A Book of Healing: Practicing a Psychotherapy of Liberation with African-Americans

About the book and the process of writing

Archive for the month “October, 2010”

20 Oct 2010

Jung’s Red Book

A new biography, Jung the Mystic: The Esoteric Dimensions of Carl Jung’s Life and Teachings, highlights Jung’s a life-long fascination with the otherworldly and transcendent aspects of human experience. It rightly places Jung in the context of other major mystical seekers and teachers, such as Rudolf Steiner, G. I. Gurdjieff, and Emanuel Swedenborg.

Gary Lachman
The book’s author is Gary Lachman, a widely respected writer on esoteric themes (as well as a founding member of the 80s rock band Blondie!). Lachman explores how, as a professional adult, Jung tended to hide and even deny this spiritual/esoteric/occult aspect of his life. Two dramatic personal experiences, thirty years apart, were to finally transform Jung into an openly mystical psychologist and an inspiration for today’s transpersonal movement. And between those two experiences came the creation of his great masterpiece, a hand-written book which for decades was virtually unknown outside his immediate family: The Red Book. In 2009, the Red Book was finally allowed to be published for the first time, an event which continues to generate a lot of buzz. Some see it as a work of literary genius, others see it as evidence of a psychotic breakdown. I’m with Lachman — I think it is a good idea to see The Red Book in the context of the current of mysticism and other-worldly weirdness running throughout Jung’s life. Lachman shows that even as a child, Jung was immersed in a world in which spirituality and the paranormal were the norm.

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20 Oct 2010

The Seven Types of Souls

The Spectrum of Essence
When we cast light through a prism, it comes out in the form of a spectrum which we perceive as the seven colours of the rainbow. Similarly, when the Source of all being (God, the Tao, the Absolute, whatever you like to call it) casts its consciousness into the relative world, it comes out in the form of individual souls of seven types:

What are the roles?
The word “role” refers to the fact that we each serve a particular type of function in the great scheme of things. We are all parts of a greater whole—the evolving consciousness of all-that-is.

Think of how every cell in your body is designed to play a specific role or function. And, although there are trillions of cells in the human body, there are only a few different types of cell.

Or think about all the stars in the cosmos. Although their number is so high as to be virtually infinite, scientists classify them all into just seven types, from hottest (type O) to coolest (type M).

Similarly, there are only seven types of soul. Which is to say, there are seven primary ‘roles in essence’ — seven ways in which the One becomes the many.

The names given to the seven soul types in the Michael Teachings are deliberately archetypal — hence somewhat old-fashioned sounding and not necessarily politically correct. The names are:

SERVER | ARTISAN | WARRIOR | SCHOLAR | SAGE | PRIEST | KING

The names reflect the natural purpose and proclivities of each soul type:

•Servers are naturally accommodating, caring, nurturing, hospitable, altruistic.
•Artisans are naturally creative, inventive, imaginative, sensitive, dexterous.
•Warriors are naturally forceful, loyal, protective, determined, steadfast.
•Scholars are naturally curious, studious, academic, analytical, neutral.
•Sages are naturally engaging, articulate, charming, entertaining, expressive.
•Priests are naturally inspirational, uplifting, motivating, energising, visionary.
•Kings are naturally commanding, assured, powerful, authoritative, decisive.
You are one of these. I am one of these [a Scholar, to be exact]. Everybody is one or another of these. All the 6 billion souls who are currently on the planet, plus all those who are currently are off-planet between lives, can be identified as one of these seven types.

Incidentally, you can often (but not always) tell someone’s soul type from their facial features. I have a separate article on this: The seven soul types: what do they look like?

(Feel free to look at that now, but do come back here to learn a lot more about the nature of the seven types!)

The Proportions of Soul Types
The seven roles make up different proportions of the overall population. In percentage terms:

•Servers = 25%
•Artisans = 21%
•Warriors = 18%
•Scholars = 14%
•Sages = 11%
•Priests = 7%
•Kings = 4%
So, one quarter of the entire poluation is made up of Servers, while there are fewer Kings than any other type.

To illustrate this, think of a school class with 28 students. According to these figures, those students would probably be made up of the following: — one King, two Priests, three Sages, four Scholars, five Warriors, six Artisans and seven Servers.

Now here are some further explanations about the roles in essence.

The Nature of the Roles
•Roles are not assigned to us or imposed on us. They are who we are.
•There is no hierarchy. All roles are equal in value, and all souls are equally free. A King is in no way “higher up” or “better off” than a Server. The roles are simply seven different ways of being, seven ways of playing the game of life.
•A person’s soul type has no bearing whatsoever on that person’s station in life. A King soul will live just as many ordinary, hard-working lives as a Server. A Server has just as much opportunity to become a leader as any King. In fact, the present monarch in the UK is a Server, as is the heir to the throne.
•The roles are certainly not be confused with the Hindu caste system. There are similarities in the names used, but this is simply because the caste system is a tragic misrepresentation of the nature of the roles. Soul types having nothing to do with birth, ancestry or class heritage.
•Despite the labels used, no gender is implied. Souls have no gender. They simply choose between one or the other for each life to come. There are preferences, however. Priests, Sages, Artisans and especially Servers generally enjoy being female and often prefer it. Kings, along with Scholars and Warriors, tend to favour being male. (That said, the challenge of being female and the fight for equal rights can be very attractive to a Warrior.)
•Our soul type is often evident in the first years of life but then becomes masked to some extent by false self or false personality. This consists of cultural programming, ego, persona and so on — the superficial identity we all develop which has nothing to do with who we really are. Usually, it is not until mid-life (when much of this false identity is broken through) that our true essence comes to express itself more clearly. For example, a female Warrior in her late 30s who has so far been a stay-at-home housewife might suddenly find her true home working as a political activist. A male Artisan who has followed in his father’s footsteps in the armed forces might have a mid-life crisis and decide to become a poet.
•Whereas our soul type is permanent, everything else can change from one life to the next: race, nationality, religion, gender, social standing, profession. But the essence and consciousness will be consistent. For example, a certain Artisan soul might incarnate as a woodworker in one life, a choirboy in the next, then a housewife, then a wealthy wine merchant, then a child prostitute, then a female shopkeeper … and so on. Throughout all these human lives, however, the Artisan will tend to be creative and inventive, seeking to bring fresh and original perceptions into being.
Our role in essence is our true nature, the part we each play in the cosmos. And, as the Michael teachings remind us:

NO MATTER WHAT THE ROLE OF ESSENCE, THE ESSENCE ITSELF IS COMPOSED WHOLLY OF LOVE.
Complementary opposites
Six of the seven soul types actually belong in pairs. Those in a pair share a similar function or specialism in life:

•Priests and Servers are both inspiration specialists, bringing good intentions to life, serving a good cause, seeking to improve the quality of life for all.
•Sages and Artisans are both expression specialists, bringing good ideas to life, giving form or voice to thoughts and feelings, changing perceptions.
•Kings and Warriors are both action specialists, bringing concrete objectives to life, making things happen, setting goals and moving towards them.
Scholars stand alone as the neutral role, and they are the assimilation specialists, absorbing knowledge from life. In each of the pairs (action, expression and inspiration), one is “cardinal” and the other is “ordinal“. Another way to put this is in terms of yin and yang.

The cardinal of the pair is yang: proactive, expansive, foreground, driven, and with a big-picture focus. The ordinal of the pair is yin, the equal-but-opposite complementary energy to yang: reactive, responsive, background, introspective, and with a detail-level focus.

•In the action-type roles, the King role is cardinal and the Warrior role is ordinal. To use a simplistic analogy, Kings embark on wars while Warriors fight battles.
•In the expression-type roles, the Sage role is cardinal and the Artisan role is ordinal. If all the world’s a stage, Sages are the presenters of the show, while the show itself is created and crafted by Artisans.
•In the inspiration-type roles, the Priest is the cardinal role and the Server is the ordinal role. If inspiration is likened to shepherding, Priests move the whole flock on to better pastures while Servers tend to those in need.
The Scholar role is neither cardinal nor ordinal, but at the intersection of all the pairs. The Scholar is the only neutral type, the role being assimilation — absorbing information from life to create knowledge. At the risk of mixing too many metaphors at once, Scholars would be the ones who chronicle wars, record stage shows, and study sheep!

Positive and Negative
It is important to understand that we can manifest our potential in different ways. In the extremes, each role has a positive pole (+) and a negative pole (–).

•The positive pole represents the highest, most authentic and positive expession of the soul, the true self, which is a source of love, truth and freedom.
•The negative pole represents the lowest, most distorted and negative expession of the ego, the false self, which is a source of fear, illusion and malice.
For example, my being a Scholar means that I am the sort of soul whose role in life is to take information from the raw data of reality. Scholar has as its positive pole “knowledge” and as its negative pole “theory”. When acting in my positive pole, I do indeed serve a positive purpose by collecting and offering valid, useful knowledge. But when acting in my negative pole, I tend to get side-tracked in invalid or useless theories of no interest to anyone but me, and then only because my ego gets off on knowing more and more things rather than interacting with real life. You could say that the positive manifestation of a Scholar is being a knowledgeable expert and the negative manifestation is what some would call a nerd or dweeb — (sigh) — so true.

So, the positive pole of any role leads towards true fulfilment of self and true intimacy with others. The negative pole leads to emptiness, frustration and alienation. Here they are in full:

ROLE POSITIVE POLE NEGATIVE POLE
Server service (serving the common good) servitude (loss of own power)
Artisan creation (bringing good ideas to life) artifice (ideas used to deceive)
Warrior persuasion (influencing others’ will) coercion (imposing own will)
Scholar knowledge (learning from life) theory (lost in abstractions)
Sage communication (delivering messages) verbosity (stuck on transmission)
Priest motivation (inspiring others to change up) zealotry (overly fanatical)
King mastery (absolute responsibility) tyranny (absolute power)

Relationships and Roles
Interestingly, the different roles do relationhips in subtly different ways.

•For Warriors and Kings (action type), relationships are a matter of fealty or loyalty.
•For Sages and Artisans (expression type), relationships are a matter of commitment.
•For Priests and Servers (inspiration type), relationships are a matter of dedication.
•For Scholars (assimilation type), relationships are a matter of involvement.
Channels of Input
We process our experiences through one or more channels of perceptual input. The number of channels we possess varies, depending upon our role in essence.

•Scholars, Kings and Warriors receive information through just one channel. This allows them to focus on what’s what, concentrate on the matter at hand, and think clearly amid chaos.
•Priests and Servers receive information through two channels. One is tuned to the immediate situation, and the other is tuned to, in the case of Priests, their sense of the “higher good”, and in the case of Servers, a sense of the “common good”. Hence, there is often a moral or ethical overtone to their conversations.
•Sages process information through three channels, while Artisans have five channels. With Sages, one channel is tuned to the immediate situation, one is managing their “act” or “performance”, and one is monitoring their audience. With Artisans, it is more a case of having multiple “back burners” making creative connections around the immediate situation.
While they are shifting their attention between their multiple channels, Sages and especially Artisans can appear to “tune out” the person they are communicating with. This makes Artisans in particular seem somewhat scattered, at least to non-Artisans. By the same token, those with multiple channels can find it difficult to accept the single-mindedness of Scholars, Kings and Warriors.

Read On
OK, you have the background. Now perhaps you want to know more specifically about each of the seven roles in essence. If you want a quick sense of what they all look like, based on photos of some famous examples in each case, see:

•The seven soul types: what do they look like?
If you want to read a fuller, more-in-depth description of each one (with more photos), click below. Enjoy!

SERVER | ARTISAN | WARRIOR | SCHOLAR | SAGE | PRIEST | KING

Discover Your Soul Type
Some people find it easy to intuit their own soul type or essence. For others, it’s far from obvious. To help you identify yours, I have put together a questionnaire (personality quiz) at Quibblo. Here’s the link: http://www.quibblo.com/quiz/atufj3C/Discover-Your-Soul-Type.

Over 1,000 people have taken it already and the results look like this:

The ‘natural’ proportions, you may remember, range from 4% Kings to 25% Servers. So this chart is showing a lot more Priests and Artisans than would be expected, and not many Warriors. This suggests either that the test is skewed to identify Priests and Artisans but not Warriors (which I totally accept is a possibility), or perhaps it is simply that Priests and Artisans are more likely to be doing this kind of thing on the Internet and Warriors aren’t. Feedback welcome!

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20 Oct 2010

Doing and Being

Doing and Being: Mindfulness, Health, and Quiet Ego Characteristics Among Buddhist Practitioners
September 16, 2010 — barry
H. A. Wayment, B. Wiist, B. M. Sullivan, M. A. Warren (2010) Doing and Being: Mindfulness, Health, and Quiet Ego Characteristics Among Buddhist Practitioners. Journal of Happiness Studies , Online first , 11 Sept 2010.

ABSTRACT: We examined the relationship between meditation experience, psychological mindfulness, quiet ego characteristics, and self-reported physical health in a diverse sample of adults with a range of Buddhist experience (N = 117) gathered from a web-based survey administered to Buddhist practitioners around the world between August 1, 2007 and January 31, 2008.

Practicing meditation on a regular basis and greater experience with Buddhism was related to higher psychological mindfulness scores. Psychological mindfulness was correlated with a latent variable called “quiet ego characteristics” that reflected measures based on Bauer and Wayment’s (Transcending self-interest: psychological explorations of the quiet ego. American Psychological Association, Washington, DC, pp 7–19, 2008) conceptual and multidimensional definition of a “quiet ego”: wisdom, altruism, sense of interdependence with all living things, need for structure (reversed), anger/verbal aggression (reversed), and negative affectivity (reversed). In turn, quiet ego characteristics were positively related to self-reported health.

Our findings provide continuing support for the key role psychological mindfulness may play in psychological and physical well-being.

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20 Oct 2010

Near-Death Experiences

Implications of Near-Death Experiences for a Postmaterialist Psychology
February 25, 2010 — barry
Implications of Near-Death Experiences for a Postmaterialist Psychology by Bruce Greyson

from Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, Volume 2, Issue 1, February 2010, Pages 37-45

Classical physics, anchored in materialist reductionism, offered adequate descriptions of everyday mechanics but ultimately proved insufficient for describing the mechanics of extremely high speeds or small sizes, and was supplemented nearly a century ago by quantum physics, which includes consciousness in its formulation. Materialist psychology, modeled on the reductionism of classical physics, likewise offered adequate descriptions of everyday mental functioning but ultimately proved insufficient for describing mentation under extreme conditions, such as the continuation of mental function when the brain is inactive or impaired, such as occurs near death. “Near-death experiences” include phenomena that challenge materialist reductionism, such as enhanced mentation and memory during cerebral impairment, accurate perceptions from a perspective outside the body, and reported visions of deceased persons, including those not previously known to be deceased. Complex consciousness, including cognition, perception, and memory, under conditions such as cardiac arrest and general anesthesia, when it cannot be associated with normal brain function, require a revised psychology anchored not in 19th-century classical physics but rather in 21st-century quantum physics that includes consciousness in its conceptual formulation.

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05 Oct 2010

A Girl Like Me

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02 Oct 2010

Long Term Psychotherapy Works Best

Psychotherapy Works Best Over the Long Term

TUESDAY, Sept. 30 (HealthDay News) — People with complex mental disorders or personality disorders would benefit from long-term psychodynamic psychotherapy that lasts at least a year or longer, according to new research.

Published in the Oct. 1 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, the German study found that compared to the more commonly used short-term therapy, long-term psychotherapy left people better off. In fact, the number of therapy sessions the patients had was directly correlated to improvements in symptoms.

“Long-term psychodynamic psychotherapy was significantly superior to shorter forms of psychotherapy applied in the control groups. This was true with regard to overall effectiveness, target problems, and personality functioning,” said the study’s lead author, Falk Leichsenring, a professor of psychotherapy research in the department of psychosomatic medicine and psychotherapy at the University of Giessen in Germany.

“With regard to overall effectiveness, on average, patients with complex mental disorders were better off after treatment with long-term psychodynamic psychotherapy than 96 percent of the patients in the comparison groups. Thus, this meta-analysis provides evidence that long-term psychodynamic psychotherapy is an effective treatment for complex mental disorders,” said Leichsenring.

“This study provides a great value for doctors and for patients, and one would hope could have an influence on policy decisions,” added Dr. Charles Goodstein, a clinical professor of psychiatry at the New York University School of Medicine and Langone Medical Center in New York City.

Complex mental disorders include problems such as depression or anxiety that continue for long periods of time. Psychodynamic therapy, according to Leichsenring, is therapy that puts the focus on the therapist-patient relationship and the importance of developing that relationship. Leichsenring said this is a key difference between this type of therapy and some of the shorter-term options, such as cognitive behavioral therapy.

Leichsenring and his colleague, Sven Rabung, from University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, reviewed the medical literature to find studies that compared long-term psychodynamic therapy lasting a year or more to other forms of therapy. They found 23 studies with 1,053 patients. Eleven of the studies were randomized, controlled trials, and 12 were observational studies.

Overall effectiveness, resolution of the target problem, and personality functioning were superior in the long-term psychodynamic therapy groups than in the comparison groups, according to the analysis.

The bottom line: “Long-term psychodynamic psychotherapy is superior to short-term treatments in patients with complex mental disorders,” Leichsenring said.

But the problem, according to Goodstein, is that insurance companies often don’t want to pay for long-term therapy, perhaps believing medications and short-term therapy are more cost-effective options.

For someone who’s just started having symptoms — considered an acute problem — short-term therapy may be helpful, according to Goodstein. But, for those who’ve had mental health symptoms chronically, short-term therapy may boost them to a “barely livable level” but not to a good quality of life.

So, what’s the ideal number of visits? It really depends on the individual and their specific problem, but Leichsenring said, “there is evidence that most patients with acute distress benefit sufficiently from 25 sessions. For patients with chronic distress, about 50 sessions are required to achieve a response rate of 70 percent. For patients with personality disorders, there is evidence that about 200 sessions, or 2 years of treatment, are required to achieve recovery in 75 percent of the patients.”

More information

To learn more about psychotherapy, including psychodynamic psychotherapy, visit the America Psychiatric Association’s Healthy Minds Web site.

SOURCES: Falk Leichsenring, D.Sc., professor, psychotherapy research, department of psychosomatic medicine and psychotherapy, University of Giessen, Germany; Charles Goodstein, M.D., clinical professor, psychiatry, New York University School of Medicine and NYU Langone Medical Center, New York City; Oct. 1, 2008, Journal of the American Medical Association

By Serena Gordon
HealthDay Reporter

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02 Oct 2010

Art Therapy with Trauma Survivors


Accessing traumatic memory through art making: An art therapy trauma protocol (ATTP)
• Article
The Arts in Psychotherapy, Volume 34, Issue 1, 1 January 2007, Pages 22-35
Talwar, S.

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02 Oct 2010

Getting the Most out of Couples Therapy

How to get the most out of couples therapy: you have made an important choice: to invest in the improvement of your relationship. By developing appropriate expectations and following a few suggestions, your investment in couples therapy can reap great rewards. This document is designed to help you get the most benefit from our work together.

In couples therapy, both the clients and the therapist have jobs to do. Your job is to create your own individual objectives for being in therapy. Like a good coach, my job is to help you reach them. I have many, many tools to help you become a more effective partner – and my tools work best when you are clear about how you aspire to be. My goal is to help each of you make better adjustments and responses to each other without violating your core values or deeply-held principles.

Goals of Couples Therapy
Your initial tasks will be to increase your clarity about:

  • The kind of life you want to build together
  • The kind of partner you aspire to be in order to build the kind of life you want together
  • Your individual blocks to becoming the kind of partner you aspire to be
  • The skills and knowledge necessary to reach your goals

To create and sustain improvement in your relationship requires:

  • A vision of the life you want to build together and individually
  • The appropriate attitudes and skills to work as a team
  • The motivation to persist
  • Sustained effort
  • Time to review progress and make adjustments as necessary

Tradeoffs
To create the relationship you really desire, there will be some difficult tradeoffs and tough choices for each of you. Here are a few you can expect.

Time Investment
It simply takes time to create a relationship that flourishes, time to be together, play, coordinate, nurture, relax, hang out, plan, etc.

Discomfort
Expect emotional discomfort, as it is always part of the growth process. In therapy you will try novel ways of thinking and behaving, like listening and being curious instead of interrupting your partner, and speaking up instead of becoming resentfully compliant or withdrawing..

Expending Energy
It simply takes effort to sustain improvement over time.  It will require effort to remember to be more respectful, more giving, more appreciative, etc.

Getting the Most from Your Sessions
By following these suggestions, you can make the best use of your time in therapy.

There are several mistakes couples often make in therapy. The first is showing up without a plan.

The second is the stream-of-consciousness approach. This happens when the focus of the session is on whatever happens to be on your mind at that moment.

The third is discussing the fight of the moment or the fight you had since the last session. Discussing these fights without also discussing what you wish to learn from them is often an exercise in spinning your wheels.

Here is a more useful approach to your sessions. Before every meeting, both of you should:

  • Reflect on your goals for being in therapy
  • Think about the next step you want to take to get closer to reaching your goals
  • Be ready to discuss the outcome of your completed homework
  • Give Your Success a Chance

It Takes Two
The blunt reality is that therapy requires time, patience, effort, and commitment from both partners.

Embrace Change
When it comes to improving your relationship, expecting and accepting change will take you far. While change can be scary, it is only through change that you can reach your goals.

Improve Your Relationship by Improving Yourself
It is typical for clients to begin therapy with the goal of changing their partners. You may think “if only she would stop doing ____” or “if only he would start doing ____ then everything would be fine.”  If you want to have a better partner, you need to be a better partner.

Things to Think About
Finally, in this section I’ve included some things for you to think about. These ideas may help you better understand your problem, provide you with language to help you discuss your problem, or help you articulate your goals.

Getting Real
Marriages (and businesses) fail for the same three reasons. A failure to:

  • Learn from the past
  • Adapt to changing conditions
  • Predict probable future problems and take preventative action

Can you legitimately expect your partner to treat you better than you treat him/her?

The hardest part of therapy is accepting you will need to improve your response to a problem (how you think about it, feel about it, or what to do about it).

Communication
The three most important qualities for effective communication are respect, openness and persistence.

It is essential for you to let your partner know what you think, feel and are concerned about. Partners can’t appreciate what they don’t understand, and people cannot read each other’s minds.

Most of the ineffective things we do in relationships fall into just a few categories:

  • Blame or attempt to dominate
  • Disengage / withdraw
  • Become resentfully compliant
  • Whine
  • Denial or confusion

Effective communication means paying attention to:

  • Managing unruly emotions, such as intense anger
  • How you are communicating – whining, blaming, being vague, etc.
  • What you want from your partner during the discussion
  • What the problem symbolizes to you
  • The outcome you want from the discussion
  • Your partner’s major concerns
  • How you can help your partner become more responsive to you
  • The beliefs and attitudes you have about the problem

adapted from “How To Get The Most From Couples Therapy” by Ellen Bader, Ph.D. and Peter Pearson, Ph.D. http://www.couplesinstitute.com

Anne Aja, Ed.D.

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02 Oct 2010

Black Women, Racism/Sexism and Weight

Is Racism (& Sexism) Making Black Women Angry & Fat?

I just completed a questionnaire about black women’s body image, eating habits and racism (shout-out to Vizionheiry for bringing it to my attention). I love participating in marketing and psychological research, so completing this survey was a no-brainer for me. The following warning made me pause for a few seconds, though:

The potential risk associated with this study is the possibility of discomfort in disclosing your feelings about yourself and your experiences in life.

But I jumped in anyway. Hell, I’m just thankful that someone cares enough to actually research these topics.

 

As I answered the questions, I began having some “aha!” moments. Questions about how we view ourselves that itemize our physical features helped me realize which parts of me I find more attractive than others and why. Questions about how much our self-evaluations of our beauty is influenced by others (specifically, black men) highlight how much of my opinions are based on my own values vs. other people’s values. Questions about how much of other people’s reactions to me that I ascribe to my race and how I feel about these illustrate the level to which I identify with “the black experience” – namely, the experience of being a victim of racism.
Yep, as I moved down the questions, it dawned on me why these beauty and racism topics are linked together. A great deal of Black women’s stress (numbing the pain -> overeating -> obesity), hostility towards other women (even other Black women), difficulties in interpersonal relationships, etc. can largely be attributed to, or at least understood through, our responses to this survey. It may also explain Black women (and men)’s easy camaraderie with other Blacks who can “feel their pain”, who have similarly processed the racism they experience, why certain Blacks are distrustful of Blacks who don’t wallow in their reactions to racism (as if not wallowing means they haven’t experienced the same level of racism), etc. So when given the option to receive the findings to this study, I jumped at this opportunity, too. These findings can be a great conversation starter for Black women to own some of our feelings about racism, and confront how these often suppressed feelings are affecting our lives.

I’m extremely in favor of ALL Blacks getting psychotherapy. Maybe if we did, Black women would learn how to recognize the symptoms of anger and depression that we exhibit without knowing it. Maybe if we did, Black Men would learn how to recognize how they contribute to our daily stress by compounding racism with sexism…and they’d learn how to understand and cope with Black Women’s Anger instead of entering interracial relationships solely based on the pretense of escaping this condition. Many of us complain about our voices being ignored. Well, here’s a way for us to be heard.

If you’re a Black woman, I highly recommend that you participate in this important study and share it with your sister circle. It took me about 27 minutes to complete (while multitasking).

 

Take the study here.

 

In the interest of pulling our skeletons out of the closet & facilitating some group healing, here are my responses to some of the social questions:

 

As someone with a marketing/psychological education and background, I greatly respect a well-designed questionnaire. The way the questions are split in this section between 1.) How often do you experience this because of race? and 2.) How much does this bother you? is brilliant. Very well-done.

What do you think of the idea of this research study? Do you plan on participating? What do you expect to be in the findings? Is there a connection between racism & Black women’s eating habits and body image? If you’re a Black woman, have you noticed a connection between your feelings of stress, anxiety, anger and loneliness and your eating habits? Can this research shed some light on the chasm between Black women and between Black women and Black men? What’s the one misconception about you or Black women in general that you would like to eliminate or clarify? If you’ve completed the survey, wanna share some of your responses/reactions? Anything else on your mind?
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02 Oct 2010

African-American Women and Depression

Stigma of mental illness: treating African American women for depressionPosted on July 28, 2010 by shlimentalhealth

Providers who successfully treat African-American women understand that treatment has to be personalized: contextually relevant to the client’s life. Black folks as a rule take extreme exception to being treated as “a case” of a diagnostic category. The quality of the interpersonal relationship regardless of the type of treatment is crucial to effective care outcomes.
One of the things that would help reduce the stigma of depressive illness is to more widely inform clients that: mild to moderate depression may be effectively treated with psychotherapy; and medication is more likely to be effective in severe cases of depression in concert with psychotherapy.
Our women need to know that therapy will help their unique and highly personal situation with clear benefits:
I can talk to somebody who will understand (my situation, race, religion, and family contexts).
I can change how I think view situations and think more positively in the moment.
I can learn about healthy options and practice preventative strategies.
I can practice new behaviors that will bring me peace of mind and/or social success.
I can get the emotional support that I need without burdening my family and friends.
I can learn to become more confident, empowered.
I can learn how to let go and let others do things for me sometimes.
I can feel worthy, unashamed, attractive, smart…
I can feel healthier, stronger, sleep better, eat wisely…feel well again.
More African-American women who have been successfully treated for depression need to have their stories publicized or shared among friends/family so that the word gets out: “I had issues and dealt with them. Hallelujah!”
Reference: Dr. Carlene Smith, Ph.D. 
Student Health and Counceling Services 
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02 Oct 2010

Putting Together the Puzzle of Psychotherapy

People in psychotherapy change at different rates.  Most often I find that this relates to numerous factors.  It may for instance be related to the age at which a trauma occurred, complexity of current life situation and influences, interplay of personality characteristics, and so forth.

I use a puzzle metaphor to explain various aspects of the therapeutic process.

What takes place in treatment is similar to putting together a puzzle.  There’s a catch to the whole process though.  It’s as if we have all kinds of puzzle pieces for a puzzle and we don’t have the original picture from the puzzle box to guide us.  There is something very interesting about the mind along these lines.  It has been examined from Gestalt psychology with a process that is called “closure.”  The idea of closure is that the mind fills in the gaps to produce a “unified whole” or a Gestalt.   As we’re putting together the puzzle pieces about how you can become the person you want to become, more of the picture is obtained.  There is a point at which adding just one more puzzle piece allows the mind to form a Gestalt and mentally see the final outcome.  Once that happens, everything becomes clear as to the direction needed.

And this process also takes place on an unconscious level.  The mind has built in self-corrective measures and begins searching for these corrective measures during psychotherapy.  Automatically, while we are asleep and dreaming, or we are staring off into space thinking about nothing in particular, the mind continues this process.

I also use this metaphor to explain why some people are able to change rather rapidly and others take much longer.

Some people’s problems are like a puzzle that a young child might be able to put together.  It may only have 8 pieces, and it only takes putting a couple of pieces together to get the Gestalt of the picture.  Others are like a 1000 piece puzzle.  This type of puzzle takes a great deal more searching, effort, and trial and error.  It takes longer to be able to get that feeling of making progress.  It takes longer to get the Gestalt of the picture.

Each individual has his or her own unique way of changing.  Some patient’s will put most of the puzzle together before they make a single change.  They have to know what the full picture is before they feel comfortable in changing.  Sometimes this process happens completely unconsciously.  Others are very deliberate, and utilize a great deal of conscious effort in placing each piece and make a shift or change with each piece that is connected.

Posted in African American Psychology, Individual Therapy and tagged , | Leave a Comment

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