Unfortunately this
submission is rather long, nevertheless the story itself adds more
weight to my conclusions regarding the importance of understanding fear
on a deeper level than that which is currently understood.
_________________________________
People will do things differently, your
instructions will probably be misunderstood. What you say is likely to be
different from what they hear.
(Priscilla Elfrey)
____________________________________
ANN LANDERS
This story appeared in Ann Landers column in the
“Toronto Star” newspaper many years ago.
By spending so much time listening to, and trying to help other people,
and getting feedback from readers who
disagreed with her, Ann Landers provided a very valuable service to her
readers.
It was interesting to note that she openly admitted
that many of the basic truths that she was prepared to take to the bank earlier
in her career, were later assigned to the trash can in favor of deeper levels
of truth. The story in this case was
entitled: --- Chronic Depression.
“Dear Ann Landers:
I am 28 years old.
Seven years ago, I developed chronic depression. After 4 years of agony I was given medication
and I began to pull out of it. My
psychiatrist advised me not to return to my former occupation. He claims that if I take on too much
responsibility I will fall apart.
I am extremely shy. I have an inferiority complex and hate the
job that I have. I have never felt loved
by anyone. My mother, father, sisters
and brothers deserted me when I was ill.
I asked my Psychiatrist to tell me the truth about my mental
illness. He said that if I avoid
pressure situations and continue to take my medication faithfully, I may lead a
fairly normal life. Should I believe him
Ann?
Signed --- climbing out of darkness.”
Here is Ann Lander’s Answer:
“It sounds as if you are in the hands of a highly
competent Doctor. Listen to him. Reach out for friendship. I’m sure that you have a lot to give and there
are so many folks like you who are lonely.
Look in the phone book for
Recovery Inc. (It is free.) Attend the
meetings. Recovery’s members share
problems similar to yours. The emotional
support they give is phenomenal. Good
luck and God Bless You.”
MY RESPONSE:
When you understand what distorted fear can do to the
human mind, the above problems are far less complicated than one might
expect. To know that this young woman
was probably never given the right advice as she journeyed through the maturing
process, and that she may have been unduly relegated to the ranks of the
mentally ill, leaves me with a sickening feeling as I write these words.
Suppose we took a 10-year old boy who was considered
to be mentally, emotionally and physically well adjusted, and we locked him in
a room where he obtained no outside stimulation except for the basic physical
requirements to sustain life.
If then, at the age of 21, we released him into the
outside world and he could not cope, or compete with his peers, we would not
conclude that he was suffering from some form of mental illness. We would know that he had been denied the
opportunity to mature like the other people in his age group.
When the young girl in our Ann Lander’s story states
that she is extremely shy and she has a massive inferiority complex, shouldn’t
alarm bells ring inside the mind of the adults who should be nurturing this
young mind? Shouldn’t the Psychiatrist
recognize these “symptoms” as a brilliantly lit microcosm of distorted fear
reactions?
Are they so preoccupied with the veracity of their
psychological understanding that they fail to see the obvious? Must this girl be shunted aside and told that
she is useless when in fact the psychiatrist is acting like he is useless
himself?
Shouldn’t it be obvious that this girl locked herself
up in a voluntary prison designed to avoid fear reactions of embarrassment, guilt
and failure? A prison that was just as
devastating to the maturing process for this young lady as the
“prison” for the boy in our above imaginary story.
Like the young woman in this story, I also suffered
from feelings of inferiority when I was trying to get through adolescence. Once in high school when I was required to
give a speech in front of the class, my voice and body shook quite openly. That teacher never had any advice or
encouragement to offer me.
He probably thought that my nervous system was
inferior to that of other students and there was nothing that he or I could do
about it. At the time, with no other
advice to fall back on, I came to the same decision about myself also.
Thank God that nowadays, the teachers are more in tune
with psychological matters, and such a student would be referred to the proper
channels for psychological help. How sad
to think that a person’s lifestyle and potential lifetime career can be
sidetracked so easily.
Did you know that Winston Churchill stuttered and
stammered when he was a youngster and he only went on to become one of the
world’s finest orators? Yes it is true
that all of us have some such problems as we approach adult life and most of us
overcome them. But it should not be a
hit and miss affair.
My performance in that classroom, and in many other
interpersonal situations, should have earned me admission to a special class
where psychological guidance would have helped me to change my incorrect
approach to fear. It is my fervent hope,
that one of the by-products of this book will be the addition of such courses
in every school in the entire world.
Returning to the letter in Ann Lander’s column, not
only did the girl systematically lock herself out of the maturing process by
her constant avoidance behavior, (shyness etc.), but she compounded the problem
by telling herself that she was inferior to others.
The current level of psychological understanding that
is being practiced by many in that profession has concluded that the girl in
our story is suffering from physical or chemical damage inside her brain. They believe that this perceived damage is
the reason for her extreme shyness and medication and avoiding too much
responsibility is the best recommendation for such people.
But if they were right, how could some people who were
extremely shy when they were young, become absolute extroverts in later
years? The answer is that these
conditions are all negotiable and can be corrected with the proper
psychological help.
What the girl in Ann Lander’s story really needed was
a competent psychiatrist who understands what fear can do to the human mind,
--- who knows the value of empathic thinking on the part of a therapist, ---
who could guide her in the hierarchical approach to overcoming fears, --- and who
could gently persuade her, that her problems are all negotiable.
Her self-proclaimed inferiority complex tells us that
she never was able to sustain any confidence about herself. We need individuals who can assess this
girl’s failure to experience specific and necessary maturing achievements and
to motivate her to become involved in these experiences.
She has to give herself the right to make mistakes and
fail. Obviously you try not to make
serious mistakes but she must at all times begin to learn from her
mistakes. This approach, systematically
encouraged by others, has the potential to allow this girl to actively
participate successfully in the adult world.
The advice that the psychiatrist gave this girl can no
longer be justified. His lack of
understanding can no longer be used as a reason to set this girl’s life, and
others like her, aside. Since her
problems are all negotiable, she deserves the chance to embrace life with all
the happiness and pride that a reasonable level of confidence and successful
performance can potentially give to her.
Did her bio-psychiatrist ever ask her if she was
afraid of the feelings of fear itself?
If she was, --- and I would be willing to bet on it, --- then, every
time that she tried an achievement that activated the emotion of fear, she
avoided it. Obviously she can not take
any pressure or adult stress, she hasn’t experienced the maturing process.
Can you remember the fear you felt when you first
tried to ride a bicycle? If you never
got past that fear, then you may never have learned to ride a bike. That wouldn’t prevent you from becoming a
successful adult, but if you applied the same type of avoidance behavior to a
conglomeration of achievements, then you would begin to accumulate enough
failures of commission --- or omission,
to invalidate the maturing process.
So why does medication actually help some people? Some of them act on the brain to make the
person more relaxed and less susceptible to the emotion of fear reactions. In this state, some people can do things that
they can’t do without the medication.
There is a disheartening parallel here to someone using alcohol to give
himself a shot of bravery.
Of course it doesn’t always have a positive
result. One person, who could not speak
in a conference setting at work, took medication to calm his nerves which
worked fine except that the ideas that he expressed were disjointed and his
audience wondered what was wrong with
him.
The point being that as long as you try something,
even if you fail, there is the potential for you to learn from it and be better
the next time. If your fear makes you
avoid the achievement, then no new learning is possible.
Another factor in determining that medication has
helped a person concerns the power of suggestion. This brilliant psychiatrist, who knows what
he is talking about, has told me that my brain is damaged. The neuroleptic drug or drugs that he is
giving me allow me to function normally.
These positive thoughts can, for a variable period of time, alleviate
the conglomerated fears that are actually causing the problems.
Ann Lander’s answer that the girl was in the hands of
a competent Doctor was incorrect. It is
usually right to place ones confidence in those who have studied something all
of their lives, but at the same time, the truth is not interested in how long
you have studied a problem. If you are
wrong in your assumptions, no amount of time can make them right. Only increased knowledge can change a wrong, or
false idea into a right one..
Ann’s further comments about self-help groups like
Recovery Inc. are excellent. But should
these people be required to find their own way out of the quagmire when
structured help should be available?
There are thousands of competent psychiatrists that help these people
out of their dilemmas. It is the
confused psychiatrists, who don’t know that they are confused, and the obtuse
bio-psychiatrist’s that must change their incorrect beliefs.
Knowing that these problems are all negotiable, places
a heavy burden upon me to finish this book and give these people a chance to be
“recalled to life.” I hope that this story from Ann Lander’s column from long
ago, helps to convince you that
understanding fear equals understanding human behavior.
