Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Anger Management in the Metropolis

Life in the city is full of adventure, excitement—and rudeness. Unfortunately, crowding can bring out the worst in people and animals.

In a famous experiment, rats were put in a crowded cage to see what would happen. The rats in this cage were so crowded together that they were literally standing whisker to whisker. After spending a long time in this environment, the rats started going nuts. They were fighting and killing each other. Some practiced cannibalism. Males and females didn’t want to mate and when females did get pregnant they often abandoned or abused their children.

In the modern metropolis, as well as in other places around the world, people have also been known to behave in, well, somewhat impolite ways. All one has to do is read the daily news headlines to know what I’m talking about.

How can you live in a crowded, urban environment and avoid fighting, killing, or like the rats in the experiment, eating other people? Here are some suggestions for how to deal with life in the modern metropolis when things get too stressful.

Pretend you’re on Mars. While gallivanting around town, remain detached. One way of doing this is to imagine yourself looking at everyone as if you were peering down through a telescope from Mars. Pretty soon everybody looks like a bunch of ants. Why get overheated about tiny insects?

Get plenty of hugs. Surround yourself with caring people. Try to get at least one hug per day from your significant other, your Aunt Ethel, or a good friend. The more you feel the love, the less the stings and arrows of outrageous fortune will upset you. Also potentially troublesome people will see that rosy “I’m getting my quota of hugs” aura and will be less likely to target you.

Smile a lot. A psychologist once did an experiment in which he wired subjects up to measure their skin temperature and heart beat. When he asked the subjects to smile, he found that their skin temperature and heartbeat went down; when he directed them to frown, he found that their skin temperature and heartbeat went up. “Smile and the world smiles with you,” is the title of a song from the 1940s. There may be some truth to the song after all. Smiling may become a buffer that keeps negative people away.

Stick out your tongue. Humor can be a wonderful way to deal with the adversity of urban life. Let’s say you have a bully breathing down your neck at work, the kind of person who makes sure to point out your every mistake. “Oh, my God,” the bully says, “Did you hear what you just said? You just said ‘nauseous’ instead of ‘nauseated.’ Don’t you know the rules of grammar?” You stick out our tongue, cross your eyes, and laugh like a chimpanzee.

“You’re an idiot,” the bully says.

You continue to be an idiot until he leaves.

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Child abuse is linked with adult ailments

Recent research has demonstrated a relationship between childhood abuse and a number of adult ailments, including arthritis, depression, cancer, and psychosis.

The research, published in journals in America, Australia, Canada and England, notes the following connections:

· Adults who experienced physical abuse as children have 56 per cent higher odds of osteoarthritis compared to those who have not been abused, according to a study by University of Toronto researchers published in Arthritis Care and Research.

· Childhood physical abuse is associated with elevated rates of cancer in adulthood, according to another study by University of Toronto researchers to be published in the journal, Cancer.

· People who were abused and neglected during childhood have a higher risk of major depression when they become young adults, according to a report in the January issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. In addition, depressed men who were abused have ten times higher risk of suicide, according to an article in the British Journal of Social Work.

· Researchers at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London have published new research in The British Journal of Psychiatry which indicates that women with severe mental illness are more likely to have been abused in childhood that the general population.

· Childhood sexual abuse significantly increases the risk of developing drug and alcohol issues, mental illness and marital strife in men and women, according to a study in American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

This research underscores the long-term devastation caused by childhood abuse and shows links between it and a growing number of adult diseases and disorders. And it calls attention to a problem—be it physical, emotional, or sexual abuse—that has been escalating over the past decade.

For years, families swept childhood under the rug and some researchers believed that it had only limited long-term effect. Indeed, some researchers stated that a child could grow out of it once he became an adult. This new research shatters this mythology once and for all.

Although recent researchers don’t offer an explanation for the link between abuse and a myriad of illnesses, one can conjecture that any kind of child abuse engenders low self-esteem, bad coping method, and a pessimistic outlook on life. These three factors alone would predispose victims of child abuse to a number of illnesses. In addition, bad hygiene and physical posture associated with child abuse victims could explain the many cases of arthritis later on.

This research goes counter to recent trends to seek primarily biological explanations for mental disturbances as well as for physical ailments. It clearly shows that environmental traumas continue to have at least a partial effect on the development of adult problems.

Maybe, just maybe, by focusing on the many long-term effects of childhood abuse, we may at last be able to come up with some preventative measure that will help us to diminish or even eliminate it from our culture. Wouldn’t that be nice?

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Why does a mother beat her child to death?

A few weeks ago the mother of a 4-year-old Brooklyn boy was arrested along with her boyfriend for the savage slaying of her child. Myrna Chen Phang, 25, and her boyfriend, Steven Dadaille, 26, were charged with pummeling Jayden Lenescar with their fists and with a belt buckle during a two day spree of violence. When Phang finally called 911, after leaving the boy in the bathtub fighting for his life all that time, it was too late. He died on the way to the hospital.

The question everybody is asking is why? Why would a mother do this to her little boy?

The information about the case is sketchy and doesn’t provide concrete answers. Phang and Dadaille told an unnamed source, quoted in the Daily News, they were angry at the boy for touching himself. “They said they warned him not to touch himself and he went ahead and did it, so they threw him in the bathtub, threw cold water on him and began hitting him with the belt.” The source said Phang beat him first and then Dadaille took the belt away and began hitting the boy harder, complaining that Phang was being much too easy.

Rosa Adrien, a friend of Phang’s, said Phang spoke about spirits taking over her body. “She said something came over her, almost like a spirit. She said she didn’t know why she let it happen.” Adrien blamed Dadaille, noting that he was “a voodoo devotee.” Phang was recently separated from her husband, Mackenzy Lenescar, and had taken an order or protection out on him. Apparently the separation was not amicable.

From these sparse facts we can speculate on what might have caused Phang to lose her temper and beat her son to death.

First, there was the recent separation, accompanied by the order of protection. If a woman takes out an order of protection it is usually because she is frightened of violence against her. Sometimes she is also angry with the spouse. In such cases, the fear and anger get displaced onto their son. The boy becomes a symbol of the hated spouse and a reminder of him.

In addition, her present boyfriend, Dadaille, was reputedly a “devotee of voodoo.” While this is only second-hand information, we do know from several sources that he complained that Phang was too soft on the boy. Perhaps he had his own anger that got taken out on the boy. And his anger would have infected her anger.

This would explain a loss of temper. However, when we consider that Phang told her friend Adrien that “something came over her, like a spirit,” we may conclude that the rage that took hold of her was all out of proportion to the present situation. What this brings to mind is “transference.” In psychoanalysis, transference refers to a process in which repressed feelings (rage) toward a primary figure (a father) suddenly break to the surface in a present situation and get directed at that situation. Was Phang herself abused as a child? Research shows that abused children become abusive parents.

We can never know for sure what happened in that small apartment in Brooklyn, but we can know that it should never have happened, and we should never stop looking for ways it could have been prevented.

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Has religious freedom gone too far?

Religious freedom began during the Protestant Reformation, which is said to have started with Martin Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses in 1517. At its inception, it was a protest against the excesses of the Catholic Church, which was intolerant of nonbelievers. Indeed, at certain times the Catholic Church beheaded those it deemed “heathens.”

Today religious history seems to have gone full cycle. Around the world various religions are again preaching intolerance as well as distrust and often hatred for all those who are not of the their faith. At times religious intolerance has led to killings and war, as is the case with those Muslim sects that advocate extermination of all “infidels” (which includes Muslims and non-Muslims who deviate from their radical Muslim doctrine.)

Nor is religious intolerance only found in other parts of the world. It can be seen right here in America. Scattered around the USA are religious communities (sometimes affiliated with a major religion) that exclude others and indoctrinate their young with the notion that their religious views and theirs alone are the correct ones, while at the same time filling them with distrust of all those outside their religion.

The Hassidic Jews of Brooklyn, New York—according to the 2007 documentary, A Life Apart—consider themselves superior to all other Jews, not to mention non-Jews. They believe their brand of Judaism is the elite brand, and they socialize only with other Hassidic Jews while eschewing any contact with mainstream America. Some perceive them as prejudiced against all those outside their sect.

Ironically, religions that practice exclusivity and intolerance, as certain Muslim and Jewish sects apparently do, often accuse other groups of being prejudiced against them. Often people are afraid to speak out against religious excess out of a fear of being called a name such as “religious bigot.”

Religion, when practiced in a constructive way, can be very beneficial to its followers. When its core beliefs are focused on love, peace, and respect for all human beings, it fosters harmony and mental health. However, when its focus is on exclusivity, intolerance, and disguised or not-so-disguised hate, it can be quite unhealthy.

Religious intolerance and conflict can have a ripple effect. Thus, it prods the mindset of all people, causing widespread anxiety and stress. When Mama and Daddy fight, the children suffer.

How far should religious freedom go? Should religions have the freedom to teach distrust of anyone who is not of their religion? Should they have the freedom to indoctrinate followers with the notion that their religion is superior to other religions and they therefore deserve special treatment? Should they have the right to teach their members that they are victims of prejudice and therefore they have the right to attack those they perceive as discriminating against them? Should they have the right to preach hatred of other religions and demand death to those outside their religions?

Throughout history religions have started with good intentions, then become powerful gotten out of hand. Will that cycle ever stop?

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

End-of-Life Counseling is here.

A new hybrid form of counseling called “End-of-Life Counseling” has been developed in recent years to help the elderly deal with death. The topic of “End-of-Life Counseling” has also been linked with President Obama’s health insurance reform; one of the provisions of the current bill includes paying a nurse to talk to the elderly patient about living wills, hospices, estate planning, and dealing with death.

Conservatives are critical of this part of the bill and refer to end-of-life counseling as “death panels.”

In a new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, trained nurses did the end-of-life counseling, mostly by phone, with patients and family caregivers using a model based on national guidelines. All the patients in the study had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Half were assigned to receive usual care. The other had received usual care plus counseling about managing symptoms, communicating with health care providers and finding hospice care.

Patients in the study also attended 90-minute group meetings with a doctor and nurse to discuss problems related to their imminent death. Patients who got the counseling scored higher on quality of life and mood measures than patients who got no counseling. The patients who got the counseling also lived longer, by more than five months on average.

Actually death counseling has been around for some time as one of the forms of psychotherapy available to seniors. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross pointed to the need for this kind of counseling in her seminal book, On Death and Dying. In that book she observed a group of terminally ill patients in a hospital and noted that they went through stages of dealing with death and dying.

Their first reaction to being told they had cancer was denial. (“Those can’t be my x-rays!) Their second reaction was anger. (“Why did it have to be me?) Their third reaction was bargaining. (“God, if you’ll let me get well, I’ll give all my money to the church.”) The fourth reaction was depression. (“Of course, everything bad happens to me.”) And finally there was acceptance. (“Death is a normal part of life, accept it.”)

An end-of-life counselor can help people go through these stages as well as dealing with other end-of-life issues. People tend to get stuck in one of these stages—for example, the anger stage. They are angry at themselves, angry at their loved ones, angry at nurses, and angry at doctors. They feel everybody else is smug and gleeful because they get to live. They want to assail everybody and make them share their misery.

Death is the ultimate obstacle and the final stressor with which one has to cope. End-of-life counseling can’t make it go away. But it can get death to wipe the smirk off its face and be more sympathetic to this great human dilemma.

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

The changing definition of mental health

“She’s a strong woman. She knows what she wants and she goes after it. She doesn’t take crap from anybody.” This was how a young female patient described a friend.

“And that’s what you consider a mentally healthy person?” I asked.

“Of course. Don’t you?”

“Not necessarily. A person who doesn’t take crap from anybody might be a defensive person.”

This woman assumed that her theory about what constitutes mental health was the one and only theory. In fact theories about mental health differ from society to society, and have changed from one historical period to the next. As fashions change from time to time, so do the characteristics that are valued.

During the later stages of the Roman Empire, mental health was seen as being open-minded to any and all forms of sexuality, from beastiality to incest. Those who did not subscribe to this “civilized” open-mindedness were considered old-fashioned and, of course, not well adjusted mentally.

During the Holy Roman Empire, mental health was linked to one’s devotion to God, the Father, and the Holy Ghost. Those who were not believers were “heathens” and were seen as mentally disturbed and possessed by the devil.

During the communist revolution in Russia, rich capitalists were seen a mentally ill while revolutionaries like Marx and Lenin viewed themselves as mentally healthy people who would restore sanity and equality to humanity.

In Nazi Germany, the Nazis regarded themselves as mentally healthy people who wanted to return their beloved Germany back to a state of health; this meant ridding Germany of the mentally ill people (the Jews, etc.) who had brought Germany down.

In our own era we have many standards of mental health from the mainstream to the extreme. Those who practice a fundamentalist religion believe that devout practice of their religious rituals constitutes mental health, and they consider all who don’t practice these rituals as unhealthy. Those who subscribe to today’s liberal ideology equate mental health with fighting for liberal causes and mental illness with opposing liberal causes. Those who subscribe to conservative ideas equate mental health with fighting for conservative causes and mental illness with opposing conservative causes.

There is one standard of mental health that has been around for more than two thousand years. It is the standard associated with certain aspects of Eastern and Western philosophies. One thinks of Buddhism, Zen Buddhism and Taoism. And one thinks also of Socrates, Plato and Sigmund Freud.

This standard of mental health focuses not on having the right belief or the right cause, not on being morally superior or defeating those who are inferior. Rather it concentrates on self-knowledge, on being in tune with one’s feelings and in harmony with others and the world. It concentrates on a life focused on service to others, rather than on gratifying the self.

This standard of mental health, of course, has never appealed to the great majority. Because it’s only reward is inner peace. Who cares about that?

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Do you have to be disturbed to be an artist?

Artists have often been portrayed in movies, plays and novels as being emotionally disturbed. Nicole Kidman won an Oscar a few years back for her depiction of Virginia Woolf as a writer suffering from bipolar disorder in the film, Hours. Indeed, it has become common to think of artists as being more disturbed than the average person, but is it true?

A psychologist (Ludwig 1996) did a comparative study of emotional disturbances among artists and nonartists, showing that disturbances were far more common among artists.

He found that 60 percent of actors and 41 percent of novelists were alcoholics. However, only Three percent of scientist and 10 percent of military officers were alcoholics. Likewise 17 percent of actors and 13 percent of poets suffered from bipolar disorder (formerly known as manic depression), while only one percent of scientists did so.

Goodwin and Jamison (1990), uncovered impressive evidence of a link between creativity and depression or manic depression. The list of writers who suffered from it includes not only Virginia Woolf, but also Gertrude Stein, Fydor Dostoyevsky, William Shakespeare, Pablo Picasso, Tennessee Williams, Ernest Hemingway, William Styron, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Herman Melville, Eugene O’Neill, Henry James and Honore de Balzac.

Composers who suffered from these disorders include Robert Shuman, Hector Berloiz and George Friederic Handel (who wrote The Messiah in 24 manic days); artists include Vincent van Gogh and Salvador Dali; and poets include Poe, Tennyson, Byron, Shelly and Coleridge.

These studies also suggest several theories explaining why creative people are more disposed to mental illness. The theory that makes most sense to me is the one that focuses on a combination of genetic and environmental influences. Creative peole seem to be born with more delecate senses—an ear for music, an eye for color and design, a mind that sees beneath the facades of daily life. This genetic sensitivity renders them more susceptible to becoming traumatized by environmental events.

An event such as the loss of a mother at an early age, which might cause an average person to become somewhat disturbed, might have an even greater effect on a creative person with greater sensitivity.

However, the same sensitivity that makes artists more vulnerable to stress also makes them good therapy candidates. Among all the patients I have seen over the years, creative people have usually made the most rapid advances in therapy.

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Should parents be licensed and trained?

Vegetarian parents starve their baby to death….Mother drowns her five sons….Teenage mother throws newborn into the garbage….Toddler beaten to death by stepfather….Girl molested by father….Boy suffers brain damage from abuse.

These are some of the headlines we see in the news daily. Incidents of infant and child abuse are on the rise in America. The National Clearinghouse on Child Abuse and Neglect notes that child abuse has tripled in America over the past three decades. And these are just reported cases. It is estimated that the majority of cases are never reported, because they happen behind closed doors.

And many more cases of emotional neglect also go unreported as well, yet are equally devastating to those individuals involved.

To address this problem, Jack C. Westman and Charles D. Gill wrote a book called Licensing Parents: Can We Prevent Child Abuse and Neglect. The authors have verbalized what many in the profession have been advocating for years.

We require licenses and training for people who want to drive a car, and we require them for people to get married. The skills required to be a parent are much more complex than the skills required to drive a car. And it is certainly more important to society to have skilled parents who can raise well-adjusted children than it is to have skilled drivers who can drive safely on our highways.

How would this work? Parental licensing and training could be administered by government agencies. Newly pregnant women and their spouses (or boyfriends) would be required to register and sign up for psychological testing, parenting classes and counseling.

The testing would be a way to weed out those parents who are too emotionally disturbed to care for children. Classes and counseling would ensure that all parents would receive training and insight into themselves. One of the most important parenting skills is self-analysis: parents must be able to look at themselves objectively to understand how their own behavior is affecting their children. They need to understand how they displace violence, depression or anxiety onto their children.

Despite the rise in child abuse, a large percentage of the populace will oppose parent training and licensing. People say it would be yet another government infringement on the rights of parents—“Big Brother is watching!” Parenthood, some feel, is a sacred right that should not be interfered with by the state.

Either we interfere with parents and monitor their child rearing, or parents are going to interfere with society by producing a slew of abused and neglected children who later become maladjusted and dysfunctional adults.

Getting rid of toxic people.

Some people in your life continually cause you stress, but for some reason you hold on to them. Maybe they are people you've been friends with since the second grade. Maybe they are your parents. Maybe they are your bosses. Maybe they are your lovers or spouses.

If they are any of the above you will have a conflict about eliminating them from your life. You will tell yourself, “I can't throw my mother out of my life! I can't throw my oldest friend out of my life! I can't throw my husband out of my life!”

I have had patients who endured abusive relationships for years and were reluctant to end them. In fact, sometimes the more abusive the relationships are, the more reluctant people are to end them and the more they hold on to the hope that the abuser will change.

Mothers are the hardest to eliminate, even when they are monsters. A female patient told of being sexually abused by her alcoholic mother beginning at age three. The mother would molest her daughter with beer bottles and proclaim, “This is what men do to you.” The mother was totally deranged. The mother continued to be abusive in one way or another up to the time the woman came to see me. Yet she still went home to visit her mother, and each time she would come back to the city in a deep depression, sometimes suicidal.

She would say, “Maybe I shouldn't see her anymore.”

And I would immediately reply, “Maybe you shouldn't.”

But she would then answer, “I can't. I can't. She's my mother.”

Old friends are also hard to get rid of, especially if they've been around since the second grade. When a friendship has been around this long, a harmful relationship can take on a semblance of normality. During the course of therapy a patient began to realize how one-sided one friendship was and how it left him in a rotten mood.

This friend was narcissistic and was only interested in what my patient could to for him. He would call the patient up to vent about things, and it was the patient's job to listen. But if the patient tried to give any advice the friend would abruptly reject the advice as if it were stupid. And God forbid that my patient would ever call this friend to vent about anything. The friend would interrupt after a sentence and say, “I have to go.”

After discussing the relationship with me for a time, the patient decided to confront the friend. During one of his conversations with the friend, my patient said, “You know, I've noticed that you're always calling me to vent, but if I ever want to vent you don't have time for me.” The friend said he found that interesting and promised to think about it. The “friend” never called again.

Sometimes we hold on to relationships because we have self-esteem issues. This is often the case when somebody clings to an abusive spouse. We are convinced that somehow we deserve to be treated with disrespect and that if we lose this person we won't be able to get anybody else. These are long-standing attitudes that we have developed in childhood, due to the way we were treated by parents, siblings or other relatives. Because these attitudes are so deeply ingrained, they are difficult to overcome. Often it takes a lot of therapy to uncover the roots of the problem

But once people take that first step of eliminating a harmful person, they begin to open up. After he had eliminated his oppressive friend, my patient exclaimed, “I felt as if I could take a deep breath for the first time!”

Why would a beauty kill herself?

Ever since Ruslana Korshunova, 20, jumped from a building on Water Street in New York’s financial district several weeks ago, people have been wondering why she did it. Why would a beautiful, young, successful model kill herself?

Newspapers reported that she was unhappy, but the source of the unhappiness was unclear. In one message from her diary three months before the suicide she wrote: "I'm so lost. Will I ever find myself?" In an earlier posting, quoted in the New York Daily News, she wrote: "It hurts, as if someone took a part of me, tore it out, mercilessly stomped all over and threw it out." One cryptic entry in March reads: "My dream is to fly. Oh, my rainbow it is too high."

Other postings revealed anger. In March she wrote: "I'm a bitch. I'm a witch. I don't care what you say ... I know why my other relationships didn't work out, 'cause I'm unpredictable. "

Originally from the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan, the almond-eyed, flowing-haired Korshunova appeared in advertisements and on runways for such designers as Marc Jacobs, Nina Ricci and DKNY. British Vogue hailed her as "a face to be excited about" in 2005. Her break came when modeling booker Debbie Jones noticed a picture of her while perusing an in-flight magazine article about Korushnova's hometown of Almaty, according to a Vogue magazine report. "She looked like something out of a fairytale!" Jones told Vogue. "We had to find her and we searched high and low until we did!"

At the time of her suicide, she was reportedly dating two American men and had broken up with a married man in Russia. She had also hired a “life coach” in Russia to help her with her relationship problems. Her mother, with whom she was supposedly very close, came to America to claim the body.

We may never solve the mystery of Korushnova’s suicide. But her case reminds me of another suicidal girl, a patient, whom I came to know a while back. Let us call her Miss M. Like Ruslana, Miss M was a beautiful young woman who was troubled by pursuers. And, like Ruslana, she was sending money back home in Europe to her mother each week.

For Miss M, the problem did not have to do with the men who dated her. It had to do with her mother. Her mother had smothered her with love when she was a child. After divorcing her alcoholic father, her mother clung to Miss M like a safety tube. When Miss M became a teenager, her mother would routinely disapprove of any man she was dating.

Miss M moved to America to get away from her mother (although she wasn’t aware of that consciously). Her mother called her every day, and Miss M would report to her the details of her love life. One after another she disapproved of her beaus and entreated Miss M to return to Russia. As Miss M went through one beau after another, she was beside herself, unable to understand the confusion within. One part wanted to give herself to a man; the other wanted to remain loyal to her mother. She suffered from confusion, depression and suicidal thoughts--a depression similar to Ruslana Korushnova’s.

Whether Ruslana had a similar childhood can only be mere speculation. But we do know that children from healthy families do not normally become suicidal.

Jealousy: the invisible hatred

In a recent interview Tish Cyrus, mother of teen star Miley Cyrus, complained that school mates were mean to her daughter. She related an incident where Miley was locked in a school bathroom for an hour by a group of girls. Apparently this was just one of many such acts of meanness.

It is not uncommon for exceptional children to arouse jealousy and meanness from those around them who are not as attractive or talented. A well-known illustration of this theme is the story of Cinderella, a beautiful girl whose stepsisters, lacking her beauty, are jealous of and nasty to her.

Jealous people not only disguise their meanness from themselves and others, but also are often unaware of it. If you ask them, “Are you jealous?” they will seldom admit it. Hence is seems to come out of nowhere—to be invisible. Jealousy is perhaps the most reviled feeling, and one that is most often disowned. This makes the acts of meanness of jealous people all the more devastating. Because these acts are disguised, they seem to come from left field. Jealous people are the typical wolves in sheep's clothing.

The jealousy-fueled acts of meanness that are directed at children are not only hurtful but perplexing. Tish Cyrus noted that Miley didn't understand why her schoolmates hated her. She had never done anything to them. She had been herself. But what she was unaware of was that her self stood out markedly. She had oodles of beauty, charm and talent that others resented. Every little girl wants to be a princess, and many are told they are princesses and come to believe it. Then when they meet a real princess, they are smitten with jealousy and with an urge to knock the real princess down.

Jealous is not limited to females by any means. Shakespeare knew this feeling well and portrayed it in plays such as Othello, where Iago's jealousy of Othello causes him to scheme the downfall of the latter. Iago is a narcissistic personality, and jealousy is found most often in narcissistic people. Narcissistic people have a need to be superior, to be admired and possess the attributes that would make them superior and admired. Often times a narcissistic parent will raise a narcissistic child. The child is not exceptional, but the mother wants so badly for her child to be exceptional that she convinces herself and the child that the latter is exceptional. Think about the stage mother syndrome.

Such an individual, told from early childhood on that she is superior, will demand to be treated that way. And such an individual, when she meets someone who truly has the attributes she wishes she had, will be filled with disappointment, jealousy and rage.

Healthy people do not feel jealous of others. They accept themselves, whether they are beautiful or plain, short or tall, smart or less than smart. People have difficulty accepting themselves when they have been told to be great but do not feel great deep inside. What they feel deep inside is emptiness.

Because they don't want to know about their emptiness, they remain unconscious of it. When they meet people who are truly superior, they resent them for feeling good about themselves. They view healthy self-esteem as conceit. So they have an urge to knock the exceptional people down, to teach them a lesson.

Hence, the schoolmates of Miley Cyrus locked her in a bathroom. They probably did not tell each other that they were jealous of her. Instead they must have rationalized that she was conceited and needed a lesson. They focused on—and laughed at—her weakness.

Thursday, July 9, 2009

Forgiveness, not revenge, is the answer

"It's not what you're eating. It's what's eating you!"

This old saying describes what happens when you suffer from prolonged stress. Chronic stress eats away inside of you. It causes your sympathetic nervous system to become continually aroused. It releases various chemicals in your body that become toxic after a while; pours sugar into your system; blocks your vessels; and weakens your immune system.

Many people attempt to deal with stress by taking some action, particularly when the cause of stress is anger at a person or situation. If somebody hurts you, you want to hurt them back. Revenge appears to be human nature. We see the motif of revenge again and again in the popular media, and often it is glorified. A man's family is horrifically murdered, and he becomes a one-man vigilante, going on a mission to eradicate all evil people from the world.

In the movies, he is made to be a hero. But such themes leave out the aftermath of revengeful behavior. Revenge has consequences. If you kill somebody in real life, even if you think it is justified, the action brings legal as well as emotional consequences. It may also bring counter-revenge. As it says in the Bible, “Violence begets violence.”

When people cannot assuage their anger through revenge, they often dwell on those who have hurt them. Day after day, night after night, they obsess about them, fantasize about ways of getting back at them, imagine ways such people might bring about their own ruin. They are also continually regretting things and putting themselves down. This constant brooding does absolutely no good but instead causes a great deal of harm.

Revenge appeals to people because it is a quick and simple solution, and it places the responsibility for one's disturbance on others. Hence, the solution is external, not internal.

But revenge is not the real answer to stress related to anger. The real answer is internal: forgiveness.
Forgiveness is not a simple thing. It is a long and complicated process. You can't just decide to forgive somebody who has hurt you. You have to look at things in a different way, and that takes time.

First of all, you have to work through the anger. That means not only talking to somebody about your anger, venting it, and letting it go, but also understanding it on the deepest level. Understanding it on this level means understanding why this incident happened and how similar incidents have happened in the past. Finally, it means understanding your contribution to the incident and forgiving yourself for that contribution.

Finally you are at a place where you may be able to forgive the person or persons who hurt you. Again, you will have to go through a process. First of all, you will ask yourself, “Why should I forgive someone who has been so mean to me?” The forgiveness is not for their sakes. It is for your sake. You do not have to love them. You do not have to see them again. But you do have to stop dwelling on them, and you can stop that by forgiving them.

A final part of the forgiveness process is to understand that you have also hurt people. We all do. If you think back on all the people you've hurt, it is easier to forgive those who hurt you.

Revenge leads to unrest; forgiveness to serenity.

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Brain Study: Psychotherapy works

Psychotherapy really works! This is according to new brain studies that show psychotherapy induces changes to brain function in the same way that drug treatments do.Veena Kumari conducted the studies at the Institute of Psychiatry and later published her results in a 2006 issue of the journal, Acta Neuropsychiatrica.

With regard to depression, her recent brain imaging study found recovery was associated with decreased metabolism in a part of the brain known as the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, both in patients who had improved after taking Seroxat, a medicine for depression, and in patients who had undergone cognitive behavioral psychotherapy. Successful therapy was also associated with brain changes that were not found after using Seroxat, including increased activity in the cingulate, frontal and hippocampus regions of the brain.

Similarly, in a study of obsessive compulsive disorder, a disorder in which people become obsessed with certain fears and perform compulsive rituals to prevent them, both cognitive behavioral psychotherapy and the use of Prozac were linked with brain changes Kumari referred to as “the right caudate metabolic rate.”

Cognitive behavioral therapy is known to be beneficial to schizophrenia patients who don’t respond to antipsychotic medication but no research has yet been published on its effects on the brain.

“The reviewed studies clearly demonstrate that psychological interventions, such as CBT, are able to modify activity in dysfunctional neural circuitries linked to the development of various psychopathological conditions,” Kumari concluded in her comparison review.

She added that psychotherapy may provide a clearer insight into the brain changes associated with recovery from mental illness because “it has minimal side-effects (if any) and [unlike drugs] lacks direct pharmaceutical actions to obscure brain changes directly related to behavioral change….”

The comparison of the effects of drug therapy and psychotherapy, however, only goes so far. Even if both have the same effect on the brain, psychotherapy does something that no drug can do: it allows patients to form an attachment with another human being, and through that attachment to understand themselves.

Common to all mental disturbances is a problem in relating to others. No medication can adequately address this problem, although drugs can make a person feel generally calmer about things. Psychotherapy provides a transitional attachment in which persons can learn about their relationship issues, trust or lack thereof, fear of intimacy, anger, jealousy and suspicion.

However, this study does manage to provide a scientific evidence of the effects of psychotherapy—something that has long been needed.

Now if only the whole world would go into psychotherapy.