A Global Biographical Change (in which we are all shifting at the same time)
Where does change come from? Change is constant, with different people continuously making important life shifts all around us. The timing for them is usually independent and varied, so that there are always losses, moves, divorces, and births, but unless we are immediately connected to them we may not think much about them. Right now, life is different. We are all sharing a common experience of change, all around the world. It is a time of strong outer changes, which will undoubtedly fuel inner shifts that last beyond these immediate weeks and months.
Support for Weaning off of an Antidepressant
This might feel like a strange topic to bring up during a pandemic—shouldn’t we actually all be getting onto an antidepressant medication right now because of all of the hardship and worry that is happening in the world? The answer is, no, not as a first resort. We can learn from this time. We are being asked to understand ourselves in new ways and not just go back to the way things were, once outside circumstances make that possible. We are changing, and change can be very good. Consider it a kind of healing crisis.
Conventional antidepressants do have their role. They stabilize our nervous system and our emotional life and they can wonderful, life-saving medicines in the right situation. I prescribe them when needed and appreciate their support, but reserve them for when life is truly too overwhelming and there just needs to be some quiet pause….
Building Strength for the Future, from present adversity
Health and illness follows certain foundational laws of cause and effect. Falling from some height (like a tree) risks breaking a bone; smoking increases rates of cancer. Those are fairly straight forward links that are easy to understand. We could say, the horse is clearly pulling the cart.
But there are other situations where two results seem to come parallel to each other, like the “horse” is walking just in front of, or just behind the “cart.” But there are other situations where two results seem to come parallel to each other, like the “horse” is walking just in front of, or just behind the “cart.” For example, it has been demonstrated that having heart disease puts you at higher risk of depression, and that having depression puts you at higher risk of heart disease. Also, that depression puts you at higher risk of developing diabetes, and diabetes puts you at higher risk of depression. Hmmm—which is now the proverbial horse and which is now the cart?
The Integrated Care Package
There are currently places in the world where large hospitals, medical clinics and retreat centers are able to offer multi-disciplinary anthroposophic care (Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden), but the current medical model and insurance programs in the U.S. do not make this possible. This is a challenging moral quandary, as participation in insurance plans immediately creates oversight and rigid expectations around the kind of medical care that is being provided. Services must meet the “standard of care,” or practitioners face severe scrutiny, as well as potential punitive limits on medical practice and monetary fines. For these reasons we continue to make the decision that it is better to remain outside of the insurance system, recognizing that it is limiting access but it also allows us to provide a fully individualized, holistic approach to the healing process.
We would like to try to take one step towards healing that conflict.
Biographical Rhythm and Crisis: Getting Unstuck: Part 4
Change catches us off guard all the time, but it doesn't always sneak up on us from the outside. Some of the biggest impulses for change surprise us by coming from the inside. That can be hard to make sense of because we are so used to constantly needing to respond to the events, expectations and relationships of our lives—but it is true! External events, outer changes make sense in a certain way because they adhere to the laws of cause and effect. If we suffer a loss or are experiencing a lot of anxiety related to an upcoming event we could place our feelings into that context and gain some consolation. In other words we learn to say: I feel this way because that happened. We know that significant loss brings grief and disorientation. We also know that the anxiety of anticipation can easily exhaust us as we try to make sure that everything has been properly considered and prepared. Those are painful experiences but they can be rationally understood. What happens when a life change starts inside of us and therefore doesn't necessarily match any of the outer circumstances around us? It can leave us frightened and confused because there is no immediate reason for feelings of grief or anxiety that seemingly well up out of nowhere. But those experiences are much less random than we might think.
Finding Gratitude
It is a normal part of the passing of the year to look forward to the coming year and what it will bring. That is probably best done, however, by building on the gratitude of what has come before. In looking back we need to realize that we are all gifted, all blessed. Though perhaps this past year helped you experience that our “blessings” are not always the good, easy, and pleasurable experiences. Of course, we all wish for as large a helping of those as we can get, but sometimes the most potent growth comes from wisdom born out of challenge.
Healing from the Inside, Out
Why do you go and see the doctor? Usually it is to get something—a prescription, a lab test, a diagnosis, an operation. Occasionally it is just for reassurance, but usually it is because we feel that we need something. And that is true a lot of the time. We can't do it all by ourselves. But receiving external treatments does not solve every situation, and it can even make us assume that our bodies, or our diet, or our genes are inherently broken and lacking something. That takes away a lot of our power to heal. In fact, today's pharmaceutical drug development looks to find conditions that require a medication that you will need to take for the rest of your life. That's good business, but it is not good healing. The truth is that there are many conditions that require us to make a shift and heal from the inside, out.