The Platinum Rule

As a child, I greedily absorbed the many books I read as visions of alternate lives. Now, still capable on occasion of the same sort of greedy absorption, I am also aware of books as structures of language and of specific problems that they set out to address.

Spacks, Patricia Meyer. On Rereading (p. 46). Harvard. Kindle Edition. 

As a Psychiatric Social Worker I have been taught and learned that the skill of empathy is essential to good Social Work practice. In order to become skilful in empathy a person can practice the “platinum rule” which is to do unto others as they would have you do unto them. To practice the platinum rule one must know how others, especially those different from oneself, want to be treated. How does one learn this? The easiest way is through reading and rereading. As Spacks puts it, to experience “visions of alternative lives.” In reading books and working with people from different cultures, religions, generations, etc. I often feel like a voyeur. This is one of the reasons I enjoy my profession so much. I am endlessly curious about other people’s lives and experiences.

Intolerance of ambiguity can be a problem creating more problems

Some people tolerate ambiguity better than others who tend to see the world in black and white. The intolerance of ambiguity results in psychiatric symptoms of control, anxiety, depression, irritability, and compulsive behaviors such as drinking and drugging, pornography abuse, over working.

My mother used to call people who overthink things "worry warts."

How can people who have difficulity tolerating ambiguity and uncertainty be helped? The easy strategy for symptom relief is medication whether licitly subcribed by a health care professional or self administered having been obtained "off the street."

People who have difficulty with ambiguity have what is sometimes called an "insecure attachment style." Trust is a big challenge since negativity and pessimism are predominant thought processes. It helps if the person has relationships in which partners are reliable, honest, predictable and "there for them." The partner being non anxious, secure, and able to tolerate ambiguity is reassuring and soothing and the insecure person is able to "lower their guard" a bit and take a few bricks out the wall that they have surrounded themselves with to protect and defend themselves from the threat of future hurt.

People with difficulty tolerating ambiguity often are over controlling, rigid, stubborn, have a need to be right about everything, and insist that things be just so as they expect and demand. People they are in relationship with and trying to control often object to this style of interaction and the very things the controlling person was afraid of happening, happens. The attempt at controlling, and the other person objecting, rejecting and abandoning the person, is the very thing the person was trying to avoid by being so controlling in the first place and so there is a vicious cycle with the interaction escalating unitl a rupture occurs. In the extreme this interative pattern can lead to intimate partner violence, IPV.

Medications will not change the interpersonal activities engaged in this problematic situation. Often outside therapy individually and sometimes with couples and families can be helpful. The person with difficulty tolerating ambiguity needs help in managing their anxiety generated by uncertainty so they can manage their individual and interpersonal functioning in a more satisfying and fulfilling manner.

For more click here.

Being alone with your own mind

As far as being left with one's own mind goes, the biggest barriers and obstacles to facing oneself is fear and guilt. In our psychiatric discourse, fear is described as "anxiety" and is medicated, and guilt is described as "trauma" and "PTSD" and is subject also to medications and EMDR and CBT.

Guilt, though, is a fundamental existential awareness that we have separated ourselves from our Transcendent Source and that Source will punish us for our egotistical belief that we can be the author of our own lives. This fear of punishment for our separation contributes to all kinds of psychiatric symptoms, the greatest of which is the feeling of being victimized for whatever reasons we can conjure up to blame others for our unhappiness.

In AA people are encouraged to face themselves in the fourth step which few people do unless they are interested in actually working the twelve step program.

Peace, which we all yearn for, is based on facing ourselves and joining once again with our Transcendent Source whatever we conceive that Transcendent Source to be. Psychotherapists are walking with people as we all go home. 

Tension is a characteristic of an emotional system

The systemic tension is in the system not in solely in one part although one component is sometimes known as the "symptom bearer." But the symptomatic member of the system can change rapidly as in "hot potato, hot potato, who's got the hot potato."

One person in the system is sometimes scapegoated because it serves the other parts of the system and maintains system homeostasis. Systems, to main homeostasis, often engage in human sacrifice.

Having been trained as a strategic family therapist, I was taught to ask, "What is the function of the symptom for the system?" When we look at the high levels of systemic tension in the United States today where fingers point to many scapegoats, as therapists looking at the system dynamics, we might ask where we can best intervene to jog the system onto a better level of functioning? When we make these interventions, they may cause, initially, an increase in stress because the system is destabilized and thrown into disequilibrium, which is a good thing if change is to occur, but as the therapist, we need to professionally and responsibly guide this restabilization to a more constructive, healthy way of functioning.

Nonviolent advocacy is the better way to go than further violence or even resistance alone. So the question we might ask ourselves is what do we love and how do we bring it about. Martin Luther King, Jr. was not against racism per se, but was an advocate for justice the arc of which bends slowly but inevitably to making heaven on earth when everybody loves everybody all the time.

How do we do this? One person at a time. I can love the sinner, but hate the sin. We can commit ourselves to stop wringing our hands and do something good today to somebody who crosses our path. This can be challenging in difficult times, but something that we psychotherapists are committed to.

Who should I love? - Watch Video

Social safety net involvement to lower anxiety and stress

One of the four quadrants in Ken Wilber's AQAL metaphysical model is the scientific quadrant.  The other quadrants are the subjective, the cultural, and the institutional. Looking at the problem of "insecurity" defined as people and groups feeling unsafe and vulnerable contributing to hypervigilance, reactivity, and chronically high levels of stress from the perspective of culture and institutions, we might wonder what it takes to reduce the high levels of tension in the system? We do this by introducing mechanisms that promote security and the decrease in fear both in individuals, in small groups, in communities, and in larger societies.

This reduction of fear and nurturing of security takes what we colloquially call the provision of the "safety net." Safety net infrastructure is being eroded and eliminated by those who want to control the society through autocratic leadership that enriches the few at the expense of the many. Finding social means of increasing equity, justice, and compassion contributes to a heightened sense of public safety and individual safety. These social means of increasing equity, justice, and compassion are more likely to be realized through mutual aid in our current autocratic political system rather than through governmental support.

So the answer to the question of how to help people lower their insecurity and stress levels in our current political environments is the encourage the befriending of neighbors and volunteering to nonprofit organizations in one's community that address the meeting of basic needs such as food, housing, health care, education, and public safety. Each person has a finite amount of time, talent, and treasure which they can contribute to the common good. It is in providing mutual aid in these basic domains to enhance equity, justice, and compassion that will lower the tension level in our social systems. There are plenty of social science studies which demonstrate the benefits of this focus and activity, but they are not well known, taught, or implemented.

What social programs do you know of, support, or have benefited by?

Social safety net involvement to lower anxiety and stress - Watch Video

states with lower gun ownership and stronger gun laws have the lowest suicide rates.

For National Suicide Prevention Week, which is held each year during National Suicide Prevention Awareness Month, we released our annual analysis of state-by-state suicide rates. Year after year, the analysis reveals that states with lower gun ownership and stronger gun laws have the lowest suicide rates. Conversely, the states with higher gun ownership and weaker gun laws have the highest suicide rates 

For more click here.

Some might say that gun violence is as American as Apple Pie. This idea is indicated by the fact that there are more guns in the US than people and Americans possess more guns than any other people in the world.

When gun violence occurs the politicians ask for people's "thoughts and prayers," as if thoughts and prayers will address the tragedy that continues to occur in any meaningful way. How about if instead of thoughts a prayers the politicians focus on gun safety laws like we do with automobiles, planes, and the misuse of substances.

The mortality rate from guns in the US is a significant public health problem and until it is managed as such the gun mortality rate is not likely to change.

New York State has the third lowest suicide rate in the U.S.

When I was in graduate school getting my MSW in the early 70s our class was divided into groups and we had to pick a social problem area to research, study, and report on to the whole class. My group picked suicide.

In my career I worked for 18 years as a "psychiatric assignment officer" in 3 large urban hospitals doing mental health and substance abuse evaluations and dispositions. I estimate over those 18 years I did over 14,000 suicide evaluations.

Over my 56 year career I have continued to follow the suicide data and recently found the suicide rate for 2022.

The states with the lowest suicide rates are NJ with 7.7/100,000 followed by MA with 8.3, NY with 8.5, ML with 9.5, and CA with 10.4.

The states with the highest suicide rates are MT with 28.7, AL with 27.6, WY with 25.6, NM with 24.7 and ND with 22.5

It is very interesting that suicide rates vary by as much as 3 - 4 times as much in the highest rate states from the lowest rate states. It is interesting that suicide rates are much higher in red states than in blue states.

Why do you suppose the rates vary so significantly from state to state?