Tag Archives: Depression

Does a low IQ score matter? Mental retardation becomes Intellectual Disability.

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

Could you be mentally ill?

What Causes Mental Illness?

Mental retardation becomes Intellectual Disability.

How much do I.Q. scores tell us?

There has been a lot of misunderstanding about I.Q. Scores, what they mean, and just how significant a low I.Q. score may be. Some of the things we thought we knew have been challenged recently.

One definition of an I.Q. score is “The number of marks you make correctly on a piece of paper divided by your age.” We expect younger people to get lower scores and older people to get higher scores. What this does not tell us is what those scores are really measuring and what difference does it make.

The conventional belief is that people with low I.Q. scores are less mentally able.

This presumes that there are no biases in the test. Most test manufacturers or publishers work long and hard to eliminate biases. Still, we know that culture matters. Most I.Q. tests rely heavily on words, so if you speak two or more languages, but as a result know fewer words in each language you speak, you might score lower.

The presumption in the past has been that the higher you score on the I.Q. test the smarter you were and the better you should do in life. For someone with a low I.Q. we assumed that learning things would be harder.

This does not explain how someone with a low I.Q. score might be very good at a skill like music or a sport while the person with a high I.Q. might fail at those same skills.

Clearly I.Q. is not the whole story.

The mean I.Q. score is set at 100. The way I.Q. mathematics works are that the majority of people get scores from 85 to 115. That range is considered normal. So mix children with I.Q. scores of 85 and 115 together in a class and the teacher might have difficulty telling which is which, without reference to their test scores.

But if you get a score of 84, now we say you have “Borderline intellectual function.” If the 30 point differences between “normal” don’t make much difference how does that one point difference between 84 and 85 make so much difference?

The truth is small differences don’t make that much difference.

What matters most is what people do with the intelligence they have. So just like the really heavy kid may be no good at football and the skinny little kid may be able to run really fast with the ball, so to differences appear in how people use the intellectual resources they have.

The trend in the DSM-5 to move towards dimensional diagnosis rather than categories has changed our thinking from classifying mental retardation based on I.Q. scores to looking at how that low I.Q. is affecting the person.

So if the person is having difficulty with adaptive functioning because of their intellectual disability they get diagnosed with an intellectual disability disorder. If they are doing a good job of functioning despite a low I.Q. score they just may not get a diagnosis.

I realize this will take a while for the popular culture to catch up. It is no longer your I.Q. score that matters but what you do with what you got.

This shift by therapists and the APA is also likely to cause ripples in all that special education and those government programs that are still using I.Q. scores as a basis for services.

All in all, I see good and bad in this. Good if it reduces stigma against people simply because of the score they got on one piece of paper and bad if as a result of new definitions some people who need help get screened out.

Only time will tell.

So till then stop saying people have mental retardation and look to see if they are having difficulty coping with their life because of an intellectual disability or are they just sad, anxious, or upset about life events like the rest of us.

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

Will four beers get you drunk?

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By David Joel Miller, MS, Licensed Therapist & Licensed Counselor. Are lite beers less intoxicating? Yes, four beers can get you “drunk.” And it does not matter if they are lite beers or not. The brand and the nature of … Continue reading →

When should you force a child to go to therapy?

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

Therapy

Therapy.
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com

Sometimes you need to insist they get help.

Parents seem to be concerned about when to force a child to go to therapy. Making children go for counseling shows up in search terms to counselorssoapbox.com from time to time. This is an important topic.

In a previous post, I wrote about “Can you force your child to come for therapy.”  Parents know that forcing a child to do almost anything is difficult to do. Sometimes you need to enforce rules and decisions and sometimes the battle is not worth the effort. When it comes to getting your child into therapy which is which?

Most of the “Can you force a child to go to therapy” post was about the practical problems of coercing someone to go for therapy. Therapy works best when the person in session wants to be there. Sometimes they only “want to be there” because their parents or their parole agent made them come. Either way, if they have some incentive it increases the chances therapy will work.

There are times when you the parent are worried about your child, you can offer to get them therapy but “forcing” the child can make things worse. In a future post, I want to tell you about those times you should resist the urge to force your child to see a therapist.

We also need to look at when, for what problems, parents should be so worried, so concerned that they absolutely insist their child see a counselor.

Here are some of the reasons to put your foot down and insist that your child sees a counselor other professionals outside the family. Families who have a good, open relationship, find their children will talk to them about more, but there are still those things that are just too embarrassing to tell mom or dad about.

Your child says they are suicidal.

Suicidal statements, talking about death, or starting to say or acting like they do not want to live anymore are not something to ignore. Children of any age can and do commit suicide. Do not brush this off as just a ploy for attention. Kids get embarrassed and do not tell their parents the truth.

If there is any chance they will try to self-harm get them to go see a professional who can assess for the risk they will carry through on this thought. This is one area where kids will often tell a professional the things they will not tell their parents.

If you suspect your child has been the victim of abuse, rape, or molestation.

If you think this your emotions may run the gamut. You will be angry, fearful, and just plain want justice. The danger here is that by questioning the child too hard you will scare them, and make them close up and stop talking.

You can also run the risk of asking the wrong questions or asking them in the wrong way and then thinking their answers mean something they did not mean. You can end up taking the wrong action. Repeated questioning can also make a young child think something must have happened even though they did not realize it and they will start “remembering” details to please you. You want the truth not a story made up to please you.

These sorts of problems need professional intervention and please let the authorities deal with identifying and punishing the person who may have done something to your child.

Asking for too many details about abuse can also make the child feel it was their fault. The last thing you should do is to put the child through a second trauma when they are being interrogated about what has already happened.

You see evidence that they are becoming addicted to a drug.

The longer you wait to interrupt a substance use disorder the more likely it is to become a permanent addiction. Seek professional help.

This does not mean that if your child is smoking weed or drinking a few beers that there is someone who can lock them up to prevent them from doing drugs.

In most areas, there is no way to detain a kid for very long even when the parents want them locked up. A few places may let you turn them in as incorrigible but the number of places that will do that is getting very small.

Watching a child full-time is a difficult job. If they are abusing substances keeping them locked up and away from drugs is a complicated task. The faculty can’t just hire anyone to do this and paying a professional for 24/7 treatment gets expensive.

For drug treatment, the most effective methods include involving the parent in the treatment. Most treatments are outpatient and the child comes home at night. If you want help with this problem you will need to be part of the solution.

Locking your child up will not take away the desire to do something. The second they get out they will run to do what you tried to keep them from doing. What they need is a “head change” not incarceration.

If there are sudden dramatic behavioral changes in your child.

If they are stealing, need money, cut classes or their grades suddenly drop through the floor, these are all warning signs. Look for help fast. Do not make the mistake of thinking they will “grow out of it.”

This may mean drugs, may mean depression or the beginnings of another mental illness or could just be a problem with a boyfriend or girlfriend. Either way, once the changes are in play it may take the help of a counselor or therapist to find out what is going on and formulate a plan to help your child navigate these issues.

As hard as it may be there are sometimes you need to put your foot down, be the parent and get that child in to see a professional.

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

Should you vent? The dangers of venting

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

Should you vent?
By David Joel Miller, MS, Licensed Therapist & Licensed Counselor.

Do you need to vent?

Have you ever felt you just needed to vent?  Have you been around others who vented all over you? Sometimes it feels good to let it all out, to tell that person what you think. It is not so much fun if you are in the path of someone venting.

Have you been around others who vented all over you? Sometimes it feels good to let it all out, to tell that person what you think. It is not so much fun if you are in the path of someone venting.

Sometimes it feels good to let it all out, to tell that person what you think.

It is not so much fun if you are in the path of someone venting.

Keep in mind, there are a whole lot of problems that result from venting.

When people talk about “Venting” they are almost universally talking about expressing negative emotions. Even when people act out on supposed positive emotions there can be violence. Venting as a way to celebrate your team’s victory can end you up in jail if you act out.

When people talk about venting they are not talking about the slow letting off of pressure like when the teapot starts to whistle. Most people, when they vent look more like a stick of dynamite going off than a little steam from the teapot’s spout.

Here are some reasons that venting may make things worse rather than better.

Rehearsal for violence.

There was a time when we had couples in therapy hit each other with those sponge rubber bats and yell at each other to “get it out.” Some therapists discovered that after venting in therapy those same couples went home and then the next time they argued they started hitting each other for real, with solid bats.

Venting can increase your sensitivity to anger and violence. You are in effect practicing getting worked up and acting out.

Yelling, screaming, and jumping around does not serve to get a football team calmed down before a match, it gets them worked up and they go out there and become more aggressive. We will leave the issue of whether watching violence increases your propensity for violence alone for now. What is clear to me is that practicing aggression makes you more aggressive not less.

Venting increases your anger or other negative emotions.

Once you are extremely angry it is hard to control that anger. The most effective solution is to learn to not get upset in the first place. As hard as that sounds to do, once you get the idea that you can choose whether to get angry or not, avoiding anger is much more effective than venting once you get there.

The idea behind venting is that you are not in control of yourself, once you get angry you need to let it out and it is OK to subject others to your release of anger.

Anger management classes teach us that it is not what someone has done to us that creates our anger, it is our beliefs about that other person’s actions. Quite often the reason they did that thing which upset you was not the reason you think.

This does not imply you just need to take things. You have choices in your responses. The problem with venting is that we almost always go overboard and become excessively expressive of our anger.

The result is that after venting you end up regretting how far you went. You may even vent and then apologize. Once you have to apologize or get bailed out of jail, you have lost all the advantages of releasing that anger. You are now in a weaker and more helpless condition after venting than before.

Venting does not make you a stronger person. It leaves you making amends for the things you have done while venting.

Venting Damages relationships.

Even if you can vent and discharge those unpleasant emotions, that does not help the person you vented at. Often venting involves saying and doing things that may be hurtful to others. You vent, you feel better but the person you cussed out or hit may harbor a grudge forever.

Venting with a partner can damage a relationship beyond repair.

One reason venting is so attractive to so many people is the human tendency to store up complaints, sometimes called Gunny Sacking, and then let the other person have the whole load of our wrath all at once. This is an unhealthy way to deal with ongoing problems.

So before you let yourself vent consider other ways to handle those negative emotions or to prevent upsetting yourself in the first place.

Additional posts on this topic are under feelings and emotions, related topics are listed in the categories list to the right.

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

Can you avoid prison by saying your suicidal?

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

Alcatraz prison

Prison?
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com

If you say you are suicidal will you stay out of prison? How about jail?

Nice try! Not likely!

People try all sorts of things to get out of going to prison. While saying you are suicidal may slow the process down a wee bit it won’t prevent it.

Jails and prisons have psychiatric units. They can put people on suicide watch. So just because you say you are suicidal will not prevent you from serving a prison term.

People often confuse some very different ideas and the result is that they think things are one way when they are not. Here are the different concepts, very oversimplified. All of these, for the record, is very different from the popular conception of “crazy.”

Not guilty by reason of insanity.

This may get you off from the prison term but you may not be happy with the way it goes. Not guilty by reason of insanity means that at the time you committed the crime you did not understand that what you were doing was wrong. This is way beyond seriously and persistent mental illness and has nothing much to do with saying you want to kill yourself.

People who get this verdict go to a long-term psychiatric facility. You do not just stay for your 5 or 10. You stay until some psychiatrist is willing to risk his license on saying that you will not do this thing again and that you now have learned the difference between right and wrong.

I hear from clients who have been in these places that had they been up to going back to prison they might have chosen the prison.

Involuntary psychiatric hold.

There are three reasons you get placed on an involuntary hold. You say you will kill yourself, you threaten to kill someone else and we believe you, or when we give you food and clothing you can’t figure out what to do with this stuff.

This involuntary hold usually gets you sent to a local mental hospital. These are not long-term facilities by any means.

You stay here for, in my state, up to 72 hours for evaluation, and then at the discretion of the psychiatrist you might get put on a longer hold. For most people, this stay lasts a week to two. A stay beyond that is rare. Not the 72 hours is an “up to
” number. Lots of people get released in a lot less than 72 hours.

The objective here is to give you meds, get you stable and then send you somewhere else.

So if by some chance you convince someone you are going to harm yourself, you will get to stay here long enough for the meds to kick in and you to stop caring about what happens. At that point off you go to the prison unit.

While a prisoner is at this kind of hospital there will probably be one full-time guard watching them. They watch you all the time, everywhere. This gets annoying enough some about-to-be-sentenced people make sudden recoveries.

Seriously and persistently mentally ill.

If you can convince the powers that be that you have a long-term mental health problem you will get sent to a prison with a psychiatric unit at which you may be required to take your meds. You may have the right to say no, but the prison can go before a judge and get a court order to medicate you against your will. Also refusing meds results in a lot of reductions in privileges and options.

Should you say you are suicidal to get out of jail?

My advice to whoever sent this question in would be if you really are suicidal say so. But if you are not, do not try this dodge. The result could be more time and having to do things you do not want to do. You also run the risk of getting a label hung on you and face discrimination from the other prisoners. Who wants to do their whole time labeled a J-cat unless you really do need the meds.

Give it up. You did the crime, do the time and then consider doing something to rehabilitate yourself.

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

Gunny Sacking – When the emotional dam breaks

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

Pile of gunnysack

Gunny sacks.
Photo courtesy of  Pixabay.

Gunny Sacking is a major source of problems in relationships.

Gunny Sacking, sometimes called dam building, is that human tendency to hold grudges and then try to get even later. People who do this are often not aware they are doing it and they have, or think they have, good reasons for the behavior. Unfortunately, this Gunny Sacking behavior makes their relationship conflicts worse, not better.

Here is how the emotional Gunny sack fills up.

You get up one morning, you don’t feel well and you are running late. You trip over your husband’s dirty gym clothes that he left on the floor. You are miffed, maybe annoyed, but you let it go. When you get to the kitchen there are dirty dishes on the table and your husband is already gone. He did not wait for you, did not say goodbye, or clean up after himself.

Now you are getting angry. But you don’t say anything.

Later in the week, you make plans to go somewhere, maybe the two of you have been planning this activate for weeks, but he comes home late and you miss the thing you had planned on, or maybe you just go alone. Now you are furious, but still, you don’t say anything.

At this point, you men are getting defensive. I know that the boss called you to come in early. He also dropped an emergency on your desk at five minutes to five and when you called your partner the phone was busy. You have lots of reasons for all of this, she would call them excuses.

You guys are also thinking of all the things she did this week that you never said anything about.

None of that matters.

All week long she has been collecting slights, things he did wrong, and putting them in her gunny sack. By weekend that sack is overfull and getting too heavy to carry.

He has probably been filling up his gunny sack also. She didn’t do the dishes, there were tissues on the floor from the soap opera she watched and cried through, she was late getting dinner ready because of the meeting she had with the “The President” or “The Prime Minister.”

None of those things matter either.

Come Friday night, this was supposed to be their romantic evening alone, but before the loving can get started one or the other suddenly explodes and starts beating their partner to death with the full gunny sack. This beating usually starts off verbally but may end up becoming physical if both parties are not very careful.

The result of storing up all these issues and then dumping them all at once results in some particularly nasty disagreements. Well-functioning families talk out these issues as the week goes along and they do not let that gunny sack get full enough to be an unbearable weight.

Some people prefer to build a dam to hold the problems back. For them, a gunny sack is simply not big enough to hold all the resentments they are developing towards their family member.

They store stuff up over longer time frames, but when that dam finally breaks the deluge of anger is devastating. This broken dam release often washes away the relationship and takes family and friends downstream with it.

Cognitive-Behavioral Therapists (CBT) will ascribe the problems above to a faulty belief system. This couple has developed beliefs about why the other person is doing what they are doing. If she thinks his leaving without cleaning up and saying goodbye is because he is rude and uncaring, she gets mad. If she thinks something terribly important must have come up to make him do this, then she will be worried about him.

He probably also has distorted beliefs. Those tissues on the floor, they were because her girlfriend is very ill with cancer not because of the soap opera. See how faulty beliefs can turn life occurrences into crazy-making anger?

The stories you tell yourself matter.

Narrative therapists will say that both parties in this tale have constructed their own personal story or fable about why the other is doing what they are doing and what this means. Once the story gets full of problems and we can’t see anything good anymore. We will find this story we created harms our emotional health.

In future posts, I want to talk more about these ideas. But for now, whether you see this as faulty beliefs or a problem-filled story, we tell ourselves things and then live down to them. This couple would have gotten a whole lot farther if they had tackled each problem as they came along, in a loving accepting way, rather than storing up all their resentments for the inevitable catastrophe.

Do you gunny-sack?

How about you? Do you have a gunny sack for collecting resentments or are you building a dam full of resentments to wash away your relationship? If you or your partner are doing these things, this can change. If the two of you can’t talk about things without the gunny sack consider getting professional help.

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

Can’t find your inner child

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

Inner child.
Picture courtesy of pixabay

Have you misplaced your inner child?

The idea of having an inner child, and inner child work, comes and goes. Somehow this idea strikes a responsive chord in people even though there is scientific proof that there really is no inner child in any of us.

By inner child, we do not mean that there is some little creature lurking in us waiting to be fed. That makes for great Sci-Fi movies but not much reality.

All your “parts” do not grow up at the same rate.

What we should be looking for are those developmental stages, those things you should have learned as you grew up that somehow you missed out on. Look also for those good qualities that you left behind in your efforts to be “all grown up.”

Memories can be feeling instead of facts.

Not all our memories are filed neatly away in our heads. Some of those memories are emotional ones and those are kept throughout our bodies.

We know if you act in certain ways you are more likely to have certain feelings. Get a group of people together and have them laugh for no good reason and before long you will all be feeling happy.

So where do these phantom memories, those emotional pains from long ago, come from if not from some theoretical inner child.

Your inner child did not get everything right.

One way of explaining this inner child legend is that many adult problems are the result of things that we learned between the ages of say 5 and 15 that may have worked then but do not work now.

What if the things that you learned emotionally in 3rd grade about the opposite sex or about yourself turn out to not be true?

The person who is repeatedly told they are fat, despite looking perfectly normal, even a little thin, is likely to grow up thinking they are fat and to repeatedly try to diet and lose weight. If you learned the untruth that you were fat as a child you may develop a truly terrible adult eating disorder.

Unfinished business.

Some counselors call this unfinished business, those experiences of pain, sadness acceptance, and rejection that we learned in childhood, but are not able to work out as we transition into adult beings.

One danger in doing too much of the so-called “Inner child work.” Is that the more you go over a lesson of something you got wrong, the more firmly entrenched that wrong answer becomes embedded in your brain.

If you keep telling yourself “I am stupid” because as a child people repeatedly called you stupid or fat head, you may develop a personal story in which you continue to tell yourself that you are stupid. And as we all know stupid is as stupid does.

Pay attention to your self-talk.

For good or bad our brains believe what we repeatedly tell them. So if you tell yourself you can’t, you will not be able to. If you tell yourself you can, you very likely will be able to do so, as every little child learned from that little engine.

Be careful what you tell your brain you will be able to do. If you tell yourself you will fly make sure you head for the airport not jump off a roof and leave the gravity-defying to hard flapping of your arms.

If you sometimes find yourself crying like a little child for no apparent reason. If you have very immature feelings at times, don’t pay for a cat scan to find your inner child. Instead, go back and look at the things you should have learned at each developmental stage and then if there were emotional lessons you did not learn, work on them.

Did you outgrow fun?

One other thing that people mean when they say they have inner child work to do is that they had some characteristics when they were young and they have lost them along the way.

If life used to be fun and it isn’t anymore. If you used to be more creative and you have lost that skill, then get in touch, not with the behaviors of the little child, but the emotions and the ways of seeing.

Practice a child-like mindset.

Try looking at everything in life as if this was the first time you had seen it. Begin each day with that curiosity you once had and you will find that everything will look new and fresh again.

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

How do you tell them you have a mental illness?

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

Mental Health or Mental Illness

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

How do you tell someone you have a mental illness?

Should you tell people about your mental illness? When and how? Is there a stigma around having a mental illness? You bet there is!

That stigma impacts your decision about when to self-disclose and to whom. Whether to tell others about your mental illness is one of the tougher decisions anyone in recovery will have to make.

Your mental health conduction is mostly confidential.

Generally, medical conditions are protected by confidentiality. Your doctor is not going to tell people about your condition unless this is a “reportable by law” condition. Even then the person at the communicable disease center is going to keep it confidential as much as possible.

It is a whole lot harder to keep your mental health condition a secret and once that information gets out it can change your relationships forever.

Ask people if they would be OK working at a desk next to someone with cancer and many will say yes. There was a time people with cancer were avoided for fear it might be contagious. We know more now about most diseases.

Many people would be willing to work with or next to someone with an HIV infection or AIDS.

When it comes to someone with a mental illness the picture changes.

Most people do not know much about mental illness and still think it might be contagious, or that the mentally ill are “crazy” and dangerous. Many people do not know what to do or how to react when they encounter someone having a mental health crisis. Here is a great program called Mental Health First Aid to help people know how to respond but this program has not been available to nearly enough people.

Even among professionals working in social service agencies, there is a sizable number who would not want to have a person with a mental illness working alongside them. We have talked so much about the problems of the mentally ill, the message that recovery from mental illness can and does happen has not even reached everyone working in social services agencies, let alone the general public.

We have a long way to go to defeat the stigma around having a mental illness.

One way stigma has gotten broken down is by having people in prominent positions tell the story of their struggles. This has been powerful for reducing stigma against AIDS, Homosexuality, and a great many other conditions.

High profile people talking about their mental illnesses has not had nearly as much effect.

Some people who have talked publicly about their mental illness have said if they had known how much prejudice they would experience, they might not have been so open about their problems.

It is not just the mental health consumer who experiences discrimination. Their family members may be discriminated against or persecuted also. Some people do not want to have the mentally ill in their neighborhood even when they have a mentally ill member in their own family.

The result of this prejudice keeps the mentality ill hidden and forgotten and the families find they may need to pretend that no one in their family would be “crazy.”

The route forward for those who self-disclose mental illness does not look easy.

Sometimes the self-disclosure is inevitable. When you are in a relationship your partner needs to know. If you are on a job and have to take time off for treatment or end up in a hospital then your boss needs to know. You may have to tell your family also.

Some relatives, friends, and coworkers are more understanding than others. Some companies follow the letter of the law and look for other reasons to terminate a mentally ill person. Other employers follow the spirit of the law and recognize the contributions the mentally ill can make to this organization.

Mental Health is on a continuum.

It is important to note that even in writing this post I slipped into talking as if there are two groups, the mentally ill and the “normal.”

People who are knowledgeable in this area will tell us that the boundaries between these two groups are porous and that people move from being mentally ill to being mentally well. Some mentally well people will also discover they have a mental illness this year when they had never had one before.

Life stresses can impact most anyone’s emotional well-being.

The road to reducing prejudice around mental illness runs through the places of education. That education needs to take place well beyond the confines of professional training programs. We need more understanding of what mental and emotional illnesses are like and how they can be overcome in our schools, churches, and workplaces.

Along the way to stigma reduction each person with a mental illness, their friends, and family will need to consider when and to whom they will self-disclose.

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

Top 10 counselorssoapbox.com posts

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Counselorssoapbox.com

Top 10 counselorssoapbox.com mental health posts.

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

Just in case you missed one of these. Here are the top 10 counselorssoapbox.com blog posts for the month of August.

How much should you tell a therapist?                     

Do therapists have to report a crime?            

Levels or types of Borderline Personality Disorder               

Do people really forget what happened when drinking? – blackouts                       

Hyperthymia, Hyperthymic Personality Disorder and Bipolar Disorder                   

Are you Hyperthymic?                      

Which border is Borderline Intellectual Functioning on?                  

Do therapists tell parents what kids say?                   

Reasons Counselors and Therapists Lose Licenses               

Can you force a teenager to go for therapy? 

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

Recovery is getting your mind back

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

Brain

Getting your mind back.
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.

“Recovery for me was I got my mind back”

A client told me that once. It made a lot of sense.

One thing that happens along the way to recovery, whether you are struggling with depression, anxiety, addiction, or any other problem, is that your mind stops being on your side. It seems like your mind can go over to the other side.

You can’t do anything, your mind says. You need another drink, it tells you. And when you try to think about what you should do, your mind just doesn’t want to work.

Losing your mind.

“Lost their mind” used to be a shorthand expression for someone with either a mental illness or a substance use problem. Even their best efforts to think their way out of this problem did not seem to work.

It is not just that your thinking slows down. If you are depressed, or drunk, lots of things that you would never believe otherwise start seeming true. Get depressed enough or high enough and you might start hearing and seeing things no one else is. That should convince you that your mind is lost somewhere.

Recovery is getting your hope back.

When you are in your problem, you might also start thinking that there is no need to try anymore. Why keep trying if you are gonna be like this forever. When your mind goes so does your hope, follows right along.

In twelve-step groups, you hear the expression “my best thinking got me here” by which they mean that they had told themselves all sorts of reasons why it was OK to go on drinking and using despite mounting evidence to the contrary.

Symptoms of anxiety, depression, and a bunch of other emotional disorders include the inability to get your mind to do the tasks you ask of it. Confusion, indecision, and inability to make decisions are all signs that your problem has become a disorder.

Depression makes you confused and indecisive, so do drugs.

As you move into recovery you find your thinking changing, slowly at first, almost imperceptibly. Often others see the changes in you before you do.

The longer you are in recovery the more you find that your thinking will improve. It is as if there was a fog inside your brain and the mists begin to clear.

If you feel like you have lost your mind, get into recovery. Do the work on yourself. Accept the help that is offered and look for the recovery tools that you need.

Getting your mind back is one of the miracles of recovery.

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