Behind Creating Sanity in Troubling Times

HOW THIS BOOK CAME INTO BEING

As a psychotherapist, I'm always concerned with assigning mental illness diagnoses to people who are simply experiencing transient distress. And I am adamantly opposed to doing so in order for insurance to pay for therapy sessions. Doing so only contributes to a broken health care system, in my opinion.

The problem, in my view, is not that it is abnormal to feel depressed or anxious or even temporarily paranoid. The problem is that we have never been taught how to experience those states, and how to separate thought from emotion, when they distress is transient, as it often is, from a position of confidence that the suffering will not destroy us.

This is not to say that true clinical depression and anxiety of the biochemically-based sort that is debilitating long term don't exist. It's not to say that these difficult conditions don't incapacitate one from making a living and sustaining relationships, and in the extreme from having no impulse to self harm or harm others. Of course these are medical issues that benefit from diagnosis, medication, and often from talk therapy of some kind.

As I wrote in this ebook:

The perception that things around you are crazy is what I call cognitive growing pains. Oddly, this awareness is a good thing when you can perceive of it as external to yourself. That is, it’s good to distinguish between being in a crazy situation versus being crazy yourself.

This perspective compelled me to provide clients, and the public, with options for thinking about what they are feeling so that overwhelm doesn't overtake productivity, personal equanimity, and relationship harmony.

Your copy of this useful updated self-health book can be found on Smashwords.