Shouldn’t evolution end mental illness?

Posted on February 29, 2016 by David Joel Miller

By David Joel Miller, MS, Licensed Therapist & Licensed Counselor.

Mental illness.
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com

Why are there so very many different genes involved in mental health?

Clearly, there were lots of lifeforms on the earth in the past that are no longer around. Without getting sidetracked here by the whole question of evolution or creation or some variant of the two, one still has to wonder how all those things which are calling mental illnesses arose. And why do mental illnesses still exist?

Every additional study I read tells me that someone has identified a gene they believe may be involved in creating or exacerbating a condition we are calling a mental illness. If they haven’t found that gene then they are suggesting one must exist and remains to be found.

This raises the question: “Why are there so many of these mutations?”

That makes me wonder if all these conditions we are calling mental illnesses are of recent origin or did they at some time in the past have some evolutionary advantage. If mental illness did not serve some purpose in the past, why does it still exist?

Ancient literature, the Bible, and other writings mention things like alcoholism, drunkenness, and some people with impaired reality testing who would in past times have been described as “mad.” This was Mad as in insane or mentally ill not mad as in uncontrolled anger.

Shouldn’t natural selection be reducing not increasing the number of mental illnesses?

We know that mental illness shortens the lifespan, the mentally ill live fewer years than those without a diagnosable illness. Over time there should be fewer and fewer of the mentally ill left to reproduce. That would make some sense unless there was at some time, current or past, some advantage to what we now call a mental illness.

Humans now live longer and in larger clusters.

Some authors have suggested that many of the diseases we are now most concerned about, heart conditions, cancers, and diabetes are largely the result of humans living longer than before. When the average lifespan was 30 or 40 years, few people lived long enough to get those old-people diseases. See Sapolsky’s “Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers” for more on this topic.

So people live longer now and they also are living more and more in large industrial cities. Crowding of the sort that happens in cities can cause stress and changes in behavior. Is it possible that humans are mentally and emotionally un-adapted to live in large city masses?

There has been an avalanche of children getting mental health diagnosis.

We used to think that childhood was essentially a happy time and then you grew up and had to work. Only back then most children did not grow up, they died. So the more we look at the childhood prevalence of things we call emotional disturbances the more of these things we find. ADHD in elementary school girls is up 600 percent. Depression is more common than expected in children. Suicide rates of children are occurring in younger children and becoming more common.

Are mental illnesses ancient survival mechanisms?

What if some of those things we call mental illness helped people survive in the times when most people lived in rural areas, forests and jungles even, and some of these things use to be good things, but they are no longer as helpful in modern industrial situations.

How could some anger be a good thing?

Anger and its link to the fight or flight responses in the brain appear to occur in all the animals with a brain stem. For creatures of any kind that primitive response to threat can keep you alive in times of hunger when you need to fight for the food. Getting angry and fighting can also keep you from becoming that food.

Killing to preserve your life and your food supply makes sense when you live in the woods and that is a mountain lion out to eat you. That same anger mechanism is less helpful when someone cuts in line in front of you at the supermarket. Get angry and hit someone there and you may be the one getting carted off to jail or the psych hospital.

Why do bipolar people reproduce?

One of the characteristics of bipolar disorder is hyper-sexuality. This same driven sexual behavior can be seen in drug addicts also. Sexual “acting out” as it gets called, can get people with bipolar disorder in trouble with their family and their mates.

People, most of them, who are faithful to their mates get more sex on a regular basis and they tend to live longer than those who have lots of sexual partners. For someone in extreme danger who might get eaten at any moment being hypersexual may not improve your survival but that increased number of offspring may have helped humans expand their population at the expense of other animals.

What is good for the population as a whole is not always good for the individual person and vice versa.

Could depression have been an asset in the past?

Some of the characteristics of depression, the atypical type, are eating everything in sight and then sleeping as much as possible. This is a great strategy if you live in an ice age cave where food is unreliable and you need to conserve energy.

Eating everything in sight and sleeping all day does not work so well when you have a job to go to every day.

The point I am making is that many of the things we think of as “mental illness” may have been functional in the past. Some of these things that are getting labeled illnesses are more “maladaptations.” Even the bears don’t get to hibernate the way they used to.

ADHD may have saved lives.

One of the characteristics of this thing we are calling ADHD is restlessness and hyperactivity. This is useful if you need to outrun run a lion. The more you run around the stronger your legs get. Being fast on your feet keeps you from getting eaten or killed in some situations.

Today children need to stay put and not move to keep the teacher happy. That ancient part of the brain is telling them to run, play, and move fast. It may take a long time for the human brain to catch up with the move from the woods to the big city.

Just my speculation on how these things we call mental illnesses may at points in the past have been more adaptive than they are today. What do you think about this?

Staying connected with David Joel Miller

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now!

My newest book is now available. It was my opportunity to try on a new genre. I’ve been working on this book for several years, but now seem like the right time to publish it.

Story Bureau.

Story Bureau is a thrilling Dystopian Post-Apocalyptic adventure in the Surviving the Apocalypse series.

Baldwin struggles to survive life in a post-apocalyptic world where the government controls everything.

As society collapses and his family gets plunged into poverty, Baldwin takes a job in the capital city, working for a government agency called the Story Bureau. He discovers the Story Bureau is not a benign news outlet but a sinister government plot to manipulate society.

Bumps on the Road of Life. Whether you struggle with anxiety, depression, low motivation, or addiction, you can recover. Bumps on the Road of Life is the story of how people get off track and how to get your life out of the ditch.

Dark Family Secrets: Doris wants to get her life back, but small-town prejudice could shatter her dreams.

Casino Robbery Arthur Mitchell escapes the trauma of watching his girlfriend die. But the killers know he’s a witness and want him dead.

Planned Accidents The second Arthur Mitchell and Plutus mystery.

Letters from the Dead: The third in the Arthur Mitchell mystery series.

What would you do if you found a letter to a detective describing a crime and you knew the writer and detective were dead, and you could be next?

Sasquatch. Three things about us, you should know. One, we have seen the past. Two, we’re trapped there. Three, I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to our own time.

For these and my upcoming books; please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

Want the latest blog posts as they publish? Subscribe to this blog.

For videos, see: Counselorssoapbox YouTube Video Channel

Do the mentality ill need to stay sick?

Posted on February 1, 2016 by David Joel Miller

By David Joel Miller, MS, Licensed Therapist & Licensed Counselor.

Mental health care is caught in a bind.

Mental Health or Mental Illness?
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com

What are we to do about the mentally ill? Our systems of care are stuck on the very sharp points of a modern dilemma. Most of those care systems are set up to care for the sick. We assume that there are two kinds of people, the “normal” ones and the mentally ill ones. Despite all the evidence that across the lifespan the two groups are largely indistinguishable, our programs are primarily focused on, sometimes restricted to, treating the ill.

We have systems in place to treat the sick. Often these programs are poorly funded and access is limited to only the most severely impaired. Despite their inadequacies programs do exist. Unfortunately our systems of care aren’t always prepared for people getting well.

The traditional mental health treatment paradigm consists of identifying a problem that could respond to our available treatments. Give them meds, give them therapy, manage their lives for them. Sometimes the system expects to cure them, a few of them, and send them away.

Only we know that paradigm stopped working in physical health a long time ago. Most health problems, mental or physical, do not get cured. They are chronic. You don’t get cured of diabetes, you get your symptoms under control. Then if you are no longer critically ill we need to move you out of the treatment facility.

Mental health systems only treat the ill.

Despite much evidence that people with mental health and substance abuse disorders recover, we insist that if they are to continue to see the doctor they need to remain sick. If their current care does not meet “medical necessity:” then they are not eligible for services. Keeping someone well, supporting their wellness is just not in the program.

Once you “flip out” and try to kill yourself or others you are eligible for help. Until that time no services for you.

Preventive medicine has not yet reached mental health.

Repeated studies have demonstrated that for every one dollar we spend on substance use treatment we save seven dollars in incarcerations and criminal justice costs. But until you commit a crime and do your time you are not eligible for rehab.

Strength-based recovery works so no one pays for it.

Treatment plans begin with current symptoms. The assessment form may start off with a history of the present illness, not what life problems has this person had to overcome and what strengths have they been using so far.

The biased assumption of this approach is that there is somehow something wrong with this person. The possibility that life and its stressors have overwhelmed you rarely comes into play.

If you want treatment you need to stay chronically ill.

Generally, once the symptoms subside the client gets discharged. The recommendation is when you feel like killing yourself again, call us. What is missing is what can we do to help you get well. If you want help you need to stay sick. Get too healthy and your encouragement gets withdrawn.

The system perpetuates itself by encouraging people to think that they cannot and shouldn’t get better. Disability rather than being a temporary support has become an all-or-nothing program. Stay sick and we will help you. If you decide to get better you are on your own.

There are some exceptions To the stay-sick requirements.

I realize that there are some exceptions to this paradigm, that you need to be very, very mentally ill before you can get coverage for your mental health issues. Some non-profits try, a few governmental programs are designed to help people stay well and continue to have productive lives. But those few programs are the exceptions. They are constantly hampered because they need to find funding sources to pay for prevention and rehabilitation services. Most funding streams are only available to treat illness and to get help in these places you need to stay ill.

What is needed to improve mental health?

What is sorely needed in the mental health and the substance use disorder field is a seamless system of care. People need access to brief counseling when they are going through life’s difficulties before those problems derail their life.

We also need mental health systems that assume people will get better and can have a happy productive life. Those systems should be able to offer help and encouragement during the difficult times without requiring you to prove you are permanently mentally ill to qualify for treatment.

Most importantly, systems of care ought to emphasize helping people reach their own happy life goals rather than requiring them to stay sick if they want help. Episodic and preventative care needs to replace the current program of requiring people to prove they are seriously mentally ill and will promise to stay that way in order to receive help. Outcome measures need to focus less on how many severe symptoms you have and more on how you are progressing on having the best life possible.

Wellness and recovery needs to move from being a slogan to being a reality.

Staying connected with David Joel Miller

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now!

My newest book is now available. It was my opportunity to try on a new genre. I’ve been working on this book for several years, but now seem like the right time to publish it.

Story Bureau.

Story Bureau is a thrilling Dystopian Post-Apocalyptic adventure in the Surviving the Apocalypse series.

Baldwin struggles to survive life in a post-apocalyptic world where the government controls everything.

Dark Family Secrets: Doris wants to get her life back, but small-town prejudice could shatter her dreams.

Casino Robbery Arthur Mitchell escapes the trauma of watching his girlfriend die. But the killers know he’s a witness and want him dead.

Planned Accidents The second Arthur Mitchell and Plutus mystery.

Letters from the Dead: The third in the Arthur Mitchell mystery series.

What would you do if you found a letter to a detective describing a crime and you knew the writer and detective were dead, and you could be next?

Sasquatch. Three things about us, you should know. One, we have seen the past. Two, we’re trapped there. Three, I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to our own time.

For these and my upcoming books; please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

Want the latest blog posts as they publish? Subscribe to this blog.

For videos, see: Counselorssoapbox YouTube Video Channel

Be optimistic.

Posted on January 31, 2016 by David Joel Miller

Sunday Inspiration Post By David Joel Miller.

Optimism

Be Optimistic.
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com

Be Optimistic.

“What day is it?”

It’s today,” squeaked Piglet.

My favorite day,” said Pooh.”

― A.A. Milne

“It’s snowing still,” said Eeyore gloomily.

“So it is.”

“And freezing.”

“Is it?”

“Yes,” said Eeyore. “However,” he said, brightening up a little, “we haven’t had an earthquake lately.”

― A.A. Milne

Wanted to share some inspirational quotes with you. Sunday seemed like a good time to do this. If any of these quotes strike a chord with you please share them.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

Posted on January 18, 2016 by David Joel Miller

Inspirational Post From David Joel Miller.

Today we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day

Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

“I have decided to stick to love…Hate is too great a burden to bear.”

― Martin Luther King Jr., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches

“If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.”

― Martin Luther King Jr.

“We must come to see that the end we seek is a society at peace with itself, a society that can live with its conscience.”

― Martin Luther King Jr.

Wanted to share some inspirational quotes with you. Today seemed like a good time to do this. If any of these quotes strike a chord with you please share them.

What is – “What is?”

Posted on January 8, 2016 by David Joel Miller

By David Joel Miller, MS, Licensed Therapist & Licensed Counselor.

What is?
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.

Sometimes words don’t mean the same thing to all of us.

The fields of counseling, therapy, and psychiatry all have some common interests but we don’t always use the same words to describe the same thing. Add in related disciplines like psychology, substance abuse counseling, self-help, and life coaching, and the field has become a veritable tower of babble.

If you are struggling with, or in recovery from, a mental, emotional or behavioral disorder or if you have a problem with drugs and alcohol you may wonder what the words you hear mean. Many of the people who arrive at the counselorssoapbox.com blog have used a search term looking for information or trying to find out what a particular disorder or treatment word means.

Students in the classes I teach and sometimes the interns also, appear to grasp the concept but then come time for the test and they miss things I thought they knew. Recently I have gone to ending many nights class with a slide about the words, possibly new words, that were used in that night’s lesson.

It occurred to me that it might be helpful to explain some of the terms that professionals, researchers, self-help writers, and recovering people use. As time permits there will be posts about all these and other topics.

Not everyone agrees on the definitions of these terms. Some of the labels we use come from the American Psychological Associations book Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM.) The most recent version of this book is the DSM-5. Another source of labels used in the mental health and related fields is the World Health Organization’s International Classification of Diseases. The most recent edition of this would be the ICD-10. The ICD-11 will be on the scene soon.

Descriptions of terms that will be in this counselorssoapbox.com What is — a group of posts will be my “plain language” versions of these ideas.

The plan to describe and discuss things from the simplest possible perspective so I will paraphrase or use metaphors to explain what I am talking about. For the full text that defines mental illness see the appropriate manual.

Writing all these posts will take me some time but then you were expecting that weren’t you? This group of posts will not necessarily be in alphabetic or any other particular order. I write them as the muse strikes.

As always, comments are welcome, some end up being the basis for future posts. Remember there is only one of me and that I write during that rare period known as “spare time” therefore some comments will get faster replies than others. My goal is to respond to all of you eventually.

If you made it to here, thanks so much for being such a dedicated reader.

Staying connected with David Joel Miller

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now!

My newest book is now available. It was my opportunity to try on a new genre. I’ve been working on this book for several years, but now seem like the right time to publish it.

Story Bureau.

Story Bureau is a thrilling Dystopian Post-Apocalyptic adventure in the Surviving the Apocalypse series.

Baldwin struggles to survive life in a post-apocalyptic world where the government controls everything.

Dark Family Secrets: Doris wants to get her life back, but small-town prejudice could shatter her dreams.

Casino Robbery Arthur Mitchell escapes the trauma of watching his girlfriend die. But the killers know he’s a witness and want him dead.

Planned Accidents The second Arthur Mitchell and Plutus mystery.

Letters from the Dead: The third in the Arthur Mitchell mystery series.

What would you do if you found a letter to a detective describing a crime and you knew the writer and detective were dead, and you could be next?

Sasquatch. Three things about us, you should know. One, we have seen the past. Two, we’re trapped there. Three, I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to our own time.

For these and my upcoming books; please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

Want the latest blog posts as they publish? Subscribe to this blog.

For videos, see: Counselorssoapbox YouTube Video Channel

A New Year is Dawning.

Posted on January 1, 2016 by David Joel Miller

Inspiration for a new year Post By David Joel Miller.

The New Year

Happy New Year
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com

“Cheers to a new year and another chance for us to get it right.”

― Oprah Winfrey

“We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year’s Day.”

― Edith Lovejoy Pierce

Wanted to share some inspirational quotes with you. Today seemed like a good time to do this. If any of these quotes strike a chord with you please share them.

Is the world a good or bad place?

Posted on December 21, 2015 by David Joel Miller

By David Joel Miller, MS, Licensed Therapist & Licensed Counselor.

Good world or bad world?
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com

You create the world you live in.

The question of whether the world is inherently a good place seems like a simple question on the surface, but how you answer the question and why you chose the answer you do has a profound effect on your life.

How would we go about finding out the answer to this question?

Should you look for evidence or trust your gut?

Is this something you “just know” or do your beliefs dictate that answer?

The evidence for a bad world.

There is certainly a huge amount of evidence that the world is, in fact, an awful place. Each night on the evening news we see a number of stories about crimes and killings, disasters, and suffering.

Our history books are a litany of examples of how terrible a place the world can be. From the Holocaust to the killing fields from what was Yugoslavia to the invasion of Chad, everything bears witness that man is capable of constant unabated cruelty to his fellow man.

Each night the stories from the Middle East bring us yet another example of ways in which this world is a horrific place. Are there no limits to how bad our world can be? Is the story of our world a horror-filled nightmare?

On rare occasions, we get good news.

Most newscasts try to wrap up their parade of suffering, with a “feel-good story.” Mother Teresa feeds the poor and the fireman rescued a trapped puppy or kitten. There are stories of people opening their homes to the victims of tragedies and those who try to do good in the world.

This episodic dose of good news seems like a dash of salt on the wounds of all the terrible things in the world. Are there so few good things happening in the world or is there a systematic basis in our media to present the bad in preference to the good?

Bad news sells the paper or the broadcast. A sprinkling of good news may keep us from throwing away the paper and turning off the broadcast. Is good news really such a rarity or is it that we have an insatiable appetite for the dark and evil side of mankind?

Forgive at this point the gender basis of the term mankind. While males seem to stand in the spotlight of bad behavior. I have little doubt that some women are capable of equivalent misdeeds.

When we add up all the evidence for good and bad we don’t get a total.

Every person on earth may be having a different experience of the goodness and the badness of this world. Even collecting all those scores and adding them or subtracting them won’t give us the result we are looking for. Times change, things get worse and then better and then worse again. We can’t ever be sure we have the final tabulation of the worth of the experience of life here on earth. How else may we determine the goodness or badness of this planet?

Some people just can’t help believing in the good of their fellow humans.

There are those people, disgustingly happy people, who despite the evidence see this world as a good and happy place. They chose to see things in a rosy glow despite all the evidence to the contrary.

Psychology tells us, at least one of the classes I took did, that realistic people are depressed and happy people live in an unrealistic world. So are happy people really delusional? And if so should we medicate them to make them more realistically depressed? Possibly continuing to believe in a good and beneficial world in some ways makes the world a tad better.

Some people staunchly believe that all people are essentially bad.

This point of view appears to be a widely held one, particularly by parents of small children who report they are convinced that unless supervised every moment from birth to death these children will, at the first opportunity, do all manner of nasty things.

There are those religious groups who will insist that being sinfully evil is the inherent nature of man and that only a large dose of following rituals and self-punishment to the tune they are playing will suffice to make these people less than totally unacceptable to some religious body and presumably their specific higher power.

You get to choose your worldview.

All the evidence notwithstanding, you can decide that you will like and enjoy the trip we call life. Or you can insist on thinking the worse about what will happen.

Jeff Bell in his book about overcoming OCD “When in Doubt Make Belief.” Talks about the helpfulness of creating beliefs that reduce your doubt. My view is that belief creates hope, and hope makes recovery and a happy life possible.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy along with positive psychology recommends picking beliefs that are helpful. For me, that would be believing those things that result in having a happy life regardless of the evidence to the contrary. If the belief is helpful it may be useful.

This also means that you may need to be aware that there will always be exceptions. You can insist that people are basically good and a few people will do evil things or you can insist that most people are evil and a few occasionally do good deeds. The choice is yours.

Personally, I go for having a happy life even though that means I may miss seeing some of the bad in the world. You can do either. The choice is up to you. Which belief do you want?

Staying connected with David Joel Miller

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now!

My newest book is now available. It was my opportunity to try on a new genre. I’ve been working on this book for several years, but now seem like the right time to publish it.

Story Bureau.

Story Bureau is a thrilling Dystopian Post-Apocalyptic adventure in the Surviving the Apocalypse series.

Baldwin struggles to survive life in a post-apocalyptic world where the government controls everything.

Dark Family Secrets: Doris wants to get her life back, but small-town prejudice could shatter her dreams.

Casino Robbery Arthur Mitchell escapes the trauma of watching his girlfriend die. But the killers know he’s a witness and want him dead.

Planned Accidents The second Arthur Mitchell and Plutus mystery.

Letters from the Dead: The third in the Arthur Mitchell mystery series.

What would you do if you found a letter to a detective describing a crime and you knew the writer and detective were dead, and you could be next?

Sasquatch. Three things about us, you should know. One, we have seen the past. Two, we’re trapped there. Three, I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to our own time.

For these and my upcoming books; please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

Want the latest blog posts as they publish? Subscribe to this blog.

For videos, see: Counselorssoapbox YouTube Video Channel

What is Recycling?

Posted on December 9, 2015 by David Joel Miller

By David Joel Miller, MS, Licensed Therapist & Licensed Counselor.

Recycling.
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com

Do you really believe in recycling?

We have heard a lot about recycling in the last few years. Containers are marked recyclable. There are recycling centers and articles galore on the internet about how to recycle and what to recycle. Some people even describe themselves as “recyclers.” The biggest question in my mind is what precisely is getting recycled. Is recycling about things or about people?

People who talk recycling may be speaking many different languages.

It recently came to my attention that when people say recycle they may be talking about many totally different behaviors. They are also not in agreement on what needs to be recycled. Let me explain. I have been in the habit of thinking of myself as a recycler for a long time. Other people just recently joined the recycling activity. We don’t all approach recycling in the same way or for the same reasons.

Cities have put on a big push to encourage recycling.

Cities, counties, sanitation districts, and so on have been pushing recycling because they needed to reduce the amount of materials entering landfills. Eventually, the dumps get full, and then we need to create another. All this, burying things, and then digging new holes for the next batch costs money. Bury less stuff and the agency involved spends less money. Money matters, but it is not the only thing that should matter.

All that waste that gets buried and then some of it decomposes. That results in gasses. Some of those gasses are flammable, some dumps are burning underground and some have exploded. Avoiding these problems is a good thing but that alone does not motivate a lot of people to recycle.

The residues of all that buried stuff are full of chemicals. Some of these substances are toxic and if water flows through all that rubbish it can reach the groundwater. I am OK with drinking bottled water but do we really want to have to use that bottled stuff for cooking and bathing? How much caustic chemical do you want to rub all over your body in your morning shower?

All these are wonderful reasons to recycle, but that is not what most people in my town, and I will guess yours also, are thinking about when they talk about being recyclers.

Recycling centers pay cash for bottles and cans.

Paying cash for glass, metals and some plastics has really increased the amount of material getting recycled and this has kept a lot of stuff out of our landfills. It has also created a sort of marginal form of employment.

What many people mean when they say they recycle is that they separate out the part of their trash that they can sell to someone and get cash for. The rest of that stuff may be reusable but unless they are getting paid for it, they couldn’t be bothered.

Nowadays lots of people are picking up bottles and cans along the roadside and going through trash cans digging out things they can take somewhere and get money for.

I have witnessed “recyclers” who pull a couple of cans from the trash can for the few cents they will bring all the while tossing an armload of paper which could have been remanufactured into that self-same trash.

Thrift stores and charities do another kind of recycling.

There was a time when things were scarcer and it paid to repair broken items. Becoming a “repair” person was a potential occupation. Today many things are less expensive to replace than to repair. Worn or unwanted items get donated to thrift stores and charities.

Those items that are still in usable condition can be resold to fund future operations. Most charities receive a whole lot of donations that are hardly usable or which would require more cost and effort to repair than what they will bring. Disposing of the unsalvageable donations has become a significant problem for many charities.

Lots of waste materials can be used to create new things.

Paper can be reprocessed to make the next generation of paper. My belief is that many more things could be reprocessed or reused but the economics of collecting enough material and then reprocessing that material exceeds the cost of just making new items from scratch.

Briefly, we flirted with the idea of using garbage and waste food products to make alcohol. Vegetable-based fuel can be made but with the increased production of petroleum products and the decline in prices alternative fuels are becoming less and less viable.

Recycling may be useful to mankind in improving the environment, but to the individual, unless the recycling center will pay you to bring things in most people do not see these items as in any way recyclable.

Sometimes people need to recycle themselves.

People that were discarded by society because of their problems can be recycled also.

The mentally ill can recover. The addict and the alcoholic can get clean and sober and resume their place in society.

Staying connected with David Joel Miller

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now!

My newest book is now available. It was my opportunity to try on a new genre. I’ve been working on this book for several years, but now seem like the right time to publish it.

Story Bureau.

Story Bureau is a thrilling Dystopian Post-Apocalyptic adventure in the Surviving the Apocalypse series.

Baldwin struggles to survive life in a post-apocalyptic world where the government controls everything.

Dark Family Secrets: Doris wants to get her life back, but small-town prejudice could shatter her dreams.

Casino Robbery Arthur Mitchell escapes the trauma of watching his girlfriend die. But the killers know he’s a witness and want him dead.

Planned Accidents The second Arthur Mitchell and Plutus mystery.

Letters from the Dead: The third in the Arthur Mitchell mystery series.

What would you do if you found a letter to a detective describing a crime and you knew the writer and detective were dead, and you could be next?

Sasquatch. Three things about us, you should know. One, we have seen the past. Two, we’re trapped there. Three, I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to our own time.

For these and my upcoming books; please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

Want the latest blog posts as they publish? Subscribe to this blog.

For videos, see: Counselorssoapbox YouTube Video Channel

When old – you just sit.

Posted on November 25, 2015 by David Joel Miller

By David Joel Miller, MS, Licensed Therapist & Licensed Counselor.

When you’re old you just sit.
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com

Has your life become – just sitting?

Recently I have been talking with and hearing from an increasing number of “older people.” In the past, I have steadfastly avoided learning about the elderly in the belief that I did not know any of them. This belief, that neither I nor anyone I know is yet in that elderly class is constantly getting challenged by people who ask “How old are you?” with an incredulous look.

Those annoying people who sell medical insurance continue to force this topic on me by sending me advertisements asking me to switch my old-age insurance to their company. Worse yet they have been sending those notices to me for some years now. One of my life goals has become to outlive some of these annoying insurance companies.

My thinking, at this junction, is that being old is a combination of the effects of the physical process of aging and the mental attitude one takes towards this process. Self-care along the way is certainly a factor. Unfortunately, I learned that life lesson later rather than earlier. While my body may be accumulating aches and pains, defects of the body, I continue to work on keeping my mental faculties working.

I read somewhere that when you get old you just sit.

This was reported in an article about a woman who had passed her hundredth birthday. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? I can see that it might be nice to be relaxed and no longer stressed running hither and yon. But then it might also be that once you stop moving, at least mentally, your life loses purpose.

I have forgotten who that woman was or what age milestone she had just passed. This is a shame because I have a long-held belief that once you start school you have to stop counting half-years as in four-and-a-half and you do not get to begin counting those half years again until you pass that hundred mark. Anyone who lives past one hundred years ought to be recognized more than once per year.

You are all invited to my one-hundred-and-a-half birthday celebration. My fervent hope is that I will be able to attend it with you and will be lucid enough to realize what this gathering is for.

It has become apparent to me however that a lot of people entering those golden years have neither gold nor years. In fact, one great loss among the elderly is a loss of purpose. What do you do when you can’t go to school or work?

Young people are rushing to enter their disabled-years.

It is fully understandable that as we age we can accumulate injuries and disorders. As life moves on some people find it hard to get up and move around. For them, life’s high point may well be waking up and being able to watch some video entertainment.

What surprises me is the number of very young people who are resigned to sitting worshiping a talking box or a moving wall image. Have you all not heard the more time you spend seated the sooner that chair may become attached to your anatomy?

Despite all the encouragement to get up, out and exercise, more and more people past the age of 5 seem most motivated to sit as much as possible.

Has exercise become a spectator sport?

Lots of people drive in their cars (seated) to a sporting event where they can watch (seated) athletes perform. This is sometimes called “playing” a game. Though most sporting events past preschool take on all the playfulness of gladiator bouts.

An oft-heard life plan is to work hard enough to make enough money to be able to sit around and do nothing. Once you retire from the active world of work, it would appear that you have to join a gym, take up golf, or otherwise pay others to allow you to exercise.

Why are there so few hero action figures of old people?

There was a time when old people figured prominently in our culture. Think of father time and the Greek god Zeus. Now that I think of it the Christian deity, when he gets any consideration at all is depicted as an elderly man.

It will soon be Christmas. Santa Clause used to be a prominent personality at this time of year. The last few years Saint Nick, and his propensity for generosity has been losing ground to Ghosts, vampires, turkeys, the babies of the New Year, and cupid. Getting the latest entertainment device has supplanted giving the gift of happiness in our common lives.

My suspicion is that one reason for our cultural shift from old people and wisdom to preschool heroes is that giving required getting up and doing, while receiving can be done passively in a seated position.

If, at this time of year you find yourself “just sitting”, my hope for you is that this is a reward for a lot of lifetime doing, not the beginning of your resignation to spending the rest of your life in the not doing, seated position.

Staying connected with David Joel Miller

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now!

My newest book is now available. It was my opportunity to try on a new genre. I’ve been working on this book for several years, but now seem like the right time to publish it.

Story Bureau.

Story Bureau is a thrilling Dystopian Post-Apocalyptic adventure in the Surviving the Apocalypse series.

Baldwin struggles to survive life in a post-apocalyptic world where the government controls everything.

Dark Family Secrets: Doris wants to get her life back, but small-town prejudice could shatter her dreams.

Casino Robbery Arthur Mitchell escapes the trauma of watching his girlfriend die. But the killers know he’s a witness and want him dead.

Planned Accidents The second Arthur Mitchell and Plutus mystery.

Letters from the Dead: The third in the Arthur Mitchell mystery series.

What would you do if you found a letter to a detective describing a crime and you knew the writer and detective were dead, and you could be next?

Sasquatch. Three things about us, you should know. One, we have seen the past. Two, we’re trapped there. Three, I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to our own time.

For these and my upcoming books; please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

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I read somewhere that when you get old you just sit.

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Why are there so few hero action figures of old people?

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