Mental Health Standards you have as a person. Too both positive and negative experiences you have had.

[LightSun]

Mental Health:

“When it comes to mental health, I’ve been both a professional as well a recipient of services.

What is your minimum requirement for a psychiatrist?

What is your minimum standard requirement for a psychologist?

I. For my own standards, for a psychologist I expect insight and breakthrough. If you are not doing that, you are not doing your job.

II. For a psychiatrist I expect problem solving and increasing the quality of life of your patient. If you are not doing that then in my estimation you are not doing your job.

When I worked in the field as a counselor and in human services, I always put the best interests of my clients, consumers, patients forward.

I have standards. If a doctor achieves my level of standard, I then refer to them as doctor and mean it.

The secondary own level of subjective view, is if a doctor is a nice and decent man or woman but isn’t meeting the criteria aforementioned. I in my own private thoughts refer to them as Mr. or Mam.

The third category is of those who merely write out scripts on auto pilot in reference to in my view as a ‘paper pusher,’ receive no respect.

III. What are the good and the horror stories of those who have had to receive any mental health help?”

 

[ygolo]

My minimum for a psychiatrist is someone who will listen to my whole psychiatric history and will make sure I don't have side effects with the litany of other medications I am on now.

My minimum for a psychologist changes over time. I want people trained in the forms of therapy I believe will help me with my current struggles. Right now, it is ACT and mindfulness training.

Many of my early psychologists did more harm than good. I pretty much always felt worse after a session than before. My first psychiatrist medicated me into oblivion, and probably created an addiction to Adderall.

 

[Siúil a Rúin]

For me I don’t expect enlightenment from a counselor but someone who actively listens and withholds judgement. It would be someone who respects my ability to figure it out once my inhibitions, fear, and defenses are safe to remove. I don’t want someone telling me what to think feel or do.

For a psychiatrist I hope for diagnostic clarity. I’ve never been to one but may be going soon for possible psychogenic non-epileptic seizures and ptsd. I’d like someone who isn’t dismissive, but can help me understand what’s happening and then hopefully have a solution.

 

[LightSun]

What has been your experience with the mental health field. Do you feel peace, safety and trust with your provider?

Or do you feel anxiety, trepidation and fear?

“My Own Unique Journey”
“It astounds me that there are mental health care workers, some at doctorate levels. Yet I have seen few mental health practitioners communicate with the most basic and fundamental of Active Listening Skills.

These are just a few of the basics that anybody with any accreditation at such high levels should really master. Especially in the mental health field.

Generally people want to be listened to and treated as human beings. It would be optimal if they could find providers who instilled peace, and safety or as Carl Rogers would say ‘Unconditional Positive Regard.’

This helps to instill and establish trust which is essential for any therapeutic effort to have a fair and reasonable amount of success.”

These skills are basic, yet I have seen time and again mental health practitioners not practicing these most basic of skills.
1. Thought Empathy
2. Emotive Empathy
3. Validation
4. Feedback
5. Reflection
6. Active Listening Skills entails two way communication. I have witnessed supposedly professionals ‘Talking At’ their patients, and not listening to their concerns but instead either filtering out the information or tuning them out.

I have seen patients treated as patients with no accounting for their personal IQ levels, personal experiences, or education. There was supposed to be a paradigm shift where the doctor works together with the patient to help devise a treatment plan.

I have been both practitioner and recipient of the VA system. My first Ph.D. psychologist was a nice, warm and compassionate man. I genuinally am found of my first psychologist.

He told me that he can meditate in group or individual therapy. Now, I am dubious. Especially when it came to group therapy sessions. He said he was trained in psychoanalysis. I didn’t know that dinosaur was still taught.

Now when I left the group, a female postal worker said to me, “Paul, the group hasn’t been the same since you left. You were running the group.”

No. First I am a ‘B’ type personality and not an ‘A’ type. Second this was previous to my three university experiences with St. Petersburg and Nova University in Florida and Argosy University in Hawaii.

I am using terms I only later learned in education. I was using validation, feedback, reflection, thought empathy, emotive empathy, and used my interpersonal intelligence along with my gift of insight.

His intern was a more naturally gifted group facilitator. I am an INFP (Introverted, intuitive, feeler with empathy and a go with the flow personality).

According to Dr, Helen Fisher, Biological Anthropologist NF’s have higher estrogen levels than their Myers Briggs counterparts. Estrogen has been correlated with having the gift called real empathy.

It is my hypothesis that a gifted 2 year program that reinforces the basics can be more adept with handling non major diagnosis. Stick to the basics and ask open ended questions.

The client, patient is supposed to talk more than the therapist. My second psychologist at our veterans system, whenever I said or somebody in group said two sentences, he’d end up saying six sentences.

This isn’t supposed to be about him. He was not an effective therapist either, as the first one was not. Then use trained Active Listening Skills with your patients. Finally, it is my own conviction that the answers must come from within.

The doctor merely facilitates this. This is the problem I have with Psy.D. They impart wisdom, knowledge and talk too much. I saw a Psy.D. I will first be positive. She was a genuinely warm, compassionate woman.

She had both IQ. as well EQ. She had interpersonal intelligence and was quite articulate. I told a Behavior Coordinator that in all the time I saw her, I had not received one insight either from her or on my own part.

I had no breakthroughs, and no effective therapy. The Behavior Coordinator asked why I still saw her.” Well I said, “She has potential.” After all she supposedly was an INFP and had a doctorate degree in a psychology background.

I finally realized with my own gift of insight, I communicated with her whenever she brought up topics. She however did not communicate with me but rather ‘Talked her Psy.D. at me.’

This became apparent when I told her once, when I saw the PA (an INFP), it was like Rogerian and Gestalt Therapy. She did not respond at the time. It took me some time to realize she was not using Active Listening Skills at all.

I had to explain to the doctor that it was meant as an anology. In Rogerian Therapy there is ‘Unconditional Regard.’ Carl Rogets was an INFP. This is not the PA’s job, it’s my job and domain.

In Gestalt Therapy patients work through crises and through role playing achieve catharsis. I am using Fritz Perls as an example. He was an NF. I one Christmas session saw the PA and shared about the loss of my wife.

This is why I was in therapy. It took me 4 years of work with a patient and quiet PA. who listened attentively to me. Two weeks after this session, I finally left my wife go in peace. Ala catharsis, ergo Gestalt.

It was not designed to be this way. I healed myself through my own efforts, healing factor and education by communicating with a PA. for four years. I could have seen the first two psychologists or the Psy.D. forever and never gotten better.

This brings me back to the young intern who was more genetically gifted and more able than the first psychologist and the Psy.D. experience. It took an unofficial ‘team of a most unusual patient and an untrained PA. to accomplish more than the professionals.” LightSun

 

[LightSun]

Do you actively employ established Active Listening Skills with your patients?
“Thought Empathy, Emotive Empathy, Validation, Feedback and Reflection?

“Hello there is thought empathy and as well emotive empathy. It never ceases to amaze me of how many high degree individuals don’t use basic and simple rudimentary Active Listening Skills.

1. Thought empathy: I had a friend tell of her personal travails. I immediately put myself in her place and I said that must be stressful.

2. Emotive empathy: I had a wife pass away in October, 2010. It took me four years to finally heal from this deeply felt grief.

I called a Pizza delivery man, and he relayed that he had not gotten over the death of his father. When my wife died. I had too write a professional ‘Grief Note: On How To Communicate With Somebody Dealing With Grief.’

When my wife passed I hated sympathy givers. I know they were just trying to do the best they could under those conditions. I abhored statements like, “Oh, I’m so sorry.” “I’ll pray for you.”

and worst of all someone told me, “I was lucky to have known my wife for as long as I did.” This only reinforces the pain and made her death that more apparent.

Then there were the Advise Givers. “Oh, you need to move on with your life.” This is rhetorical. Don’t the advise givers know that if the issue is important to someone, that they have gone over it a thousand times over? I’d the advise is not specifically asked for, don’t give it.

People generally want to feel validated, and understood. They want their inner feelings and thoughts validated in some way. This is what I did for this gentleman over the phone. I didn’t say, “Oh, I’m so sorry. Or that’s too bad.”

No, I used Emotive Empathy and described my own personal experiences with my wife. I had gotten over my grief. I understood that he had not yet time to heal. He sounded on the phone that his experience and too his feelings were validated by me.

3. We both left the conversation the better for it. When we use Active Listening Skills we ‘Communicate’ With’ the individual. We don’t ‘Talk At Them.’

4. Also there is a difference between actually attentively ‘Listening’ to the individual as a person. To help them feel safe, peace, trust, and actually listened too as well as understood.

I have met too many supposed mental health professionals that treat their patients as patients, and only ‘Hear’ their own message they are wishing to convey.

They seemingly tune out and filter out the patients feedback, IQ level, education, and personal experiences. Especially in the mental health field, but in any field of education, simple Active Listening Skills should be learned, understood and used.

5. Other important skills are ‘Validation.’
6. Feedback
7. Reflection

These are simple, really rudimentary and basic skills to have as a professional who has “Compassion, Humanity, or the even rarer gift of true Empathy.”

"I try to learn from someone more enlightened than myself. But, if I am further on the path, I still can learn from others who may not be so far on the path but still have lessons to impart provided their is mutual dialogue with shown mutual respect.

This is why, with an angry individual I still strive to find some truth in their statement. I will then dialogue with that person. We will communicate on that element of truth or reason.

Thus dialogues, communication, possibly respect and even friendship can be established. Hopefully, the other can learn from me and so I help a fellow sojourner on the path.

One needs be open to discuss anything. Without challenge to one’s belief system there is no growth. If at least one is of the party is open, that person can learn from the experience.

I personally like, love, and am attracted to deep, heavy, mature, intelligent, and insight oriented conversations, discussions, and philosophies." LightSun

"The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed." Carl Jung

“Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only this meeting that a new world is born.” Anais Nin
Do you actively employ established Active Listening Skills with your patients?
“Thought Empathy, Emotive Empathy, Validation, Feedback and Reflection?

“Hello there is thought empathy and as well emotive empathy. It never ceases to amaze me of how many high degree individuals don’t use basic and simple rudimentary Active Listening Skills.

1. Thought empathy: I had a friend tell of her personal travails. I immediately put myself in her place and I said that must be stressful.

2. Emotive empathy: I had a wife pass away in October, 2010. It took me four years to finally heal from this deeply felt grief.

I called a Pizza delivery man, and he relayed that he had not gotten over the death of his father. When my wife died. I had too write a professional ‘Grief Note: On How To Communicate With Somebody Dealing With Grief.’

When my wife passed I hated sympathy givers. I know they were just trying to do the best they could under those conditions. I abhored statements like, “Oh, I’m so sorry.” “I’ll pray for you.”

and worst of all someone told me, “I was lucky to have known my wife for as long as I did.” This only reinforces the pain and made her death that more apparent.

Then there were the Advise Givers. “Oh, you need to move on with your life.” This is rhetorical. Don’t the advise givers know that if the issue is important to someone, that they have gone over it a thousand times over? I’d the advise is not specifically asked for, don’t give it.

People generally want to feel validated, and understood. They want their inner feelings and thoughts validated in some way. This is what I did for this gentleman over the phone. I didn’t say, “Oh, I’m so sorry. Or that’s too bad.”

No, I used Emotive Empathy and described my own personal experiences with my wife. I had gotten over my grief. I understood that he had not yet time to heal. He sounded on the phone that his experience and too his feelings were validated by me.

3. We both left the conversation the better for it. When we use Active Listening Skills we ‘Communicate’ With’ the individual. We don’t ‘Talk At Them.’

4. Also there is a difference between actually attentively ‘Listening’ to the individual as a person. To help them feel safe, peace, trust, and actually listened too as well as understood.

I have met too many supposed mental health professionals that treat their patients as patients, and only ‘Hear’ their own message they are wishing to convey.

They seemingly tune out and filter out the patients feedback, IQ level, education, and personal experiences. Especially in the mental health field, but in any field of education, simple Active Listening Skills should be learned, understood and used.

5. Other important skills are ‘Validation.’
6. Feedback
7. Reflection

These are simple, really rudimentary and basic skills to have as a professional who has “Compassion, Humanity, or the even rarer gift of true Empathy.”

"I try to learn from someone more enlightened than myself. But, if I am further on the path, I still can learn from others who may not be so far on the path but still have lessons to impart provided their is mutual dialogue with shown mutual respect.

This is why, with an angry individual I still strive to find some truth in their statement. I will then dialogue with that person. We will communicate on that element of truth or reason.

Thus dialogues, communication, possibly respect and even friendship can be established. Hopefully, the other can learn from me and so I help a fellow sojourner on the path.

One needs be open to discuss anything. Without challenge to one’s belief system there is no growth. If at least one is of the party is open, that person can learn from the experience.

I personally like, love, and am attracted to deep, heavy, mature, intelligent, and insight oriented conversations, discussions, and philosophies." LightSun

"The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed." Carl Jung

“Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only this meeting that a new world is born.” Anais Nin