This article -- 5 Things Psychologists Wish Their Patients Would Do -- seems to carry a lot of wisdom in the five things psychologists wish for patients to know. Having been through counseling twice, with little, if any benefit, I believe the advice is sound. I don’t know many counselors who actually teach this, however. It’s not standard work for healing, which is how I view the Restoration to Health Strategy (RtH) I envision as a means to healing. The five steps in RtH are knowledge, nutrition, exercise, self/minimal healing protocols and professional assistance.
As humans, our observations seem to focus on what is happening to us now. That makes sense to me. Our threat response is designed to react to what is occurring in our lives now. If a bear is in sight in Alaska, your threat response will take off, as it should. A bear is a true threat worthy of a fight or flight response. [By the way, you can't outrun a bear. If you try, make sure it’s not in a straight line and have cover in mind. If, with black bears, you are cornered, you should fight. (LINK HERE) Black bears will treat humans as prey. With a brown bear, you should play dead. Brown bears view humans as a threat.]
But most of the time when our threat response is set off, it’s for other reasons. Many of the reasons are linked to our adverse childhood experiences. Not all, but many. And accumulation of ACEs is usually a gradual experience over a lengthy period of time. Unfortunately, a significant period of that time is when your brain is growing rapidly and forming synaptic connections that affect a lot of our early learning.
But because our traumas are accumulated over time, and evoke different responses among us as individuals, unless we understand how the trauma accumulated and how it affected us (knowledge), it is difficult for us to figure out how to respond appropriately. So number 3 -- practice self help and observation has real meaning in RtH. We need to understand what happened to us, how it affected us and what to do about it.
Number 2, be kind to yourself, is great advice. But most of the time, when our mind beats us up, we are unaware of it. Why is that? If you look at the research about the subconscious and unconscious, you learn that most of what we do is programmed into us. We have routines we follow, mostly subconsciously. So I believe we also need to reach deep into our unconscious and subconscious to become more kind to ourselves. We need to learn how our body channels stress. There are dozens of channels for stress that we might have to examine in order to be kind to ourselves.
I am fully on board with recommendation #1, but I expand it to include meditation, mindfulness, EMDR, EFT and Ericksonian hypnosis. They work for many people, if introduced and practiced properly. When we understand ourselves, we can use any or all of the treatments for helping us deal with our toxic stress. And the beauty of three of them is their self-application. EMDR and hypnosis require a third party to administer. For rural health systems, I believe the existence of three self-applied treatments is powerful. Assistance can be given by distance delivery as well.
And #4, stay healthy, is encompassed in my recommendation for using trauma release exercise leading to tremoring and somatic release. And exercise does release endorphins, a positive chemical for happiness.
Finally, healthy relationships are important, but do require finding health people to interact with, or require teaching the people you interact with about how to seek health and happiness. In my original recommendation for RtH, I advocated for healing groups that come together to learn together, practice together and offer each other support. With the success achieved by Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn in his full catastrophe living model developed at the University of Massachusetts General Hospital over 30 years, it seemed that a group healing model could be sound. It could also be achieved in a rural community setting.
Because we accumulate both trauma and the behaviors it spawns over a period of time, I remain hopeful that we can recognize both the conditions for infliction of trauma and the behaviors it generates earlier and earlier, as we gain experience, and intervene earlier and earlier with support for victims. I respect the role of counselors and behavioral health specialists, but there are so few of them and the cost is high in rural areas. And they are generally brought in when symptoms have reached a critical level. My goal is to push the toxic stress recognition window back in time and intervene quicker with a therapeutic model that stops the development of more severe symptoms. That’s why I appreciate articles like this one that stress what an individual can do alone, but can also bring into therapy at level five of the RtH model.
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