Psychology, as with medicine, believes it needs a diagnosis, a singular explanation for a problem. To reach a diagnosis, doctors compile symptoms until they reach a tipping point. When reached, the practitioner declares a particular dysfunction (something is not functioning) to exist. Knowing the non-functioning process in the body, the healer can proceed with treatment.
In medicine, my body reacts to itself or the environment around it, like age or virus or toxins. In psychology, a problem comes from an individual’s past experience and has no parallel in the present, but I live as if it exists now. Work in psychology tries to match a diagnostic process by analysis of brain operation. Good idea-up to a point. My brain is in my head but my mind can go anywhere. To treat this problem, experienced years ago, as if it is a brain chemistry dysfunction, is that the answer?*
Physical symptoms are responses. I popped my back. The pain made it difficult to stand straight. It was hard to exercise. It put me in bed for several days. I took muscle relaxers, why, because the muscles try to rescue a painful area by tightening around it to avoid movement, which increase the pain. I took pain relievers, why, to stop my body notifying me of the pain. I used a heating pad to loosen the muscles. True improvement came from relaxing the muscles and movement to treat the popped back.
In Psychology, I have a trauma (same as the back). The trauma feels like a raw pain, a fear I can’t handle, a frustration I can’t control, or a problem I can’t solve. I buffer the trauma. I can do it many ways. Physically, I can exercise obsessively like the person in Silver Linings Playbook by Matthew Quick. I can act out, blow up, harm others, or harm myself. The action (response) is me trying to make sense of the trauma, understand it, and problem solve it.
When the trauma first occurs, I lack the ability, knowledge, skill, or information to solve it. It lingers unsolved in my mind. Fear, frustration, powerlessness, lost control become a theme for me. I worry that the trauma will return. The knowledge of it is a memory but raw feelings remain attached. Any response I decide to institute that works to control the raw feelings becomes my answer. I act as if this solution will control the fear and never seek any other solution. I form a trusted pattern, no matter how unhealthy, that keeps the feelings away from me.
Healthy is the absence of dis-ease. If I am physically healthy, I feel good. With my mind entertaining trauma, I am not at ease. I am tense, upset, anxious, depressed, crazy, or plain miserable. These are the symptoms that the doctor treats.
A good therapist will locate the event, explain the feelings, and offer options for a new decision, one my mind understands. Once a new decision is accepted and practiced, responses change and feelings are eliminated because they are no longer needed. If I am emotionally healthy, I feel good.
I know my life events that cause me stress. When I find the pattern of how I fear and control the stress, learn to understand it, and don’t fear the feelings surrounding it. I am free.
*Psychotropic medicine is a positive treatment as a temporary respite.