THOUGHTS from The HEADoc

For the past several months...

I have been pretty much switched to survival mode due to a number of personal stressors. Deep within I understand that from time to time we must undergo testing of our innermost being and endure being pushed to the fringes. The quote from Niesche of that which doesn't kill us makes us stronger is an intricate component of the human experience. Thus, those of us continuing to survive are inversely strengthened inwardly even as our physical being is inevitably weakened and diminished by father time.

Last week during a session with a young man suffering from severe passive dependency on his mother, mostly believed due to repression of hostility toward an abusive and emotionally and physically unavailable father, I found myself in conflict about suggestions I felt strongly compelled to voice. He had tried moving out on his own but lacked the emotional maturity to survive independently and returned home to his inherited, but undesired, alpha male role which conflicted with his younger brother who essentially has developed into a senior juvenile delinquent and was exerting his dominance through oppositional defiant behaviors and terrorizing the single mother and the household.

The patient chose to deal with his younger brother's aggressive and unacceptable behaviors by retreating to his bedroom and playing video games and watching TV all day every day. As a result of the circumstances, he developed suicidal impulses again with the urge to cut or burn himself. While talking with him I recalled myself at his age and in a very similar situation with my younger brother. I knew personally the distress he was facing. The successful solution to my problem, which was not socially unacceptable at the time, was to deliver to my brother a very thorough and long deserved ass beating. (please pardon the french) Because our father had never dealt with certain issues this is what it came to.

As a more mature adult now, I still know it is thought to be wrong to condone violence, but I also know that I had to do what I had to do at the time. The greatest lesson for me learned was; when war is the only option you must act with maximum force to accomplish the objective and with as little collateral damage as possible. Maybe I should be the Secretary of Defense instead of Mr. Rumsfeld. Right or wrong, my rather desperate and barbaric response to my brother's unacceptable behaviors did restore some form of peace to the home and within the context of family allowed for healing to occur over time.

Every conflict evolves into crisis at some level and ultimately a point where something has to give is reached. So, the dilemma faced with my patient was to suggest to him to 1) stand up and be the man his father had failed to be through physical dominance 2) to leave home again or 3) to search for more reasonable diplomatic solutions. I'm sure malpractice legal counsel would recommend to me # 3 or nothing at all.

In reality, sometimes no diplomatic solutions exist.  Were we diplomatic with Saddam Hussien? I don't think so. We started out kicking ass, but I think history will prove eventually that we lacked the troops to do the job correctly and efficiently. This may have been influenced by the naiveté of our leadership and the fact that majority of the country would have opposed the war completely if given the true facts of the grounds for going to war in the first place. The bottom line, as many are starting to see, is that if we were going to go to war we should have gone all out and with absolute force and went in and got out ASAP. I guess that is what occurs when the war planners and executive decision makers are mainly those who never fought and probably couldn't defend themselves hand to hand if forced to do so. I think we should put the world leaders in the ring and let them go at it until one surrenders instead of forcing the people to fight wars that they aren't certain of why they are fighting. Let's vote on that idea.

A couple of weeks ago I crossed paths with the bully I wrote about in Evolution of a Psychiatrist. I was forced to clean his clock way back in 1972. I saw his name on the list of detox patients I was to see for the day and a feeling of terror came over me. I wanted to run away. I didn't know if I could handle this reunion or not. Irrationally, I kept feeling that if he recognizes me he'll beat my ass this time. I knew I had to stay and face the music. I decided to behave in a professional manner and just see where things went. I'm sure that somewhere in his subconsciousness he recognized me but neither of us acknowledged our past lives or that day on the playground where we played the roles of Ali vs Liston II with me the victor. Presently, I listened to him complain about the fight he was losing to cocaine and alcohol. I saw in him a scared child just wanting to find some degree of comfort. Retrospectively, I found some closure in that chapter of my life through the understanding that in 1972 we were both just doing what we had to for the sake of survival in our particular environment. In 2006 we continued to do the same, only this time my intention was to help him, not to cause harm to him. Life is funny sometimes.

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