Grief and Loss - SWEET INSTITUTE - Continuing Education for Mental Health Professionals

Can We Cease Suffering?

Mardoche Sidor, MD and Karen Dubin, PhD, LCSW — Thu, 18 Feb 2021 14:39:28 +0000

Here’s the truth and the answer. This article was first published in Psychology Today â€œWhat does it mean to be a human being? What is life all about? Why are we here?â€ he asked, but without waiting for a response. â€œWhy are we supposed to be here? How did we get here? And why do we have to be living a life that is so unpleasant and such a struggle?â€ He paused and then resumed: â€œIs this what life all about? Is life supposed to be this hard? Whatâ€™s the difference between these other folks who are making it and me? Those rich people, with a lot of money, born with a silver spoon in their mouth, why them, and why not me?â€ He now took a longer pause, just enough to catch his breath before proceeding and said: â€œWhat did I do to be born into this family? What sins did I commit to deserve to be born to an addict mother?â€ â€œWhy was I born mixed? Why was I not just either all white or all black? Now, where do I belong? No one accepts me except those I was smoking and using with. Now that I am sober, where do I belong? Who am I? What am I? Why am I even alive?â€ At this point, he starts to look tearful, and he then continues: â€œI can see why so many people kill themselves. I used to think it was stupid, but when you think about it, when you become realistic, you realize that they are right in just ending it.â€ This is an extract of a patient, â€œMike,â€ receiving combined psychotherapy and management. He had graduated from a specialized high school for gifted and talented students and received scholarships from three different Ivy League colleges. Mike had started college but had to leave to get treatment for substance use and mental health conditions. Now he is in recovery, back in college, working, and regularly attending his mental health services. Almost 1 million people die by suicide each year.[1] Thatâ€™s more than one person every 40 seconds, and for each person who dies, 20 persons attempt to die, which means one person attempts suicide every two seconds. Now, when accounting for confounding factors, the most common reason behind all forms of suicide, either attempted or completed, is â€œfeeling depressed.”[2] â€œFeeling depressed,â€ in turn, can be part of, or due to, various factors, one of which is related to where Mike was at that point in his life. When people die by suicide or are contemplating it, several of the questions posed by Mike at the beginning of this article are their questions as well. Before considering suicide, they have attempted to find the answers to these questions, and have often engaged in behaviors that turned out to be detrimental to them, their loved ones, and society. At times, people turn to drugs and alcohol, or their symptoms of depression, anxiety, or OCD become more apparent.[3] Many seek treatment to get answers to their suffering. At times, they explicitly pose similar questions; at other times, they are implicit, while still, they hardly know these are the types of questions they are asking. They know, deep inside, something is missing, something is not making sense, something is not clicking. They know internally that their self-concept is shaky, their sense of identity is confusing, and their sense of purpose is nonexistent. Five major thought systems try to answer these questions and try to make sense of the world, our human race, and our existence. Philosophy, religion, and science started, while spirituality and metaphysics continued. Whoâ€™s right? Who has “the Truth”? Instead of asking who has the Truth, it is more beneficial to ask what the Truth is. Part of the answer to this question helps make it easier to recognize that the Truth is at the intersection of all our five major thought systems. In other words, the Truth is not in religion, spirituality, metaphysics, or philosophy alone. By the same token, the Truth is also not in science alone. And as the phrase goes, the great scientific truths of today are expected to be the great scientific lies of tomorrow. Yet these significant five thought systems have something in common among them, and that commonality is the Truth. Now, the question is: Why is this important? To which we answer in the form of the following five questions: 1. Do we want to cease suffering? 2. Do we want to learn a new way to navigate the world? 3. Do we want to know aliveness, peace, freedom, authentic happiness, and authentic success? 4. Do we want to fully use our talents, skills, passion, and strength for our highest benefit and that of our loved ones and others? 5. Do we want to grow ourselves and help elevate ourselves to a new way of being in the world? If you say “yes” to any of those five inquiries, it means the question of “What is the Truth?” is important to you. Answering this question in the most rigorous and accurate way possible is also of the utmost importance because it is fundamental to everything else we are and we do. The answer is also fundamental to something all of us are concerned with, and that is suffering. Just like Mike, billions of individuals in the world are wondering why life is so hard. Like Mike, often enough, we find ourselves suffering as if this is indeed what life was all about. Can we cease suffering? This article introduces a series on Ending Suffering for All. Suffering has been with us since the dawn of time; therefore, it must sound preposterous to assume that we can end it. This would indeed be a logical way of thinking about it, except that such an assertion derives from the same type of thinking that created suffering, to begin with. As Einstein said, â€œWe cannot solve our problems with the same type of thinking that created it.â€[4] This means nothing we can currently say about suffering would end up being helpful as long as we continue in the same type of thinking that has engendered it. “What is that other type of thinking that will help […]

The post Can We Cease Suffering? first appeared on SWEET INSTITUTE - Continuing Education for Mental Health Professionals.

The Formula to Help Cease Suffering

Mardoche Sidor, MD and Karen Dubin, PhD, LCSW — Thu, 18 Feb 2021 14:36:45 +0000

Introducing the process of integration. This article was first published in Psychology Today The best way to understand others is to understand ourselves. We keep hearing that, yet we hardly understand what that means. We also hear “the clinician treats, but the patient heals herself.” And, once again, what does that really mean? No, not what does that mean intellectually—what does that mean from an experiential standpoint? Unlike psychotherapy, which has been around for a few centuries, coaching has been around for only a few decades. Many therapists have slowly moved their clinical practice to a coaching one, making use of the same skills they learned in school and in their practice, but through a different lens [1]. However, no research shows the opposite—coaches transforming their coaching practice into a psychotherapy one, though the skills they are using are practically the same as clinicians’. This, then, begs the question: What is that different lens? Medicine, mental health, and psychotherapy are based on a disease model. This model is based on what’s not working, and it’s based on what’s wrong, what’s to be fixed, and what the patient is not doing. Coaching, on the other hand, is a strengths-based model. It’s based on what’s working and how to make it work better and faster. It’s based on what’s good and how to make it great, what the strengths are, and what the client is doing, all of which is predicated upon the same skills that clinicians have learned [2]. Here’s the caveat: The moment we start looking for what needs to be fixed, we will always find things that need to be fixed. Similarly, when we start looking for what’s working, we will always end up finding what’s working. The world we live in is one of awareness and consciousness. We experience only that which we are aware of, and we do not come across that which we are not apprised of. Without any form of judgment or blaming ourselves, much less blaming others, let us take an objective look: In 1952, the DSM-I was 130 pages long and contained 106 mental health conditions. In 1968, the DSM-II was 134 pages long and listed 182 conditions. In 1980, the DSM-III was 494 pages long and listed 265 conditions, and 7 years later, the DSM-III-R was 567 pages long with 292 diagnoses. What about 7 more years later? Well, the DSM-IV came with 410 conditions and was 886 pages. By the time we went from the DSM-I to DSM-IV-TR, we have seen an increase in the number of mental health conditions listed by more than 300 percent [3]. Have we been making them all up? Yes and No. For, as the Nobel Prize Laureate Daniel Kahneman explained it, the decision has been made, and we simply justify it as if we had made it consciously. Our consciousness is the decisive factor, and as long as we continue to practice medicine, mental health, or psychotherapy with the same level of consciousness that we have been practicing all along, more conditions are likely to be listed, more patients will be diagnosed, there will be more problems to be fixed, and more money will be spent towards disease management than towards enhancing wellness. As Einstein said, “We cannot solve a problem with the same mind that created it.” This implies we need a different mind, which simply means we need a different level of consciousness: an update in our “Decisive Factor.” For the Fundamental of Consciousness is constant, and it will not change. What to do: Understand and help others understand that we have been treating individuals on a superficial level, just at the tip of the iceberg, ignoring everything under the water. Understand and help others understand that as long as we continue this way, we can guarantee an increase in the number of conditions, in the amount of resources spent trying to treat them, and in the number of disabilities due to illness. Understand and help others understand that helping individuals stay well and be better does not take business away from us; on the contrary, we will end up with a richer economy, much more for more people, because we will be helping more individuals create more cool stuff in the world, making it easier for everyone to live a better life with less striving. Data shows that coaches consistently do better than therapists on several levels. And they focus consistently on what can be better instead of what’s not working. Understand and help others understand that pointing fingers at anyone does not make things better; clinicians do not have to continue to leave the field, and clinicians can start being the change they want to see in the field, to borrow Gandhi’s suggestion. How to proceed: While helping patients and clients with their psychology and biology, which means with their “Normal Blueprint,” keep in mind that the work is not done and will never be done until we lead them towards their Natural Blueprint. Emphasize at all times that behind our psychology and our biology are the “Three Fundamentals” and that behind our Normal Blueprint is our “Natural Blueprint.” Understand that our biology and psychology will continue its “normal” pattern of symptom formation, maladaptive coping mechanisms, and disease making, as long as disintegration remains the norm since it is the mechanism of disease. Understand that the only way to wellness for all individuals is through the mechanism of integration, which is the opposite of disintegration. Emphasize that the process of integration means the fusion of “the Fundamental of Mind,” “the Fundamental of Consciousness,” and “the Fundamental of Thought,” and that mastering the how of reaching integration is the best gift clinicians can ever give to their patients and clients. There is no one formula to get to integration. But the more practical the formula, the easier it becomes for patients and clients to implement and master. The following formula meets such criteria, and it is the “Triple R Triad”: Refocusing Restructuring Redirecting Might clinicians hold the key to help ease the suffering in our patients and clients? Might clinicians be the pioneers to help our beloved field catch up […]

The post The Formula to Help Cease Suffering first appeared on SWEET INSTITUTE - Continuing Education for Mental Health Professionals.

Why do your patients and clients suffer?

Mardoche Sidor, MD and Karen Dubin, PhD, LCSW — Tue, 24 Nov 2020 15:00:00 +0000

We do not have a lack of information in the world but rather a lack of true understanding. In other words, knowledge is not power, rather, potential power, which can be harnessed only after a true understanding leading to full implementation.

The post Why do your patients and clients suffer? first appeared on SWEET INSTITUTE - Continuing Education for Mental Health Professionals.

10 tips for supporting someone through emotional pain and loss

Mardoche Sidor, MD and Karen Dubin, PhD, LCSW — Fri, 01 Sep 2017 16:30:00 +0000

"Samantha, a 36-year-old woman, comes to see her clinician after experiencing the devastation of a severe hurricane in her birth country. She brings her 12-year-old daughter, Marilyn, whose father is yet to be found since the hurricane. Her grandmother has been pronounced dead, and one of her siblings is severely injured. Both Samantha and Marilyn sit in the office, sobbing. Samantha is trying to comfort her daughter, but clearly she also needs someone to console her."

The post 10 tips for supporting someone through emotional pain and loss first appeared on SWEET INSTITUTE - Continuing Education for Mental Health Professionals.