Posted by psych chat on September 15, 2009, at 12:55:34
In reply to Re: 'treatment resistant depression', posted by desolationrower on September 15, 2009, at 0:20:28
My two cents are that some people need to work on the psychological issues behind the symptoms. It's easier said than done. Also, being a patient in therapy does not necessarily mean the problems are being addressed appropriately.
This article delineates the psychological and biochemical sources of pathologies but also articulates the interdependency of the two:
http://www.wholeminds.com/web/index.php?module=article&view=9&lay_quiet=1
From these descriptions of attachments combined with traumatic events, I hope one can see how excruciating life experiences foster psychopathology and somatic ailments. When talking about pathology in these terms, we are not using medical or psychological diagnoses to describe behavior or health conditions. We are focusing on coping patterns and environmental factors as the key proponents in causing symptoms, abnormal behavior, and how a person sees himself and the world around him. If he is geared up to take on the world as an adult with the residue of anger, sadness, or abandonment issues, then the world will be construed as his enemy. It is important to point out malfunctions of normal brain processing and how it is evident in behavior. Deprivation in nurturing and attunement seemingly has a role in disabling the normal tasks in self-regulation and conscious awareness. I am not admonishing genetic factors for psychological problems; however, there is a consistency with the types of attachments that show a predisposition to future psychological impairment and genetic formation. It has been proven that insecure attachments will exacerbate mental instability, whether a person is genetically misfortunate or develops psychopathology later in life.
The brain fires neurons by observing how one perceives an experience. Neurons will link together to form a neural net to match the perceived experience by associating it with old patterns and experiences. For example, if a girl had experienced physical abuse from her parents, along with being told that she is loved; even though a new experience of love from her boyfriend doesnt involve physical abuse, she has a negative reaction when her boyfriend tells her that he loves her and associates love with the feeling of being abandoned. We construct our models in our brains by the way we perceive our environment. Its like we tell ourselves a story about the outside world, whether its true or false. Any new information we take in from our environment is always colored with an association and experience we had in the past.
In short, most of us are never really experiencing the here-and-now. Physiologically nerve cells that fire together are wired together; and if you practice something over and over again, those nerve cells build a long-term relationship. If a person becomes angry on a daily basis or gives reasons for his victimization in his life, he is hardwiring and reintegrating those beliefs in his neural net, hence, creating a long-term relationship with the feeling of being angry. Because those biochemical changes are created within him, he is literally self-deprecating and sabotaging himself. This could link to the loss of volume of the hippocampus in people who have suffered from clinical depression.
poster:psych chat
thread:916286
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20090912/msgs/917216.html