1、1Dealing With Mental MiseryCrittenden E. Brookes, M.D.Mental misery painful or problematic feelings and experiences that wont leave a person alone and make life difficult is pretty much universal. No one escapes such feelings entirely, although they vary in topic, timing and intensity from person to
2、 person. Some people dont even know that they are feeling miserable, but those around them certainly feel miserable, both for them and because of being the recipient or target of their unrecognized miseries. In the present day, most people probably suffer even recognized mental misery in relative si
3、lence. Well over one hundred and fifty years ago, a famous American writer (Thoreau) remarked that many of us “live lives of quiet desperation.“ This is probably as true now as it was then 2we do our best to tolerate our mental miseries, and move on. However today, popping pills to help us feel less
4、 anxious or less depressed or whatever is probably more common than it was then. This is likely because such pills are more available, and advertised to us as though they are the final answer to taking our miseries away. In point of fact they do no such thing, although they may at times be helpful i
5、n reducing our symptoms of misery, at least for a time. Of course, “altering our state of consciousness“ with alcohol, marijuana and other substances has been around for thousands of years, depending on time in history, location, legal and cultural values and so on. As Prohibition showed in the Unit
6、ed States, legislating against such things is usually futile in the long run.Taking something to feel betterWe have always resorted to substances to help us feel better to alter and soothe our states of mind. Alcohol and other substances as I indicated, have long histories of such use. 3The problem
7、of course is that all such substances, including the drugs that are marketed to us through television and elsewhere, often have only temporary or limited effect at best. They also can come equipped with many problematic and even dangerous side effects and addictions. In summary, ingesting substances
8、 almost never cures mental misery although such substances may temporarily or superficially relieve it. Often they do tend to make us feel better (or at least different), and since some of them have been around for thousands of years, they probably wont be going away - although in the case of alcoho
9、l for example, the distance between feeling good and getting drunk, or even alcoholism for that matter can be quite short. Similar questions and concerns hold true for other things that we take to feel better, whether recommended or not, legal or illegal. Other medical treatments4In addition to drug
10、s and other substances that alter symptoms, other treatments that apply themselves directly to the brain and to the nervous system are becoming available. The use of magnetic pulses, for example, appears to be of help in certain cases of depression. Working with eye movements provides another exampl
11、e. We can expect more of these kinds of treatments to become available, as the physical underpinnings of “mental misery“ are investigated - let alone the more severe mental symptoms. As in the case of medications, at least some of these approaches may prove to remove or alleviate symptoms. In the be
12、st of all worlds, they would remove such symptoms permanently and in the absence of side effects. But this is probably unlikely to happen, and if it did we might be in worse trouble, as we shall see. This is because such symptoms are often signals that we are not living right. This will become clear
13、er in subsequent articles, but for the moment lets stick with the suffering part. Other more personal methods used to try to feel better5There are also many other things we do to try to feel better: getting a divorce, having an affair, making lots of money, name-dropping, perhaps staying away from s
14、ocial contact, moving to a new location, blaming someone else for our troubles, getting involved in a cause or a even a cult, finding other distractions, trying to put misery out of our minds, rationalizing our behavior - or whatever. Some of the things that we do with our lives to make us feel bett
15、er and more worthwhile do of course work or seem to work, sometimes for a time. Unfortunately many are quite temporary or dont work at all, although they are usually well intended.The important pointTo summarize the positive and negative aspects of behaviors directed towards feeling better, as well
16、as physical treatments that ameliorate or remove symptoms: such things can bring temporary or longer lasting relief, sometimes with and (hopefully in the future) sometimes without negative side effects. But even under the best of 6circumstances, they still do and will miss an important point. This i
17、mportant point is that in the final analysis we still live inside our own heads. And it is inside our heads that mental misery takes shape, sometimes in complex and subtle ways that no one else can ever truly know. And even if it is sometimes a signal that something dysfunctional is going on, it sti
18、ll hurts, and no one can truly experience such pain except the one who is feeling it. Telling someone else about what goes on, whether friend or psychotherapist can be helpful. But no one can ever know the exact state of things, except us. This doesnt mean that relationships arent important in fact
19、they are very important but in another important sense, each of us remains alone. So to a notable degree, each of us must deal with his or her mental state, even while cultivating our relationships with others. Mental misery is often quite silent and inarticulate. 7Working toward more permanent chan
20、geSo how else can one deal with the private, internal aspect of mental misery? Remember that in quoting Thoreau, I suggested that many people dont even try “anything else“ they may be too busy just surviving, or not aware that there is anything else to try, or just feel too beaten down and taken ove
21、r by daily events and problems to find the energy to search for answers. So they dont even ask the question. And as I indicated, when someone does try something new, it is often like the blind leading the blind. We frequently end up in more trouble than when we started. Sometimes the new thing works
22、 temporarily because we are distracted by our effort. Medication or other “treatment“ can at times help us feel better. But other times it does not do so, or not for long. And even if such feeling better lasts a long time, internal misery - as private and often complex as it is - does not have a dir
23、ect causal connection with the world outside us. It may appear to do so such as when someone with whom we are in love with rejects us but if for example we feel that life has become meaningless, what pill or treatment can take the sense of lack of meaning 8away, with its deep and inarticulate pain?
24、Not often, if at all. On the other hand, there may be at least one positive function for feeling bad it may prompt some of us to look around and see what we can do rather than just hoist a cocktail or two or three every evening, take a pill that a busy doctor gave us, blame someone else for our trou
25、bles, get out of town or just stonewall it. This paper and the ones to follow are written for those people who are “looking around.“ Looking aroundIf you are looking around, you probably want your change to be deeper and more permanent. Beginning to work toward such change is the purpose of this art
26、icle. Working with your mental state 9In order to do so, you will have to work directly with your own mental state. I am about to introduce you to this topic. You will find that on the one hand changing ones own permanent mental state seems quite simple. On the other hand such change is actually sub
27、tle, and requires considerable work. It bears some similarity to (but in another respect is dissimilar from) training oneself in a complex topic or a skill, and like all skills can seem simple once learned. The learning however, both as the acquisition of a skill and in its other forms, is the hard
28、part. Education towards such learning is the focus of this article and the articles to come, whether they deal with personal pain, with relationship problems or whatever. Keep in mind that such education is far more than just learning to think about things differently, although that is a start. The
29、non-thinking part is harder to teach in written form. You will have to learn that by reading between the lines of the written material and trying things out in “the 10school of hard knocks“ my own fathers euphemism for living in and directly experiencing the everyday world, while learning to tolerat
30、e both the pains and joys that such living brings. Only by practicing something again and again can we learn a skill. More of that as we get into other topics. First, more detail on the idea of “mental misery,“ since an understanding of the nature of misery is an essential condition for the learning
31、 that I am talking about.The characteristics of mental miseryMental pain is at least as bad as physical pain, and often worse. This pain (which is often called psychic or psychological pain) is both intangible and very real, and the very intangibility of it often adds to its intensity. The suffering from such pain can be massive, or it can be “grinding“. One person might be beset by “bad thoughts“ that they cant get rid of, while another experiences high levels of anxiety or depression. Someone might be bored with life, and feel “dull grey.“ A fourth might be totally in
