By: Dani Kolsrud, Mental Health TVLC
“Replacement therapy” is my term, not credited to any great psychologist! We are having to do a lot of “replacements” during the COVID virus pandemic. I don’t google or use the internet for my research. Instead I burrow through shelves in libraries, read books I purchase at book stores, follow up on news stories, go to classes and seminars, and do interviews. As you can guess, my routine for research is requiring me to “replace” some of these routines due to the fact I am 82 yrs old and have a doctor giving me orders to stay home! I have chosen to do this by using research from articles I have already written. A sort of reapplication for our new and very unusual time.
I am going to start with a 1984 quote from Rev. Granger Westberg, a pastor and hospital chaplain in the Chicago area: “Medicine transcends the physical because true healing involves the body, the soul, and the mind.” This implies that we will need to look within ourselves to achieve a complete state of good mental health.
We hear over and over the routine that will achieve good physical health — good nutrition, exercise, rest. These are very basic, but to put them into practice, we have to create a time or space for them to be employed. If we fill up on junk food, we will not have room or a desire for good nutrition. If we clutter our days with non-satisfying activities there will be no desire or time for exercise or rest. Looking within ourselves to address our nutrition, exercise, and rest for our brains, we draw the following corollary. What are we feeding our brains — a steady diet of negative information that triggers anger and resentment? How are we giving our brains exercise — by just watching tv and providing no stimulus? What about rest — do we overextend ourselves unnecessarily? The first thing that comes to mind is “Garbage in—Garbage Out.” What we feed into our thought process in our brains is exactly what comes out of our brains! In other words, a healthy brain needs good input, good conversation, good stimulus, and time to be around people that bring out good things in us. Does this mean we should never have to deal with negativity or that our lives need to be devoid of struggles? I quote author Richard Carlson: “True happiness comes not when we get rid of all our problems, but when we change our relationship to them, when we see our problems as a potential sign of awakening, opportunities to practice patience and to learn.” During this pandemic we have been thrust into a world we would rather not be in. We are dealing with the situations we have been given in different ways, the more successful results come when we develop the ability to “change our relationship to them and see them as new opportunities.”
The study of positive psychology in mental health is relatively new but gaining more respect. In reading the book “Positive Psychology” by Bridget Grenville-Cleave, I learned that forty percent of our happiness is determined by intentional thoughts and activities, in everyday, ordinary things. I interpret that to mean we have some responsibility for our own happiness. In the “Twelve Step Program” we learn that we are responsible for our own happiness. Perhaps a worthwhile endeavor will be to apply some “replacement therapy.” Clean out thoughts, habits, and attitudes that are filling our brains with unhealthy responses.
The fields of meditation and mindfulness are promoting the idea of doing some “housecleaning” in the attics of our brains. Mindfulness involves actually setting aside a time for this “housecleaning,” getting rid of the clutter. This can be done in an organized group or, as is necessary now, at home in a designated place that surrounds you with some aura of serenity. Teaming up with mindfulness is meditation. Mindfulness clears things out; meditation invites prayer, reading, and reflection in.
Yogi Bhajan puts it this way: “Prayer is us talking to God. Meditation is letting God talk to you.” The brain loves stimulation and new things. One of our most contributing sources for this stimulation is through community. At this time however, in the pandemic, community has been, for the most part, removed from our interaction. So how do we reach out? How do we feel we have anything to offer, and how do we get “it” anywhere? On the RFD TV channel (I am a farm girl from Iowa, this is what I watch!), I heard a song that reminds us again to look inward that addresses this challenge. It went like this: “I have a hand-me-down coat; I have hand-me-down shoes; I can’t give you anything new, I’m not a rich girl. But here’s what I’ll do, I’ll take my heart, reach out and give it to you.” We have thoughts, prayers, texting, emailing, snail mail, and other outreach tools that remind people they are important to us, and it is a two-fold positive, it stimulates you as you do the reaching out, and it stimulates the recipient by the joy received.
All research points toward finding those positive tools that need to be used to “look within.” Research also underscores the fact that we may all have some of the same basic needs “within,” and though our “replacement therapy” is similar, our tools for achieving contentment, peace , and good mental health will vary. Rumi says it this way: “It’s your road and yours alone. Others may walk it with you, but no one can walk it for you.”
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