Posted by Thanks for your comments some clarification on February 26, 2000, at 3:07:53
In reply to DJ, posted by Renee N on February 26, 2000, at 1:10:44
If you have chosen to take offense at my comments, I'm sorry to read that. Sure I have been pumping the Haven but there's nothing going on that's cultish there (far from it), just sheer gratitude on my behalf. However clumsily, in my own way, I am expessing my appreciation publically here for all that I've learned in the workshops there, which I know to have been key to much of my healing. That and all the other factors I have mentioned in a number of posts.
If you want to suggest that, that's the gospel according to DJ, that's fine, but far from the truth. I may come across as dogmatic in expressing my points but that's because I truly believe that ADs are a crutch and that goes against the grain here, obviously. And I believe many folks here and elsewhere do cling to their afflictions because that's part of the symptom, their identification with it and it's also supported by the predominant medical view in our society, which has value, but is far from the whole picture.
I'm not suggesting that reading any or all of the books I or anyone else has mentioned will necessarily make a difference to anyone. But they may challenge your thinking, just as they did mine and the Haven did more so, as well as show a different route. I was very identified with my depressed state and suicidal when I went to the Haven, several times, and skeptical. I was experiencing intense mental and physical discomfort as a result of being under intense stress the past year, for many reasons, which I've previously delved into here.
The programs there helped me get through that and rebalance my life by intervening in compassionate ways, challenging my thinking, and offering me other ways of looking at things which just as with true Buddhism and Christianity I am free to take or leave. Over time, I've come to believe in the power of compassion, starting with myself (and working out from there) and the methods which have worked for me and I believe will work for most people, though mileage will vary.
A few months back I would have been mortified and self-hating due to your responses. Now, I accept if for what it is, feedback from your own points of view and experiences. If they don't gel with mine, that's okay. If they do, that's okay. I'm not attached to either result.
As for anger, I have my share and I believe that the healing power of anger properly channeled is much underated. I also believe that anger is always covering up another emotion and that if we do the work, connect with that emotion and express it in an effective manner that can be very healing and in fact is at much of the root of healing. And ADs can mask those emotions and make them very difficult, if not impossibe to access.
Part of my healing has been and is working through my previously poorly expressed (to the administration) dissapointment at the quality of the IT education I received over the past year and dealing with it, in a generally constructive manner by pursuing compensation through various channels and discussing it in detail with both those who agree with me and those who don't.
Anger leaks out sometimes because it is there and it is genuine. However, I am usually less effective when I give it full rein, though on occasion that can be helpful. However, I generally believe the Buddhist take on it that it is like a hot iron ball that you swallow and it burns you all the way through. Which can certainly motivate one, though more often in a reactive manner.
One of the books I've previously mentioned is Undoing Depression by Richard O'Connor who runs a mental health clinic as well as having dealt with his own depression. He believes and makes the case, drawing from his own experience and a cross-section of psychiatric theories, that habits of depression are learned and hence can be unlearned. I concur. He also believes that ADs have their place. I also concur there.
(Here's a sample of some of his thoughts:
"This is an unorthodox theory of change and recovery. I remember how for decades the analytic community debated whether true "structural change," as opposed to mere "symptom relief," could ever come from anything other than full-blown psychoanalysis. Now prominent scientists argue that recovery can come only from medication. These dogmatic positions are appeals to magic, not reason. I believe that people can make substantial changes in how they live their emotional lives, in their personalities, even in their brain chemistry, by replacing what depression has taught them with new, more adaptive, ways of thinking, feeling, relating, and acting." (page 5)http://www.undoingdepression.com/excerpts.html)
However I also believe that just as with crutches for a broken leg, ADs are only part of the picture and are inadequate in and of themselves. You also need to set the leg properly as otherwise you not only will be in pain, you will suffer needlessly. I believe people suffer needlessly and excessively from depression and anxiety because they don't set their emotional fractures properly and hence don't heal properly and hence are weaker rather than stronger in the places where they have been injured and not properly healed.
And sometimes you may have to refracture that poorly healed appendage to properly heal. That to me is whateffective therapy, in whatever form works for you, is all about and in my experience having tried lots of group and one-on-one therapies over the past 25 years the work they do at the Haven is the most integral, clean, effective, compassionate and loving I have experienced. If I don't always do a good job of reflecting what I've learned there, well the learning never ends, though I have and will get better with time and practice. I am only human, even if + thinks (and others perhaps as well) that I am Satan's disciple, in which case I can always claim the devil made me do it ; ).
So I can go on but I won't. Take what you will and discard the rest and feel free to dismiss it all and me with it, if you so choose. That is your choice, not mine. I am at peace with myself, whether any of you are or not and regardless of any point of view you wish to project upon me. And I repeat the Irish toast I previously noted (I'll hold back on the Scottish one): "May the most you desire, be the least you achieve." And if you don't achieve bugger all, well that's unfortunate but that's life...
poster:Thanks for your comments some clarification
thread:23125
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20000220/msgs/23954.html