping Skills, And Develop Ego Strength. Believe that Life Will Become Bearable Again.•If these suggestions do not work and you find your emotional state is becoming destructive, see a physician for brief mood altering medication to use until you have settled down and are ready to resume learning to deal with these tormenting emotions through psychotherapy. Only Turn to Medication as a last resort.


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A Fourth Very Important Step:Understanding Current Structural Causes.

• The structure of one’s current circumstances and conditions create predictable reactions.

• Some structures unwittingly induce negative reactions in people.

• A positive structure in one arena may serve of mollify the negative effects of a negative structure in another arena.

• Negative structures in multiple arenas compound the negative reactions in each.

• Their responses to their reactions may vary depending upon each person’s prior life history with respect to similar events, circumstances and conditions.

• Responses to their reactions may vary depending upon the level and sophistication of learned skills apropos to dealing with the specific type of condition or circumstance.

Work

pressure

Peerpressure

Roman

cepr

essu

reFamily

pressure

Finance pressure

Healthpressure

Livingconditionspressure

•Current structure in the arenas below affect emotional states.

•Outside observers tend to attribute emotional states solely to the person.

Some structures are highly persistent and intransigent. Others are short lived and/or easily altered. The history of some people prevents them from discriminating the difference. In such cases the ’mode of coping’ may be ineffective and self defeating.


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A Fifth Very Important Step:Understanding the Broader Trends in the Structures and Systems of Our Society


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Twentieth Century Trends in Managing Youth

Post WW II 50ies

Majority Conformity

Early 20th Century

Life Is Safe and Free for Kids.

60ies through 70iesWhite Flight – ‘Just Fence Them In!’

80iesBeginning of ‘Just Arrest and Jail Them!’

90iesFor God’s Sake, These Kids Are Driving Me Crazy.

‘Just Medicate Them!’


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Our Cultural History Through the History of Our Schools: the Rugged Road to Mood Altering Medications

• Socio-economic cultural changes have led to a world that is increasingly productive, resulting in a life style lavish with material wealth;

• more open and competitive vocationally, yet less open socially;

• more complexly organized in the economic and educational worlds, yet less organized in the social, familial, and personal worlds;

• more impersonal;• simultaneously, our world is

more demanding;• more anxious and stressful• and less personally satisfying.In these stressful times, the solution

for dealing with our irritating, demanding kids is: MEDICATE THEM!

• Faster, faster;• Bigger, bigger;• Harder, harder;• More chaotic;• More complex;• More uniform;• More channeled; • More pressure-full;• More impersonal;• Less rewarding;• Longer, longer;• Everyone watching• Everyone judging• Everyone fighting

OVER US KIDS

Century 2000


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Address the Dysfunctional Structures

of Our Culture


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A Sense of Mastery Comes From Realizing You Made It Through the Emotional Storm,

on Your Own, With Minimal Medication.You Feel So Much Stronger.

AND, You Are Now Making a Difference for Others by Addressing the Structural Problems of Our Society.

I did it!I did it!

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copyright ed young, PhD 1 PART XIV DEALING WITH INTOLERABLE OR DISORIENTING FEELINGS A NATURAL SYSTEMS VERSUS A MEDICAL MODEL APPROACH.

Documents

copyright ed young

patterns of causation

causes of ones behavior

discerning patterns

smaller patterns

larger patterns

changing ones behavior

observation slide