Do you have the integrity and courage to take the road less taken?

Had a discussion Monday with a 30 year old client who has been struggling to discern his calling in life. He told me how he had started down a path the last couple of months and decided last Friday that it wasn't for him.

He shared with me the relief he felt in deciding not to continue to struggle with something that just didn't seem right for him. His major fear, he told me, was disappointing the people who had been cheering him on.

Well, "to thine own self be true" and if one lives one's life for others, life is very short, but if one lives one's life listening to a different drummer than the one society wants him to listen to, it can be very long and fulfilling.

And then this evening I stubbled across this beautiful TED - ED rendition of  Robert Frost's wonderful poem, "The Road Not Taken".

Rilke said, "We should live the question." It takes integrity and courage and requires, sometimes, that we take the road not taken and it can make all the difference to our life.

The client and I talked about discerning God's will for us. "Living the question" with integrity is done with a willingness to discern who it is that God is calling us to become and what it is that God is calling us to do with our lives. Responding to God's will often takes faith and courage.

Health insurance uninsured goes up since individual mandate eliminated

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From Gallup report on 01/23/19

The uninsured rate rose for most subgroups in the fourth quarter of 2018 compared with the same quarter in 2016, when the uninsured rate was lowest. Women, those living in households with annual incomes of less than $48,000 per year, and young adults under the age of 35 reported the greatest increases. Those younger than 35 reported an uninsured rate of over 21%, a 4.8-point increase from two years earlier. And the rate among women -- while still below that of men -- is among the fastest rising, increasing from 8.9% in late 2016 to 12.8% at the end of 2018.

At 7.1%, the East region, which has in recent years maintained the lowest uninsured rate in the nation, is the only one of the four regions nationally whose rate is effectively unchanged since the end of 2016. Respondents from the West, Midwest and South regions all reported uninsured rates for the fourth quarter of 2018 that represent increases of over 3.0 points. The South, which has always had the highest uninsured rate in the U.S. but has seen some of the greatest declines at the state level, has had a 3.8-point increase to 19.6%.

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Editor's note:

Quality of life is often impacted more by social policy than individual choice. The policies of the Republicans have been major obstacles to improving health care in the United States which may have been a major reason in their historical defeats in the 2018 elections.

In general, citizens in Red states have much poorer health care coverage than in Blue States.

For more click here.

More Americans are understanding that climate change is real

From New York Times on 01/22/19 by John Schwartz

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"A record number of Americans understand that climate change is real, according to a new survey, and they are increasingly worried about its effects in their lives today.

Some 73 percent of Americans polled late last year said that global warming was happening, the report found, a jump of 10 percentage points from 2015 and three points since last March.

The rise in the number of Americans who say global warming is personally important to them was even sharper, jumping nine percentage points since March to 72 percent, another record over the past decade."

For more information click here.

Editor's note:
It is a sign of hope that more Americans are becoming "reality based" instead of being duped by "fake news" and false beliefs promulgated primarily by politicians who have been elected due to financial support from fossil fuel companies into believing lies, fabrications, equivocatons, and disengenuous nonsense.

Exxon Mobile and other fossil fuel companies have known for years that the carbon emissions created by the burning of their products is affecting the climate of the planet earth. These companies, fearing a negative impact on their financial revenues, have kept this information not only secret, but have propogandized the American public and their elected policy makers into believing the opposite.

With the awareness of the American citizens rising to the truth of the matter, we can hope, working together, that we can mitigate the problem of carbon emissions and other climate destroying practicies we have created and participated in.

The truth can set us free but it takes more that just consciousness, we need to bring our awareness into application by changing climate damaging policies and practices. This means many things but perhaps the most sigfniciant for positive change at the macrosystemic level will be electing policy makers who are not afraid of the truth and who will act on it. It does no good to simply speak truth to power if power has no use for the truth. It is time to change those whom we give our power to who will do the right thing to enhance the well being of our planet and all the things that abide here.

Can we overcome the psychosis in our society and come to "really see?"

Tim Folger writes in the forward to The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2018 about the corruption of speech in our national conversations facilitated by cable news and social media. Mr. Folger points out that this corruption was foretold by George Orwell in his novel 1984 when he coined the term "Newspeak." This idea of the creation of propaganizing memes is at the heart of what is being called in the Trumpian age, "fake news."

"Early in 2017, for some strange reason, George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four suddenly jumped to the top of Amazon’s bestseller list. Orwell laced his dystopian novel with Newspeak, the language of Oceania, one of the story’s perpetually warring states.

Here’s a short sampler of its Big Brother–approved vocabulary: minipax—the Ministry of Peace (Oceania’s war department, not to be confused with our Department of Defense); prolefeed—mindless mass entertainment; malquoted—what today’s authoritarians would call fake news. And then there’s blackwhite, a synecdoche for all the perversions of Newspeak: to believe that black is white. Our own leaders have given us “enhanced interrogation,” “collateral damage,” “clean coal,” and so many more."

Kean, Sam. The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2018 (The Best American Series ®) . HMH Books. Kindle Edition.

These propaganizing memes cannot be stopped because the means of dissemination are obiquitous. The best hope for restoring sanity to the members of our society is making them aware of the forces of communication which are being deployed to influence them so they can choose their own thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors and not just react in mindless ways.

In psychiatry, "psychosis" is a term of servere cognitive disorganization which places the person suffering from it out of touch with reality. It seems that we are witnesses to this daily in our news stories from politicians who express inaccurate ideas which do not correspond with any reality other than the one they are intending to create in their target audiences with their own dissembling.

Marianne Williamson, a Presidential candidate, tells us we have to "really see", "not just look, but really see." This ability to "really see" requires a maturity, a nonreactivity, an ability to apprehend a spiritual vision of self, community, and society which far exceeds what we have been led to hope for from politics.

Media literacy - Can you spot a "dog whistle?"

What do medical social workers do?

From The Cavalier Daily on 01/23/19 by Zoe Ziff

The following describes the role of Medical Social Workers at the University of Viginia Hospital

"Medical social workers are integral parts of the hospital and oversee much of the non-medical aspects of a patient’s recovery. Their duties include assessing the social and psychological states of the patient, leading counseling and group therapy sessions, working with loved ones on a plan of treatment after discharge from the hospital and referring patients to community resources.  

At the University hospital, each social worker is assigned to a specific unit — such as surgery and trauma, pediatrics or psychiatry. With each new admission into the unit, they look through the patient’s medical history for indicators that a social worker needs to be involved in their case. A few of those indicators include mental health history, a poor prognosis, a history of substance abuse, homelessness and history of child or domestic abuse. 

“Social workers get involved from the beginning,” Repaske said. “Even if we're not called in to see every patient, we are assessing by a high risk indicator need .… Could everyone benefit from a social worker? Absolutely.” 

A social worker will meet with a patient and conduct social and psychological assessments if the patient has an indicator on file or if the social worker simply feels the need to.  

“I'll meet with the patient,” Kojo said. “I’ll let them know what my role is, why I'm seeing them, pretty much just like as a brief check in. It builds rapport with them, and then eventually, I let them know that it's part of an assessment that we just want to make sure that their needs are being met. Ideally by the end of the assessment, we've identified what they need assistance on, and then, we work with them during their admission in order to reach those goals.” 

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Editor's note:

It is important to recognize and acknowledge that a person is not his/her body. The person's psyche and relationships are as important, if not more important, than the person's physical manifestation. 

A significant question is whether a person is a body with a spirit or a spirit with a body? 

Modern medicine is comprised of techical prodcedures which focus on assessment of physical functioning and with tunnel vision, all too often, overlook the person's psyche and soul.

Social Workers are trained in the bio-psycho-social-spiritual model of the human experience. With this training, Social Workers engage with the whole person not just the piece of meat in which their psyche is encased. While Social Workers strive to help people with a "cure for what ails them" they also attend to the healing of the whole person and their relationships when it is desired and appropriate.

Games people play - "Be Afraid" on the Macro level

"That thing that you do," or "that thing that always happens to you" is the key idea of Schema therapy.

Back in the 60s this idea of repetitive patterns of behavior was popularized as Games People Play by Eric Berne, the father of Transactional Analysis.

Several decades later the idea of dysfunctional repetitive patterns of behavior became offical with the DSM - III (Diagnoses and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association, third edition) axis 2 diagnoses of personality disorders.

There is a new tag being created on MBH, "games people play" which will identify articles which describe these repetitive patterns of behavior at the micro, mezzo, and macro levels of human interaction.

One of my favorites which is played on the macro level by politicans is "Be Afraid."

The thesis is that if the politican can manipulate people with fear, (s)he can get their votes and/or support for the policy they are promoting. There are new examples of this game presented to us daily in our news. The memorable examples are "WMD," Weapons Of Mass Destruction, which garnered support for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq during the George W. Bush administration. Most recently we have experienced the "Caravan Invaders" game perpetrated by President Trump and the Republicans.

The way this game "Be Afraid" is played at the macro level is described by Hermann Goering, Hitler's right hand man and founder of the Gestapo,

"“Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America nor, for that matter, in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship. ... [V]oice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.” 

The aim of the game is to generate fear to obtain supporters for one's election and policies.

The targets of the game are willing victims. They are the dupes in a con job.

The roles of the victims of the game are to vote, cheer, and fight, if necessary, for the perpetrator.

There are nemeses of the perpetrator who unwittingly attempt to fight the perpetrator's moves but often only reinforce them, and strengthen them through polarization from the generated adversity. The nemeses moves makes the bogus fear  real and credible through repetition and heightened visibility.

The best antidote for this game is simply not to play by changing the subject, redirecting the focus, side step the whole attempt to propagandize, and offering the perpetrator's targets more attractive options.

What was the antidote to the WMD hysteria? Focusing on the grief and fears of our nation after 9/11 by having more rituals of mourning and analsyis of factors which contributed to the attack, and efforts to rebuild and repair our relationships around the world.

What was the antidote to the Caravan Invaders? Focusing on what other candidates would do to address the real problems of the American people. This is what was done, and these candidates obtained the votes from the targets of the game to move the nation's functioning onto a more constructive path.

The key idea in game analysis is to be able to name the game. The ability to name the repetitive pattern of dysfunctional behavior enables our ability to manage things better. Rather than being victimized by social, political, and emotional forces we don't understand and are confused by, we see the game being played, and once we are aware, we have the power to choose to do things differently and in a better way.