Invisible Death Anxiety

As for me working with the psychologically and emotionally wounded, the existential "hints" of death and its accompanying anxiety are never absent. I can hardly get through a session without sensing a deeper cry for help from individuals ravaged by dire consequences and relationships. It's not a private bias or indulgence on my part. It's a universal concern of all to feel some kind of dread or uncertainty about the inevitability of death in our human condition.

This "death anxiety" though is often invisible. A male patient of mine in his early 40s, whose much younger cousin died of cancer just recently, suddenly felt an intensification of his panic attacks while inside an airplane. He narrated that everything was well when he took his seat and several minutes after. Then, suddenly, he began perspiring profusely, panicking, and feeling, "This plane is where I am and it's about to crash!" No amount of care from his wife or stewardesses could calm his anxiety and fear.

We have two choices to deal with "invisible death anxiety." We either face the essence of its truth directly or we try to flee the anxious feelings and not attempt to come to terms with it. I think the latter response appears more common in modern times. In the "Hour of Death," author Philippe Aries writes, "Except for the death of statesmen, society has banished death. In the towns, there is no way of knowing that something has happened ... Society no longer observes a pause; the disappearance of an individual no longer affects it's continuity."

Ernest Becker, in his "The Denial of Death," portrays our inescapable reality in the midst of our society's or culture's generic avoidance of relief in allowing full awareness of our own personal death.  He says, "Man is a worm and food for the worms. This is the paradox; he is out of nature and hopelessly in it; he is dual ... Literally split in two... He sticks out of nature with a towering majesty and yet goes back into the ground a few feet in order blindly and dumbly to rot and disappear forever. It is a terrifying dilemma to be in and have to live with."

So in our deepest core, to make invisible our inherent death anxiety does not make sense. Even when our society tends to focus us more on the "economic" or "making a living" that conditions us to deny or be unprepared to dying, we all need to face the reality of it to live well. Free from inessentials in life or unnecessary personal disabilities. Free from "denying the problem," "immature defenses," "distortion of our reactivity," or projecting fears to things or persons.

Death anxiety is not beyond human control. If it's made visible and faced head-on, it can bring much quality of life in our limited years. I believe that the measure of a good life is how we view and transcend our own death.

War Of Therapy

Therapy is a journey of the Self. Often, when there's deep psychological wounding, the Self remains fragmented. Split. Two selves - one is the damaged self lived to the present and the other is the positive self of an unlived life within. It's a difficult situation that needs adequate healing and recovery.

In between the lived life and the unlived life is a big enemy - resistance. My work with countless individuals in therapy is full of this. Resistance - whether conscious or unconscious, explicit or implicit - blocks well-being.

I'm reminded of Anton. He is a speaker guy. A gifted entrepreneur. At one time, he succeeded building a multi-million business. Then, he crashed. He overspent money on vices - booze, women, drugs. Now, even after over 5 years since he went bankrupt, he stopped using his gift.

Anton becomes disabled by his panic anxiety attacks, rage, and depression. When directly addressed by his therapist to deal with his core issues, he refuses to process them. He remains stuck, unwilling. Yet he knows many things are not ok about him.

But something inside Anton  is saying ok to what he knows very well is not ok. About his self, his life in general. There lies the location of his internal resistance. It's this underlying resistance that fuels and drives his self to think, feel, and do what he doesn't want for himself.

The "war of therapy" for a person's liberation is to break this resistance. Pound it into finer pieces, turn the ashes into something new and beautiful. Hope is basic. Faith and courage brings the resistance down.

When Children Misbehave

What I've known is, all children misbehave no matter what their family situation is. I surmise it's a natural built in to the predictable pattern of development of children their age. Yet it's still vital for parents to determine if the misbehavior is just normal for the child or related to parental deficits.

A therapist/counselor can be helpful in assisting and clarifying what parents cannot see. I recall spending hours of session with a single Mom whose 14-year-old daughter has dropped out of high school and often been running away from home. The question that arose was, "Is this daughter acting in that way because she never knew her father, or it's because she's a teenager?"

Some times, answers are not black or white. "This misbehavior is all about the parents' divorce" or "This behavior is all about teenage behavior." Some times, I'm saying, it can't be accurately distinguished. In this case of the Mom and her 14-year-old daughter, the misbehavior most likely reflects both typical teenage feelings and some stuff resulting from her father's abandonment and other relevant factors.

I know. It isn't comfortable to have answers like that. But it's the likely truth.

When children misbehave, a best answer is for parents to give their child loving "consistency." Is the child getting wild, crazy, or out of control? If you think you're being loving by letting your misbehaving child get away with anything, you've got it wrong. Your child may look thankful for allowing him or her to misbehave. But sooner deep inside, he or she'll find out that you don't care enough to take him or her to the right path.

My fellow parent, it's a tough tightrope to walk, isn't it?

If you're a Mom or Dad who have emotional wounds or dysfunction your self, you need to give attention to your healing while being actively involved in your children's lives as well. So, one best gift you can give to your misbehaving child is to be a healthy parent! That requires primary care if you're to realistically hope to influence your child for the better.

Best Life After Infidelity

Something new came into the life of Maria as a result of her husband's infidelity - tears. She was still obsessed over processing all the events circling around the wound of her marriage and life. It was overwhelming, a deepest cut. And all she could do was look out the window and cry for months.

I asked her in one of our sessions if she'd ever run out of tears. I mean, a "dry cry." She finally said, "Yes!" Of course, I suspect she remained crying as she always did, but no liquid present! That is one woman who had truly cried a river for some time. That was several years ago. Time and distance passed.

Then one day, she made a call and reappeared to me. I noticed a different Maria. In our talks, she reported significant accomplishments in her life after her unremorseful husband's infidelity and separation from him. As the days, weeks, and months went by, things looked clearer to her that led to a successful writing and business career. By placing distance between her and her marital wound, she gained valuable progress in healing her self and building a new life.

Looking at Maria's massive crisis that engulfed her life, it's important to note one helpful action she did - she sought professional help. Since the situation was beyond her ability to handle and decipher, it made great sense to her to see a counselor from the beginning. According to her, that choice speeded up rather than prolonged her healing process. She honestly believed that something self destructive might had happened to her if she didn't make that choice.

If you're deeply hurt right now, I know your teary eyes may feel like heavy weights. But in time, as you take the right steps and commit your self to recovery over the long haul, you'll be back at the top of your game. You'll be brand new! And pretty much better rising out of the ashes. There is always the promise of hope beyond the pain.

So, if you're locked up inside, open the door. Open the window. Go outside. Take deep breaths. Pray. Look as far as you can see. Take responsibility. It's wonderful. It's worth the price to pay to live your best life ahead.

Moments Of Being

Noted therapist/author, Virginia Woolf, speaks of how much of our life is lived in the haze of "non-being." She describes what she means:

"A great part of every day is not lived consciously. One walks, eats, sees things, deals with what has to be done; the broken vacuum cleaner; ordering dinner; writing orders to Mabel; washing; cooking dinner; bookbinding. When it is a bad day, the proportion of non-being is much larger."

In my work as a psychotherapist, it's inescapable for me that I catch glimpses of people going about their lives. And I always notice that it's easy enough for most of us to live without really looking. We can get things done or interact with others and not bothering to pay attention. 

I once knew a 50 year old man stricken with colon cancer who was always out, day after day, walking in the mall despite his frailty. He liked to get out. According to him, it made him feel alive. Even just looking at people going by or conversing with them in the coffee shop gave him "moments of being." He rejoiced with them, sharing each other's stories.

Illness, accident, or death can teach us that all can be taken away in one swift moment. So, for the first time in our lives, we may find learning to reject "moments of non-being" that characterize much of our days. We search for what really matters given the shortness of time to enjoy "moments of being."

When Alexander Solzhenitsyn was imprisoned, he wrote:

"You have the right to arrange your own life under the blue sky and the hot sun, to get a drink of water, to stretch, to travel wherever you like ... Do not pursue what is illusory -- property and position: all that is gained at the expense of your nerves decade after decade, and is confiscated in one fell night ..."

Endless Cravings

Life is a temporary assignment. Many of us tend to crave things. We long for more and thirst for something better.

If only I have millions in the bank ... if only I'd married the right person ... if only I completed my degree ... if only I was born in a different family ... if only I have good connections. The list is endless.

Then sooner or later, with all our endless cravings, we find ourselves feeling empty. We catch existential angst. Confused, we don't experience lasting satisfaction in anything, anywhere. We wonder where the time has flown.

A young single woman I'd call Martha saw me once in deep distress. She's into daily prescription drugs due to her anxiety panic attacks. She described her self a "workaholic." According to her, she craves for a lot of things that she wants to possess, such as jewelry, cars, condos, and foreign travels. She hates not working. If idle, she feels panic.

Once Martha had casual sex with a man who picked her up in a coffee shop. She craved and loved the attention. She gave her self and body to the stranger with all gusto. She liked the excitement. In the session, she remarked, "But after, I never thought it would be so quick." Then she admitted it made her feel bad about her self and other areas of her life.

One of life's greatest deceptions is we need to crave to own something, crave to be with someone, or crave to do something, before we can feel happy. Our agenda is filled with temporal goals. Have you ever thought that life is more than these transient things we endlessly crave for?

Think about it. There is an ultimate answer to make us live life to the fullest. Know the secret of what lasts.

Are You Loving From An Empty Or Full Tank?

Once I received a heartbreaking message from a divorced, 32-year-old Middle Eastern woman I'd call Riza. She is currently remarried after a time of promiscuity from the first divorce and left everything to be with her second husband in a foreign country.

After just less than a year of being with her second husband, Riza texted me the other night to pour out and describe her latest update. A part reads,  "I have walked out and gone to international airport to leave the country as my self esteem is very broken with my husband." What strikes me about Riza' s declaration is that it's her self esteem which got very broken, not the relationship with her husband.

I feel for Riza. My heart goes out to her. She is in a very painful place. Despite her natural beauty and "wanting to love and be loved," Riza still finds her self empty and have not been making good progress learning to truly love and receiving love with the various men who passed by in her life. She has a "mountain" to climb but has to learn from the pain first about her self and her former love relationships before she can move on to climb the top.

Divorce or ending of a love relationship is especially traumatic and destructive for those who "love from an empty bucket."  If the center of your life and love is in your partner and the relationship dissolves, your center is suddenly removed. Since the bucket is empty, what else is left of you?

What could it be like if the loving is from a "full bucket" within a whole person?  If loss, divorce, or ending of a love relationship comes, you would still experience pain and trauma. Of course. But it would not be so devastating and destructive because you love from a "full bucket." You would still be a whole person.

Are you loving from an empty bucket or a full bucket?

The Money Delusion

Recently, a man named Jessie was in headline news. He was a gambling addict who lost millions to casinos. A few days ago, he went inside Resorts World Manila with armalite rifles and bottles with gasoline. He burned the casino tables and slot machines in the area. And then robbed millions worth of gambling chips which he put inside his bag. Eventually, the police caught up with him and shot him. Wounded, he holed himself up inside a room and committed suicide.

Multiple times I've come across patients who've become addicted to winnings in casino gambling. At first, when they're allowed to "win," they felt high and proud like rock stars. They thought well of themselves and were cheerfully congratulated by smiling admirers. They giggled, kissed, and hopped up and down!

Then as time went by, the unbridled ecstasy turned progressively into increasing losses. Debts began to pile up. And one's urges got out of control. As one patient Daniel told me in one of our sessions, "So what? I want my money back! I live for the next chip, borrow again and again -- striking more to get my money back and cancel my losses."

The whole problem with the money delusion is that it is deceptive. The lust or greed of the heart lies at the root of this lucky-sweepstakes syndrome. We crave instant gratification. Instant inheritance! The love of money and leisure can blind us to the importance of work we give to earn it. Specially in the materialistic world where we all are, we can become those who live only for the paycheck.

From this mindset, the money delusion falsely assumes that we are our happiest self when we think and feel no need to be productive to get the money we want. Or, if we're able to earn it, we don't experience lasting satisfaction and contentment. For years money and leisure promises us joy and leaves us disconsolate. Because its fleeting, the self never arrives at its true core and best meaning.

As writer W.E. Sangster once put it, "You seem to have more of everything than anybody else. You have more cars, more televisions, more refrigerators, more of everything. In fact, I've noticed that you also have more books on how to be happy than anybody else." The history of men and women shows that money itself will not produce lasting feelings of self esteem and happiness.

In the process of getting older or when death looms nearer, this money delusion may begin to show its weaknesses to us. With chances of cancer, a heart attack, or costly hospitalization before us, despair over fleeting satisfactions begins to set in. The foolishness of both the money delusion and the leisure delusion gets clearer.

Rather than speed up incoming cash and self indulgences, one asks one's self then, "Since my final years are short, how can I use my final years to produce what's lasting and meaningful?" Here, the doctrine stops being purely material. Such self exploration can pave the way for us to understand what life's purpose truly is.

Dr. Jung and Higher Self

What is the Higher Self? Renowned psychologist, Dr. Carl Jung, offers an answer to this question: “The Self is the royal archetype of the whole person; the Self is the totality and purpose of the psyche; the Self is the imago Dei (image of God), the “God in us.’ “ In other words, the higher Self is transcendent, since it’s beyond the confines of our own limited, lower self.

The discovery of the Self, the highest authority of our personality, is fundamental to the wholeness and balance of our selfhood. It oversees our organic, biological, mental, emotional, and spiritual centers, in addition to controlling our concept of life and the world. It’s the totality of our conscious and unconscious psyche.

Most of our self’s psychopathology is rooted to an undeveloped higher Self. When the ego behaves excessively or destructively, the higher Self becomes the healing self responsible for re-establishing balance and inner harmony. It’s work is to remove hidden obstacles and harmonize all dimensions of the person.

A long time ago, I treated a couple in therapy who were on the brink of a nasty divorce. The husband Antonio was a bar owner. For decades, he made constant verbal promises to his wife that he’ll stop boozing, womanizing, and gambling. Yet despite his willingness, hidden unconscious blockages prevented him from meeting his objectives. This continually traumatized his wife.

Since his conscious and unconscious goals are out of balance, part of my role was to assist him to reconcile them by integrating “symbols” in our sessions. One time, Antonio chose the cross as a symbol to process that clashed most violently against the negative, damaging fragments of his self. For him, this manifested a sacred, luminous effect on his capacity to stop his damaging impulses and become his” true self” living a new life with his wife.

So here, the higher Self intervened in the patient. In Dr. Jung’s thought – it’s the human soul of the recovering person in which the divine resides that participated. I am astonished by the richness and result that emanated from this exercise over time in our sessions. Now, Antonio gives up his bar business. He reads a page a day of the Daily Bread from his cell app as part of his healing and goes to church with his wife and kids for the first time in his life!

Jesus said, “… and anyone who does not take up his cross and follow Me is not worthy of Me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. He who receives you receives Me, and he who receives Me receives the One who sent Me.…” (Matthew
10:38-40)

Facing Death Anxiety

"Death is the ultimate statistic. It affects one out of one."
-- George Bernard Shaw

"Death is no paper tiger," once wrote psychologist Dr. Carl Gustav Jung. Beyond age 35, according to him, death is a common universal source of anxiety or preoccupation in our lives. It's also a revealer of one's actual state of Self, mental health, and overall wellbeing.

In the process of getting older, death anxiety usually looms progressively larger. The threats of cancer, heart attack, and costly hospitalization are terrifying. People show a variety of responses to this inevitable, heavy reality of eventual physical self-obliteration. Generally, one's response can either be helpful or harmful to one's self-integration and wellness.

In many respects, death makes people anxious. Witnessing the death of a loved one, friend, or stranger can make us more sensitive to mortality. Even while expressing hurts or seeking comfort from others, we tend to steel ourselves against death fears.

And we pass the years with our most vulnerable feelings on this reality numbed or shielded from the core of our selves. As author Ernest Becker put it, man "is out of nature and hopelessly in it - it's a terrifying dilemma to be in and have to live with."

Many years ago, my younger sister was in a hospital. She had a stroke and had to be confined indefinitely to the ICU. My wife, kids, and I passed by the hospital to visit her but I remembered going anxiously. I felt too uncomfortable. I didn't know what to say when I see her. And she didn't have much to say to me because she appeared dying.  It's awful. But how can I not visit her. She's my sister. So I went. Yet I felt terrible about it.

Dr. Oliver Sacks, a neurologist, maintains that his view of medical practice was changed after he experienced a near-death body injury. He endured months of helplessness in a hospital and then in a nursing home.

He realizes that "there is an absolute and categorical difference between a doctor who knows and one who does not, and that this knowing can only be obtained by a personal experience of the organic, by descending to the very depths of disease and dissolution."

Before we can fully deal with our anxieties or fears about our own death, we often need to experience glimpses of it personally. In my therapy work, I've seen solitary, abusive individuals become soft and more receptive once they sensed that the end is near.

After such glimpses, real changes tend to emerge in the way they spend their time, conduct their relationships, and look at the future. Michael Norvak writes, such "lift his eyes from the sequence of daily routines to perceive the law of his own death, and to struggle for ways of life that assuage death's bitterness."

Death, our self-obliteration, is the final enemy of our human existence. The power of personal experience in facing the approach of death then becomes a grounding of our spiritual Self. It means that we can heal and control death anxiety, and its effects on our body, health, and self-integration, by our faith and beliefs.

That includes the after-life, eternal life, a life greater than physical life. As Christ said in John 11:25, "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me will never die."

Healing Your Parent Wounds

What do you do when your neglectful or abusive parent becomes ill and seeks your sympathy to get to the end of his or her life?

For a lot of people, the duty of honoring parents can be a perplexing dilemma. Such is especially so, when their parents  have given them no or few reasons to honor them. Parents who were toxic and distant when their children were young tend to incur resentment rather than kindness.

Several months ago, I experienced this common dilemma. My 80+ year old father became finally sick and called for me after many decades of absence, neglect, and physical abuse during my youth. I never had a real conversation with him, a time spent eating out or walking in the mall, or directly receiving funds from him all my life. It's fine that he asked for me now that he's sick. But where was he when I needed him then?

Abraham Lincoln, one of America's best-loved presidents, had an abusive, brutish father. His father, Thomas, hated his books and controlled his life by sending him out to work as a kind of slave to others. Even as an adult, Lincoln did provide finances to his father to bail him out of trouble despite disconnection and abuse in their relationship.

Eventually, Lincoln confessed that he was unable to stand his father any more. During his father’s terminal illness, Lincoln ignored messages from him. He wrote a note not to his father but his stepbrother to explain his absence: “Say to him that if we could meet now, it is doubtful whether it would not be more painful than pleasant.” Lincoln didn’t attend his father’s funeral.

Warren Buffet, the world’s no. 2 richest man in the world, once shared his life with his mother. He remained distantly dutiful to his mother, who had subjected her children to endless verbal attacks. Buffet was 66 when his mother died at 92. His tears at her death were not because he was sad or because he missed her.  He said in his biography: “It was because of the waste.”

In my years of psychotherapy practice, the issue of "parent wounds" is an extremely recurring shadow evident in my sessions. Unbeknownst to these adult children, much of their psychological sufferings and dysfunctional behaviors are traceable to their lingering unprocessed pain from this kind of wounding. So, even to the end of their parents’  lives, they simply can't imagine how else to be with or see them.

We are all children of our parents. Still, the ability to see our parents as children too can easily elude us. In my own life as well as in others, I've witnessed and experienced firsthand the shortcomings in parents which became damaging to us as a child and when we’d become parents ourselves. Like nothing else, such glimpses across generations can aid us to comprehend those who parented us.

Ultimately, with this cross-generational insight, we can view more clearly  how we've been hurt and shaped. And finally, the hope of closure and healing from our “parent wounds” becomes a reality. Such facilitates making the prospect of our own personal change and fully seeing our parents’ humanness less frightening.

Meet Your Personal Shadow

The shadow.

Psychoanalyst Dr. Carl Jung, as early as 1912, speaks of the "shadow" side of personality. For Dr. Jung, the "shadow" is a world of chaos always ready to burst.

He'd use varied expressions to describe it:  "the other in us," "the unconscious in us," "repressed self," "the dark side of the personality," "the alienated self," "one's inferior personality."

I can think of a family where the father is an over- controlling, abusive King Kong. He is severely wounding - physically and verbally - to all his seven children, from childhood to present even when they're already grown-ups.

He insists that his rules in the house are absolute and he often would not explain them to his children. His wife is compliant and afraid to confront him --no matter how irrational and harming his behaviors have become to their children's mental health and well being.

In therapy session with one of his adult daughters, Marcia, she tells of her father's family history. Her father's own Dad was an extremely angry and addicted personality. In his own hands, Marcia's father suffered similar physical and verbal abuses since childhood that sent him to the hospital multiple times.

It's a well-guarded secret scandal, a "family shadow" that continues to haunt Marcia's father's unconscious "personal shadow," re-living the same drama in his own family and successive generation.

As Dr. John Monbourquette put it, "The unloved parts of ourselves which we try in vain to remove from our lives project themselves onto others, forcing us to recognize them."

Before you can know and meet your "personal shadow," you need to stop denying its existence. Too often, we're so good at ignoring, burying, or repressing our shadow. As a result, this component gets masked, hidden in the unconscious.

And we suffer the natural harm to our well-being and relationships out of it. It's essential, then, to acknowledge the shadow's presence in us, as a first step to heal.

Psychotherapist-writer Dr. R.D. Laing describes our real need to notice our shadow in this way:

"The range of what we think and do
is limited by what we fail to notice.
And because we fail to notice
that we fail to notice
there is little we can do
to change
until we notice
how failing to notice
shapes our thoughts and deeds."

Is It Love Or Addiction?

Love is a fact of human life. The need to love and be loved, get close to another person, is natural. It’s human.

As a psychotherapist, I’m constantly aware of how this need for love or connection exists in the shadow of people’s problems in their relationships.

But the root causes or reasons why love turns “good” or “bad” are anything but simple.

The story of Agnes illustrates how one’s mental state affects one’s love relationships. When there’s psychological illness, it hovers over one’s relationship like a powerful, unseen ghost.

While Agnes’ story seems an extreme case, it vividly demonstrates a significant truth: there is often more to love than sexual attraction, emotional need, or compatibility.

Agnes, 41, was extremely pretty and intelligent.  She was never married. Yet, she professed “love” to 34 different men in the past — all failed relationships. She had sex with almost all of them.

In one of her therapy sessions with me, Agnes admitted being overpowered with a sense of insecurity, jealousy, and need to control in all her relationships. Even with the slightest provocation, she’d go into a rage and inflict violence, either on her self or her partner.

Love can be “good” or “bad.” It depends upon how it serves it’s purpose on you.

It’s “good” love when there’s expression of nurture, care, respect, vulnerability, trust, responsibility, growth, and happiness to another based on one’s own capacity to truly love. It’s unconditional.

This kind of love is life-giving and expansive. It’s energy that gives wholeness to one’s state of being, emanating from within you and and extending outward to another.

Love turns to something bad when there’s unhealthy overdependency on the other to get unmet needs met, avoid fears or emotional pain, solve problems, or feel good about one’s self.

It’s essentially self serving and compulsive. Addictive lovers labor under the illusion that their dependent love relationships will ultimately “fix” their selves or their needs.

Dr. Brenda Schaefer, a noted psychotherapist on love addiction, writes:  “Love addiction creeps into the best of relationships, and the challenge we face is to acknowledge the addictive elements and build on the best aspects of a relationship.

If there is any reason to heal an unhealthy relationship, it is so that we can be more and give more to life.”

So, is it love or addiction for you?

That seems a valid diagnostic question to ask your self when you’re in a relationship. You need to adequately explore such question if you desire to build a healthy, long-lasting relationship.

The seeds of whether our love will turn to “good” or “bad” lie deep in our psychological beliefs, our childhood development, our social context, our biology, and even our spiritual values.

Love People, Not Things

Every human being is designed to love and be loved. Things are designed to be used.

A big reason why much in our relationships are in chaos is because we use people and things are ones loved by us.

I’ve once a married couple in therapy that lasted for about a year. Both of them came from very wealthy families.

Their lives together is laced with separate businesses, bank accounts, and managed properties. They “profit” from each other’s ventures.

In my working with them in our sessions, I could not be sure if marriage is truly the best word to describe their relationship. You see, since marriage, they never “dated.” Sex stopped for decades. They lived their lives as if they’re co-dorm mates.

Until one day. The wife discovered her husband having affairs with multiple women. One of them was housed in one of their condominium properties. Their world crashed. And both of them declared they still “love” each other.

It’s a deep mess. The unfaithful husband apologized for his betrayal. He assured his wife that he was letting go of the other women. And he agreed to his wife’s requirement for them to go through personal and marital therapy.

Both of their lives had not been easy despite their families’ affluence. They told me repeatedly of tales of abandonment, the drugs, the alcohol, and the lonely nights that define their past.

They speak of dysfunction  freely of their families of origin. It was as much a part of their story as what happened to them in their relationship.

In therapy, they developed emergent awareness and honesty. When they’d learned to be honest, they’d become aware that much of their relationship with each other is focused on “things.” They used each other to increase these “things.”

And in the course of doing so, they missed each other’s persons.

Indeed, our pockets may be full. But our hearts are empty. Love people, not things. It’s the path to better living, your best self and relationships ever.

Chess and Mental Health

Chess therapy is now used by numerous psychotherapists and doctors. It has become a popular creative psychotherapy technique in the past 20 years.

This therapy has been known to produce positive results with children who have bipolar disorders, depression, ADHD, and neuro-behavioral disorders.

Chess therapy is a form used to form bonds between the psychotherapist and his/her clients. It is an alternate diagnosis for neuro-behavioral and mental issues that a client may suffer from.

Chess therapy helps in cultivating an intentional rapport and connection between the psychotherapist and his patient to help him through any psychological or emotional problems that he may be facing.

Unlike other forms of therapy, chess therapy does not require the patient to lie down on a couch and pour his heart out to his therapist. Chess therapy involves active participation from both parties―the client as well as the therapist―to engage in a game of chess.

One time, Mark, a university-educated young man from Italy, visited me in the hospital. He's hungry for chess and wanting to inquire about chess therapy. When he arrived, I asked him to join my group session and share a bit about himself. After a short conversation, he's truly a "philosopher" guy immersed in heady ideas and abstract concepts.

But, most of all, Mark was going through some emotional difficulties and seeing me for psychotherapy to unpack his unexplainable psychological blocks. His preferred way: chess therapy. Chess did fit him despite his seemingly normal exterior or mindworks. It can be good emotional therapy too for "philosophers" to play chess.

Chess therapy was founded as early as AD 852-932 by a certain Dr. Rhazes who was chief physician at Baghdad Hospital. Dr. Rhazes uses chess strategies and tactics as metaphors in real life to help patients think clearer.

Wikepedia reported:

 "One of the earliest reported cases of chess therapy involves the improvement in an isolated, schizoid, 16-year old youth that took place after he became interested in chess. Chess provided an outlet for his hostile impulses in a non-retaliatory manner. Good use was made of the patient's digressions from the game and his newly acquired ability to speak about his feelings, fantasies and dreams which the particular emotional situation of the game touched off."

"The report demonstrates how the fact that chess is a game, and not real, enabled the patient to exert some conscious control over his feelings and thus learn to master them to a limited extent."

Natural Mental Health

When I reviewed the studies on psychiatric drugs and treatments most commonly used for mental health patients, I found very little or no evidence of effectiveness. The “disease model” of psychiatry and mainstream medicine does not work.

In fact, numerous patients even got worse with synthetic brain drugs. And a number of human rights legal cases have even been filed against brain drugs over the decades.

Why are people so readily satisfied with the short cuts and simplifications of the medical disease model of mental health?

It seduces us to our wish for a quick fix. The instant gratification that does not require us to struggle with life issues — as if changing our lives are as simple as popping a pill or abstaining from a substance or activity.  It gives the appearance of magic.

In addition, although insights from psychotherapy can be useful tools, I see a need to go beyond them too. You will surely need to work on your addiction or psychological disorder specifically.

But what I believe the most crucial work is lies in what you need to think, feel, and do in regard to the direction of your overall life, of which addiction or a mental health problem is just one expression.

To heal beyond the drug-based or disease model concentrates on strengthening the “life skills.” A person needs to replace an addiction or emotional dysfunction with deeper satisfactions and better ways of coping.

These include personal, marital, and family therapy; emotional and social skills training; job skills; spiritual life savers; and stress management.

Then, there is what I call a “community reinforcement approach” or involvement in therapeutic groups where people’s lives are addressed as a whole as well as their addictions.

The ultimate goal is “whole life” natural recovery and transformation — which disease-oriented treatment says is impossible. There is no reason why you are unable to shed the “addict identity,” for instance.

You  altogether can put your self permanently on a new, healthy plane of existence. It is within reach. If you believe it, and act on that belief.

Choose natural mental health.

Wellness ... In Spite of Pain

Pain is a place for the mind and soul. It's an inevitable part of life. We're often unable to fully understand the substance of our self. But our willingness to go deeper and experience the pains of life can make us find this true substance .... and wellness in spite of them.

Pain is not just physical. Mother Teresa was once quoted saying that the worst disease in the world is not leprosy or tuberculosis but the feeling of being unwanted, unloved, and abandoned by every one. Life's pain also includes the non-physical, the emotional, relational, and spiritual pain. It's so because the self is of many components, one but of many parts.

In psychotherapy, there is mostly this type of pain. A lot of psychopathology and socially unacceptable behavior is really a heart cry to be loved and accepted. Few people ever come out directly declaring this aspect of pain in their lives. But the behaviors and feelings manifested say it loud and clear. 

How then do you find wellness ... in spite of your pain?  

Christopher, a millionaire doctor and sought-after life coach only after he survived financial bankruptcy, his wife's infidelity, and family estrangement, shared his hints that we can all learn from: "I just accept and bear it and every moment choose to be present in the Presence." 

Anxiety is known to stimulate pain. Christopher learned to conquer that through solitude, Scripture, and prayers. He learned to experience wellness amidst his varied pains, even at times eliminate the pain, by changing his attitudes, perceptions, and behaviors. 

An anonymous writer once wrote about a secret formula:  "Suffering is not a question that demands an answer;  it's not a problem that demands a solution; it's a mystery which demands a Presence." 

Yes, you can experience wellness ... in spite of your pain or suffering. Apply the secret. 

Affirmation Of The Self

When Bobby saw me, he would rather not look at me in the eye. His head was either bowed or hanged somehow. He slouched. He breathed shallowly. He appeared so unsteady on his feet while seated. When talked to, I could hardly hear the sound of his voice.

Bobby almost stayed silent during our session. He only had a few words. Upon patient prodding, he began to respond better. When I asked what he feels or why he is silent, he told me that he feels unimportant. If possible, he just wanted not to be talked to.

Such a self manifestation on the part of Bobby betrays a serious lack of self-affirmation. A person who affirms himself instead can breathe calmly, has a good posture, an expressive look, a firm audible voice, feet firmly planted on the ground, and an open countenance.

Self-affirmation is an external expression of our inner life. It consists of verbal and non-verbal behaviors: words, physical appearance, clothing, posture, tone of voice, attitudes, eye contact, gestures, and so on. We cannot isolate self-affirmation from our communication and relating with others.

Albert Camus once wrote, “To know our selves better, we must affirm our selves more.” Affirmation of the self, an expression of our mental health or inner life, requires us to be positive, honest, and spontaneous with our life experience in community with others.

I’m reminded of Marissa, one of my patients. In response to her “gains” in therapy, she started to take her place in her family and society. She taught herself self-affirmation: daring to share her ideas and needs to her husband and children, negotiating when there is conflict, being more accepting and giving of affection and attention.

Before, she preferred to disappear into the background and not to ask for what she needs. She was always quiet and unnoticed. She confided that when she was a little girl, her mother treated her like one of their maids and forbidden her to speak in front of adults. Her repressed feelings resulted in damaged self and interferences in her relationships.

Yes, once you checked your “roots” and summon the courage to affirm your self, you’ll feel proud of your self. This can be done!

Wesley's Rise

A few years ago, I met 23-year-old Filipino chess grandmaster, Wesley So, during a Meralco tournament where I was a participant. I found him friendly and accomodating. I didn’t imagine his meteoric rise where he is now.

Recently, he won the 2017 US Chess Championship, accompanied by his foster mother, Lotis Key. Wesley is one of the world’s youngest grandmasters, no. 2 now in the world. He is now dubbed as the strongest contender to the World Chess Championship.

Once, I received hints of Wesley’s Story from his FB open letter to his mother. Wesley said hurtful words to his Mom, such as:

“Leny So, I was NOT HAPPY that you suddenly showed up in my life, unannounced, at the biggest tournament of the year, and that you came with Susan Leonard whom I hardly know. In the last six years I’ve only see you once a year for about a week, I hardly know you either … I am uncomfortable around you. You want me to respect you but you have never respected me. You left me when I was sixteen, telling me to become a man and find my life. Well I have found it, you just don’t like it.”

I felt sad about this for it has already gone public. Those of us, like myself, who are behind Wesley in his world chess campaign, may miss all the truths or details of the mother-son attachment injury and disconnection.

What I know is, a prodigal was not a prodigal before he becomes a prodigal. Something must have wounded Wesley’s mind and heart over the years that so traumatize him.

I also realize that most parents who have broken/insecure attachments with their children do love and care about their children. They’re simply unaware of the effects of their absence on the emotional states of their children.

Visiting Vincent Van Gogh

It's Holy Week. A time of spiritual reflections.

Consider what happened to Vincent Van Gogh.

Somewhere in the 1890s, this extremely artistic nonconformist painter shared his interior canvass, "The sadness will last forever." Later, at age 37, he was believed to have shot himself in the chest with a revolver. He died in the evening 29 hours after he supposedly shot himself.

Few know of Vincent's spirituality despite his psychological state. Around age 30, he had a Christian conversion and was known to read the Bible and sing worship songs. He found inspiration in John Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress" and Thomas a Kempis' "The Imitation of Christ."

What happened to Vincent? you may ask.

You read his biography and you discover that he has had life deforming disappointments of all sorts. He was alone. He was a victim, got wounded, and in need of special care.

Yet he got injured, rejected, and betrayed by a lack of response in the church. Instead of being taken cared of, he was shot by the very people who were supposed to be instruments for his healing.

It's a pattern I have often seen. Like others, Vincent sought to be whole and serve God and then got hurt. Right after, he stopped trying. He stopped growing and focusing his spiritual and psychological lens.

Vincent's story also confirms that life is meant to be lived and healed in a community taking the high road of support, encouragement, and unconditional love.

Life Is Brief

In my practice, hurt people seeking therapy and recovery - no matter how young or old - always seem to express unending pain and regret. There is damage in the way they spent their time in the past. They don't feel happy or fulfilled in their today. And they can't move on into a brighter future.

British writer William Maugham, at age 64, wrote his autobiography entitled "Summing Up." When asked why sum up his life at 64 when he was still in the best of health, Maugham quips, "An occasional glance at the obituary columns suggests that the 60s can be very unhealthy." That's a clear reality of life. But Maugham survived for another 27 years and died at age 91.

In contrast, in the news headlines once, I was somewhat shocked by what happened to 25-year-old Kristell.  She was snatched from her home and brutally murdered by five young men.  No one in her circle - from her family members to friends and office mates in the corporation where she had a thriving career - can expect or anticipate that Kristell's young and promising life would end like this.  

Whether age 16 or age 96, it's therapeutic to always review our earthly journey. Because life is as fleeting as vapor, it is healthy that we make the most of our limited days. Have we been developing into the kind of persons that can honor God and men with our words, deeds, thoughts, feelings?  Are we making the most of opportunities presented before us?

How much time do you have left? You are never sure. Life's end comes at any age. You can't change the way you spent your time in the past or avoid losses and mistakes that are already done.  But from this moment on, you can resolutely choose to be better the remaining time of your life. You have the present moment - make the best of it!

 "Certainly every man at his best state is but vapor." (Psalm 39:5)

Betrayal

Several months ago, a British man came to see me with his Filipina wife. There I felt the heaviest weights their hearts can endure. After being shown indisputable evidences of her affair with a younger man, the wife hurriedly walked out. Tears flowing from his eyes as a flooding river in the night, the British husband was left with me. Groans fell from his lips -- deep loneliness and trauma arrived and clinged to his chair.

There is simply no other anguish like the consuming feelings of loneliness. Ask a long-time inmate in prison this evening ... or an OFW or migrant worker thousands of miles at sea or in some bar tonight ... or a wife who is being physically and emotionally abused by her husband ... or a father and mother whose arms ache for a child who met sudden death ... or a bitter teenager who weeps over her parents' abandonment ... or even a single-person who goes to his or her apartment alone, haunted by painful memories of betrayal and shattered romance.

Composer Peter Tchaikovsky knew. He wrote the following words in minor key:  "None but the lonely heart can feel my anguish ... " In my journey to help others heal, I've crossed paths with too many who could echo Tchaikovsky's lament. It knows neither border nor barrier ... no respecter of race, color, age, status. It refuses all bargains or logic in its deepest part. Crowds can make it worse. Even activity can drive the loneliness deeper.

When you are in deep loneliness, you need an understanding friend or helper. You need someone who can share in your wound in silent warfare. When you are lonely, you need strength to keep putting your one foot in front of the other. When you are lonely, you need to grieve well and refuse to succumb. In time, your healing needs to reach a point when you are able to lift your eyes off your self. Then, that becomes the beginning of your better relief.

Psychopath-Free

When psychopathy (some interchange it with sociopathy) and blood mix together in one person, the result is horrific. A marital and family nightmare. Very traumatic, wounding to the deepest core. The psychopath is a shadowy black figure that seems larger than life.

Countless psychopaths are like Ching's husband, who deliberately abuses her and their three children. He habitually attacks her verbally, emotionally, and physically. He disempowers her by limiting and withholding financial support. For over 3 decades of her marriage to him, he maintains mistresses and engages their company women employees to sex for hire.

Just a few weeks ago, I was speaking to one of their children, 22-year-old Mary. In much tears, she recounted during our session how his father kicked her several times out of uncontrollable rage. From there on, she chose to ran away and never talked to her father anymore. During her wedding shortly after, she decided not to invite her father for fear that he'll make a scene during the ceremony.

Ching, when she saw me during therapy, has finally decided to divorce her "psychopath" husband. After enduring unimaginable abuses from him over the years, she already got so sick and had multiple medical surgeries. She realized the mistakes she made, how she allowed and enabled her remorseless husband to continue abusing her and their children.

In the course of therapeutic intervention for her self, Ching needs to work through issues left over from her deeply traumatizing marriage. Especially her self blame, feelings of dependency, and identity issues connected to her husband. She's able to gain better understanding of her husband's psychopathy and lack of conscience. This new perspective is certainly helpful to her.

The long-overdue "geographic cure" and divorce of Ching from her husband is healing. One of her greatest remaining concerns, as in the case of many other psychopath-victimized families, is the emotional vulnerability of her children. She knows that the longer journey of her own self forgiveness, healing, and stability would be complicated but the key to the rebuilding of her life as well as the lives of her children.

Up Close To A "Love Mechanic"

One of my foreign patients, Kevin (not real name), is a "love mechanic." He had picked up over 50 women so far and had sex with almost all of them.

His expertise is wooing women, sweet-talking, and touching to "be close." He talks about his feelings too and makes an effort to listen. Mechanically, he can show he loves or cares about women.

After getting what he wants from a woman, he breaks up and moves readily to the next. Immediately, with the next woman, he appears to be just as "intimate" and "loving" there. He knows the moves, the "right" places to touch a woman sexually.

He works hard to make a woman feel good and loved in bed. He uses "love" language constantly. "I miss you a lot," "I'm feeling so close to you now," or "I want to share with you how I feel."

The "love mechanic" is a fake. He believes his "love" is coming from inside him. However, it is actually psychologically or intellectually monitored.  His "love" is mechanical, disconnected from his very core or his own feelings.

Yes, he knows and does all the appealing intimate, "loving" behaviors. But his way of connecting is profoundly shallow, distanced, automatic, and therefore manipulative. His way of "love" exists apart from himself -- a psychological disguise for disconnection.

Let this insight be a step towards making efforts to recognize, analyze, and heal a "love mechanic," especially if you're married or romantically linked to one. The ramifications of such type of "unconscious" psychological deception in relationships are enormously hurtful.

I hope this understanding somehow narrows the gap for you between what seems to be and what is actually going on underneath the "love mechanics." They do abound around us.

Who Are You Really When Alone?

Can being alone make you certain of who you really are?

It looks it can. Yet we must not forget that aloneness and solitude often spawns an inner struggle that may bring you to the edge of your mental health. In your inner wrangling amid quietness, you make choices that could be mind-boggling.

A young woman's mother came to me in tears. Her daughter, Kara, had been staying inside her room alone for many months. She was a pretty and intelligent girl that completed a degree with honors in a top-notch university. She was congenial in the presence of family members - an admirable quality also recognized in school. 

Then, out of the blue, she changed. She began to isolate. One item about her particularly troubled the family: every night, amid her stares and tears, she had been seeing snakes, cockroaches, and lizards crawling into her bed to attack her. 

By nature, this mystique of Kara's condition is erosion more than explosion. It is not a reality-based solitude and aloneness inside her room. The vacant stares, the manic tears, the unreality visions that will not stop. Such are the dry heaves and symptoms of unresolved, unprocessed pain. They've become a shadow to keep Kara from having to live in a real world. When you want to escape the world, solitude becomes destructive.

On the other hand, true leaders, geniuses, and creatives are accustomed to aloneness. From their times of social separateness, they acquire depths of character and produce great works. As psychologist Dr. Nathaniel Branden put it, "Innovators and creators are persons who can to a higher degree than average accept the condition of aloneness. They are more than willing to follow their own vision even when it takes them far from the mainland of human community."

I'm reminded of writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn who once said, "Prison, I bless you!" This man blessed his solitude, for out of his "Gulag aloneness" came his masterpieces. Like Solzhenitsyn, John Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress" and the apostle Paul's epistles in Scripture were also born out of the solitude of the jails. Even when alone in the heaviest of circumstances, who these men really were from their deepest core was celebration of their work that marked their greatness.

There, the paradox of being alone. You can like being alone only when you like who you really are. Great characters or accomplishments are often a product of constructive use of aloneness. If you are terrorized by your being alone, you'll be pained by negative thoughts, feelings, and lingering memories. It's destructive, unhealthy solitude.

Who are you really when you're alone?

When You Envy

"Envy is the ulcer of the soul."
-- Socrates

Envy has the power to damage your self. If you're unable to  check or manage it, it may consume your whole being.

Author Rolf Dobelli, in his book "The Art of Thinking," tells of a Russian tale: "A farmer finds a magic lamp. He rubs it, and out of thin air, a genie appears, promising to grant him one wish. Finally, he says: 'My neighbor has a cow and I have none. I hope that his drops dead."

Sounds absurd? But, this tale of Dobelli still reeks of common reality among humankind. Yours may not be extreme. But whether you like it or not, there's a part of our self - whether conscious or unconscious - that tends to be envious of other people's success or blessings.

Tomas wished he wasn't that way. As he told me about his expanding wife's foreign business trips while he remained stuck in his job, he felt kind of sad. It would be wonderful for him to enjoy his wife's success without having to experience feelings of envy about it.

The trouble with such envy is, it can create a chain of  unhealthy, irrational thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. You find your self distant from your wife. You try to sabotage her plans. And perhaps, puncture her clothes or steal her passport!

So, how do you manage and control your envy when you experience it?

In my own self growth, I've learned how "grateful for what I've got" helps check my human tendency to envy. Count your blessings is a familiar refrain. I start and end my day with thanksgiving prayer.

Then I think about how vast the ocean is, instead of looking only at a little corner. That enlarges my vision, helps me see the bigger picture. It energizes me to create one opportunity after another. Actively inventing my future stops the envy.

Quitting Any Addiction

Quitting any kind of addiction is a process, not a one-time event. It's comprised of different phases. When one fully understands these phases or stages, one can more effectively navigate rehabilitation.

I've treated all sorts of addictions in my practice, such as ones involving drugs, alcohol, sex, gambling, etc.  And I observe that the process of change is often circular rather than linear. There is really a need for adequate time to pass with the right treatment and actions.

Psychologists Carlo DiClemente and James Prochaska have identified 5 stages in quitting an addiction. Here they are (for each stage,I've included illustrative self-statements):

Stage 1:  PRE-CONTEMPLATION (person hasn't identified behavior as addiction)
               "I'm well and ok, I don't see it as a problem."

Stage 2:  CONTEMPLATION (at least experiencing ambivalence) 

                "I wonder if I gamble too much or if I have the strength to stop it"

Stage 3:  COMMITMENT AND ACTION  (turning point at which person decides to change or quit 

                behavior)

                "I can't go on like this any more! I've to change."

Stage 4:  MAINTENANCE  (efforts to keep off "drug-of-choice")

               "I avoid the bars. I think of the consequences on my family and my health if I drink again."

Stage 5:  RELAPSE and RENEWAL  (failing or giving up on change efforts ...relapse is an aspect of 

                change and rehabilitation)

                "Here I go again. I've to get back on track, renew my commitment to change."

Chess and Mental Health

“Chess, like love, like music, has the power to make men happy.”
— Dr. Siegbert Tarrasch

Chess, for me, is a metaphor for life.

The chess board provides a distinct, structured framework. As in life, to win, you think and work to coordinate your pieces. You develop a pattern to your moves. And you view possibilities through which you can shape your world.

One time, I was speaking to a 31-year-old man who’s about to give up on life. Abandoned by his father since birth and raised in poverty, he rose from the ashes and became a self-made millionaire at a young age.

Then, for some unexplainable reason, he was having suicidal thoughts. Somehow he slipped from his usual determined self that produced a magical dance in his life. He was good in rising up. Yet he experienced almost losing his grip.

In chess, it’s essential to keep one’s motivation alive. And when darkness shadows the board, to recall one’s purpose. And when one gets lost or confused looking at those dead pieces of wood, to stay in touch with one’s original inspiration to play.

In life, an absolutely most important thing is affirming your higher Self and knowing your true purpose. Even when you experience hurts, failures, or traumas, you have to stay in touch with that very core of your being.

Sad After Sex

I surmise that countless people experience sadness after sex. Psychologists call this psychological phenomenon “postcoital tristresse.”

It’s a feeling of unfulfillment in the sexual act, especially when something deeper or permanent is desired or hungered for in the physical expression of love.

Such is a familiar scene.

A woman in her 40s, Georgina tries to experience love by giving herself away sexually to men. She goes to one sexual relationship after another, yet never feeling satisfied.

Lito is a gay law student. He lives in with a boyfriend, with whom he has frequent sex. Most of the time, he admits feelings of emptiness in his life despite the relationship. One day, his boyfriend abandoned him, leaving him suicidally depressed.

A married family man, Pedro, goes to the condo of his girlfriend with lots of passionate kissing. Compared to his bad mouthed wife, his girlfriend takes care of him, cooks for him, and laughs with him. Still, something constantly disturbs him within.

Tito goes from one massage parlor and spa to another, paying women for extra service. These women, with fake names to declog him of stress, seem to give him a temporary feeling of being loved or embraced as he is. He keeps coming back for he’s never full.

Here is one horny senior citizen, Cesar, at age 68. He looks for girls who are 18 to feed his lust. The more he gets what he wants, the more he feels lonely and unconnected. He eventually sees a psychotherapist who helps him sort out his long time unresolved pains.

Such is the loneliness and emptiness of a sexual seeker who continues to search for satisfaction in a series of static encounters. Here is what’s common: in the addicted, fixed sexual pattern of behavior, what always comes out is the feeling of “futility of going nowhere.” At times, it’s conscience that bothers.

What’s wrong with the picture?

Ultimately, it’s intimacy that we long for in our relationships. Deeper waters, getting close emotionally to someone other than sex. To be able to experience genuine connection – a feeling of being unconditionally loved as you are, as a whole being.

As psychotherapist and writer Dr. Rollo May put it, “In remembering our sexual experiences, it’s the intimacy that is remembered, not the orgasm.”

But, even as best as it can be, human connection remains limited. No human intimacy can give you 100% satisfaction. We’re all created to need more than what is human in our lives.

When Your Anxiety Attacks

You and I will experience anxiety all throughout life. It’s normal. Feelings of anxiety are natural  responses that support our very basic survival need to escape from harm.

For example, if you see a snake inside your house, the anxiety you experience will heighten your drive to remove it and quickly allow you to respond to protect your loved ones.

However, there is such a thing as an abnormal amount of anxiety. Psychiatrists have what they call “general anxiety disorder,” among other things. Severe anxiety symptoms happen on more days than they don’t. There are frequent signs of extreme nervousness or getting frantic even for no external reason. Such psychological condition can significantly impair one’s quality of life.

Sometimes, a person’s true condition can be difficult to determine. That is because, for instance, there could be little difference between having an “anxiety or panic attack” and a “heart attack.”

Once, I saw a person with a long clinical history of anxiety, fear, and panic attacks. She tried many medications and counseling sessions. Yet, there’s no significant improvement. Only to find out that she had been suffering from abnormal heart rhythms caused by some type of heart disease.

Yes, anxiety disorder may imitate heart disease (or some other type of medical condition). So to rule out any medical or physical causation before you go into therapy and counseling, have a thorough physical examination first.

Then, the psychotherapist would have enough information to assess at least two possibilities: did anxiety and panic cause physical disease or did the physical disease make the body develop anxiety and panic?

Parenting Cyber-Addicted Kids

These recent years, many parents have come to me regarding their children's so-called "cyber-addiction." They speak about how addicted their children are to their electronic devices. Their children, while looking at their devices, hardly pay attention to them, look to them in the eye, or are able to read their emotions. There is little or no more active family interaction as a result of this device addiction or "digital dementia."

According to Digital 2016 report by a Singapore-based social media agency, the Philippines is #1 in the list of 30 countries on time spent on social media. It says Filipinos spend about 4 hours a day using social media, followed by Brazilians at 3.3 hours, and the UAE at 3 hours. The report says Filipinos surf the Internet on their computer or tablet for 5 hours and 21 minutes each day, and on the mobile phone for 3 hours and 14 minutes. That's a lot of hours fixed on the screen!

In other countries, the problem of cyber-addiction and digital dementia has become severe or serious enough that they have specific facilities to detox and rehabilitate young people who can't control their use of their devices. Indeed, the negative psychological effects of the overuse of technology can be likened to behavior patterns of drug addicts. I think many of us can experience it ourselves to a certain extent when engrossed with our devices.

If you're a parent of a cyber-addicted child, what can you do? Here are some possible "therapeutic" steps that may be undertaken:

*  exercise appropriate parental controls on the use of their devices, which may include taking away the devices to which they're addicted in certain situations

*  in some cases, rather than restrict or control the use of the devices, having healthy conversations and fun time with your child can be more effective

*  you provide the child information on how technology can affect the brain

* be an example yourself to your child of the type of behavior or moderation of use of technology you're enforcing on him or her

* be kind, empathetic, and patient when you have to confront our child about the problem

* try to help them to get into other activities, such as sports, social events or groups, arts, or other productive substitutes

* engage in activities you and your child both enjoy

* make time to connect with your child on a meaningful level, such as talking about what's going on inside them, talking about feelings rather than criticizing or lecturing to them

* develop traditions in your family life that's fun, memorable, and positive that will make devices less attractive

How To Handle Your Pain

Pain is inevitable in human life. Whether physical or emotional pain, no one escapes this reality. What do you do when it comes?

Many years ago, I was at the bedside of my younger sister, Cecille, who got confined at the ICU of the Philippine Heart Center. She wailed, gripped the bed rail tight, and experienced the pain rampage in her body. Her medicines seemed to no longer have any effect on her immune system. It was a difficult moment for me to behold. Resisting it, battling it, my sister had a ferocious struggle that won't make the pain go away.

Teddy, one of my long-term clients, suffered from the emotional pain of his wife's infidelity. In session, he suddenly became a yowling with moans, groans, and curses that reverberate from within his heart and mind. His days were filled with anxiety attacks, sleeplessness, and depressive episodes. He felt exhausted. His attitude was virtual surrender of his capacity to heal and be hopeful of his future.

English clergyman and writer Charles Kingsley writes, "Pain is no evil. Unless it conquers us." Pain has a strong psychological component. Passive resignation and fatalism only make this enemy linger. Anxiety is known to stimulate further pain. When one is conquered by pain with negativity, bitterness, and hopelessness, more often than not, the body or one's emotional being deteriorates faster. Death is not far behind.

How then do you handle pain? How do you overcome it?

"We do not choose our afflictions," Paul Tournier says, "but we can overcome them only by accepting  them." That's right. You overcome pain by accepting rather than resisting it. Welcome it!  "Thank God for the pain," so ended the lecture of Dr. Paul Brand. He continues, "With the acceptance of the discipline of pain, suffering for one another, we wil come also to the ecstasy of shared happiness of a new understanding as we glimpse the vision of God for His world."

Yes, even in pain, as you accept it, you can grow to bloom. An anonymous quote states, "Suffering is not a question that demands an answer; it is not a problem that demands a solution; it is a mystery which demands a Presence." The secret of acceptance of inevitable pain is sinking your roots in faith. You focus on living day by day, present in the Presence, to effectively handle and overcome your pain.

Making Peace With Your Self

Thomas Kempis once wrote, " ... make peace with yourself, so that you may then bring peace to others."

When victimized, its essential to acknowledge that one's self has been wounded or damaged by an offender. Some people deny or repress the hurt they experienced. They want to appear unaffected. They try to forget without working through. They make excuses.

Because they do not want to risk shaming themselves or harming their dignity, they betray themselves by refusing to admit or face their damaged emotions head-on. If this is happening, any efforts towards healing of one's self from the offense and sin of others are going to be unattainable and merely illusory.

What exactly can you do to make peace with your self when a spouse has betrayed you ... a friend duped you with millions of money ... a group of men raped your daughter ... the police killed your loved ones ... And so forth?  How do you heal your self from these terrible offenses?

Let me cite here one major key psychological and spiritual step: forgiving your self. Before you can even think of forgiving your offender, you need to first re-establish your own internal harmony. To do this, you have to avoid being "contaminated" by the offensive acts of the other with forms of vengeance or self-harm. You attain internal harmony by forgiving your self.

Forgiving one's self, as psychologist John Monbourquette put it, means "reconciling within one's self the offender and the victim: stopping the offender in one's self and breaking free of victimization."

That involves refusing to identify your self with the offender. You need to call on your Higher Self with the Higher Power than that of your wounded ego self, naturally caught responding in the "twin role of offender and victim." It is this Higher Self that can break the impasse and recreate your internal harmony to make peace with your self, finally.

Sedative, Not Solution

Cesar is CEO Founder of a billion-worth food company. He has wealth, fame, and admiration of the business community. His life is filled with rounds of busyness, pleasure, and amassing of money.

Yet, instead of his success bringing fulfillment, Cesar still experiences a persistent ache inside his heart and mind. He realizes that all his achievements were just his vain attempts to escape from his unhappiness. To his surprise, he feels that he had only grasped shadows.

Everyone has favorite escapes. Some overeat. Others watch or play video games, smoke, drink, do drugs, gamble, become sex addicts, workaholics or enter a flurry of activities. Still others go to entertainment, even occultism.

The possibilities for escape are endless. All in an effort to dull some unexplained or recognized pain and discomfort. However, the end result of these escapes is only loss of self respect and continuing delusion as well as disappointment.

Now I'm not saying that some of these escapes are unhelpful. In fact, many of them may meet legitimate needs. But the satisfaction or relief they give is temporal. Short-lived. They are mere sedatives, not solutions.

Brain drugs, for example, may afford temporary relief but address only the periphery of the real problem. A band aid is helpful to cover a cut but is not a long term treatment to a broken bone. They fall short of addressing the roots of the infection from which illness stems.

Self "Disidentification"

A couple of days ago, I was in a session speaking to a Chinese who regrets not owning a Porsche. Coming from one of the country's wealthiest "tsinoy" families, he feels insecure and unable to measure up when he and his siblings and other relatives get together. He shared how much he always appear to lag behind as he hears them telling stories of their latest luxury purchases and travels.

In far contrast, American-Canadian actor Keanu Reeves is a multimillion dollar action star who lives simply and rides the NYC subway train. Once, he donated 70% of his earnings from his Matrix movie to a worldwide health care cause. Life seems more than money for him. A minimalist, Keanu "disidentifies" his self from his wealth and fame.

Yes, that term "disidentification." It refers to a basic exercise in the school of psychosynthesis  created by Roberto Assagioli. It consists of discovering what the Self is not. It intuits your real essence and identity by disengaging all that does not belong to it. This psychological process allows you to loosen your grip on and let go of all false identities.

For example, if I have an aching foot, it's important that I don't identify my self with it, as if my whole being has become an aching foot. Therefore, in my mind I say, "I have an aching foot but I am not my aching foot." Seeing this basic distinction allows me a better mastery of my existential reality or circumstances.

The same principle of "disidentification" applies in other aspects of our life. Nowadays, our culture is filled with stuff using money, fame, possessions, power, emotions, romantic relationships, and other externals as reference points for one's value or being. These are "false identities;" they do not constitute the very essence of our being.

Thus, when I'm financially bankrupt and I say "I'm financially bankrupt but I am not my financial bankruptcy, because I am more than my financial bankruptcy," I disidentify my self with it. If I find my self alone or divorced and depressed, I avoid believing or letting others make me believe that my whole being is only being alone, divorce, or depression.

Practicing disidenfication regularly is healthy. It gives you the needed psychological detachment or distance from your problems, so you can better solve them. Disidentification, which is a form of mindfulness or meditation, allows for greater discovery, awareness, and nourishment of your true self.