How to Talk to Anyone (Junior Talker #5) by DeYtH Banger (old books to read .TXT) 📕

This medication reduces the craving for alcohol and can be used with an SSRI to reduce depression. This is an exciting development for the following reason:

Some people drink in an attempt to medicate their depression. The result is that the depression worsens as a result of the alcohol. When psychotherapy is used in an effort to get them to stop drinking the depression worsens and they relapse into drinking again. If psychotherapy is used to help them with their depression but the depression but the biggest problem is drinking, not depression, they continue to drink. In other words, the disorders reinforce one another. Now, with the use of anti depressants and Naltrexone, both conditions are treated with the hope that the chances of relapse are reduced.

It must be emphasized that psychotherapy remains a vital and necessary part of treatment for both conditions. Medication cannot do everything and people drink and get depressed for many  personal reasons that are best dealt with in psychotherapy. Here, too, there was once a belief that psychotherapy cannot work while someone is drinking, even if they are depressed. Now, psychotherapy is used while people are drinking and this can be sharply reduced with Naltrexone medication.

While much research will continue to be done in the area of this comorbid condition, at least this is a good start. At this point it is unknow how many people will be helped by this but at least there is great hope. In addition, it is a positive thing that alcohol abuse and depression are seen as disorders that can be dealt with at the same time.

Your comments are encouraged.

 

Allan N. Schwartz, PhD

 

 

 

 

 

 

Men, Women and Dysfunctional Relating

 

 

 

 

 

“When this couple entered therapy they were clearly alienated and angry. There was little doubt that they were headed for divorce. The husband was silent and brooding and the wife was seething with sarcasm and resentment. They had been married for twenty years, had two kids and were financially secure. From the outside, most people would have said they were a successful and happy couple. Obviously, this was far from the truth. Their sexual lives had ended and they barely talked to one another at home. Their marriage was typical of what happens in many marriages across the country. One of her major complaints was that whenever she tried to confront him with her dissatisfactions, he withdrew into silence.”

 

Did you ever notice that men and women often communicate across a canyon of misunderstanding? I am a fan of the books by psychotherapist and well known author Terence Real. In particular his book “How Can I Get Through To You?” presents a helpful discussion of what goes wrong between men and women and how to fix it. From his experience and point of view, men and women relate differently because of the ways they were raised. Boys are taught to suppress their emotions and to focus instead on being aggressive, competitive and independent. In other words, they are raised to be masculine and that translates into being unemotional and strong. On the other hand, women, according to Terence Real, are taught to put their needs aside and to nurture others. Instead of being aggressive they are taught to be compliant. This is the definition of being feminine.

 

While a lot of this seems to have changed since the women’s liberation movement of the late twentieth century, it still shows up in the ways couples relate to one another. In fact, according to Real, this difference is at the core of why there is divorce rate of over 50%. As a result of suppressing their emotions, men lose their connection with their families and wives and become vulnerable to addiction to drugs and alcohol. Women become depressed because they feel taken advantage of by husbands who do not supply their needs. Of course, they are part of the problem because they suppress their needs and wants in favor of children and husbands. They do not ask for what they want only what others want.

 

Because of the fact that men learned, early on in their childhoods, that they must be aggressive to be masculine, they become arrogant, especially at home. It becomes easy for them to view their wives as weak. The relationship between men and women becomes one of the man believes he must be in control while expecting compliance from their wives. What husbands view as compliance is that, when they come home from work, the dinner table is set and the wife is warm and nurturing. If this is not fulfilled then he becomes verbally loud and verbally abusive. On the other hand, too many women give in to this scenario until they grow so depressed and unhappy with things that they fall out of love with their husbands. Then, husband and wife become silent, withdrawing from one another and becoming more distant. One example of this type of dynamic is that when the wife starts to assert her needs her husband withdraws into silence. Her frustration results in her, once again becoming silent. The road to divorce is then well paved.

 

Part of the work of marriage counseling for these couples is to help men and women change in the way they interact. In other words, men must learn to give expression to their emotions rather than suppressing feelings until they become explosive and women must give voice to what they want and need rather than suppressing those things.

 

According to Real men and women must move closer to one another because each has the ability to recognize both the masculinity and femininity in each other.

What are your experiences in your relationship like? Your comments and experiences are welcome and encouraged.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Elderly, Terminally Sick and Assisted Suicide

 

 

 

 

 

Last month, the daughter of a 93 year old father, who was dying and in extreme pain and saw no reason to prolong the agony, apparently carried out his wishes that he be helped commit suicide by over dosing on morphine. This occurred in Philadelphia where she was arrested and charged with a felony. Her lawyers are arguing that the overdose of his medication was an accident and not deliberate. However, the ethical question here is not whether she deliberately or accidentally administered the medication but whether a terminal patient should be permitted to either commit suicide or have a loved one assist in that act if they are not able? Should assisted suicide in a terminal patient be legalized?

There are strong arguments for and against legalizing assisted suicide. Against it is the opinion that society has a moral duty to protect and to preserve all life. To allow people to assist others in destroying their lives violates a fundamental duty we have to respect human life. A society committed to preserving and protecting life should not permit people to destroy it. In addition, those who oppose assisted suicide point out that family members might urge the terminal patient to commit suicide because they cannot tolerate the slow death of a loved one or who just want to get them out of the way to suit there own needs. In other words, legalizing assisted suicide could threaten the safety of innocent people. Finally, it is argued that permitting assisted suicide could violate the rights of others. Doctors, nurses and loved ones might find themselves pressured or forced to cooperate in a patient’s suicide. In order to satisfy the desires of a patient wanting to die, it’s unjust to demand that others go against their own deeply held convictions.

Those who favor assisted suicide have a powerful argument of their own. They appeal to our capacity for compassion and an obligation to support individual choice and self determination. In other words, if a person is of sound mind, can no longer tolerate their suffering and pain and choose suicide, they should be allowed to have their wishes carried out. Further, it is important to respect the dignity and will of terminal patients who make a sane decision of how they want to die.

What is your opinion about this deeply important issue? Your comments are strongly encouraged.

 

Allan N. Schwartz, PhD

 

 

 

Note: I am cleaning some stash... archive...

 

 

 

 

Enough Already! Making Sense of Senseless Loss

 

 

 

The past year has been one of tremendous loss for my family. Seven people in our circle of family and friends have passed away. Some were expected (inevitable due to illness), others unexpected, but each one filled us full of deep grief and loss. Some were close friends, others family members, and still others colleagues. We’ve attended five out of the seven memorials. Having testified as expert witnesses in homicide cases for the past thirty years, death has not been something foreign or abstract to either one of us. We have also experienced the death of all four of our parents in our lifetime, as well as some very close friends in recent years, and yet we wondered if these experiences prepared us for the cumulative effect of grief that we felt in the past twelve months.

 

A few months ago, several days after experiencing the loss of a dear friend, we were sitting at breakfast and I said to my wife, “Haven’t we had enough death in our lives this year? Why is this happening to us?” In her usual kind and loving voice, she said, “I know, I wonder about that too. But we didn’t do anything to create these losses, but perhaps there is something in the experience for us to learn. The trick is figuring that out.” I kept asking myself, what was in all this loss for me to learn? I remembered when I was in training, reading that Carl Jung said that he kept death on his shoulder. This awareness constantly reminded him of the fragility of life. Doing so helped him appreciate each day. The loss of my parents and two very close friends, in the past six years, taught me that important life lesson. As I sat there and contemplated this question, I was aware of feeling angry that the big L “Life” was making my little L “life” more difficult. But I was still left with the question, why all these loses now? As my frustration started to rise, I opened up the New Times on my computer and saw the link to a two-month-old article entitled, On the Road to Recovery, Past Adversity Provides a Map. It peeked my curiosity. Perhaps the universe was providing me an answer to my question.

 

In it, the author writes about the latest psychological findings on trauma, loss and resilience. One study in particular caught my eye. Mark Seery, a psychologist at the University of Buffalo,and colleagues, published a paper on the effects of adverse events on mental health. I was immediately intrigued by the title of the article; Whatever Does Not Kill Us: Cumulative Lifetime Adversity, Vulnerability and Resilience. The conventional wisdom is the more misfortune we experience, the more problems such as anxiety and depression may develop. However, his research showed that a certain amount of difficulty actually helps to foster resilience and a stronger ability to face setbacks in the future. The study included three groups of individuals: those with a high history of adversity, those will no history, and people in-between. What he found was very interesting. The people who recalled a very high history of adversity (up to 12 negative events) scored very low on a number of measures of well-being. This makes intuitive sense. At some point (and that point is different for different people) the growing stress of multiple negative events can eventually lead to psychological overload. This may not only cause difficulty coping with extreme stress, but may also make it hard to deal with the hassle of everyday living. This dynamic is particularly visible with people who live in war-torn countries or who are experiencing ethnic cleansing or genocide. Holocaust survivors are another group who have experienced countless deaths. For people who have experienced many losses, especially over a short period