Insight from 40 Years on the Clinical Front Line
- When patients contact me for treatment it is because they have imploded. This means that the internal explosion of repressed and recycling emotion has caused toxic behavioral and physical symptoms.
- Upon initiation of treatment the question is did the patient have the initiative for facilitating their mental health or was treatment initiated by a parent or caregiver. This dynamic determines the architecture of treatment as the avoidance-dependence dynamic can be organically ingrained.
- Once the individual is engaged in treatment the skills of introspection are taught within an age appropriate protocol. Insight is essential to the development of emotional agility. Many of my patients of all functioning levels; from sufferers of pervasive social avoidance and selective mutism to 7 figure earners with performance anxiety have said this is the hardest thing they have done in their lives. This is because detachment from thoughts and feelings as a defense mechanism (not to feel anxiety) is significantly at play.
- Concurrent to introspection is interoception. This is the skill of internal physiological awareness. Making “friends” with adrenaline is the basis of the adrenaline control technique of The Berent Method. In order to make friends with it. You have to feel it. The bio-card is a useful tool for facilitating physiological awareness. It measures skin temperature which is based on vaso-dilation and vaso-constriction.
- If there were a magic word in treatment it would be intention. This is the effort or energy of focus. This is by far the crucial variable in determining one’s learning curve.
- Integration is the objective of treatment. In order for true integration to occur the variables of FATE need to be “glued” together.
| F | = | Function (physiology) |
| A | = | Action (behavior) |
| T | = | Thinking (cognition) |
| E | = | Emotion |
