David Teachout's Blog, page 11

Embracing the Fetishes of Humanity

Directing attention to the atypical by labeling it deviant is a time-proven way of utilizing shame as a social control. “Why can’t you be more like x?” is the parental equivalent of the social admonition “don’t rock the boat” and the childhood condemnation of “you’re a weirdo.” The modern notion of declaring someone insane who’s ideas or behavior is disagreed with,

Disagreement Is Not Mental Illness

We construct our personal experiences, the relationships we engage in and the seeming choices we make through the mind’s eye that is our conscious lives. As we do these things, we typically believe that we are mentally coherent, sane and possessed of a degree of accuracy we deny to those who disagree with us. Unfortunately it is that last point, the acceptance

Working towards Wellness

Whether professionally as a therapist/counselor or personally as one among many taking life one day at a time, the issue of health, particularly mental health, is often front and center, or at least a persistent, just below the surface, consideration. Unfortunately we often look at health, even mental health, through only one lens, with the physical or social or emotional

The Expectation of Memory

Memory exists as a source of immeasurable joy and pleasure with loved ones and children and laughter and achievements parading across our conscious lives, even as it holds the repository of one of our greatest fears, that of its loss in dementia, alzheimer’s and brain trauma. The very substance of who we define ourselves to be is constructed out of

The Right Approach to Terrorism

Originally posted on Bracing Views:
Replica of the Manneken-Pis statue, a major Brussels attraction, among flowers at a memorial for the victims of bomb attacks in Brussels. REUTERS/Yves Herman W.J. Astore I grew up during the Cold War when America’s rivalry with the Soviet Union posed a clear and present danger to our country’s very existence.  Since the collapse of…

A Work of Worry and Hope

All activity demands two forms of projection from us: intention and endowment. Picture someone pushing a large empty barrel up a hill. At each step a mechanism fills the barrel with an increasing amount of water. If the person were to stop, the water would cease flowing but the barrel wouldn’t reach the goal. Consider intention as the desire to reach that

Tick, Tick, Tick … the Augustus Countdown Continues

Originally posted on The Weekly Sift:
If we can’t make our republican system of government work, eventually the people will clamor for a leader who can sweep it all away. Many of them already do. In the 2013 post “Countdown to Augustus” I laid out a long-term problem that I come back to every year or so: [R]epublics don’t work just by rules, the dos and…

The Substance and Process of Change

Often in the training received by therapists, there is little differentiation made between the theory of psychotherapy and intervention strategies. We are taught skill-sets for listening, empathic responding and being attentive, but, for instance, no attention is made to just what the “mind” is that we’re supposed to be working with. More difficult is an almost complete lack of appraisal concerning

Neurons Firing & Wiring

Originally posted on Dr. Christy Sim:
Did you know that anything can become a trigger for your brain’s fear response? A smell. A stuffed animal. A song. A picture. Even the most innocent things can become the cue for your brain to prepare your body for survival. When your brain is processing whatever that object or experience is at the same…

Living In A World Not Your Own

Contrary opinions are difficult to face. We see the world a particular way, utilize this perspective to provide justification for our actions and rarely tell our stories with anyone but ourselves being front and center. Contrary opinions are like having walked a seemingly comfortable marathon only to find out that there was something in a shoe giving you a blister. Thinking