REFUSING TO TAKE MY OWN ADVICE.

Hello One and All:

While the advice that I gave in my previous blog is entirely true, the following story is also true.   Recently I read a book called, --- “the Organized Mind”, it was written by Dr. J. Levitin who is associated with the McGill University in Montreal, Canada.

On page 160 he tells the story of a mother named Ruth who has a mental breakdown and is diagnosed as suffering from dys-executive syndrome.  It is categorized as some complicated disease of the brain.’  Two other men whom the author calls Ernie and Peter also have the same problem.

The author does not say how this problem occurred.  If it is from some terrible brain damage that would be an entirely different story but if it is some kind of damage that they have been able to detect inside the brain, but not from an outside source, then one of two scenarios seem to be valid.  

For some unknown reason a genetic flaw has taken this opportunity to make itself known or psychological reasons have caused the damage inside their brains.   For a clearer understanding of this phenomena I could offer you a link but unfortunately I don't even know how to actually do it and if I did I don't have the time today  to set it up.

Suffice it to say that in the story about Helen Irving in my book called the Human Mind, we come face to face with the proof that the emotion of guilt can cause physical damage to the body.   In Helen Irving's case, this damage caused her to break out into hives.

At another point in my Human Mind book a psychotherapist states that he and his colleagues successfully showed that psychological interventions can bring about the correction of chemical imbalances inside the human mind. 

Hopefully I will be able to use links in the near future and provide them to you in this kind of a setting.  On the other hand, it is said that too many links spoil the broth --- so to speak.   There is one last point to consider here.  

The word guilt actually expresses ones fear that the person so afflicted is either not living up to his or her own standards of behavior or to the standards that his or her social customs bring to bear upon them.  The whole point being that we are actually talking about fear.  The word guilt then simply illuminates the type of fear that one is experiencing.     

                

‘Indeed, it is entirely possible that the damage to the brain has been caused by the fears that this mother is experiencing in her life and not by a genetic malfunction or by some outside physical damage to her brain.  

This whole story reminds me of the Superman story in my book called the Human Mind.   In that story while Dr. Cunningham of the McMaster Chedoke Hospital stated that ever one of the children that he saw with this problem eventually spoke fluently on a normal basis.  Other psychiatrists and psychotherapists said they were stumped.  Doctor Cunningham determined that the children were suffering from a distored fear of strangers and corrected this problem in due course.   

This mother, named Ruth, is actually suffering from the profusion of multi- tasking which has become more and more a part of our every-day lives.  She is simply taking on more than is necessary and her failure to be as successful as she wants to be is affecting her behavior.

My wife exhibits some of this behavior herself but it is not conglomerated to the point of deflecting her behavior as drastically as the mother in this particular story.  What I am talking about is my inability to be as successful as she is in performing tasks around the house and in particular, in the kitchen. Since I am 77 years old, she has decided that I am to set in my ways and it would be next to impossible to teach me new ideas that I am currently ignorant of.  Consequently she does things herself.   

She correctly explains that she does this because it would take longer to teach me how to do these household tasks successfully and even if I do it right the next time, under my own kind of stress, I will probably revert back to my mistaken ways of the past.  She has also decided that she will save time if she just does it herself.

I suspect that the lady in our dys-executive syndrome story uses similar ideas to do everything herself.   Instead of having her oldest daughter or son, help her making supper and other achievements around the home, for reasons similar to what I described above concerning my wife, she decides to just do it all herself.

Many things would favor such a decision on her part.  Yes it is true that for the first time or even the second or third time, showing one of her children how to help her would take longer but eventually the mother would be managing her own time better. In the longer picture she would be providing that child with the skills that he or she would need when they themselves become adults.  Which in turn fits into the Mother’s desire to be the best mother that she possibly can be.

It would be nice if the story in the book told more of the  mother’s history but from what is offered, the above ideas appear to be appropriate and possibly the following also.  Is the brother a constant “visitor” for supper or just a casual one.  Sometimes husband’s fail to realize how difficult it is to run a home and care for one's children.  In this case we are told that there are 6 of them.

More deeper knowledge of the personal situation would be necessary but the following ideas might turn out to be part of the problem.   With 6 children already, there is a chance that this husband wants to experience the extra excitement of sexual intercourse without using a condom.

He could be one of those men who believes that it is up to the woman to avoid becoming pregnant by either using the rhythm method or whatever.  As long as it does not interfere with his desire to experience as much pleasure as possible during sexual intercourse.

This type of attitude by the father in this kind of situation can add untold stress to his wife’s life.   It is up to her to share her concerns with him.  She may not be confiding her concerns to him under the assumption that as a “good wife” it is her duty to give her husband as much pleasure as he feels that he needs.

Perhaps he believes that he is experiencing the pleasure he craves but let me make this perfectly clear.  Unless ones partner is experiencing a similar amount of pleasure, he is not realizing the level of contentment that he is seeking.

It is this kind of failure to communicate such ideas with each other that finds them at odds in other areas of the marriage which leaves them both thinking that they are not achieving the level of happiness that they expected in their marriage. 

Especially the level that they probably achieved when their lives were much simpler.  That is, before they had six children and a brother who may or may not be looked upon by the wife as just another individual to be cared for and looked after, instead of assuming the adult role of looking after himself.

Correcting this problem of dys-executive syndrome must include the psychological training that sees an individual speaking up for themselves in a way that also shows empathy for all those who make up the family unit.

If this means that the brother in question must learn to live on his own, then so be it.   If I told the husband that he had two choices, either he starts thinking about and acting on the ideas that I have expressed above or watch as his wife suffers a mental breakdown; I think it would be much easier for him to make the right decision.

But when a respected Psychotherapist tells you that your wife has a disease of the brain that requires some kind of mind altering drug to correct; where is the incentive to find the right ‘”cure” for the problem?? 

When such an ill-advised decision is made by the psychotherapist who incorrectly determines that this kind of problem is caused by genetic damage that requires mind altering drugs to correct; the outcome invariably finds the so-called patient being told to cut back on her responsibilities.

While this decision is correct, the method of achieving this cut-back are absolutely wrong and the additional psychological knowledge that is required to fix the problem is never really discussed. Making the correct decision is further exasperated by the fact that since the psychotherapist tells the woman that she must slow down, this indeed makes her start to feel better.  In far too many cases this better feeling is attributed to the drug rather than to the slowing down process.

But if the mother whose name is Ruth, included her children in appropriate responsibilities and entered into a more truthful expression of her feelings with her husband, in all probability she could uphold her part of the marriage bargain without having to deal with the stigma that she needs a special drug to help her cope with reality.  Especially when the drug helps to prevent her from ever confronting the real problems that caused the "so-called" problem in the first place.       

And further, while I said that I should stick to simpler problems, this one, although it looks complicated, especially when the psychiatric community becomes involved, is much simpler than they are incorrectly describing it to be.

I’ll confidently hang my hat on my interpretation of this situation --- and leave the incorrect diagnosis to the well-intentioned --- but misguided advice of the psychological profession at large.