One time a couple came to see me, confused and upset by an encounter they had with their clergy-person. They went to him explaining that they were having marital problems and they wanted help. He was a lovely and loving man. He listened carefully and told them they had to start acting nicer to each other. They looked at each other and then at him. “But” the wife said, “we know that! We just don’t know how.”
When depression hits, what do you do? When your Life Partner is not good enough to chase away the anxiety, what do you do? When past, black predictions by parents or others of your future failure, haunt your thoughts, what do you do?
Well, of course, you blame your anxiety, depression, and self-hatred on a “chemical imbalance.” You claim that your present state is inherited and your only solution must be chemical.
“No,” Jake said adamantly, “Don’t you remember? I was standing right there, not here, and I was with Sam, not Sylvia.”
“That’s not the way it was at all,” Stacey said with growing annoyance. “Why do you get everything mixed up? I have a much better memory of things than you do and you are all wrong.”
As early as the turn of the last century, psychologists and philosophers wanted to understand what they called “the mind-body connection,” Freud being the most well-known of them. Gradually, research started to demonstrate that the seat of the mind—the brain—could actually change through learning. They called this the brain’s neuroplasticity. But it was only toward the end of the twentieth century that researchers were astonished to learn that the brain’s chemistry and wiring could change in the absence of an outside influence simply as a result of a person’s thoughts.
When the pharmaceutical industry finally implodes, it will not be from the many unlawful death lawsuits against them (although there are many), and it will not be from the increasing disclosure by doctors of payments they received from them for doing presumably unbiased research (although disclosure requirements are getting stronger). The pharmaceutical industry will implode from the simple act of customers taking their mental wellbeing into their own hands through increased knowledge of neuroscience.
Recovery begins with a three-pronged approach. Like a little stool that cannot stand with only two legs, it is necessary to work on all three for best results. However, even if you don't have the emotional resources to do it all, that's ok. In time, everything will come together.
When depression hits, what do you do? When your Life Partner is not good enough to chase away the anxiety, what do you do? When past, black predictions by parents or others of your future failure, haunt your thoughts, what do you do?