We Are not Cows and Birds Are not Real

The finger pointing at the moon is not the moon. Buddhist teaching

 

What else I have learned: small egos thrive on circumstances that feel like a crisis. Calamities allow these self-obsessed inner personalities—and their outer manifestations–to declare that any “different” way of experiencing life and reality is naivete and foolish or dangerous. Outright lying is not often repudiated because it’s voiced in places that exhaustively stoke gaslighting and bullying. To belong to such a group or community requires heavily-stylized performances—almost a form of Kabuki—often with cruel denouement.

The same phrases are repeated; the same ego states demand attention; the nastiest emotional energies become unstoppable currents. They are addictive to us. Conflicting (often meaningless) beliefs build in a back-and-forth push and pull, finding too often a crescendo in physical violence. Until, at last, it feels enough like a pervasive emergency that control is justified, by any means. And, on the stage of such actors, a slight of hand occurs, a scapegoat is found; the less powerful are the ones who ultimately are made to submit to authority and to keep their mouths shut.

The burgeoning forces of factionalism on social media mirror what I’ve seen in organizations, in families, and within the psyches of the wounded and terrorized. In our culture, there has been a lessening of respect for kindness and wisdom, a turning away from democratic systems with almost gleeful defiance: What are you going to do about it? Such provocation is met with, if not fawning, a protective submission: There is nothing to be done.

 Experts

Maybe you noticed it, the summer of 2020, when the CDC put out a serious warning about Ivermectin, a medication effective for lice (applied to the scalp) and for use with livestock as a deworming treatment (injected, commonly).

“We’re not cows,” they said. But the feed stores just couldn’t keep their shelves stocked.

You may also remember “doctors” warning that ovarian cysts were caused by demon sperm after having sex with reptilian aliens in your dreams, or something to that effect. In our society, nothing seems to disqualify the experts.

While I was looking at the Covid stories again, I got sidetracked and started to follow a thread about birds (some birds/all birds?). They apparently are not birds but technologically sophisticated drones that spy on us from the trees.  I eventually learned that this is a movement, Birds Aren’t Real, young people claiming that spy drones disguised as everyday birds’ recharge by landing on powerlines. It’s satire and meant to be so. But so far down the rabbit hole, satire is no longer even registering.

I’ve no doubt if humans live long enough, if we don’t kill each other or destroy the planet during one of our frequent mass-psychosis events, then there will be spy technologies that are indistinguishable from wildlife. So, Bird’s Aren’t Real are just a little ahead of their time like all great prophets. More than anything, I’m fascinated by the level of paranoid delusion around us, worthy of a long stay in the local psychiatric unit. Such a disconnect from reality is not going to be helped by a brisk renewing walk in Nature (something I’ve otherwise prescribed for unreasonable anxiety), not when the forests are filled with feathered monitoring machine/devices, recording every step, each facial expression evaluated remotely by an unnamed agent of social control.

Everyone is an Influencer

Obviously, I am trained as a mental health therapist, and this may be a career quite different from yours. But, if I’m not mistaken, even if you have no understanding or interest in therapy, you too know the utter frustration of working within an organization that seems preordained to miss the point.

I’ve been in numerous treatment meetings in different geographical locations where we seemed to be missing something, despite our best efforts. Usually, the setting is a non-descript and somewhat worn table in a tiny conference room. I associate these spaces with fluorescent lighting, illuminating the stage for massive amounts of projection, and the predictable enactment of job titles and social roles.

This treatment team I’ll describe here was better than most.

I’m the assigned therapist, the person who has spent many hours with the “patient.” Supposedly I’m here because I have experience and am skilled clinically. But my case presentation is met with unregistering eyes.

People at the table make references to systems of classification that sound important, primarily the DSM, which has become increasingly influential over my lifetime. Indeed, it’s the language of our time, used to describe things. Not just a list of behaviors, but factual things that exist in the real world, vaguely hereditary. By adopting its tone of certainty and pseudo-scientific lexicon, our meanest gossiping can sound like a diagnostic assessment.

At this table:

Patients are borderline.

I wonder, Does that mean they were traumatized?

They are addicts.

I wonder, What pain is driving it?

They are narcissists.

I wonder, Are they just describing someone who is mean spirited?

They are resistant.

I wonder, What part of this person is resistant and to what?

They are “needy.”

I resist, That’s not really a trait, is it?

They are co-dependent.

I know that’s not in the DSM.

I’m not feeling smug as I tell you this. I’m no different. I spent years playacting in these rooms. Ultimately, I know all of us have good intentions. But, here, these “diagnostic” words seem like insults, though the language offers the impression that every speaker is saying something carefully formulated. Adding to the stage craft, presentations follow a format. We start with a psychologist who explains test results or a psychiatrist who has some special summary that triggers the confirmation bias. This is a medical model at its core after all, and doctors go first.

Nurses have their say.

Mostly it’s all anecdotal.

But there are always nods of knowing. There are always the expected funny statements that might derail the group into a stream of consciousness or gallows humor.

I’m not blameless here. I specialized for a time in flat-affect sarcasm. Like rolling my eyes but with my words, my tone. It creates a moment between my delivery and a listener deciding if I’m serious or not. My family of origin taught me how to survive by being the clown, the sardonic fool. Cynicism kept me well protected. I learned this so well it has taken decades to unlearn it.

Everyone here is a skeptic, even when they are drinking the same Kool Aid as hurriedly as their coffee or chilled caffeinated beverages. Everyone is also very clever. You can only survive at this table if you’re clever enough to repel any attack.

Who mounts the attack?

There are regular chart audits usually performed by someone in the organization who has a checklist and little knowledge of the bigger picture or of the practice in general.

There are information systems you battle that will change periodically, always seemingly to make matters worse.

There are insurance companies that have their own special dictates. They can withhold until the financial coffers are hollow-eyed and wasted.

There are professional organizations that can take away your privilege to make a living.

There are the clients, patients, consumers (every agency has their own language to describe the people we help) who can sue you. Even if what they claim is nonsense, your life can be turned upside down and made miserable by a complaint.

There are the family members (client families, and maybe your own family members) who suspect you have no idea what you’re doing.

There’s the internal critic that agrees that you have no idea what you’re doing.

There are supervisors who are supportive—unless anyone complains, then you will likely get thrown under the proverbial bus.

There are your co-workers (loosely called colleagues), who suspect that you’re violating some law or principle (because deep down they suspect that they probably are, too).

Then there’s the basic mistrust by a lot of people in our culture of the work.

Not to mention the lack of pay. The lack of respect. You just need to accept that you will never be compensated for what you do, nor will anyone realize what you’ve done, even when you’ve blossomed with experience into an astonishing healer, even if well informed and always going above and beyond the call of duty. So, you get a little bit paranoid. You’re ultimately alone. Whether in a small agency or large organization, you’re essentially in private practice. At least you practice privately. You close the door. You face the next wounded soul.

Everyone is Selling a Product

            In traditional treatment, however well meaning, the expert maneuvers the client into adopting their “evidence-based” theory of the case and the interventions that dovetail with it. It’s no doubt salesmanship. Don’t kid yourself. In traditional addiction inpatient treatment, the “patient” is supposed to be completely (or nearly so) incapable, because the brain’s reward pathway has shot-circuited, by definition, impairing decision-making. When a person struggles, the answer is always to increase treatment, the length of stay, the intensity of focus. Don’t address trauma immediately or other sources of pain because that makes it harder for an addict to stay sober. Avoid family history or adverse childhood experiences. Keep them caged in a “program” until the brain calms down.

In mental health treatment, as practiced in huge corporations selling those well marketed continuums of care, the caregivers aren’t therapists. They are “case managers” who leverage the “consumer” through megalithic psychiatric systems. If the consumer struggles, then the provider surrounds the individual with increasing supports and reevaluates their medications—avoiding family history or adverse childhood experiences (sound familiar?) and what has been too long denied or minimized (because it’s a chemical imbalance).

In traditional child and adolescent treatment, it is similarly limited in focus. In one organization I worked for (briefly) in St. Petersburg, Florida, on my first day I was handed a caseload of several hundred children and teenagers. It became quickly evident that I was employed to keep the paperwork current so that the young people could continue to be medicated by the team of psychiatrists and physician assistants. When I attempted to sift out the systemic dynamics (in families, schools, churches, etc.) and the social inequities that were re-traumatizing these children daily, such a tact was not well received.

Now to give credit where credit’s due (my mother’s relentless voice), some of these systems can be helpful when we’re in crisis. When the prescription is carefully and artfully tailored, their costly services might help us feel less miserable, but they are not designed to help us grow into our own Truth and to recognize Beauty.