Gaslighting Definition, Techniques and Being Gaslighted - HealthyPlace

Gaslighting Definition, Techniques and Being Gaslighted - HealthyPlace
Excerpt:
Gaslighting is a form of emotional abuse where the abuser manipulates situations repeatedly to trick the victim into distrusting his or her own memory and perceptions. Gaslighting is an insidious form of abuse. It makes victims question the very instincts that they have counted on their whole lives, making them unsure of anything. Gaslighting makes it very likely that victims will believe whatever their abusers tell them regardless as to their own experience of the situation. Gaslighting often precedes other types of emotional and physical abuse because the victim of gaslighting is more likely to remain in other abusive situations as well.
The term "gaslighting" comes from the 1938 British play "Gas Light" wherein a husband attempts to drive his wife crazy using a variety of tricks causing her to question her own perceptions and sanity. Gas Light was made into a movie both in 1940 and 1944...

We Are One: Hurricane!

We Are One
Excerpt:
...Following the analogy those gusting winds that are hitting 80 miles per hour is the time to button down and get ready for a storm.  Too often I tried to keep going and carry on.  So not good for me.  I am learning that taking time to weather a storm and taking time to clean up afterwards is in my best interest. Where possible, I desensitize the.... 

Patience Mason's PTSD Blog: Meritorious Honor

Patience Mason's PTSD Blog
                                           My salute to Patience Mason.
Beyond wikipedia and pscho-net articles this woman was the first 'human being' I crossed on the internet when searching for so many, many things.  It is amazing how others influence one when we never actually meet them face to face or even engage in conversation.  Yet they profoundly change a life.  I truly believe before her hard work there was scant resource for most. I am not saying anymore about myself although I am deeply changed.

I deeply appreciate what this woman has done for her suffering soldiers.  I have no idea if she grasps how much she has done, not only for each of them, but for those suffering the invisible wounds of all kinds of wars.
           She deserves a medal for meritorious service to those suffering in this world.  

From her own words:
Because the fear is bone deep, and the only thing that puts it to sleep is the thought that you can maybe patch a few of the holes in the swiss cheese net under the high wire. Because we are fright­ened from the moment we wake until the moment we sleep, and if we can stave that off for someone else, well, then maybe that’s some­thing to live for.
And that’s for those of us who get off easy. In the worst cases, people aren’t able to find meaning in a reg­ular job, or in wealth-building, or rela­tion­ships, or any of the things that modern soci­eties tell us charts the course of a life. These are the people that PTSD takes, as they flail their way into sui­cide, or crime, or insanity, des­per­ately trying to carve meaning out of a world where all the goal posts have sud­denly moved, where the giant ques­tion that no one can answer is, “why bother?”

The root of the treat­ment has to come from meeting those who suffer where they are. It isn’t just hard oper­a­tors. It’s clerks and phle­botomists and chem­ical engi­neers. It’s people who thought they were fine, only to wake up one morning and realize that the last few years have changed them in ways they don’t quite under­stand. It isn’t just sol­diers and cops and ER nurses. Life in poverty can bring on PTSD. An abu­sive parent can have the same effect.
We need to treat the fear, address the world view, acknowl­edging that these aren’t things you cure, maybe aren’t even things you change. We need to tip our hat to the trauma, and look instead at what the life after it looks like. We have to find a way to con­struct sig­nif­i­cance, to help a changed person forge a path in a world that hasn’t changed along with them.
And if you’re a vet, or an EMT, or a cop, or fire­fighter and you’re reading this, I want you to know that you can’t put the cur­tain back, but it’s pos­sible to build ways to move for­ward, to find alter­na­tives to the rush of crisis. There are ways you can matter.
              There is a way to rejoin the dust of the world, to find your own space on the dance floor.

             On this Memorial Day she deserves our gratitude for she is a wife who took it to the trenches.

We Are One: In Flander's Field

We Are One: In Flander's Field
Excerpt:

by John McCrae, May 1915

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

http://www.greatwar.co.uk/poems/john-mccrae-in-flanders-fields.htm
[...]

Just received this from my sister:

As I came out of the supermarket that sunny day, pushing my cart of groceries towards my car, I saw an old man with the hood of his car up and a lady sitting inside the car, with the door open. The old man was looking at the engine. I put my groceries away in my car, and continued to watch the old gentleman from about twenty five feet away.

I saw a young man in his early twenties with a grocery bag in his arm walking towards the old man. The old gentleman saw him coming too, and took a few steps towards him.

I saw the old gentleman point to his open hood and say something. The young man put his grocery bag into what looked like a brand new Cadillac Escalade. He then turned back to the old man. I heard him yell at the old gentleman saying:'You shouldn't even be allowed to drive a car at your age.' And then with a wave of his hand, he got in his car and peeled rubber out of the parking lot.

I saw the old gentleman pull out his handkerchief, and mop his brow as he went back to his car and again looked at the engine. He then went to his wife and spoke with her; he appeared to tell her it would be okay. I had seen enough, and I approached the old man. He saw me coming and stood straight, and as I got near him I said, 'Looks like you're having a problem.'

He smiled sheepishly, and quietly nodded his head. I looked under the hood myself, and knew that whatever the problem was, it was beyond me. Looking around, I saw a gas station up the road, and I told the old man that I would be right back. I drove to the station and went inside. I saw three attendants working on cars. I approached one of them, and related the problem the old man had with his car. I offered to pay them if they could follow me back down and help him.

The old man had pushed the heavy car under the shade of a tree and appeared to be comforting his wife. When he saw us he straightened up and thanked me for my help. As the mechanics diagnosed the problem (overheated engine), I spoke with the old gentleman.

When I shook hands with him earlier, he had noticed my Marine Corps ring and had commented about it, telling me that he had been a Marine too. I nodded and asked the usual question, 'What outfit did you serve with?'    

He had served with the first Marine Division at Guadalcanal , Pelieliu, and Okinawa                         

He had hit three of the worst ones, and retired from the Corps after the war was over. As we talked we heard the car engine come on and saw the mechanics lower the hood. They came over to us as the old man reached for his wallet, but was stopped by

me. I told him I would just put the bill on my AAA card.

He still reached for the wallet and handed me a card that I assumed had his name and address on it, and I stuck it in my pocket. We all shook hands all around again, and I said my goodbye's to his wife.

I then told the two mechanics that I would follow them back up to the station. Once at the station, I told them that they had interrupted heir own jobs to come along with me and help the old man. I said I wanted to pay for the help, but they refused to charge me. One of them pulled out a card from his pocket, looking exactly like the card the old man had given to me. Both of the men told me then that they were Marine Corps Reserves. Once again we shook hands all around and as I was leaving, one of them told me I should look at the card the old man had given to me. I said I would and drove off.

For some reason I had gone about two blocks, when I pulled over and took the card out of my pocket and looked at it for a long, long time.

The name of the old gentleman was on the card in golden leaf and under his name was written: 'Congressional Medal of Honor Society.'

I sat there motionless, looking at the card and reading it over and over.

I looked up from the card and smiled to no one but myself and marveled that on this day, four Marines had all come together because one of us needed help. He was an old man all right, but it felt good to have stood next to greatness and courage, and an honor to have been in his presence.

Remember, as we approach another Memorial Day, OLD men like him gave you, and all of us, FREEDOM for America .

Thanks to those who served and still serve, and to all of those who supported them, and who continue to support them.America is not at war. The U.S. Military is at war. America is at the Mall. If you don't stand behind our troops, PLEASE feel free to stand in

front of them! Remember, Freedom isn't Free. Thousands have paid the price, so that you can enjoy what you have today.

Marine captures emotional military homecomings | Watch the video - Yahoo! Screen

Marine captures emotional military homecomings | Watch the video - Yahoo! Screen

The Right Pundit: Memorial Day

The Right Pundit: Memorial Day

Mental Health Awareness Month - Headlines and Quiet Shadows | Family Mental Health

Mental Health Awareness Month - Headlines and Quiet Shadows | Family Mental Health
Excerpt:
The point of Mental Health Awareness Month is to go beyond the headlines and the popular conceptions of mental health. To really understand people who have mental illness, you need to explore the quiet shadows. The vast majority of these individuals face their symptoms without ever becoming a news story.
New moms experience postpartum depression in the middle of the night as they care for their newborns. Elderly people with depression face another day by avoiding social interaction any way they can. Teens with anxiety turn down invitations from friends to avoid having a panic attack in public. Adults with bipolar disorder try to sort out the trouble from dramatic mood swings within the privacy of a counselor’s office.
More than likely, you know someone who has recently struggled with some kind of mental health issue. It’s important to know that many mental health problems can have mild or moderate symptoms and are very treatable. Even though severe problems can grab headlines once in a while, they do not represent the majority of mental illness experiences.
====================
Bumper Stickers:
'Everyone Needs Therapy'
'All Roads Lead to Therapy'
'You Are Not Alone in This Fight'

If you haven't seen this, you should - Light On Dark Water

If you haven't seen this, you should - Light On Dark Water

LINEN ON THE HEDGEROW: "Disabled children should be put down"

LINEN ON THE HEDGEROW: "Disabled children should be put down"
My Note: Now if you REALLY want to talk about 'crazy' check this out. And supposedly a 'leader(?)' of his community?
Excerpt:
That anyone could be so callous and crass in making such a statement is beyond comprehension, yet that is what, allegedly, Cornish Councillor, Colin Brewer has said.

Both The Independent and The Huffington Post carried the story, extracts below:-

The Cornish councillor who was re-elected despite saying that disabled children "should be put down because they cost too much money" has again insisted that there may be a case for killing some disabled children with high support needs...

[...]

Looking for analogies to support his view, Brewer compared disabled children to farmers' treatment of animals, telling the agency: “If they have a misshapen lamb, they get rid of it. They get rid of it. Bang!” He continued: "We are just animals. He [the farmer] obviously has got a point… 

============

My Response: There we have it: 'We are just animals.'  Thus we have reached the 'crown' of Darwinian socialism who not only deny God, it seems, but man.  So who belongs to this 'elite' group of theirs--if not God or man?  The crux of the matter: socialism reducts everything to this thus denying the soul.  Now who I wonder hates man and so denigrates him?

For over a decade I was Education Director at a 'special' school.  It was my job to coordinate with the university and community in training developmentally disabled adults and teens to live and work in the community.  I will never forget when the first (US)government interventions began.  The institutions were to be emptied out with residents sent back to families for 'local' agencies--including public schools--to train and care for. For a solid week I was required to participate in 'testing' each one's skills.  One afternoon a middle-aged gentleman who worked in the greenhouse/farm area came in.  He was irritated that he had to leave his job.  Staff, employers, and residents alike respected and liked him.  I was tired and irritated too after a day of utter inane questioning.  So I went right to the point with him.  

"Can you read, Pete?"

He retorted: "I read my Bible everyday.  Do you?"

Pete passed. 

Oh, BTW.  He was diagnosed with brain-damage and Down's Syndrome.  I wonder if Mr. Brewer has read Exodus?  I think he will find the injunction:  "Thou shall not kill."  It doesn't take an act of God to declare which human being I have greater respect for.

A Mirror to the Cage

Holding a mirror up to the cage of how people treat one another and the fall-out from that can be a gruesome experience.  The ignorance is the most difficult static to clear from being able to really see illness, diagnose it wisely and treat it humanely.  

                                  “Don’t throw pearls before swine,” is very astute.   

No one really appreciates bullying gossipmongers and those who mock anything they don’t understand.

While discussion is necessary, today that often turns into ‘mud pit’ brawls with mocking cat calls.  

My posts represent trying to sort out the crap so that hurting desperate people caught up in the morass of ‘the cage’ of the present day traumas can find peace and healing.  Nothing less and nothing else. 

I really only welcome those readers to this blog who compassionately wish to find bona fide spiritual and emotional healing for themselves, those they treat or those who have friends and family suffering in these areas.  I seek no fame, followers, money or favor.  I don't really care whether someone likes or dislikes what I blog about.  I have family and friends who are suffering and my task is to comfort them.  I work very hard at doing that and put in a lot time, tears, effort and money for that one task...for that one heart that I love..for that one smile I receive from the one I love...

In a civilized society that should be everyone’s task.  There is only one controversy: people do terrible things to other people even in families and societal structures are not wise and compassionate enough to find healing and prevention methods that sustain the wisdom journey to find healing.

Elizabeta Furst

Elizabeta Furst

Elizabeta Fürst was born in 1928 as a daughter of the Lendava inn-keeper Aladar Deutsch. The Deutsch family was a bourgeois family: "We lived well," recalls Elizabeta Fürst, "but we were not wealthy." After her mother died in 1937, the nine-year old Elizabeta stayed alone with her father while her two-year old sister Judita was sent to her grand-mother in Hungary, to Zalaegerszeg. The Hungarian occupation of Prekmurje in 1941 led to a confiscation of her father's inn as well as the bowling next to it and therefore deprived the family of its only source of income. "A Jew could not own an inn in town." In 1943, Elizabeta completed her lower gymnasium, but was not accepted to the gymnasium because of the numerous clausus for Jews that was already in place by then. "My father did not want me to learn to become a dressmaker. I would have liked to, but he did not want me to. So, I stayed at home for a year." The Jews of Lendava were forced to wear the yellow Star of David from 1 April 1944 onwards. "After this date", recalls Elizabeta Fürst, "my friends, with one exception, did not want to walk with me in the street anymore." Other prohibitions were also introduced at that time, for example, Jews were not allowed to bath in the municipal swimming pool any longer. On 26 April 1944 at around 9 am, Hungarian gendarmes came to the house of the Deutsch family and informed them that they had to come to the synagogue with only the essential luggage. The following morning, Elizabeta Fürst and all the Jews from Lendava were deported first to Čakovec and then to Nagykanizsa where they were put up in the local school building. From there on, the Germans deported people between the ages of 17 and 60 to Auschwitz, including Elizabeta's father Aladar Deutsch. "He was deported with the first transport and gassed immediately. I know this for sure because nobody ever saw him in the lager." Elizabeta and Judita Deutsch, as well as their aunt and uncle from Črenšovci stayed in Nagykanizsa for three more weeks.  They arrived to Auschwitz on 21 May 1944 after having traveled for three days. Elizabeta Fürst thus described the journey: "It was horrible. Seventy-five people in one cattle train car, without water, food or anything." Dr. Mengele separated the two sisters immediately upon their arrival. "'You go there and you there,' he said. I knew that Judit would not survive." .... Hannah Starman (hannah.starman@guest.arnes.si)

“Age has nothing to do with the template that Beckett has pressed into my soul.” | The Book Haven

“Age has nothing to do with the template that Beckett has pressed into my soul.” | The Book Haven
Excerpt:
Occasionally, you hear someone blather on about how art can change your soul.  And far more rarely, you run across someone for whom it’s actually true.
Over at “A Piece of Monologue,” Rhys Trantor interviews 79-year-old actor and former felon Rick Cluchey, founding director of San Quentin Drama Workshop. Cluchey discovered Samuel Beckett and theater at the same time, while serving a sentence for armed robbery.  It’s a moving and powerful story, and it’s here...



[Dr. Murray Cox - Thank you.]

Faces of mental illness: Patients share their stories | Photo Gallery - Yahoo! News

Faces of mental illness: Patients share their stories | Photo Gallery - Yahoo! News
Excerpt:  First three below:

DSM5: Rewriting the Diagnostic Bible | BREVITY's Nonfiction Blog

DSM5: Rewriting the Diagnostic Bible | BREVITY's Nonfiction Blog
Excerpt:
Sometimes a book is more than just a book: it is an occasion for high anxiety.  For instance, in just a few days, the American Psychiatric Association will unveil the fifth edition of its handbook of diagnoses, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. More than a few – patients and professionals and caregivers – are upset with what they expect to find there. In today’s guest blog, psychiatric nurse practitioner Nina Gaby examines how the controversy might play out in one family:
...Appendices become sections. Axes morph. Spectrums of quirk. Structure disintegrates. What is already less science than art becomes even more subjective. The world as she knows it is crumbling. 992 pages. Releases to the big shots on May 18...Controversy has overshadowed common sense. She takes it personally.
It has done away with the Multi-Axial System. Axes 1-5 initially provided a template on which to place symptoms, psychosocial stressors; quantifying functioning and listing criteria, stuff that people hate to hear, but clinicians rely on. We have only moments to evaluate, diagnose, develop a treatment plan, and find a billable code. You don’t like being reduced to numbers? Okay, says the older sister, then pay for it yourself. Personality still takes on blame, but has lost its own axis. (Is it scrim or lens? the older sister snorts.) The proposed windmills of domain and level and trait, internet process addictions and other tasty problems will reside for the next decade, unreimbursed, in the nether land of Section 3. Others have died altogether.

Bereavement, Excoriation, Hoarding, Asperger’s. No, yes, yes, no.
=================

Medical advice from Bertie Wooster 

From the opening of Aunts Aren't Gentlemen (1974):

"Jeeves," I said at the breakfast table, "I've got spots on my chest."

"Indeed, sir?"

"Pink."

"Indeed, sir?"

"I don't like them."

"A very understandable prejudice, sir. Might I enquire if they itch?"

"Sort of."

"I would not advocate scratching them."

"I disagree with you. You have to take a firm line with spots. Remember what the poet said."

"Sir?"

"The poet Ogden Nash. The poem he wrote defending the practice of scratching. Who was Barbara Frietchie, Jeeves?"

"A lady of some prominence in the American war between the states, sir."

"A woman of strong character? One you could rely on?"

"So I have always understood, sir."

"Well, here's what the poet Nash wrote. 'I'm greatly attached to Barbara Frietchie. I'll bet she scratche when she was itchy.' But I shall not be content with scratching. I shall place myself in the hands of a competent doctor."

"A very prudent decision, sir."

-from Levi Stahl at Ivebeenreadinglately Blog

Portland police officer stops car chase to help duck | The Sideshow - Yahoo! News

Portland police officer stops car chase to help duck | The Sideshow - Yahoo! News

Tension of Uniqueness

Psychiatry and Psychotherapy

A recent article and buzz about the decreasing use of psychotherapy by psychiatrists is further evidence of a social shift away from relating to others as people. Our use of torture as a nation, the "axis of evil" language from our government, and the increasing psychiatric view of symptoms as reflections of neurons and chemicals suggests that we may be in a social withdrawal from being able to face and bear the pain of human experience. The Austen Riggs Center' s Eric Plakun speaks for the tension in psychiatry between two models of treatment: biological and psychological. He argues that they must be integrated for a full picture of our patients. Shifting away from the area that psychoanalysis has so carefully developed of listening to others with disciplined empathy runs the risk of losing the embedded set of values about the significance of the individual life.   ~Dr. Edward Shapiro,M.D.,  Lost in Familiar Places

No Comfort Zone: Notes on Living with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder: Marla Handy: 9780983111108: Amazon.com: Books

No Comfort Zone: Notes on Living with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder: Marla Handy: 9780983111108: Amazon.com: Books
No Comfort Zone exposes a jagged slice of humanity that is all too present, but often shielded from our view. The author challenges us to see life as she does, so we can understand a bit of what it’s like to live with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). With insight and humor, she describes the fear and unpredictability of growing up in an unstable household, the terror of being raped as a young adult, and the confusion and shame of living with perceptions and reactions that are often so very different from others’. After years of treatment for depression, a diagnosis of PTSD came as a surprise. Isn’t this something that only happens to combat veterans? But it made sense. In writing this highly personal account, Marla Handy helps the rest of us understand what PTSD is and that it happens here at home, too.
================================
Excerpt:

“ I react to the world as I do because I’ve had my personal safety violated, which also makes me the type of victim that many need to call survivors.  Otherwise, we make them uncomfortable.

   They need us to move on, to be heroic, so they can be inspired and comforted by the acceptable ending to our saga.  Recognizing that someone may be living in a continuous state of injury is too depressing and makes them feel powerless.  And feeling powerless is scary.

But the fear of powerlessness is different than fear as entertainment or the fear of reaching out to expand one’s sense of competency in the world.  This is the type of fear that invades and dissolves your comfort zone, leaving you bare and vulnerable.  It’s terrifying.

Powerlessness is not a state that many people choose to stay in for very long, so they move away from it.  They explicitly or silently tell those who are injured or grieving to hurry on to the hero, or at least the stoic, stage.  Get up.  Get over it.  Get on with it.

“Hey, sorry for your problems but don’t let this change my life or my sense of safety.”

But that momentary terror of powerlessness?  It’s just a whiff of what it’s like to live with post-traumatic stress disorder.  Because with PTSD there is no comfort zone.  Ever.

PTSD is both a result of randomness and a source of it.  It is a conditioned reaction to living in terror of the next horrible event.  It also apparently creates random physical and emotional reactions to routine life events.  You can’t trust the world and you can’t make sense of your reactions to it.  Nothing fits together in a logical pattern.

It’s enough to make you think you’re crazy.

As a child, our family often appeared normal to the outside...

Being hypervigilant is like being trapped in a haunted house, always anticipating a shock.  The anticipation is so high that even minor events can cause a major jolt.  A clanging pot or a coaster falling to the floor can cause me to jump and gasp.  It happens at home...(or anywhere)...(and everywhere)...

Joke:

Why will there never be a ‘Race for the Cure’ for PTSD?  Because the starting pistol would cause half the runners to hit the ground in panic.

....Marla Handy, Ph.D.

Intro to Making Peace with Chronic PTSD

First Known When Lost: Four-Line Poems, Part Seven: "Sighs Nature An Alas? Or Merely, Amen?"

First Known When Lost: Four-Line Poems, Part Seven: "Sighs Nature An Alas? Or Merely, Amen?"
Excerpt:
Harvest Home

A bird flies up from the hayfield;
Sweet, to distraction, is the new-mown grass:
But I grieve for its flowers laid low at noonday --
        And only this poor Alas!

I grieve for War's innocent lost ones --
The broken loves, the mute goodbye,
The dread, the courage, the bitter end,
The shaken faith, the glazing eye.

O bird, from the swathes of that hayfield --
The rancid stench of the grass!
And a heart stricken mute by that Harvest Home --
        And only this poor Alas!

Walter de la Mare, The Burning-Glass and Other Poems (1945).

Warning Signs: Honoring Your Mom

Warning Signs: Honoring Your Mom
Excerpt:

My Mother lived to age 98 and was my dearest friend. She was an internationally famed authority on wines, an author of several cookbooks, and a teacher of gourmet food preparation for some three decades. She was a cheerful person whom my late father adored...

We Are One: Learning to honor women

We Are One: Learning to honor women

Trauma Writes Its Own Script

  “That’s not the shape of my heart.”     -Sting

Dis-ease exists.  Its ubiquitous nature twists and turns in smoky veils in and out of the crevices of the mountains.  Yet the modern, stultifying and skeptical stoicism increasingly forces denial on sufferers. To continue on this path of irresponsibility in caring and respecting people who are in pain and need is not just a society choosing to embrace ignorant indifference, it is a sinful, gross negligence and has led to great suffering.  A patient wearily responded to his therapist: “A fuckin’ pill is not going to heal me.”  That being said ‘wise diagnoses’ must include safe, efficacious medicines proscribed by mature, healthy and qualified ‘healers’. 

                                  There’s a point isn’t there?

“Comfort My people.” –God

The dis-ease in almost every case is a result of societal unrests along a continuum from family to government to institutions.  The dis-ease in almost every case is strongly affected by the creeds and ideologies of the variety of groups.  As the drug culture hammers away at the foundations of our civilization destroying not just individuals but whole families, the myopic views toward the nature of being and suffering become one more nail in the coffin of tormented sufferers.

And since we have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let each exercise them accordingly: if prophecy, according to the proportion of his faith; if service, in his serving; or he who teaches, in his teaching; or he who exhorts, in his exhortation; he who gives, with liberality; he who leads, with diligence; he who shows mercy, with cheerfulness. (Romans 12:6-8)

...that is, that I may be encouraged together with you while among you, each of us by the other's faith, both yours and mine. (Romans 1:12)

And we urge you, brethren, admonish the unruly, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with all men. (1 Thessalonians 5:14)

 

Metaphor provides an avenue of indirect communication between patient and therapist, later to be exchanged for a more direct communication, and also provides the patient and therapist with a measure of relief not available with encounter of a more direct nature. Cox and Thielgaard (1987)state:

We found that an image could safely hold experience which was too painful, too brittle, or too broken to be firm enough to tolerate analysis. Such patients enabled us to see that the image, activated by metaphor, could be the location of exploration of the fabric of support. (p.xiii)

Cox and Thielgaard (1987, p.xiii) use as a key to their book, the words of Bachelard: "But the image has touched the depths before it stirs the surface."...

Cox and Theilgaard (1987) describe how the metaphor 'I wonder who would win the medal for skating on thin ice?', introduced into a group session, furthered a therapeutic process in both an exploratory and a supportive direction. Sometimes a fusion of inner and outer world phenomena is encouraged. For example, one patient in the group referred to the failure of his social supports while another referred to the 'thin ice' being inside him, implying threatening loss of internal control. They say: "each member proclaimed experience which would have remained concealed, had it not been for the skating on thin ice mutative metaphor." (Cox and Theilgaard, 1987, p.80).

The metaphor energises alternative ways of viewing experience, bringing to the surface material that the patient has hitherto tried to suppress and placing that material in the "pending action file" (Cox and Theilgaard, 1987, p.99).

The metaphor permits the therapist to sail as close to the wind as possible in the face of the ever present risk of going too far too fast, which could block therapeutic movement and progress. Cox and Theilgaard (1987) refer to Kahn's (1979) statement that metaphors have the ability to intensify the patient's already deep initiative by taking the therapeutic process a step further.     ~Dr Aharon Segal, Metaphors in Psychotherapy

...“there is no definition of a mental disorder. It’s bullshit. I mean, you just can’t define it.” Then an odd, reflective look crosses his face, as if he’s taking in the strangeness of this scene: Allen Frances, lead editor of the fourth edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (universally known as the DSM-IV), the guy who wrote the book on mental illness, confessing that “these concepts are virtually impossible to define precisely with bright lines at the boundaries.” For the first time in two days, the conversation comes to an awkward halt...”

However, I find the statements by Allen Frances comforting because no one in the health profession worth his salt can long deny the reality of the unique sanctity of each human being and the awful individualistic realities of the causes underlying ‘mental illness’—a misnomer.  Labels are skeletal outlines—at best.  The ‘focus’ should always be the total human being suffering, in desperate need not the ‘outline’ or the ‘bottom line’.  Those who slap ‘propaganda’ and ‘agenda’ into the healing arena go way beyond performing a ludicrous dog-and-pony show.  The act is criminal for it breaks the healing code of ‘do no harm.’  The inept, vacuous greed-mongers should not be allowed in the profession nor should the practice of taking money from drug companies et al ever again be tolerated.  CV’s and annual salaries are not the basis of worth and efficacy as a healer.
Addendum:  


He consulted the DSM-IV and concluded that the patient had obsessive-compulsive disorder.
“Did it change the way you treated her?” I asked, noting that he’d worked with her for quite a while without naming what she had.
“No.”
“So what would you say was the value of the diagnosis?”
“I got paid.”
  ~From article on interview with Allen Frances...

I still find tears flowing when I realize that a ‘dis-ease’ shrouds my own being and my everyday life.  I have studied and fought the battle from chemistry, pharmaceutical essays, physiological treatises to religious tracts, the Bible, papal and saint writings, healing gifts to poets and their lives to psychotherapy tomes to epistemologists, philologists and philosophers. My complex journey through the mountains of the mind and soul and heart only confirm the presence of more mountains, more ravines and more oceans.  There is little I have not only read but studied, hard.  I and thou are realities for me as are subject-object. 

A child in trauma—whatever the source—doesn’t have the toolbox of resources to withstand such horrific forces tearing into his entire being.  It is tremendously difficult enough for the adult for the duration of his life to deal with such deep and profound things. 

But for a child...

 

                                    

                     

First Known When Lost: A Single Flower

First Known When Lost: A Single Flower
Excerpt:
As I was out walking this week, I noticed a single flower growing in a seam of the sidewalk.  It had five yellow petals, and was about three-eighths of an inch in diameter.  I searched, but I could not find any similar flowers nearby.

The world around us contains innumerable small dispensations of this sort, doesn't it?...........

An Inner Fire

                               'A Fire Shared'

This evening I have spent
in the Irishwoman's room.
A fire shared is a fire cheaper.
A twelvemonth since
I knew her not at all.
Our hearths were crowded then
but now it is fitting
that one of them bides cold.
A fire shared is a fire cheaper by far.
She has enough English now
for January tales
of our slavering bargeist
which stalks these dark flagged yards
intent on the taking of children.
She would not have understood a year ago.
A year ago her English was just enough
for blessing or cursing,
to ask the price of bread
or direction to a pump.
But now a fire shared
is a fine instructive tutor.
She has enough English now
to match my bargeists and goblins
with pookas and suchlike,
and I find I have learned what these are,
from many a night
spent sharing and cheapening fire.
A twelvemonth ago I would not have known
the Irish for 'sorrow', 'cholera', 'children',
or who stood by me at the same wide grave-mouth
as we wept after each of our fashions.
But now I know these things,
which are things I have learned
in the school of the ruined hearth,
which is held in both our rooms,
where a fire shared
is the cheapest fire of all.    ~Peter Didsbury, h/t Books: Guardian:UK, Review, 6/28/10
                                'On A Vulgar Error'

No. It's an impudent falsehood.  Men did not
Invariably think the newer way
Prosaic, mad, inelegant, or what not.

Was the first pointed arch esteemed a blot
Upon the church?  Did anybody say
How modern and how ugly?  They did not.

Plate-armour, or windows glazed, or verse fire-hot
With rhymes from France, or spices from Cathay,
Were these at first a horror?  They were not.

If, then, our present arts, laws, houses, food
All set us hankering after yesterday,
Need this be only an archaising mood?

Why, any man whose purse has been let blood
By sharpers, when he finds all drained away
Must compare how he stands with how he stood.

If a quack doctor's breezy ineptitude
Has cost me a leg, must I forget straightaway
All that I can't do now, all that I could?

So, when our guides unanimously decry
The backward glance, I think we can guess why.     ~C. S. Lewis, Poems (1964), page 60.
                                     'End and Beginning'
After every war
someone has to clean up.
Things won’t
straighten themselves up, after all.

Someone has to push the rubble
to the sides of the road,
so the corpse-laden wagons
can pass.

Someone has to get mired
in scum and ashes,
sofa springs,
splintered glass,
and bloody rags.

Someone must drag in a girder
to prop up a wall.
Someone must glaze a window,
rehang a door.

Photogenic it’s not,
and takes years.
All the cameras have left
for another war.

Again we’ll need bridges
and new railway stations.
Sleeves will go ragged
from rolling them up.

Someone, broom in hand,
still recalls how it was.
Someone listens
and nods with unsevered head.
Yet others milling about
already find it dull.

From behind the bush
sometimes someone still unearths
rust-eaten arguments
and carries them to the garbage pile.

Those who knew
what was going on here
must give way to
those who know little.
And less than little.
And finally as little as nothing.

In the grass which has overgrown
causes and effects,
someone must be stretched out,
blade of grass in his mouth,
gazing at the clouds.            ~Wislawa Szymborska(translated by Joanna Trzeciak)

Wislawa Szymborska, a Polish poet who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1996.

And With Love...

 Update: Sorry.  Forgot: h/t Dolce Bellazza blog...
"...I did a Google search and discovered it's nothing more than a MacGuffin. "A MacGuffin?" you say, "what the heck is that?"  Funny you should ask, as I did, for here's the definition from Wikipedia:

A MacGuffin (sometimes McGuffin or maguffin) is "a plot element that catches the viewers' attention or drives the plot of a work of fiction".

Sometimes, the specific nature of the MacGuffin is not important to the plot such that anything that serves as a motivation serves its purpose. The MacGuffin can sometimes be ambiguous, completely undefined, generic or left open to interpretation.

The MacGuffin is common in films, especially thrillers. Commonly, though not always, the MacGuffin is the central focus of the film in the first act, and later declines in importance as the struggles and motivations of characters play out. Sometimes the MacGuffin is even forgotten by the end of the film.

So, even if you don't like Madeleine L'Engle (impossible as that is for me to imagine), or fantasy (which is less impossible), you have now either learned something new or been reminded of a literary technique. Fascinating, huh?

Specific to A Swiftly Tilting Planet, though, is this beautiful 5th century Irish poem named St. Patrick's rune:

At Tara in this fateful hour
I place all Heaven with its power,
And the sun with its brightness
And the snow with its whiteness,
And the fire with all the strength it hath
And the lightning with its rapid wrath,
And the winds with their swiftness along their path
And the sea with its deepness,
And the rocks with their steepness
And the earth with its starkness
All these I place
By God's almighty help and grace
Between myself and the powers of darkness."

...More important to me than the plot, is the message within it: as always with Madeleine, a message of faith despite what one sees..."

Καθολικός διάκονος: How does grace work?

Καθολικός διάκονος: How does grace work?
Excerpt:
I don't know how grace works, I only know that it does. What's so amazing about grace to me is that God always meets my need. I know for a fact that it is not because I deserve it, or because I have done something good. I guess that's the part I don't get....
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in