mental health practioner: heal thyself

mental health practioner: heal thyself . This is an excerpt from the end of a much longer post that I wanted to highlight.  See the original for context here: The foundation of healing mental distress and of becoming a mature human adult. 

I spent 15 years in social service agencies in the USA as a social worker. I served folks with a large spectrum of psychiatric labels.

The work has continued for 20 more online.

What I learned is that most mental health professionals are not comfortable with their own unchartered psyches. This means that too often they project their fear onto the people they are charged to help. This unconscious habit is a large part of what leads to the incredibly unsuccessful mental health system in our country.

One of the many harmful ways it manifests is in the massive over-drugging of  individuals who exhibit difficult psychic material, emotions, feelings, thoughts and behaviors.

I have never been one to say that psychiatric drugs are always unnecessary. They certainly have a place in crisis care if only because nothing else is available. The position of this site is to be pragmatic. If things were as they should be psych meds wouldn’t be necessary. They are not as they should be.

see also: To be or not to be on psych meds

We don’t really know how well people might do given we don’t allow people to find out at this point. We have a system that reflexively puts everyone on medications without any other considerations. It is done while damning them to an entire life-time on them. I now know hundreds of people who have been told this. I’ve interacted with many who have not only freed themselves from the drugs but are now doing better without them.

 It is not exaggerating to say that this reflexive habit  to medicate rather than seriously and sensitively engage the pained psyche is destroying lives.

I want to say, simply, “Healer heal thyself”

And to wrap this up I also share a small excerpt of this article I wrote:  Bridging the patient/professional divide:

Clinicians are trained to never, ever identify with the client. Why? What is wrong with recognizing shared humanity, even a weakness or flaw, and bonding in that? In providing a safe container from that understanding? The mere instruction to avoid such intimacy at all costs seems like a violent denial of oneself and clients both. It seems indicative of a deep fear of ones own dark parts. How do we help others find their way out of the dark if we hide from our own darkness? Such identification may not always be appropriate to share, no doubt, it may also not be present with many clients. But when it is present and appropriate to share from such a place, with adequate boundaries in place, it can be an incredibly healing experience for both parties.  I believe that all our psyches contain a full spectrum of the content of the human psyche within it…some people experience more or less of this or that, but we’ve all got it in there. Healing ourselves and others both require deep familiarity with all its parts. This is not understood particularly well among most mental health professionals, in my opinion.

Most mental health professionals not only know next to nothing about the deepest part of the psyche, they are terrified of it, adding another layer of obfuscation to the problem. When people in mental distress are terrified the last thing they need is to be met by a “healer” who is equally terrified of the clients thoughts and behavior.

Changing our system of care for those in mental distress requires deactivating the knee-jerk response of professionals and non-professionals alike towards those in psychic pain.(continue reading)

I’m going to close with two quotes by women who are wiser than I am:

Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It’s a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others.

Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity. ― Pema Chödrön

and

Helping, fixing and serving represent three different ways of seeing life. When you help, you see life as weak. When you fix, you see life as broken. When you serve, you see life as whole. Fixing and helping may be the work of the ego, and service the work of the soul….

…Serving is different from helping. Helping is not a relationship between equals. A helper may see others as weaker than they are, needier than they are, and people often feel this inequality. The danger in helping is that we may inadvertently take away from people more than we could ever give them; we may diminish their self-esteem, their sense of worth, integrity or even wholeness.” — Rachel Naomi Remen

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More on topic ~~ mental health practioner: heal thyself:

●  Bridging Patient-Professional Divide 

●  The mental health professional and the patient (wrapped into one).

●  Stigma alive and well among mental health professionals

\●  Idealization of the therapist / psychiatrist / doctor / clinician

●  The truth is often ugly… (what people are up against when they choose to free themselves from psych meds)

●  This is how mental health professionals argue against INFORMED CONSENT and support lying to those they serve 

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