Psychiatry reviewed
Hi, my name is Wendy van Mieghem. As a psychologist and sociologist, I write about the psychology of human nature, mental health, human-centered leadership, and sustainable change in behavior and culture. All my books and products help you find and maintain your inner peace and balance.
This article, Psychiatry reviewed from a human perspective, serves as an introduction to the field and was written as a contribution to Katie Mottram‘s book “Mend the gap“, published in November 2014.
The article invites you to view psychiatry from a human perspective. It’s just a start, but it’s a start! If you’d like to respond to this article, you can leave a comment below or contact me.
Life’s vast tapestry of possibilities
Life is a wondrous, breathtaking event. It encompasses many polarities: both cruel and caring, dark and light, earthly and spiritual, creative and destructive.
Life is a chain of present moments with an unlimited number of possibilities. It grants us, humans, the full freedom to live our lives as we choose. Yet there appear to be recurring patterns in the challenges we face at both universal and individual levels.
Just like most people, you (un)consciously feel that it is not possible to open yourself up to the full range of possibilities life offers every second of every day. For example, to take into account all the risks of what could happen, or to leave all options open for the directions you can choose in your daily life. It is too stressful and demanding for your nervous system. You need to build behavioral, emotional, and rational patterns that you can rely on, more or less. Living life without any patterns would probably drive you and others mad.
Sane or not?
So, you tend to deny parts of your human nature to reduce the overwhelming reality you face. You tend to structure, shape, and filter your reality in ways you (un)consciously choose. From this, your patterns for dealing with your instincts, emotions, feelings, thoughts, and inspiration arise. You first copied these patterns from your parents, teachers, peers, neighbors, and friends.
Whether you trust yourself to deal with emotions and with life itself is therefore passed on from one generation to the next. You mix it with a purely individual, intrinsic element that encapsulates your passion or motivation to live.
Yet every time you deny an aspect of your inner self, you become a little bit less sane. Every time you allow an aspect of your inner self to be present and, step by step, learn to deal with the emotions, feelings, and thoughts that arise from it, you heal a little bit from the inside out. We then become a little bit saner.
Moving in and out
Throughout each day, you tend to move in and out of denial about human aspects. You may also move in and out of allowing human aspects. To put it roughly: if, at the end of the day or night, you have allowed more than you have denied, you heal bit by bit over time. When you deny more than you allow to be present, you slowly become less sane. You may not notice this at once. On average, it takes years for the symptoms to start affecting your day-to-day well-being.
A sustainable change process in service of sustainable recovery and growth is the ongoing practice of regularly giving yourself the attention and time you need to heal, bit by bit. It is an individual matter; no one else can do it for you. By turning your attention inward and giving yourself the time and attention needed to recover from stress and inner conflicts, you become more aware of who you are and what you need to find peace, balance, and fulfillment in your daily life.
Technically speaking, every sustainable change process leads to greater awareness of your individual insanity. You are invited to learn to deal constructively with the consequences. Fully integrating the emotions, tensions, and pain involved in healing requires learning to allow them to breathe here and now and to stop denying their existence. As a side effect, this learning process gives you insights and wisdom about who you are, what you need, and life itself.
Healing through breathing space for humanity
Reality has many layers, a fact that mindfulness teachers are well aware of. There is incredible healing power in letting things be as they are. And in respecting and accepting reality at every level. Reality is anchored in time and space in the present moment.
The heaIing ability of the present moment is often referred to as the power of now. Its power partly lies in no longer scrolling forward into the future or backward into the past. It focuses on learning to endure what is present now. Learning to recognize, allow, and accept reality as it is requires considerate breathing space for humanity. Practicing recovery-supporting mindfulness meditations stimulates inner recovery and helps you move through blind spots. These exercises can also help you develop and deepen constructive life skills. Life skills such as constructively regulating needs, emotions, tensions, and pain.
The hardest part
The hardest part of not altering or manipulating the reality of being human is that you can no longer flee perceived inner unease, discomfort, or threat. It means finding constructive ways to regulate your instincts. Leveling your instincts with other human aspects, such as your emotions, feelings, thoughts, and inspiration, often helps soften the urge to run away. Taking accountability for your instincts, emotions, and patterns, which are part of everyday reality, is not easy, but it can become doable over time with practice. Even though it may take years of practice to learn to deal with emotions and pain on a deeper and deeper level, the reward of every step you take towards your goal is as grounded as it is sweet.
At first, your instinctive reaction to intense emotions and pain is to withdraw from contact with that part of reality, thereby losing touch with yourself. As you learn to trust that you can navigate your emotions without altering them, you feel more connected to yourself, to others, and to life itself. This helps you find your way to your inner home: a warm, secure, and bright inner feeling that makes you truly at home with yourself. It is an anchor that keeps you centered and balanced as you express yourself through your qualities and serve others.
Trauma and psychiatry
Every intense life event that remains unprocessed, every trauma, settles in your human system. It does so by the way you do or do not allow emotions, feelings, memories, and the underlying existential fears and doubts associated with this life event to be present in your day-to-day life. The way you deal with your instincts, emotions, feelings, and thoughts on a daily basis shapes you. This is what your attitude toward life stems from.
Many psychiatric disorders, in my opinion, are at their core a mixture of two human aspects:
- An inability, to a certain degree, to deal with one’s needs, instincts, emotions, feelings, thoughts, and inspiration in a constructive, comfortable way up to an existential level.
- A lack of inner trust to deal with one’s needs, instincts, emotions, feelings, thoughts, and inspiration in a constructive, comfortable way up to an existential level.
These two aspects interact with each other. As a result, psychiatric symptoms may become less or more severe over time.
Finding inner wisdom
As a psychologist and body-oriented psychotherapist, I have supported clients through individual psychotherapy sessions, first in my private practice and since 2014 through my private training institute. I have had the pleasure of watching people with psychiatric diagnoses overcome their pitfalls and sensitivities over time, and of seeing them free themselves from suffering by gradually allowing caked pain, emotions, and tensions the breathing space needed to heal.
The experiential insights and inner wisdom that flowed through them as a result gave their self-confidence a boost. The way they experienced their daily lives had altered. It became brighter and lighter. Over time, an irreversible healing and sustainable change process appeared to have taken place from the inside out, as if the penny had dropped permanently.
But I have also seen people without psychiatric diagnoses become less sane over time, despite all efforts and best intentions. Some were not yet ready to let the explanations sink in or to use the available tools. Instead, they were trying to postpone their inner work. Others were having such a hard time, harassed by inner conflicts and fears, that it fed their distrust. Unfortunately, clients often have to deal not only with their own distrust but also with others’ distrust.
Mental health care systems
All around the world, there are governmental organizations and (mental) health care systems that tend to handle psychiatric complaints by avoiding contact. They deny people’s feelings and inner truth. Every time I hear about this, I feel extremely sad and sorry for the people who have to go through it. It is painful to hear, because I personally feel that making contact, together with trust, is the most healing aspect of life.
Still, in many health care education programs, students are taught not to make contact with their clients. They are not allowed to show compassion or be moved when they meet a client. As a result, professionals are not truly able to listen to clients’ experiences. Nor can they encourage and support clients in finding their own way through the misty fields of inner conflicts and emotional struggles.
Professionals have learned to take over their clients’ responsibility for healing. As you may imagine, taking over responsibility is a devastating act of mistrust. It conveys the (in)direct message that the client is incapable of dealing with one’s own emotions, which is exactly the fear and inner doubt the client has been struggling with before reaching out for help.
No distinction
As I see it, it is impossible to truly heal in this way. Much of the suppression that takes place by mental health care professionals stems from their own inability and lack of inner trust to deal with their own instincts, emotions, feelings, and thoughts in a constructive, comfortable way up to an existential level.
Making a resolute distinction between the professional and the client, not allowing a sense of connectedness or contact, and not truly listening to what the other is experiencing and believing, are therefore illusory by themselves.
From an emotional perspective, there is no distinction between professionals and clients. We are all human, and we all struggle with our humanity. The degree to which we regulate instincts, emotions, feelings, thoughts, and inspiration varies over time and is largely a matter of experience rather than knowledge. So why don’t we trust this?
Acknowledge your limits
A true professional knows their limitations and humanity through experience and by heart. It acknowledges, from the inside out, that there is much more to true healing than a professional can accomplish. Recovery involves life itself.
A professional can make contact, listen, and walk alongside for a longer or shorter time. But they can never claim to know how to make another person better or what the other person needs. The best a professional can do is be willing and open to learning through interaction while taking one’s own humanity into account. This includes all the blind spots, pitfalls, and unresolved pain and tensions one carries. And that’s OK. Professionals and their clients have different roles and tasks, but they remain equally human. Every encounter can be a learning opportunity for both sides, nourishing sustainable change processes across the authority gap. When professionals refuse to accept these learning opportunities and invitations to recover and grow sustainably from the inside out, they abuse that same authority to hide their own needs, pain, emotions, and tensions. They, too, struggle with their humanity, but refuse to admit it to themselves or others. This leaves clients who are aware of these underlying power dynamics in doubt and confusion. Should they mend the gap, or leave it be?
Healing is an inside job
Everyone’s healing journey is foremost an inside job. It demands attention, time, and fine-tuning. It also demands devotion and a willingness to get to know oneself and learn to navigate one’s emotions, instincts, feelings, thoughts, and inspiration, step by step. Ideally, these responsibilities cut both ways, inviting professionals and clients to learn from and about each other. This naturally applies not only to (mental) health care and government-related organizations but to every profession and every authority relationship life provides.
Sustainable recovery and growth processes, such as those described above, demand that we understand our individual purpose in life so we can find inner peace. They often require a shift in attitude toward life and suffering, and a willingness to surrender to the present moment, here and now. Naturally, they also demand a willingness to surrender to life as it is.
In conclusion
In conclusion, there IS and should be no distinction between psychiatric and normal people. We are all human. As a result, we all carry a certain degree of sanity and insanity within us. We all struggle to regulate instincts, emotions, feelings, thoughts, and inspiration at every level, again and again, as these tendencies tend to deepen.
The degree to which we are (un)able to deal with life varies throughout our lives. Some of us can still hide it, while others experience an inner necessity that prevents them from doing so. They have simply waited too long and haven’t been able to find constructive ways for sustainable recovery and growth, YET. All they need is to find the right person(s) to build a healthy connection with and learn through interaction. That is the basis of every healing journey. As professionals, we can learn so much from our clients, as long as we are willing to listen to the mirror they provide. As clients, we can learn so much from the professionals we encounter. However, we should first listen to the mirror they provide and to our inner truth and wisdom before we know whether their input is constructive or destructive to us.
Breathing space for all
Both professionals and their clients need to be committed to learning to comprehend our humanity, as we are all invited to find constructive ways to address our pitfalls and illusions. If we do encounter ourselves and others from this attitude towards life, an equal playing field arises. What remains is a nurturing learning experience that provides equal breathing space for everyone involved. Space to play, learn, and simply be.
The degree to which we can heal from trauma and suffering is vast yet limited. Not everything can be accomplished in one lifetime. At some point, we need to accept that some inability will always remain on both sides of the authority gap. And that is OK, as long as it does not prevent you from continuing your individual inner journey in the service of sustainable recovery and growth, from a place of peace with your current situation.
Take care,
Wendy Van Mieghem
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Hi, my name is Wendy van Mieghem. As a psychologist and sociologist, I am happy to support you in increasing your emotional intelligence and learning how to apply it. Connecting with your human nature and caring for it in a supportive, healing way helps you achieve more lasting, positive behavioral change.
Getting to know yourself and others better allows you to connect more deeply and with greater nuance to what is needed. This way, step by step, you can reach the goal or result you desire in a sustainable and effective manner. Both personally and professionally.
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Warm regards,
Wendy van Mieghem