Tag Archives: Behavioral Health

Warning – 6 reasons what you learned may not be true!

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

Truth or lie

Separating truth from lies is hard work.
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com

6 Reasons why some of the things we learned turn out to not be true.

Turns out that a whole lot of what most of us think we know is not accurate. Some of this does not matter. But if you base your life on things that turn out to be wrong, you can be in a lot of hurts. If we got it wrong we may be teaching our children things that could hurt them. It pays to reexamine some of the things we think we know and see if we got it right.

Here are 6 reasons you may have gotten it wrong.

1. Parents are fallible.

Think back to the first lessons you learned in life. Did you learn a lot about life from your parent or caregiver?

Most of us have things tucked away in our brain, emotional learning, moral learning, and attitudes about life that we internalized at a very early point in our lives. Your parent may have told you wrong.

Not that they meant to lie. Back then they looked so big and strong and knowledgeable. For most kids, the adult that raised them looks like an all-powerful god. Then we get older and realize that this person does not know everything. We forget that much of our way of seeing the world was learned from that caregiver before we were able to judge if they had it right.

It continues to amaze me that humans have survived and prospered, more or less, on the earth. Consider that child production and rearing is mostly left to the youngest and least mature of our members. Think about those teen parents trying to raise children even before they have learned how to have a healthy relationship, get a job, and cope with life.

Is it any wonder that lots of what we learned, we learned from other children, even if they were our parents?

2. The person we learned from may have been wrong.

We all learned lots of lessons from our peers. Did you learn a lesson about how people are, how you should be on the playground, from another child in an early grade?

That first romantic partner, did you learn about life from someone who had little knowledge also? That 14-year-old girl with a 15-year-old boyfriend, did you learn about love and sex from them? How did they know? In those early relationships, that other partner can appear so adult and knowledgeable. Later we find, as we have more life experiences, that they knew no more than we did, they and we may have been making it up as we went along. Who wants to look ignorant with their lover?

3. Brain chemicals may have interfered with storing and retrieving memories.

Drugs and alcohol are significant culprits in this area. People under the influence have distortions in the way their memories are stored and retrieved. Drug and alcohol use has continued to creep down to younger and younger people. Children in elementary school are experimenting and using drugs on a regular basis.

Stress hormones also interfere with learning and memory. Prescription meds may or may not be needed but there is always that risk that prescribed medication will alter the experience. If you do not feel pain you are at increased risk to be injured. This applies to emotional as well as physical pain.

4. We may have been watching the wrong people for danger.

Many a child has been taught to avoid strangers and not talk to strangers. There is some truth to begin cautious around strangers. What we leave out is that the majority of abuse of children is perpetrated by close family members and friends.

Not every teacher or religious leader is a safe person. Every day we hear about children who were abused or molested, frequently by someone in a position of authority and trust.

If you learn an unrealistic view of the safety or danger of the world your future life experiences will be distorted. A child who is injured by someone they should have been able to trust will be affected for the rest of their life.

5. Even the best student does not get everything right.

For example, the top score in one class on a recent test was 80%, this is a passing score, maybe even a B in most classes. Now if that student teaches this material to a younger brother and that brother gets 80% of what he is taught he now has 64% correct

See how a small error gets rapidly compounded as the facts, almost correct, are repeated.

Consider the effect it may have had on you if someone you learned from had it mostly right but not completely. Then you learn most of what they taught you and now you are trying to pass this on.

This is a reason that we need to continue to check and recheck those things we think we know to see if they are really true.

6. The prevailing wisdom may be wrong.

Just because everyone says something is right, you see it on T. V. or in a movie, does not make that right.

Our media has made it look like the good guys go out and fight every day. Often they use guns and kill the bad guys. The result is a general tolerance for the use of violence to solve problems.

Would it surprise you to know that on some police forces the majority of officers go their whole careers, all the way to retirement, without ever having to discharge their gun in the line of duty?

People who get killed in their own home, they are often the victim of a family member or friend. It is not strangers breaking into your home that you should fear. It is your family member who knows where you keep the loaded gun.

Many of the things I learned as a child, that was thought to be absolutely the way things were, have since turned out to be wrong.

Even the flat earth society has suffered a decline in membership.

Consider these six reasons why things you learned may not be so and then continue to learn new lessons. Accurate knowledge helps make the journey along life’s road happier and more enjoyable.

If you have found other reasons that you have learned things that later turned out to not be true please leave a comment and share these with the rest of us.

Are you on the path to the happy life you deserve?

David Joel Miller, LMFT, LPCC

Related articles

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

Does your family know right from wrong? Moral Reasoning

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

Ethics

Ethical loopholes strangle.
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com

How did those in your life learn right and wrong?

If you look around these days you start to wonder if anyone knows the difference between right and wrong. All-day and every night the media is full of stories about wrongdoing. Each successive incident seems to top the last for cruelty and wrongness. It would be easy to become pessimistic.

The optimist will point to any number of past incidents of wrongdoing and say we are making progress. There are laws designed to prevent wrongdoing on an individual level and more worldwide awareness that when something wrong occurs anywhere in the world it affects all of us.

Occasionally we see a young child who has done some great deed of kindness and at a tender age has an apparent grasp of right and wrong, but that is the exception and not the rule. There are always more stories about some youth who has done some unspeakable deed.

Think for a moment about how you learned right and wrong. Did you have to figure it out for yourself or did someone teach you? If someone taught you, who? Have you continued to accept everything they told you or did you ever question? If you have children how are they learning right and wrong, from you or from someone else?

How do people learn right from wrong and how might we increase the number of people who know the difference?

There appears to be a process that people need to go through to learn the difference between right and wrong. What they learn depends on the student, the teachers, and the way the lessons are presented.

Just because you act well around your children or your spouse does not mean that those family members will learn your understanding of right and wrong. There are lots of things that can interfere with the process of learning right from wrong.

First the process of learning right and wrong and then how it can go awry. In my life, plenty of people have tried to tell me the difference between right and wrong. Most times they did not agree and they have various formulas for determining the difference between these two options. A few people assert that there really is no difference, that truth and falsehood like right and wrong are all relative.

This relative position may have appeal as a philosophy, but it is not much help if you are being beaten, robbed, or raped or if your teen is standing before a judge charged with a felony.

The idea that people learn the skill of “moral reasoning” comes from the work of Lawrence Kohlberg. I was first exposed to this concept when I read Dr. Lakona’s book Raising Good Children. These steps or stages of moral reasoning are sometimes subdivided as they develop and change over time. I will summarize their ideas from memory so if errors creep in they are my errors.

A. Primitive right and wrong.

It is fair if I get what I want and not fair if I do not get what I want. The young child might say “It’s not fair I did not get a red one and I wanted a red one.” Fairness and right and wrong are all about getting what you want. Other people’s wishes do not enter the equations.

This approach is understandable in very young children and dictators of countries but we expect most other people to outgrow this way of seeing right and wrong. Our prisons and banks are full of people who do not appear to have outgrown this way of determining right and wrong.

B. You do for me and I will do for you.

In this version, we trade right and wrong. This comes from learning to share with siblings and playmates. So if you do something nice for me I owe you a good deed. If I do for you and you do not reciprocate then I can do whatever I want.

This stage of moral reason comes up sometimes in relationship or marriage counseling. One party believes they have been wronged by the other and therefore they are justified in doing something to hurt the other party.

People who stay stuck in this tit-for-tat stage of moral reasoning are destined to be disappointed and have a life full of conflict or they become a permanent victim as others let them down.

C. Mommy says.

Eventually, most people begin to resolve their moral dilemmas by resorting to authority’s opinions. At first, it may be mommy and then later it will become the teacher.

Plenty of people abrogate their need to determine right or wrong by following a leader and asserting that if the leader says it is right then they should know.

This faith in authority explains why people can be convinced to follow a leader and do horrific things because that leader told them it was the right thing to do. If that leader can convince you that God or correct politics is on his side then you might be convinced that killing others was a moral thing to do. Even if in the back of your mind you question this leader, the weight of others who follow the same leader will pressure you to adopt that leader’s version of right and wrong.

Peers are also authorities.

Somewhere in the adolescent years, our peers start having more influence on us than adults. If you join a gang, then their norms become your criteria for right and wrong. If you hang with drug addicts then you develop a “hustle” and stealing or other criminal activities stops being wrong and becomes acceptable.

In a previous post, I wrote about why trying to resist peer pressure is a choice doomed to failure and why sooner or later all humans give in to peer pressure or change their peers.

D. The rule or the law.

Many people come to believe in the rule of law. They memorize the law, regulation, or bylaws of an organization. Their appeal for right and wrong always goes to what the law says. People quote the constitution or other law as evidence for their belief in what is right and wrong. We have a supreme court to make just those fine distinctions as both sides in the argument can see how the law agrees with what they want the right and the wrong to be.

Others resort to a particular religious book, the Bible the Koran, or what have you. They are often adept at finding a verse to quote that establishes that they are correct in their view of right and wrong. As with other laws, these religious documents may also have other portions that lead to a different interpretation and there are religious wars a plenty over which religious book is the right one or the wrong one.

It is reassuring if you can find guidance in a book or law that eliminates the need to judge right and wrong but it does not always lead to a correct way of behaving.

E. Higher Values.

Beyond all these ways of separating right from wrong, there is in most of us a gut sense that regardless of what the authorities say, what our friends may tell us, or the holy book appears to be revealing, there is this fundamental thing that just does not feel right.

We have established by war crime trials, though some will disagree with this, that just because your party, leader, law, or religious book seems to sanction a practice there are some things that are inherently wrong and should not be done regardless of who says to do them.

Not everyone reaches or wants to reach this higher level of moral reasoning but it should be something that is encouraged if we want to avoid the excess of relying on leaders who might use their position, the law, or the religion, to justify doing fundamentally wrong things.

These are some thoughts about ways moral reasoning may develop. In a future post let’s look at the errors that may creep in along the way to better moral reasoning.

Here is wishing you the happy life you deserve. David Joel Miller, LMFT, LPCC

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

Decluttering my head.

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

Decluttering your mind.
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com

When your head gets full everything slows down.

Sure is easy to get busy. Each thing on the schedule requires thought. Some days there just isn’t room left for me in my head. Do you ever feel that way?

Recently I had a bout of illness. Two things stood out as a result.

First, I need to spend more time and effort on staying physically healthy, more on that later, and second, at times when our physical health is down, everything takes more effort, especially the mental part.

I realized while I was physically sick that everything took way more mental effort. I suddenly discovered my head was so full of the things I think about each and every day that there was not enough room to focus on getting well. Something needed to give.

One thought that occurred to me as I was convalescing was if I were to not recover if this illness was to be long-term, what things would I still think mattered?

This thought, occurring as it did during one of those long trips between the bed and the bathroom resulted in a decision that there was just way to much stuff cluttering up my mind that did not need to be taking ups space there.

If any of you have unused space in your head and need something’s to store there, just to take up space, let me know and I will be glad to send you some things, particularly things that no longer seem to matter in my way of thinking.

One thing I noticed while ill and convalescing was that my email was consuming a lot more of my thought than remembering to take my medication. When you are really sick just reading all that stuff can be exhausting.

Not only did my inbox now contain hundreds of unread emails, but they continued to arrive faster than I could open them. I know there are ways to organize my email, but consider what is the benefit of organizing stuff I don’t need in the first place? Which did I want to spend my energy on, reading emails in the hope of not missing something or spend that energy on recuperation?

The result was a determination to pare down those emails and then to start looking at the other things that I have let expand to fill up every waking moment of my life. At times like this, less really is better.

My apologies to all those “how to blog” and “how to sell stuff” folk as well as the “how to buy happiness folk,” most of you not only got moved to the delete box, you were gifted with an unsubscribe. If reading your email takes up my time, it clearly needs to be worth my effort and I quickly realized I was following a whole lot of email newsletters that did nothing but fill up my head and suck my energy.

I shiver as I write this, fearing that my subscriber number will take a sudden drop but if reading my emails is costing you more than the benefit you are getting from this blog, than one gift I can give you is to help you save that much time anyway.

So how about you? Do you have a whole lot of things that fill up your head and your life? Do those things really matter and do they make you any happier?

What I found, the gift of this illness was that there are a lot of things that occupy my head and my time that needs to be cleaned out, especially if I want a healthier and happier life.

Here is wishing you a happy and meaningful life, whatever that means to you.

Related articles

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

6 Myths about alcoholism

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

Bottles of alcohol.

Alcoholic Beverages.
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com

How many of these Alcohol myths have you heard?

If you don’t know the signs of a disease you can pretend you don’t have it. As a society, we do a lot of pretending about drugs and alcohol. Regardless of anything you may have learned alcohol is just as much a drug as any other chemical.

How it affects you depends on the relationship you develop with this powerful drug we call alcohol. Millions of people are on the road to alcoholism and don’t even know it. Some are already there despite their best efforts to pretend otherwise.

Here are some common myths about alcoholism.

1. Alcoholics are homeless bums.

The majority of all alcoholics, by some estimates up to 90%, have full-time jobs. It is only the most debilitated that end up homeless. Most have suffered for years before they reach the homeless point.

Alcoholics come from every economic strata, race, and religion. Even groups that forbid their members to drink still have alcoholics among their ranks.

2. Alcoholics drink every day.

If you only drink once a year on New Year’s but you have gotten DUI’s several times or arrested for bar fights, then you are drinking alcoholically.

It is not how often you drink, but what happens when you drink that determines alcoholic drinking. Alcoholics do not drink one or two drinks; they drink with the intention to get drunk.

Periodic episodic binge drinking is more likely to lead to alcoholism than the person who has one every day.

3. You will not become an alcoholic if you only drink beer.

The majority (54% by one estimate) of the alcohol consumed in America comes from beer. Beer drinkers get just as many DUI’s and are involved in lots of fights and domestic violence. If when you drink, you get in trouble, that is drinking alcoholically regardless of what you are drinking.

4. You need to drink for years to develop alcoholism.

Many chronic alcoholics will tell you that the first or second time they drank they became drunk and many blacked out. If you like the effects of the alcohol you can begin to drink alcoholically from the very first time.

The amount of damage done to the body is largely dependent on how high the level of alcohol in the bloodstream goes. You can die from an overdose of alcohol the first time you drink if you consume too much too quickly.

5. One drink a day won’t hurt you.

That may be true for some people, but the very young and the elderly are at risk from even that much. More than 4 drinks a week can impair health in older adults and alcoholism in the elderly is growing at a rapid rate.

More than half of all the emergency room admissions among senior citizens are the direct result of being under the influence of drugs and alcohol. Alcohol does not mix well with many prescription drugs that are routinely prescribed for the elderly.

6. Alcohol is a stimulant and gives you more energy.

Alcohol is a depressant. The use of alcohol has been linked to depression and other mental illnesses. Binge drinkers are 55 times more likely to attempt suicide.

While alcohol does not give you energy, make you look better, or improve your sex performance, what it does do is lower your inhibitions and get you to do things that you would never do sober. For every one thing positive that someone reports having done as a result of drinking we hear countless stories of people who committed crimes or were the victim of a crime as a direct result of forgetting to pay attention to what they were doing while they were intoxicated.

The majority of people in prison were drunk or high in the 24 hours before they committed the crime that sent them to prison.

Many who are arrested for being under the influence of drugs have alcohol in the bloodstream at the time of the arrest. It is very common for those dying of drug overdoses to also have alcohol in their bloodstream. Being intoxicated can impair judgment and lead to a drug overdose.

As much as alcohol consumption is glamorized in our society there are surely many more myths about the risks and benefits of drinking alcohol. What other myths have you found about alcohol?

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

Why your partner thinks you said things you know you didn’t say

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

Why does your partner think you said that?
Photo courtesy of Pixabay

False Memories.

What we remember about things others say can depend on our mood.

Two men go out to dinner with their dates. Let’s call them Bob and Sam. Bob goes home sure that his date did not like him. Sam is sure his date did. The two women said exactly the same things to their dates. Why the difference?

This happens a lot. You swear you didn’t say something, your partner swears you did. Neither of you may be lying but one of you has got this conversation wrong. Why?

One cause of memory failures is false memories. They happen more often than most of us realize and they cause a lot of relationship problems. Those memories are easier to create than you might think.

Researchers have sophisticated ways of testing for false memories and the way they are created or perpetuated. In pasts posts, we talked about how drugs and alcohol can increase false memories, but your personality and that of your partner are also factors. False memories are dependent on your mood at the time you hear things. They are also affected by your normal personality and way of perceiving the world.

Info about false memories and why they occur in relationships.

A test for false memories would consist of asking you to remember a list of words. Say the list included, night, bed, pillow, nap, etc. The next time you see the researcher you read a list of words and are asked to mark which you saw the first time.

This time included in the list is a word that was not there the first time but would have fit with the category that made up that list. In this case, the missing word might have been sleep. So if you picked sleep it made sense, but in fact, the word was not there the first time. If you said that you remembered it this would be a false memory.

In our date example, we find that in both cases the woman told their date that they had an interesting tie. Bob the perennial pessimist is sure his date said he had an awful tie. Sam remembers his date as saying he had a nice tie. Sam is an optimist.

The mood, as well as the basic personality of these two men, causes them to hear the same information but they both remember things that the date did not say. What they are remembering is a form of false memory in which their mind has filled in the words needed to make sense of the comment “interesting tie.”

One way to check this out in the lab would be to leave the word “sleep” out of the retest. This time if we added two words to the list, say insomnia and restful, we could see if there was a difference in the way two people would remember that list.

Sure enough, pessimists will remember insomnia and swear it was on the first list and optimists will remember the word rest. Both are making errors in their memory. Neither is lying but they both are sure they remember things that did not happen because they learned the list of words as a category, not as a list. Then when they are retested they fill in another word that fits their version of what the category is about.

So consider that some of the things you and those around you swear were said or happen may, in fact, be false memories. How sure are you that you actually heard the things you think you heard?

Sometimes for the sake of relationships and our long-term sanity, it pays to check out with the other person what they really said or meant. That way our minds do not need to fill in missing information and there are fewer chances to create these troublesome false memories in the first place.

What is the chance that memory you are arguing about is a false memory?

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

Why can’t I stay better? Why doesn’t recovery last?

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

Relapse

Relapse.
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com

If self-help and self-improvement work, why are people still looking?

There are no shortages of self-help books or self-improvement products.

They appear on talk shows, on the internet, and in bookstores aplenty. With all that help why are so many people still looking for a way to achieve happiness and then to stay happy?

There are more than enough religions on earth and plenty of room for anyone who wants to join one, still, there is widespread unhappiness. Why can’t we find a way to happiness and stay there? Some Religions pride themselves on their ability to bear up under suffering, seem to relish in it, and contend that they are better at suffering than others.

Not many groups can honestly say that their members are happy on a consistent basis. Your higher power may take away your burdens but you still have the requirement to walk the road of life.

The journey from mental illness or addiction to recovery is a long one.

The road is easier to travel if you have a trustworthy guide. Counselors, therapists, and peers can point us in the direction of recovery. Why is no one able to tell you how to stay happy and recovered once you get there?

Recovery reminds me of the bills I pay. Every month I pay the rent and the utilities and come the first of the month that unreasonable landlord, along with the illogical utility close on his heels, sends me another bill to pay. I paid you off completely last month and you want me to pay again?

Why can’t I be rid of bills and unhappiness all by making one final payment?

What I have come to discover is that most of life’s challenges are not the one-time crisis but the day-to-day strains. The things that throw us off track are not the huge things that others may have labeled us with. Unhappiness often comes not from the nature of our challenges, but from the problems of daily living. This is a real-life, some days I like it and some days I do not.

No matter how hard I struggle to get out of the ditch and back on the road of life there are always bound to be more bumps down the road. Just because I get up does not mean that nothing will ever knock me down. The road of life is full of bumps. At any time the problems of life can knock me down again. What matters is how I react to those crises, that and having a good support team that can help pull me out of the ditch and gets me back on the road of life again.

As I face the day-to-day challenges in my life I try to keep reminding myself that this too will pass. The pain may be a part of life but the suffering continues to be optional. I can stay stuck in my problem or I can move forward and have the best life possible under the circumstance. The choice is mine.

How is your recovery going today?

Are you making progress towards being the better person you want to be? Have you seized some positive thoughts and some happiness today? What are you doing to further your recovery? If you have a support system in place have you reached out to them recently? If there is no one in your corner how can you create and maintain that support system we all need? Here is wishing you all the happiness that you can squeeze out of this life whatever the challenges and obstacles you are struggling with today. Life never is about the destination, it is always about how well we make the journey.

Related articles

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

Want to write a post for counselorssoapbox?

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By David Joel Miller

Man writing

Writing.
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com

Interested in writing a counselorssoapbox post?

People who have lived with and overcome a life problem have a lot to share. We refer to that sometimes as lived experience. That perspective teaches you things that you can’t always learn in other ways.

I wanted to throw an opportunity out there for those of you who read this blog. If you have something to say but haven’t found a way to say it yet, I invite you to consider writing an article for this blog. Whether you currently have a blog, or this is the one and only time you are planning to write something you are welcome.

My plan is not to change the blog to an article one, but it might be fun to share some things written by others from time to time. Frankly, this may also help me by keeping the blog going with fresh posts during those times when my other activities keep me from writing.

In all fairness, I need to tell you what sort of articles I am looking for. The main focus of this blog is and will remain on having a happy life. I strongly believe in recovery, that people do not need to stay stuck in their illness forever and that they can and do get better and go on to have happy fulfilled lives. What that means to each of you may be a quite different thing.

Many of the posts I write are about mental and emotional illnesses, substance abuse, and their co-occurrence. Some posts have been about counseling and therapy. Related to those topics are self-improvement, parenting, and relationships.

What I most would like to hear about is not the daily problems but the daily successes. If you went for counseling, what worked and what did not work. If something else was helpful, what was it and how might others make use of the resource you found?

Even if you did not have a problem that got a diagnosis but you found a way to overcome that issue I would love to hear from you.

If there was a particular book or exercise that you have done that led to your growth and learning, by all means, share that also.

Professionals are welcome to join in this opportunity. Many professionals are themselves in recovery or have had to do a lot of work on themselves to get to the point they could be helpful to others. We also find we learn a lot from our clients. So if you would like to share those lessons learns, by all means, send them along, just please be sure, as I know you are aware, not to share anything that would violate someone else’s confidentiality, privilege, or otherwise get us in trouble.

Articles for consideration should be from 500 to 1,200 words and positive or constructive in nature. As the author and editor of this blog, I reserve the right to reject anything that does not fit with what I am trying to do on this blog and to make small edits as needed. I would ask the author before making any big changes in what you write. I also reserve the right to reuse your article or quote from it in other things that I am writing.

If you send pictures, make sure they are not copyrighted or I can locate a picture to add to your article. At this point, my blog is not big enough to pay for submissions but in exchange for your contribution, I can offer you a byline.

These articles should be original, not something already posted to another blog. Most bloggers know how to reblog and we all do that from time to time but for this submit-an-article program, I am looking for new and different points of view.

Whether you have written a lot of posts or this is the one and only one you will write all submissions are welcome.

This is not something that needs to be done right away, I have posts scheduled to appear for a few weeks yet but I find those who say they want to write but never get started never get them written. If you have an idea let me know and we can plan for a future date for your post to appear.

So if the idea of being a writer whose article is featured on counselorssoapbox appeals to you or you just have a burning desire to say something contact me and let’s see if this is something that could happen.

You are of course always welcome and encouraged to leave a comment on anything that is posted even if you chose not to write a long post.

Here is hoping that you all will continue to read counselorssoapbox and that some of you will decide to write an article for the blog.

Thanks for reading,

David Joel Miller, LMFT, LPCC

Related articles

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

Why we need to talk about mental illness, drugs and alcohol in combination

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

Drugs.

Drugs.
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.

Why you need to know about mental illness, substance abuse, and co-occurring disorders.

Most people identify with one major problem, they have a mental illness, they are addicts or alcoholics or they may just have a “communication problem” with their significant other. No matter what you identify as your primary problem there are reasons you need to know about the other possible problems and how they may affect you.

Why “normal” people should know about both mental illness and addiction.

In the course of any given year, 25% of all Americans (numbers in other countries are about the same for most issues) will experience symptoms of a mental or emotional problem that are severe enough to be diagnosed. Most of those people will first see a medical doctor thinking that their loss of energy or their nerves is a physical, medical problem.

Most people who die from a mental illness have been to see a primary care or medical doctor in the 30 days before they die. When there is no medical cause for their suffering found they may fail to go for mental health treatment.

In their lifetime, about 50% of all Americans will experience an episode of an emotional or mental illness. Many of these issues can be mild if caught and treated early but untreated they get worse. The old practice of pretending you are O. K. even when you are in pain did and does not work. If you have a mental illness it needs treatment and getting it treated is no more giving in than going for treatment for a heart problem or cancer.

Many people will experience at least one episode of substance abuse, some get away with it a few times. Some abuse drugs and alcohol on a regular basis and do not get caught for a while, but eventually, most people have difficulties.

Even if you do not do drugs or alcohol there is a high likelihood that someone in your family or social circle will become an alcoholic or addict. For every substance abuse out there we estimate that there 5 to 8 people directly affected by the substance abuser’s disease.

Why the mentally ill need to know about substance abuse issues.

Not all mentally ill people abuse substances but the overlap is larger than most people would care to recognize.

Those with a mental illness are drawn to using drugs and alcohol to try to cope with their symptoms. Many Bipolar people like the mood swings that accompany alcohol use. If you like the mood swing you are likely to continue using or drinking.

When the depressed person drinks it helps them forget their problems for a while. Then the alcohol wears off and the problems return. There is often a rebound effect and the result is that your mental health issues are now worse than when you started. This leads to more and more frequent drinking.

Using drugs or alcohol to change the way you feel is a risky way to use them. If you are an emotional user you are at increased risk to develop an addiction.

Most psychiatric meds do not work that way, they do not suddenly and miraculously make you feel good, and then when the med wears off you feel worse. This is why psychiatric meds which only help you function, not cure your problems, need to be taken as prescribed and every day for a period of time before most of them will begin to help.

Why addicts and alcoholics need to know about mental illnesses.

A great many people in substance abuse recovery initially feel great, they are clean and this feels good. They the good feeling wear off and they are at high risk for relapse.

Many people began using and drinking at such an early age they do not know what it feels like to be without the drugs in their system. We often find that the early symptoms of a mental illness were there before the person first experienced drugs. But the long-term use obscured the emotional part of their problems.

Using drugs, the lifestyle, the drug, or alcohol experiences, distort your development. People who go for years using and drinking do not undergo the developmental milestones they should have experienced, and as a result, they are unprepared for life without drugs. The drug of choice and that could include alcohol or gambling or any other addictive behavior, has been your best friend and now when you give that friend up you may go through a period of grieving.

So drug and alcohol use may have hidden the symptoms of a mental illness, the emotional or mental illness may have been caused by the drug use or may occur when you give the drug up and discover that there is a whole lot of wreckage that you now need to clean up.

People just do not get through life having only one problem. The chances are high that you or someone close to you will have multiple problems in their lifetime. Having a mental or emotional illness and substance abuse or misuse is one of the more common cases of having multiple problems.

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

If you think fast are you crazy? Does jumping to conclusions make you delusional?

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

Delusions.

Delusions.
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com

People with delusions and delusion like thinking have been linked to fast thinking.

There is a body of research that links jumping to conclusions with having delusional thinking.

This has me concerned for several reasons. I have read a number of these studies recently and while they seem to have been rigorously done, I think there are flaws in their logic. I am also concerned that if we define one reasoning pattern as “normal” and another way of thinking as “delusion” there may be implications for the way these people get treated.

There are two problems with this research. Who gets labeled delusional and how that gets measured. I am suspicious that both are biased.

Who gets called delusional?

One study reports that a constant finding in the research is that the younger you are the more “delusional” you are. Presumably, this definition of delusional has to do with looking at a set of facts and circumstances and coming up with the “wrong” answer. In these studies, the wrong or “delusional” answer was anything the researcher did not agree with.

Another group that has higher than expected rates of “delusional” diagnosis is urban residents. This is disconcerting as this century is reported to be the first time in the history of the world that the majority of people on earth now live in urban settings. From this line of reasoning moving to the city makes you delusional.

Having a lower-income, living alone, and being unemployed also result in receiving a label of delusional. Men and non-English speaking immigrants also get labeled delusional more often as do those who are never married or divorced.

One other factor that increases the likelihood of being given a designation of delusional is a history of alcohol abuse and drug abuse, especially marijuana use.

All in all, it would appear that minorities and lower socioeconomic status groups are more likely to be labeled delusional.

The tests for delusions.

Groups of research subjects were given a test to assess their thinking process and its relationship to delusions. The thing being studied is a way of thinking called “jumping to conclusions.”

For now, I will accept the tests or screening devices and focus on the connection between the “delusion-prone group” and the Jumping to conclusion experiment.

The marbles (or bead) test.

Participants in this experiment were shown two jars of beads, one jar contains 85 white beads and 15 black ones. The other jar contains 85 black beads and 15 white ones.

The researcher then hides the jars and begins drawing beads from one of the jars. They wanted to see how many beads you will need to make a decision on which jar they are coming from. They also compared the “delusion-prone group.” to an apparently normal control group.

Most psychology experiments are conducted on rats. When rats are not available the researchers use the next best thing, college undergraduate students. Most “Jumping to conclusions” experiments are conducted on college undergraduates, a group not known for its rationality.

One thing that I do not see mentioned is the significance of being right or wrong on your estimate of which jar the beds come from. This may be invalidating the whole jumping to conclusions research paradigm.

What are the advantages of being right and the disadvantages of being wrong in this experiment? Would those intangible payoffs overpower the Jumping to conclusion effects?

What if your life or the life of someone you loved depended on getting the right answer? How sure would you need to be then?

Say the first bead is white. There is an 85% chance that the jar is mostly white and a 15% chance the jar is mostly black. Let’s say, to keep the math simple, you make a hypothesis that this bead came from the white jar, are you willing to bet your life? The second bead is also white. There is now a .025 % chance two white beads in a row are coming from the black jar.  By the fourth white bead, we are down to about 4 chances out of 10,000 that these are coming from the black jar.

Now, are you willing to bet your life?

Since there is no gain to be had for risking my life in this scenario I would hold out until there have been 16 white beads drawn. This could require as many as 36 draws. At that point, all the low occurrence beads should have been drawn and whichever color has 16 has to tell me the jar. So if my life depended on it I would hold out until the very last draw needed to be absolutely certain.

What if you could win money?

What if the experimenter offered me $100 if I could guess correctly on the first bead and the amount I would win declined by half after each draw? Assume the risk of death is off the table now.

Some of us would take a shot after one draw and go for the whole $100. Some of you more cautious types would want the second bead to increase your chances even though you now get only $50. A very few of you would wait for the third bead and play it safe to improve your chances even at the risk of only getting $12.50. My guess is that how long you wait will not be anywhere near as long as if your life was at stake.

Last example.

Let’s say the money was on a table behind a door. There is a whole string of doors. But behind one door there is a hungry lion that would eat you. To see the jar in this room you need to enter the room and then find the light switch to turn on the light. If you opened the door a crack and heard a lion roar would you go ahead and go in there and see if the lion was really there? Or would you try another door?

I would slam that door fast and then open the next one a crack to see if I got the roar again even if I was not sure which door the roar had come from.

Now back to the whole jumping to conclusions test. Would a group of accounting students tend to be more conservative and wait longer to make choices? Would a group of day traders make quicker decisions?

So while making quick decisions may increase the risk of making errors and some of these errors could be seen as delusions. At some point in our human history the ability to make quick decisions could have strong advantages. If you live in a poor, crime-ridden, neighborhood today, those quick decisions could save your life.

I am a lot suspicions that the researchers have proved that those people who make quick decisions, they term it that, jumping to conclusions have established a connection between their jar of beads and delusions.

I might try to guess after the first draw just to try to beat their game and they being more conservative and needing lots of evidence before they can conclude anything, would wait as long as possible before concluding anything.

More to come on delusions and how they may be affecting your life.

But the take away from all this, I remain unconvinced that making quick decisions even when you will make more wrong things is a bad thing or that we should call this delusional. Creative people try more things, some of these efforts work out and some do not. That does not equal delusional or mentally ill in my book.

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

Delusions are a leading cause of homicides; if you were delusional would you know?

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

Brain

Mental illness.
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com

What exactly is a delusion and why are they so hard to recognize beforehand?

One particular delusion has been implicated as a leading cause of homicides. Related delusions may also play a major role in other violent acts even though professionals have such a hard time recognizing them.

Delusions are one of those things like art or pornography we have great difficulty in defining but we all think we will recognize it when we see it. Unfortunately, it often goes unrecognized until way too late.

While not necessarily a particular mental illness, Delusions are a symptom of a number of mental illnesses. In practice professionals rarely seem to pick out the delusion first. The person gets diagnosed with a particular mental illness and then the descriptor with delusions gets tossed in later like that tells us much about what is going on.

Some mental status exam forms and assessment forms include checkboxes to mark off delusions. Since deciding if someone is delusional is such an extreme judgment call, this decision often comes after the diagnosis not before. Also, note that the one delusion that results in many homicides is not usually included in the list of delusions that we are presented to check off.

The commonly considered delusions are, Paranoid, Grandiose, Religious, and Persecutory. Let’s look at these one at a time and see why they can be problematic. Some of these examples are slightly exaggerated and embroidered for effect. Can you tell which are which?

When paranoia is not a delusion.

A client told me that he was being followed; that the police were out to get him and that it was not safe to walk the streets. Clearly, he was sounding paranoid. On Monday I learned that he had been arrested after the police responded to a shooting at his house. The police were quick to respond as they were only a couple of blocks down. They had been watching his house. He was found in possession of a large quantity of drugs.

Was he paranoid? As I tell students in the substance abuse counseling program, if the client thinks people are watching him and he has a kilo of dope in the trunk of his car this is not paranoia, it is common sense.

How Grandiose is Grandiose.

If I told you that an African-American though he could run for president and have a chance of winning in this the 21 century that would sound Grandiose wouldn’t it?  And if that Black man was a first-term Senator from the mid-west – any psychiatrist worth his salt would know right off that this person was Grandiose.

Thank goodness no one told President Obama those things. Or if they did, it is a good thing that he did not listen. Whatever your political affiliation, it is clear that President Obama ought not to be diagnosed as Grandiose, not since he won anyway.

So it is not grandiosity if you are actually able to do something. This makes me nervous when I put down that someone is having grandiose delusions. How do I know for a fact that they are delusional? In my mind, any doubt goes to the client.

Your religion is delusional mine is doing what God wants.

All religions are based on Beliefs. They customarily urge you to act on faith and have belief. Unfortunately, they all seem to have a different group of these essential beliefs.

In mental health, if something occurs to you and most of the other people in your community think this is correct, we do not diagnose this as a mental illness.

If a Catholic believes that they see the Virgin Mary we let that go.
Where this becomes a problem is if you move to a country where no one believes in the Virgin Mary and now if you keep seeing her they can lock you up as delusional. That whole community values thing is a rabbit hole down which the truth can disappear in an instant.

If you are now thinking of sending me a nasty comment or e-mail about how far off I am about your religious beliefs please read the next section before hitting send.

Persecutory Delusions.

It is not persecutory if people are after you. Like paranoid this one is a matter of degree and judgment.

If you think that people are out to get you and then you start getting written death threats, that is probably not a persecution delusion.

This like all the others is a matter of fact and judgment.

Which major delusion is not on a lot of forms?

We don’t like to look for and may miss jealousy delusions. People who believe that their partner is cheating on them can and do frequently get violent. Sometimes after they shot or kill someone they discover that their partner was not in fact cheating on them but at the time the evidence looked to them like that partner was clearly cheating.

One article I read recently reported that someone killed a man he believed was cheating with the client’s wife. He was arrested. The victim now dead was clearly not having an affair with the client’s wife. This belief was called a delusion.

Later it came out that the wife was, in fact, having an affair, the client just got the identity of the man she was cheating with wrong.

Was he delusional? I let you decide that.

Certain groups are far more likely than others to be described as delusional. I worry that if you do not agree with the assessor you will get called delusional.

Say you are sent for an evaluation and the assessor is a member of the Church of the Religious Egg. They teach that you should cover yourself with plastic and surround yourself with plastic objects three times a day to meditate. You report that this whole idea is crazy. The assessor reports that you are having religious delusions because you believe in some other deity.

At this point who are we thinking is delusional?

Please do not misunderstand here. I do believe that people, with or without mental illness, can and do have delusions, some more bizarre than others. My point is that we need to be careful about what we call a delusion and what we let go.

So in some future posts, we will need to talk about the research on delusions and why certain groups get that label more often than other groups.

Until next time, stay happy.

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