We are in the swing of mental health awareness month. As a treating clinical psychologist, our practice has seen a sharp spike in the number of people suffering from anxiety, extreme stress, and varying degrees of depression. It's an unfortunate fact that we are all witnessing and experiencing at this time. Other mental health practitioners call it "the side effect of the pandemic" and it's ubiquitous throughout the United States and North America.
But let’s back up and look back. Certainly, there was a lot of stress and anxiety in other periods of time. Stress and worry and an unsettling conflux of issues in the lives of people was always a reality.
So how should we understand this?
The important concept here is not that we have challenges or problems in our lives; the whole issue is HOW WE MANAGE THOSE PROBLEMS. That takes us to the most important concept here: HOW WE THINK ABOUT WHAT WE THINK ABOUT! The way you think about something can make you sick or well. Just look at neuroscience and the way the brain works. The brain gets “wired”, i.e., it grows neural networking, by and through every single experience, every bit of formal and informal learning we take part in; yes, and, from our infancy, from and by how good or bad our earliest and latter attachment was with at least one caretaker. That’s what a good therapeutic therapist-patient relationship should do most basically: to help the patient rewire their brain with the most positive input; and to delete the negatives that cause us to perceive our outer world reality in the most negative way.
To other clinicians out there reading this: when a client comes to you with trauma, the preference should be not to just address the neo-cortex, conscious part of the brain. That’s not where trauma is found. We must address the Limbic System of the brain, the EMOTIONAL Brain, and the unconscious part of the brain, to effect any significant change. Talk therapy is good, but it bodes little for TRAUMA.
Make this the month you change your life for the better!
Dr. Jane PsyD LCSW
Mind Body Therapeutics LLC