January 2021 – Therapy: Vehicle of Transformation

emotional crisis

We continue to struggle, digging deeper into the muck of death, yet we can see light in the distance. We are now in 2021 between light and darkness. We have mounting deaths nipping at our heels as we try to stay safe by hiding, while each of us has our own brand of haunting risks to deal with.  But wait!  The vaccines are tantalizingly close. What a strange reality: liberation so close while we fend off death closing in on the other side.

We are in constant emotional crisis swinging from one mood to another. We feel a sense of constriction, what Reich called character- and body-armoring: the feeling of being in a vise grip – tight necks, tight shoulders, constricted in our belly, closed in, accident-prone, tripping, falling, twisting knees. We lack balance.

Loneliness stalks us, an extreme sense of isolation; sheer pain as we are limited, the pod tightens and we so miss friends and family. For all of us are adrift in the swelter of light and dark. Is liberation coming soon?

In my second book to be published in 2021, Psychotherapy Solution in Troubled Times: Create a Better Life Now, I suggest that professional guidance can help us balance this myriad of feelings. Here is a passage:

Therapy: Vehicle of Transformation

Therapy is a stabilizing, focused path that ensures transformation if you stick with it and take it seriously. As you can see from the examples above, you can enter therapy through the easy access door marked CHOOSE THIS OPTION – a choice to take full responsibility for your life through self-examination, honest assessment, and willingness to face into the darkness and expand to meet the lightest of feelings. The process defines a course of development that takes you beyond your current status quo, entertains a multitude of options and deepens your experience with the mysteries your life may offer.

The other option you might end-up with is crashing through the therapist’s door headfirst! (Frisch, 2021)
© 2020

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October 2020: The Critical Importance of Psychotherapy

importance of psychotherapyThe critical importance of psychotherapy has become especially clear during the Covid-19 pandemic. In the US alone at least 209,600 have died, according to a New York Times database on October 5th, 2020. Those can be dry statistics that create numbness as we spin the daily news. Yet these seemingly empty numbers reflect the deaths of babies, adolescents, young and old and their families who feel the unbearable pain of loss in their hearts. There are the many thousands of people who became ill and had to isolate without loved ones either at home or in the hospital while they suffered through pneumonia and worse.

Our President and his wife were confirmed positive for Covid-19 on Oct 2, 2020. Due to his falsifications regarding risks, disseminating misinformation about the disease, his refusal to implement safe practices, which include wearing a mask, and social distancing, rather he promoted activities that encouraged others to congregate in close proximity defying all established safe practices. He thumbed his cocky nose at scientific evidence resulting in disastrous consequences.

Lives are not statistics as each person has a story: regardless of age or circumstance; their lives are held hostage by a disease with, for some, lifetime effects. Or death. Now the President, flaunting his stupidity, has been bitten by the venomous snake of his own making.  There will again be a coverup, lies and deceit as to progression of events leading to his Covid-19 diagnosis. All his corrupt practices we have endure but in the face of the pandemic, his lies have costs us everything.

Psychological Pain of the Pandemic

There has been extreme stress throughout his presidency that have added to the effects of the pandemic: the extreme isolation that endures month after month; the fallout of loss of jobs, loss of institutions we counted on; the feeling of chaos has heightened. Research cardiologists at the Cleveland Clinic have referred to “broken-heart syndrome as “stress cardiomyopathy” and have found significant increase during the pandemic: from 1.7 percent pre-pandemic to 7.8 percent between March and April 30., 2020. The symptoms of stress cardiomyopathy are chest pain, and shortness of breath that can mimic a heart attack. (AARP Bulletin, September 2020) Please consider psychotherapy to help you weather the extreme stress of our situation.

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Touch in Psychotherapy

Touch in psychotherapy has been a controversial topic. This is a very complex discussion as there are many considerations to balance.

First though, let’s discuss a basic misconception still prevalent within vast swaths of psychotherapists and medical professionals, as well as society at large, for that matter. Namely, the mind/body dichotomy and it is still alive and well within psychotherapy since Freud. Wilhelm Reich bridged the scientific and theoretical gap between mind and body elegantly. Reich, through years of clinical experience with patients, and a legacy of scientifically validated laboratory experiments, documented how patients’ psychic conditions were reflected in medical conditions and how physical conditions were mirrored in the psyche.

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