Development

The Challenges of Honesty, Openness, and Truth

Ron Johnson communication, Development, emotional maturity, Feelings, mindfulness, Personality, relationships, Self-Awareness, social esteem, Spiritual

I am no philosopher, but like all people, I delve into the medium and art of philosophy unavoidably as we all do. I am certain that philosophes could be bemused by my meanderings in their territory with my minimal training and understanding of such things. I am often bemused by people meandering into the realm of psychology, like the current days when seemingly everyone has at least one psychological diagnosis. So, granting my philosophical superiors much greater understanding of things philosophical, I will indulge myself by attempting to blend the philosophical concept of “truth” and its cognates with things that I do understand, namely the different characteristics of personality.

This blog has been brewing for several weeks in my mind but just the morning I received a request from a patient of mine that required me to delve into the matter of honesty. In this man’s case, he asked that I render some advice as to how he should handle a complex situation in his life that centered on a forthcoming funeral for his father. I did my best to help him migrate these murky waters but not without a good deal of thought and feeling. This matter of truth and its cognates, openness and honesty is no easy matter. I did my best with my patient, and I will do my best with this blog but admittedly I am not particularly skilled in the philosophical matters. It does occur to me that the very words, philosophy, derives from the Greek, namely philos, which means “love” and Sophia, which means wisdom; hence the love of wisdom. (Note that Philadelphia derives from philos and adelphos, which means brother; hence “the city of brotherly love). So, when we delve into philosophical matters, such as truth, we are seeking to “love wisdom,” perhaps thinking the wise thing or doing the wise thing,

In this blog I will dare to fuse the concepts of personality and philosophy with the grave danger of being simplistic or artificial. If you have followed me over these recent years, you have heard me speak of personality type and personality temperament among other elements of making what I call a “friendly diagnosis.” It is in this context that I wish to share with you some things about the whole business of truth and its cognates, openness and honesty. I originally thought of entitling this blog something like “different kinds of lying,” but then I listened to my own way of thinking about life and psychology and decided it would be better to look at how people of different personality stipes might face the matter of truth et al. Among the ways of understanding differences in personality, I often make use of the terms “personality type” and “temperament,”

And occasionally differences in personal development, cultural background, and differences in the various aspects of intelligence. Instead of examining all of these elements of human existence, I choose to focus on a couple of areas of personality, and examine how we could examine truth, or the lack thereof, within these boundaries, possibly leaving other ways of examination for a later exploration. Before I dare to dive into how differences of personality affect one’s approach to truth, we must consider the whole concept of truth itself.

Truth and consequences

Obviously, I borrow this title from the parlor game and the TV show that existed before most of you were born. I intend to render (perhaps my simplistic) distinctions between the terms honesty, truth, and openness because while they are second cousins these three terms represent somewhat different elements of the idea of being honest. My minimal understanding of these terms is as follows:

  • Truth: something that is accurate or an accurate representation of something. Hence there are “truthful words that represent a feeling, a thought, or an action.
  • Honesty: speaking the truth as one knows it. Perhaps also keeping silent so as to avoid agreeing with a statement made by another person that is felt/thought to be untrue. There is also the element of “being honest with yourself”…or not.
  • Openness: the expression, or perhaps a personality tendency, to express one’s thoughts, feelings, and actions

As a result, we have the complex situations where:

  • A person could be honest not actually be speaking the truth because s/he did not know the whole truth. It is even possible for someone to be speaking the truth as s/he sees it but it is not actually the truth. Children do this all the time and are false accused of “lying” when they actually “saw the ghost in the room.”
  • A person who could be open in some expression but not necessarily be honest. I may openly espouse something that I don’t actually believe. This might be as the simple nod of the head when you hear something that you don’t agree with so as to avoid hurting your friend’s feelings.
  • A person can speak the truth but not being open about certain matters that relate to the truth s/he is speaking. This is something like speaking some of the truth but not all of it. It is this element that I want to tackle next.

Different kinds of truth in personality characteristics

Here I choose to examine three elements (of the available four) that are the result of the Jungian concept of psychological type or as Myers-Briggs calls it, personality type. Here I note examples of how people engage the world of truth and its cognates differently.

Differences in perception: how we see the world

  • I see the world objectively. Hence I see things as they are, not as they should be or the way I would like them to be. I tend to make statements rather than asking questions. I tend to be honest with what I see, but because I don’t see all that can be, I do not see the whole picture, namely something that could happen, or perhaps even should happen. This roughly falls into the category of being “honest but not necessarily speaking the truth.” Such people tend to get lost in the real world, perhaps the practical world but often miss the rest of life that is not real and objective. I can “lie” to other people without realizing that I am “lying” because I didn’t see all there was to see. Kierkegaard said of these people, “everything is real but nothing is meaningful.”
  • I see the world subjectively. Hence, I see what could be, might be, or should be, but not necessarily what actually is. I tend to be honest about looking for things, and often ideas and tend to ask questions. I can be quite satisfied to ask questions without having complete answers. I want to speak the truth and often do so but I to be “dishonest” by getting lost is ideas, possibilities and questions. I tend to “lie to myself” in the constant finding new ideas and having new questions but not really doing anything real. Kierkegaard said of these people, “all things are possible but nothing is real.”
  • I evaluate the world objectively: Descartes said, “I think, therefore I am.” If I evaluate objectively, I think objectively, feel objectively, and act objectively. What you see is what you get. I reason with logic and have a sense of the ultimate fairness in making a decision that is based on reason. I do the “right” thing…regardless of how anyone “feels” and even regardless of how I feel. I can get caught in being truthful to logic but not truthful to my feelings, much less anyone else’s feelings.
  • I evaluate the world subjective. Descartes could have said, “I feel, therefore I am,” although many contemporary psychological writers have suggested that could be a way of looking at decisions. If I evaluate subjectively, I “feel,” whatever that means (read our book, please), and attend to my feelings and other people’s feelings. “Truth” is thus highly related to feelings and to relationships and cannot be explored, felt, or expressed apart from these elements. Thus, I can speak “truth” that is related mostly to how I feel or someone else feels, which may actually be truthful in the objective sense of the terms
  • I am energized by being with people: I talk in order to be listened to and to be talked to. I tend to be “open” with my thoughts and/or feelings and expect other people to do the same. This openness, however, is not always exactly “true” because I can embellish, enlarge, or elaborate with colorful metaphors seeking to “communicate” what I feel or think. This amounts to being open but not entirely honest. I also can fall into not being honest with myself for the sake of communicating with someone. I tend to “lie” objectively, say something that is not factually true.
  • I am energized by being alone or with one special person. I tend to keep my feelings entirely to myself and most of my thoughts to myself. I am honest with myself but not necessarily honest with people around me perhaps thinking, “It’s none of their business what I think or feel unless I want them to know.” I tend to lie subjectively, i.e. not saying something that is true.

Examples of “lying” by good people

You might enjoy reading my blog, “Why Good Men Lie,” which examines the tendency of men to lie to women. In the same blog I suggest that while men lie to their spouses, unfortunately, women tend to lie to themselves, also unfortunately.

I am reminded of an experience I had 30 years ago with a group of men who regularly attended a men’s group that I led. One night one fellow named Bill said to the group that he believed that some of the men didn’t like him, and proceeded to ask whether this was true. Each man responded to the question, and I remember one man saying to this man that he “flat out didn’t like him,” while another man said, “Sure, Bill, I like you.” I inquired with the second man privately why he said that he liked Bill given that I had heard that he most certainly didn’t like him at all. His response: “he is not important to me so I didn’t feel compelled to tell him the truth.” Some weeks later, Bill was speaking about some subject what seemed to go on without profit and one after another men left the group, seemingly bored or disinterested. This left one man yet in the room with Bill, the man who said that he “flat out didn’t like” him. Such a mix of truth and consequences, truth, honesty, and openness.

I have seen many courageous statements of truth despite the consequences:

  • The man who speaks his mind and as a result is not allowed to graduate from a seminary because that “truth” didn’t seem to fit with the “truth” the seminary held
  • The woman, in the company of his former husband, when the two of them were discussing the challenges of their son. She said that the reason that the two of them had been divorced was that she had been “unfaithful” and possibly caused their son harm because of it
  • The child (actually, many children) who said, “I hate you” to his parents. He didn’t know it at the time but he had the permission to say such things because he lived in a loving home.
  • A few politicians who are courageous enough to challenge the party line and take the consequences. Liz Cheney comes to mind as does John McCain.

I have seen many more examples of the lack of truth spoken…or not spoken:

  • The several women who spring the “D” word on their husbands having evidently lived with someone they didn’t like for years…or decades
  • The several men who have been unfaithful to their spouses, sometimes with their common friends or relatives
  • The teenager who has simply not found the social maturity to be honest about whether he did, indeed, brush his teeth or take a shower

 

These are my current thoughts. But I must leave you with this, abridging the statement, “beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.” Perhaps truth is also in the eyes of the beholder. But I am also cognizant of Shakespeare’s statement, “When first we practice to deceive, oh what a tangled web we weave.” I am brought back to the patient I mentioned at the beginning who is trying to find a way to be wise, kind, loving, and honest with his family, girlfriend, and himself. He has a very tangled web that has been constructed by many people including himself.

The Last Half of Life

Ron Johnson appreciation, Development, Discovery, Feelings, grief, happiness, men's issues, mindfulness, Opportunity, Self-Awareness, social esteem, Spiritual

I’m in the last half of life. Perhaps, I should put quotes around that statement because I am not speaking concretely and practically but abstractly and metaphorically. I just flew by my 77th birthday a bit ago and now I’m well into my 78th year of life. Who knows how long I will live: a day, a year, 10 years, or 30 years? Yes, I suppose I could live to 107 but that seems quite likely. I am actually at the average age where Americans people die, and actually a couple years beyond the average lifespan of men, which is 75, so it behooves me to examine such things. Let me get to the point of this “last half of life” business.

The last half of life

I have come to use the phrase, the last half of life, metaphorically, not as a chronological measure. Half of the typical life of an American is about 38 years. But many people never see their 38th birthday and many see years well beyond 76. I am using the last half of life to mean the period in a person’s life that s/he might make a lasting contribution to life, perhaps something substantially different from the “first half of life,” whatever that period of time might be. I am presently seeing many men who are in “the last half” of their lives, but their ages range from 35 to 78. I will be gathering some of these men together for a day of reflection, encounter, and forward-looking even though the challenges and dilemmas of these men are substantially different. What remains the same for them is finding meaning in the rest of their lives. These men are quite seriously looking at what the past, the present, and the future in order to go forward with self-confidence:

  • They are looking at what they have done right, what they have done wrong, what they could have done, what they should have done, and what they shouldn’t have done. These men are looking at the past with what we might call “the wisdom of age” or “the 20-20 vision of hindsight.”
  • They are looking at the present with a certain perspective, namely what they are now doing including what they should be doing, what they shouldn’t be doing, and what they want to be doing.
  • They are looking at the future as to what they could do, what they should do, and even what they feel they have to

Who is looking at the last half of life?

Let me tell you about some of these men. (And permit me to use the masculine pronoun from here on because I am just talking about men. There may be some great similarities with women or perhaps some profound differences, but that is another piece of literature that I am not qualified to write.). Of course, all the names are fictional as are some of the professions and situations in life so as to protect the privacy of these men. Nevertheless, the thoughts, feelings, and actions of these men are wholly factual.

  • Jack is the 78-year old, and my only patient who is actually older than I am. He has been a very successful person in his trade, which has been social work. He has continued to work until just recently when outlived his usefulness at the agency he worked for. Previous to that work he has had some very responsible and successful people and is a person deeply committed to his work, and also to his faith. Unfortunately, over the years, including the 50-some year of marriage, he has not managed his money very well and is in an almost dire financial situation. He is looking to the “last half” of his life free of this financial burden but also have a life with genuine meaning.
  • Sam is a 35-year old very successful businessman who owns a trade-based company. He has been quite disturbed by the recent election and the many changes in the culture and politics and wants to “make a difference” in the world in some way. He has considered selling his business and moving on but has no idea where, when, and how he would “move on.”
  • Peter has been successful in human resources for many years. He has made a significant amount of money, but now has been “downsized” as many companies now do. But he has taken the huge step of working on a master’s degree in psychology and hopes to enter the field. By the way, he is in a very unsatisfying marriage, has three adolescent kids one of whom is going to college this fall. So not only is he changing professions, he is also changing his parental role and possibly his marriage situation.
  • Tom of 63 but you wouldn’t know it because he so spy and active. He has had a couple of professions over the years, including a good stint in ministry, but he has been quite successful in sales. He, too, like Peter (and another man as well) is looking into the field of psychology or counseling. By the way, his marriage is also on the rocks to his great dismay because his wife left him having discovered that 33 years ago she shouldn’t have married him.
  • A man who may soon be inheriting a very successful professional business from his father, a business for which he is trained but not interested. His interests seem to lie more in teaching and coaching.
  • There are several others in situations not unlike these, where men have been making tons of money but not happy, have been in difficult marriages, and other challenges.

Perhaps one of the reasons this “last half” of life has interested me is the fact that I have seen many deaths over the past year, including many deaths of young people, who might not have found a way to truly engage the “last half” of their lives. These people include the children of several friends, my own daughter, the children of several men that are current patients, three cousins, three in-laws, and one patient who wrote three blogs about his life with me as his amanuensis. This man, 75 when he died, often said to me, “I don’t know what I’m going to do when I grow up.” Now he doesn’t have to worry, but I think he really wanted to find some meaning to the “last half” of his life but never did. These many deaths have only been aggravated by the “war” that I spoke of in a previous blog (biological, political, and cultural war) in the world together with the 550,000 people who have died of Covid and the millions who have been damaged in some way by the war. All of this has given me the opportunity to look at the “last half” of the lives of these men as well as the last half of my own life.  Truly looking at this last half takes an honest look at what has happened, what is happening, and what might happen in life.

Honestly looking at the future

The theme with all these men is this: what can I do in the future that will be meaningful? Perhaps, what can I do that will be of lasting value? Perhaps also, what can I do that will be of value to the world? Unfortunately, but understandably, these men want to bring all the past into the future. They want to bring along all the good of the past, leave all the bad, and have more good in the future. You can’t have all three, and this fact is difficult for every one of these men. Simply put, you can’t bring all the past into the future.

Examples:

  • One man wants to stay married even though his wife says that she doesn’t like him, never has, and she is seemingly very happy without him
  • One man wants to continue to make $100,000 but in a new profession that will barely give him half of that amount
  • One man wants to find a way to continue to love his former wife in the same way he always has even though his current female relationship is far superior to his former marriage
  • One man wants to stay living with his wife primarily so he can have an “intact family” even though he doesn’t love her, and possibly never has
  • One man wants to have some kind of magic that will eliminate the debt that he has acquired over many years
  • One man wants to get back with the woman who just might have the most important woman in his life even though she says that is impossible
  • One man wants to continue to engage in ideational figuring out new ways of looking at life although he never seems to be able to put anything to real practice.
  • One man wants to be able to drink as much as he always had even though his drinking has certainly damaged his marriage and possibly his life
  • Another man wants to continue to smoke pot as a primary means of coping with life
  • Many men want the people in their lives to understand the psychological principles that they have learned without these people going through the rigors of years of therapy that they have gone through

Slowly and painfully, men often have to learn to let go of much of the past, many sad and challenging things like mistakes of relationships, school, and work. Just as often men have to let go of the good things that were a part of the “first half of their lives” because these good things are no longer available. The poem Desiderata said it this way: take kindly the counsel of years gracefully surrendering the things of youth.” But what do we need to surrender? And what can I expect positively out of a good perspective of the second half of life?

Surrendering and expecting

If I am to truly face the future and seek to find meaning and make meaning in life, I have to give up so much of what “the first half” of life has been. Then I need to focus on what I can do, how I do it, and why I do it.

Primarily, what has to be surrendered is fear, namely:

  • Fear of mistakes
  • Fear of failure
  • Fear of rejection
  • Fear of correction
  • Fear of being alone
  • Fear of being ill or dying
  • Any other fear

Secondly, you have to surrender some expectations:

  • Of visible success
  • Of appreciation
  • Of recognition
  • Of money

But you can expect

  • An increasing realization that you are doing something for you, for other people, and for the world all at the same time
  • Being more truthful, first to yourself, and then to others
  • Continuing to get better at thinking, feeling, and doing
  • Finding people who share your interest in doing something meaningful
  • The freedom that a fear-free life gives you
  • Success in doing something meaningful
  • A lasting purpose in the days, years, or decades you have to live
  • Recognition of your work by some people

There are many people, at least so it seems, that do not need to look at the “last half” of life.

A good life in the past leading to a good life in the future

I know of several men who are quite pleased to be retired. One of them spends a good deal of time golfing, another a good deal of time water-skiing, with both of these activities being spent with other people. I can only surmise that there are many people who are snow birds in order to live their remaining lives in parts south, at least one in Costa Rica and many in Florida. I see Facebook posts by some of these men who are very content to philosophize, share pictures, tell stories, tell jokes, remind me of things in the 50’s, enjoy the spring flowers, and spend time with their grandchildren. I am happy for these men. Most of them have lived honorable, productive, and honest lives and now are using the fruits of their labor. While I appreciate their pleasant retirement, such is not my lot in life, so it seems. I look favorably at the past but look even more favorably at the present and the future.

Personal

So, what, you may ask, is my second half of life? The answer, quite simply, is teaching, namely teaching people what I have learned over these 77 years of life, and more specifically what I have learned over the 55 years of my professional career. The forms that this “teaching” seem to be taking is in writing, conducting seminars, and doing meaningful therapy. I have finished with several elements of therapy that constituted as much as half of my working years, namely psychotherapy with children, seeing people who are chronically ill, whether with mental illness or physical illness, doing evaluations to determine if someone is “disabled,” and very possibly severely limiting evaluations in general. My focus now, aside from reading, writing, and teaching, is to work with people in therapy who are truly ready to enter the second half of their lives. There are many people who think about such things, feel about such things, and dream about such things, but I think I can be of more value to the world helping people who are willing to step out of the past, into the present, and towards the future. This is somewhat of a painful change that I have been making in my own “second half” of life, but it yet seems right to do.

The Only Mental Health Diagnosis

Ron Johnson Children, Development, Feelings, grief, Mental, Self-Awareness

I am amazed how frequently people talk about various mental health diagnoses. It is common to hear people talking about their “anxiety,” “panic disorder,” “ADHD” or other things, so much so that I hear such conversations while waiting in a cashier’s line. Of course, it is even more common in my business. I regularly do “ADHD neuropsychological evaluations” for people, both children and adults, who come to my office seeking some kind of answer to what ails them. Often, adults want to be “tested for ADHD” because they have some kind of trouble with memory or focus in their daily lives. I met with the parents of a teenager recently who has been diagnosed and treated with medication for his alleged ADHD condition for nearly 10 years. I found it interesting that the father noted that he most certainly suffered from ADHD as a child and adolescent but somehow got through childhood without medication. I told them that I was the same as a kid as I remember my maternal grandmother telling my mother that “you’re never going to raise that kid” because I was so active and unpredictable, like running down the block stark naked when I was three with my aunt chasing me all the way.

ADHD is certainly one of the more common “diagnoses” that people like to have. I use the phraseology “like to have” because it is my belief that ADHD and other diagnoses give people a sense of what is going on with their lives when things aren’t working out well for them. A diagnosis, namely a mental health diagnosis, helps people make sense of what is wrong in their lives. It is as if a person can have some kind of diagnosis, then they have some hope of recovery from the mental health “disorder” or “disease” that they have. Rarely, is that the case. Rather, people get this diagnosis and are not really better for it. Importantly, it is not only the mental health diagnoses that keep people busy figuring out what is wrong in their lives. There is even a larger number of physical anomalies that people suffer that lead to a similarly large number of physical/medical diagnoses. I see a couple whom I have seen off and on for 20 years as they have struggled with a variety of challenges in their marriage, interestingly, not the typical arguments and dissention that usually brings couples to see me. In this case, the original “presenting problem” (which I prefer to call the “presenting situation”) was the man’s impotence, but over the years we have dealt with a number of other (seemingly) external matters including finances and vocational adjustment. It is interesting to me that when I see this couple, the first thing the woman talks about is the great variety of physical/medical problems that she has, talk that could last for 30 minutes of our 2-hour time together if I allowed her to tell me all that ails her. This occurs while her husband sits patiently by until he can then tell me of his physical ailments. True, these people are in their 70’s where such things do occur more frequently, but it is continually interesting to me that they can talk about what ails them physically more fluently then they can talk about how they feel or what they think, this despite the fact that they are both well educated. When we finally get around to talking about how they feel or what they think, they then talk about the various mental health diagnoses that they both have.

The dependency on physical and mental health diagnoses has increased so much over the recent years that it is not uncommon for people to allege to have several diagnoses. I recall a woman I saw for an evaluation who initially said that she suffered from “bipolar disorder, ADHD, PTSD, anxiety, panic disorder, borderline personality disorder, and depression in addition to a similarly long list of physical disorders. I was amazed at her willingness to have all this wrong with her.

The popular mental health diagnoses

Consider how often you have heard about someone’s “bipolar disorder” over the recent years. Note that you never heard the term 10 years ago, much less 20 or 30 years ago. As you probably know, bipolar disorder was previously manic-depressive disorder. Despite the fact that you probably hear about someone having bipolar disorder, this is a very rare disorder that, like so many other diagnoses, is way over diagnosed. In fact, true bipolar disorder is a psychotic disorder where someone has a kind of delusion, often “manicky,” like s/he is going to be the next benign dictator of the world, or will most certainly suicide tomorrow. Bipolar disorder is not the ups and downs that all people have. It is not the grandiosity that we sometimes see with people or the hopelessness that we see with others, much less the changing of mood from one day to another.

The other “popular” diagnoses are as follows along with the symptoms of these disorders:

  • ADHD: impulsivity, distractibility, hyperactivity
  • Panic disorder: accelerated heart rate, feeling of dread, fear of a heart attack
  • Depression: disturbances of three elements in life: low, high, or inconsistent:
    • Appetite (too much, not enough, not hungry)
    • Sleep (too much, not enough, erratic)
    • Energy (too much, not enough, erratic)
  • Anxiety: fear of the unknown future; usually together with increased heart rate
  • PTSD: symptoms of depression and anxiety related to past traumatic events
  • Borderline personality disorder: feeling of a “deep hole” in oneself
  • Addictive disorders (chemical or behavioral): compensations for traumata

There are many other mental health diagnoses that are less frequently self-diagnosed, like schizophrenia and personality disorders, but the foregoing are the most commonly rendered, often by the individual and frequently by a therapist or physician. It is notable that one of my psychology journals reported that fully 40% of Americans were on some kind of psychotropic medication; possibly more now. Medications are antidepressants, anxiolytics (sedatives; anti-anxiety agents), stimulants (usually for ADHD), and anticonvulsives (given to treat bipolar disorder). So, does have the country suffer from one or more mental health disorders? I don’t think so.

What do people suffer from, and what can be done about it?

  • First, there is only one real mental health diagnosis.
  • Secondly, there is only one cause.
  • Thirdly, there is only one effective treatment.
  • Fourthly, there is only one real “cure” because there is nothing “wrong.”

The one real mental health diagnoses: PTSD

PTSD stands for post-traumatic stress disorder. This is the correct diagnosis for 95% of mental distress, as I call them rather than “mental health issues” or “mental disorders.” In fact, I think it would be better “diagnose” this condition as PTD: post-traumatic distress, which would be more accurate. Better yet, when I deal with people who are really seeking psychotherapy for improving their self-understanding and their lives, I simply call it “distress” rather than PTSD, much less depression, anxiety, and the like. It is the distress that people find so disruptive in their lives, and it is the distress that I work diligently to help them to end.

I should make a comment about the so-called biological or inherited tendency people have towards various mental health disorders. There is no clear science in this matter but there is a good deal of theorizing in the matter. We do find that certain families have proclivities towards something, perhaps anxiety or depression. But the science is not yet clear as to whether this finding has to do with the environment (usually the biological family) or the heritability factor. We do know that if identical twins are separated at birth, and then they have some sort of mental illness, there is a 50% chance that they will have the same illness. Interesting. But what about the other 50% that don’t share the diagnosis? We come to the mixture of nature and nurture in this situation, with the suggestion that we may, indeed, have an inclination towards some kind of mental distress that surfaces because of the family environment. In my own family there is a plethora of people who have suffered from some kind of anxiety. I have found it necessary to attend to the phenomenon in my own life as well. But was I “taught” anxiety or is there a propensity in my genes towards anxiety? The answer is probably both are true. The larger question, however, is what shall a person do when s/he has some kind of mental distress, a question we shall tackle shortly. Certainly, in my own life, I suffered traumata in childhood, which may have caused or quickened anxiety in me. Read on.

The one real cause of mental distress: trauma

What is “trauma”? Trauma is an unexpected event that causes some kind of damage, be it physical, mental, or relational. We might even suggest that are other kinds of traumata (I use the German plural of the word, but “traumas” is just as good), like financial trauma, property trauma (some kind of loss), or even vicarious trauma. I think I was vicariously traumatized by watching a war-based movie last night that adversely affected my sleep. But PTSD is not just trauma. It is the emotional element in the trauma that causes the distress.

PTSD (or my “PTD”) is a condition in which an individual has not resolved the emotion attached to the trauma. The most obvious kinds of PTSD are sexual trauma and war trauma. I was thinking about the poor soldiers facing a myriad of traumata in the movie from which they might later suffer PTSD. A veteran of war or a victim of sexual abuse suffers PTSD because at the time of the trauma the individual is not able to feel the emotions associated with the trauma. The emotions associated with war are anger, fear, and sadness, but if you’re in a foxhole and need to shoot the bad guy, you don’t have time to feel these emotions. Likewise, if you’re being molested, you aren’t in the position to feel the emotions of fear, which is predominant, much less anger at your perpetrator, much less the pleasure that might actually be associated with the abuse. So, such people suffer from not having felt the feelings that naturally occur in these circumstances. But traumata are not just related to sexual abuse and war trauma.

Developmental traumata are situations where a child fails to receive one or more of the basic ingredients of childhood, which can be summarized as the following:

  • Security and safety
  • Sustenance (food)
  • Physical affection
  • Emotional affection
  • Freedom
  • Limitation
  • Encouragement
  • Challenge

In all of these circumstances, there are three possibilities for traumata:

  • Too much
  • Too little
  • Inconsistent

Allow me to explain. Many children live in circumstances that are, indeed, dangerous, hence lacking in security and safety. But there are children who have too much security. Ideally, a child needs 100% security through much of her first year of life, but if she receives infantile security after that year, she will then feel unduly afraid of the world, perhaps for the rest of her life. Or, she might receive inconsistent security, which means safe and unsafe, which is actually even worse than no safety at all. Research psychologists call this “intermittent reward” (or punishment). Likewise, all the other aforementioned causes of possible trauma could be the “not enough, too much, or inconsistent” categories. Some children have too much limitation and are not allowed to explore the world with trials and errors, while other children have so much freedom that they fail to understand the value of laws and natural limitations. All of these circumstances contribute to PTSD to some degree or other.

Some children suffer from more than one of the lack of one of ingredients of an ideal childhood. For instance, some children are not loved right (lack physical affection), so they put up a real fuss in life. Then, to quiet them down, they are indulged with something. Then, they become even more demanding, and are then shamed. This combination of neglect, indulgence, and shame causes the condition known as borderline personality disorder. The other so-called mental disorders might be seen as having been caused by various traumata:

  • Anxiety: almost certainly caused by some kind of neglect during early life
  • Depression: most likely caused by losses in early life
  • Bipolar disorder: both neglect and losses
  • Schizophrenia: inconsistent love and limitation and some kind of chaos in general
  • Personality disorders (narcissism): lack of encouragement, challenge, and limitation
  • ADHD: too much limitation or too much freedom
  • Additions: a coping mechanism that replaces what was lost in childhood

So what can be done to successfully treat these conditions?

The one real treatment for mental distress: grief

As you may know, Deb and I wrote a book on sadness entitled The Positive Power of Sadness, subtitled How Good Grief Prevents and Cures Anger, Sadness, and Depression. In this book we discuss how the mental disorders of anxiety and depression are prevented by honest sadness in addition to the phenomenon of undue anger. Let me summarize:

  • You love something
  • You are assaulted
  • You lose this something
  • You feel hurt
  • You feel afraid of losing more
  • You get angry to protect yourself from future loss
  • You compensate with some kind of addiction (chemical or behavioral)
  • You then develop “symptoms” like anxiety or depression

Our suggestion in the Good Grief book (as we all it) is to stop the process at the hurt level and then back up from there. If I feel hurt, I will simply and profoundly feel sad. Just sad. Not angry, not afraid. Not compensating. Just sad. The beauty of sadness is that it ends. It really ends. There is nothing that we cannot finish feeling sad about if I allow myself the privilege of feeling sad. Way too much so-called therapy focuses on fixing sadness or making up for it instead of just feeling sad and allowing sadness to run its course.

This having been said, it is important to note that feeling sad is painful. Hence we avoid sadness by feeling fear or anger or having some kind of compensation. But the problem is that people are generally not good at simply feeling sad. They would much rather feel angry at what happened to them, which always leads to depression, or feel afraid of what they might lose in the future. Both are delusional: we can’t change the past and we can’t change the future. We can reflect on the past and finish the feelings of sadness, or we can consider possible losses in the future and feel anticipatory sadness. But we can’t change the past or future. So, the “treatment” for all trauma is to feel the sadness that comes with all loss, e.g.:

  • Loss of freedom as a child
  • Loss of limitation as a child
  • Inconsistent freedom and limitation
  • Loss of security
  • Loss of physical or emotional love

All of these losses can be felt and finished, but this is no easy task. Simple, but not easy.

The one real “cure” for PTSD

We have already suggested that the treatment for PTSD, or for any other mental distress is grief. Honest grief. But how is this done? Grief is simple, but it is hard, as I just said. It is simple because it is natural. It is natural to cry when I lose something, and it is just as natural to feel the sadness associated with crying. But it is not easy. It is not easy because of several matters, not the least of which is the cultural resistance to sadness and crying, particularly in America. Yet, there are ways to deal with the resistance we all have to grief:

  • Find a competent therapist. There aren’t many, sad to say.
  • Find a true friend…one who does not try to fix you and says very little but stays with you
  • Find a time when you can be alone…and grieve the loss(es) you have suffered in life
  • Write these losses down. You will see some “large” losses are no longer grievous, while smaller ones are still unfinished.
  • When you are angry or afraid “back up” your feelings until you find the hurt that always precedes anger and fear. Then back it up further, and you will find the love that you have for something

If you do this process of finding the core “problem” in PTSD, or any of its derivatives, you see that they are all about love, principally the love of yourself, which has been lost along the way. Love of self is natural, and it is not the same as liking oneself, liking what you said or did. But this is another subject.