Posted on by WanderingNation

The Primacy of the Unknowable

It often seems that, when talking about what we should believe in, the prevailing consensus in the Western world is that we should only place faith in things that are knowable – things that are scientifically provable. To state that we experienced a vision from a deceased relative is pathologized, and often diagnosed. To state that we believe in an all powerful and all knowing God is scoffed at in our secularized society. To state that we are convinced of something that has no proof, as defined by our “scientific” age is to announce that we should not be taken seriously by the majority of society.

As a practicing therapist, I find that this manifests most often in what are called “evidence based practices” or EBP’s. These are heavily researched approaches to therapy and counseling, such as DBT and CBT, that have displayed scientific and documentable evidence that they produce improved outcomes in the majority of patients. What I am not saying is that these EBP’s are methods that we should eschew. However, I do believe that the presence of these modalities have pushed the art of therapy into the corners, and have made the art of therapy into something that is much more often something that companies and insurance agencies can turn into numbers, dollars and, most importantly, profit.

This marginalizing of the art of psychotherapy is, I believe, a symptom of the greater issue of our modern society’s unwillingness and sometimes downright hostility to accept that there are things in this world that affect us deeply, and oftentimes only individually, with no explanation in the material and observable world. These can be experiences of the paranormal, an intimate unspoken connection with a stranger on a bus, a powerful religious experience either individually or as a community and a number of other things that, due to their very nature, elude a description that I would be able to provide.

It is these things, these unobservable and often unexplainable experiences that comprise the most important and moving aspects of human life. This is not to deny the importance scientific progress – the material world is not diminished in importance by the existence of the metaphysical and interior world. But we should likewise not let our reliance of the material world dim the beauty and integrally important world of the unknowable either.

Posted on by WanderingNation

When Patients Don’t Deserve Care

As a therapist at a community mental health provider. this is a question that is very challenging on an ethical level. One of the biggest challenges that I face is with patients who either don’t want care, are violent/belligerent or are a combination of all of these. Often, these patients have been through the mill of services – in and out of jail/prison, chronically suicidal, and spit out by every mental health provider in a 100 mile radius.

And then they are referred to me.

These referrals come from people who are out of options, who are at their wits end as to how to provide care for these individuals. Whether it is people who are chronically addicted to some substance, have a personality disorder, or just don’t want help (which is a lot of people), I am the one who gets the call when there is no one left to call.

When I get these calls, I can confidently say that I always want to help. Is it an ego thing? A “big heart” thing? Am I perhaps too naïve? Whatever it is, I always want to add them to the caseload.

When they do get added, it is very quickly that I realize why they were referred to me, and refused services from so many other organizations in the process. They are angry, aggressive, belligerent, intoxicated, and a plethora of other things that prevents me from being able to help them, if they even want help in the first place.

When the violence, anger and belligerence starts, though, I feel at a loss. These individuals are justifiably angry in many instances. They have been abused, mistreated, refused service and generally thrown to the wayside by every societal apparatus that we have at hand. And I do not blame these apparatus’ when they do throw these people away! Many of these individuals are fundamentally broken people, and beyond the help that I, or the wonderful people that I work with can provide.

As a therapist, I often have to come to the conclusion that I am unable to help these people, and that it is only a choice on their end that will allow them to become able to accept help, when it does eventually come to them. But as a Catholic? It is extremely difficult for me to accept this. Christianity is the religion of the broken and the castaway. It is the religion for those who have been shunned by the society in which they are a part. So how do we help these people? These people, who refuse the assistance of secular society, often justifiably so. These people, who are so often simply beyond the help of secular society. These people, who deserve to be accepted by those of a religious heart?

I do not have an answer. But I had to ask the question.