The First Collection of Posts about Obsessions

You knew I'd go with that pic for this feature, right?


It's not usually fun, having an obsession. For example, Dealing With Healing has an issue with a crime that won't die. (neither the perpetrator, nor the obsession).

But Mad Kane's humor blog presents us with a LIST obsession. I'm there.

But a tech blogger is obsessed with moulding ANY topic and making you see it as simple, pertinent and wonderful. I'm perplexed, but okay, that's never stopped me from going with the flow.

Phil for humanity is obsessed with flag burning-- it should be your right, according to him, which would make him somewhat to the left, no?

Just kidding, Phil. (I've learned I have to say that.)

And Dr. Scott Davis addresses your kid's addiction to Internet pornography. Someone had to. Thanks Scott.

Zenofeller has so many obsessions operating at once that I don't know where to begin, but I think this post is about thinking, obsessing, about making money while blogging.

Like anyone could get obsessed over money, seriously.

Our last booth is about sleep, which is an obsession for the 24-hr Paradigm.

Well, it wasn't what I expected, but we're not so into control on this blog now, are we?

obsessively yours (read the chocolate blogs, and that's just for starts),

therapydoc

Classical Music and Jewish Jokes

FD read the last post (Music Lessons) and said, That wasn't about Scarlatti.

I guess he thought I'd tell you something interesting about the composer's life, like he was born in Naples in 1685, was from a large musical family (lots of sibs to fight with), wrote over 500 keyboard sonatas. A contemporary of Bach and Handel, Scarlatti went unappreciated in his lifetime, but had future admirers the likes of Chopin, Brahms, Vladimir Horowitz. And FD.

I took most of that directly out of Wikipedia.

FD has told me much racier stuff about other composers.

Below we have a more modern musical hero, Ottorino Respighi. It's looking racier already!

Nah, nothing racy to report on him, either.

But the other day I couldn't get out of the car because the Pines of Rome had me gripping the steering wheel. Life's too short, let's not rush it (one of the themes of this blog) should not be confused with sitting in your car looking like a stalker.

There's history.

As much as I couldn't wait to see my kids after work when they were little, if there was something good on the radio I forced myself to wait until it was over before facing whatever awaited inside. I needed to do that.

Some people finish their crossword puzzle.

The idea is, of course, slow it down. Nobody's doing a crossword puzzle and driving. Theoretically, classical music is good for slowing people down, especially good for Type A personalities (there's research!) and overly caffeinated people who can't relax (my guess).

Should you fall into this class of personality, you might want to buy, or take out from your locally enlightened library, Respighi's Pine's of Rome. Find a copy that's not too scratchy, preferably conducted by Arturo Toscanini.

Onto other coping strategies. Jewish jokes.

My friend Sarelle is known for them. She must read hundreds and passes them along, thinking people will read them. I generally leave them unopened until AOL starts archiving everything forever. Then I know. It's time.

Try these two. This is how some people grew up. Constantly battling

Jewish Logic

(1)

Moishe walks into a post office to send a package. The postmaster says, "This package is too heavy -- you'll need another stamp."

Moishe replies "And that will make it lighter?"

Not bad, right? Try another.

(2)

Three prisoners, about to be executed, are asked what they wish for their last meal.

The Italian responds "Pepperoni pizza," which he is served; and then he is promptly executed.

The Frenchman requests a filet mignon, which he is served; and then he is executed.

The Jew requests a plate of strawberries.

"STRAWBERRIES"?

"Yes, strawberries."

"But they are out of season."

"So, nu? I'll wait."

therapydoc

Music Lessons

It's Domenico Scarlatti's birthday, which means that if you turn on a classical music station, you'll probably get lucky.

Did I ever tell you the story of my first date with FD?

I was a Resident Adviser in this cool run down old house in Urbana, Illinois, a female cooperative house unit of UIUC. About 8 rowdy wonderful young women, great people, lived in that clapboard house. I learned how to make bread and yogurt and only had an occasional potential suicide to manage.

Anyway, I'll save how we met, but FD picked me up and saw the upright piano in the sitting room.

Oh a piano!

Do you play?

A little.

Do you know any Bach? (I was in my Bach phase, this was a test)

Why yes, yes I do.

And the rest is history. Years later, I told an elderly woman that my daughter was taking piano lessons. She nodded sagely and smiled, Oh, a girl playing piano. There's nothing more lovely.

My own personal history with lessons is traumatic, so we won't go any farther. My feeling is that if this is an affordable thing, finding out if your child has this aptitude is the right thing.

You never know where it might lead.

therapydoc

A Day Late, a Dollar Short

Had I known, I'd have added this link, too, on the back a' cha's

If you like ENT you go to this link and read the interview they did with me and arrange your own, maybe.

I can't believe I waste time with this stuff. The interview is terrible. It was as if I had to catch a plane or something. Wait a minute. I did have to catch a plane.). No pressure.

therapydoc

back a'cha and regrets

This is the kind of thing I try to do once a month, send readers off to read other bloggers who put out good stuff and happen to have linked to me, maybe quoted me or they barked loudly at a carnival. Actually, this really is a carnival, with less barking.

The fact that I'm a little too glib sometimes on ENT and am also hoping to be cute when I comment on other people's blogs may be due to being so suppressed (muzzled) as a therapist. That's a good thing, by the way. There are SO many things I want to say, am thinking, and DON'T say. Even here, on the blog, believe it or not, I edit like crazy before posting and rethink what I write a thousand times (am a sucker for hyperbole, clearly).

Nevertheless, I'm trying to reign it in when I comment on other people's blogs, which is harder, since you only have a few seconds to comment, and once a comment is posted, it's unlikely the person who commented will really revisit that comment again. I don't know the statistics.

BUT I offended two bloggers and am mortified, since it was never my intention and consider that a terrible thing, offending anyone. I linked to 2 blogs in the last back a'cha and what I wrote in my own post wasn't taken in the way I wanted it to be taken (lightly), and the bloggers let me have it in cyberspace.

The rule here is that if I link to a blog, it's because I LIKE it, usually, not because I disapprove or think the blogger is unconscionable. I may not agree with what you people write, but I truly respect the time and effort you put into expressing your right to free speech.

If I really disagree or find content objectionable, the I won't link back to you in back 'acha (this feature), and I wont talk about it or criticize it, most likely. It's like when they send me books to review. If I don't like a book, you won't read about it here.

So on that note I owe a huge apology to certain bloggers who didn't see the humor in my last back a'cha. Furious Seasons and BipolarBlast were both upset with what I wrote and didn't like the comments I put on their blogs. I generally defend physician medication recommendations and this time urged people to not discontinue medicines based upon what FS wrote about Zyprexa. Furious brings research on psychotropics to our attention, and it's a wonderful blog. All I really wanted to do was bring that blog to your attention. Apologies, FS.

And BipolarBlast took my defense of labeling (diagnosing) disorders a little hard (I think, correct me if I'm still not getting it). I said that for people to be able to collect social security for a mental or behavioral disorder, they need a diagnosis. You won't get help from the government for a disability without it. I'll add that a doctor also has to provide substantial medical evidence, and that takes time.

In truth, however, Bipolar Blast is correct. Diagnosis and labeling can make recovery and life much more difficult and money won't always help. Labels do stick, whereas people get well. One of the first things family therapists do, as a matter of fact, is stare behind every individual diagnosis for the family pathology and go there, treat that first, if it's possible. The individual diagnosis often melts away. Apologies, BB.

Okay for other news fit to print, check out one of my favorite primary care docs, Jay, at Two Women Blogging.

And Kim, at Emergiblog has a number of fabulous links and great posts about emergency medicine. The fact that she lets me in makes me feel good. This blog is rarely an emergency.

I got a major complement over at MyShrink.com, apparently am not the only one who thinks we all need therapy. (smiley emoticon here) Thanks Shrink.

Anything Goes and General News
is a new blogger. Reminds me of that song, In olden days a glimpse of stocking was frowned on as something shocking now Heaven knows, anything goes. Boy, they don't write 'em like they used to.

And an aspiring film maker at Production Blog Blue Skelton (related to Red?) isn't afraid to share celebrity gossip.

But creativity in the blogosphere abounds. For example, The Lost War on Drugs at Death by 1000 Paperclips will have you wondering (if you're me) where you've been. And I don't know where I stand on legalization, by the way, so no assumptions here. I'm probably not pro.l

Then there's the People's Choice a carnival chock full of great posts, with voting happening there. I didn't have time to vote and not being a Chicago blog, nobody came to my door to drag me to the polls. Sorry PC.

And at the Books Den you can find hard copy, always a concept worth thinking about, real book reading.

MimiLenox is pushing peace, bless her, around the globe. And for more on positivism, here's positive thinker.

Can't get enough personal coaching? Two more and that's it for the day. The coach at I Will Change Your Life can tell you how to beat a "bad mood" and you're advised to eat breakfast (FD agrees) at Former Fat Guy.

No comment.

An awesome blogger tells us about a farmer's crop charity at One day at a time.
If you're into politics, try Morning Globe News.

Best Medical Blogs is worth a peek. As is this one on social skills training.

The 13th Story is a grant writer, political writer, and all around renaissance man, whereas Be Conscious Now is not kidding. I should have done this together with the Carnival of All Substances. Changetherapy included my definition of addiction in one of her posts. I think and has a great discussion of guilt going on. All of these docs are over my head, seriously.

Speaking of docs, Dr. Aleksandr Kavokin has been putting out good medical material at RDoctor.

And have I mentioned history at Osprey Publishing? So interesting. History, unfathomable.

Whereas MovieTrailers, I understand. And there are still more personal development bloggers pushing Priscilla's list. Such a list. Including Robin's Reflection's.

For a blog about kids with special needs, try Kintropy.

And a yogi blogger likes to draw and quote physicists. Check out resonent enigma

College bloggers into pizza and beer need only go for Pizza.beer.tech for refreshments.
Just watch it, okay?

For women's health and wellness, try ModernSage. But for feminism, Femtique is best.

Now, if I REALLY wanted to work on my chocolate fix, I'd go to Raising a Healthy Family and put a little more effort into my cooking. It's not true, I suppose, that you can stir fry EVERYTHING.

Oh, and one more thing. There still are such things as political pundits. Check out these, Morning Globe News
and The New Pundit.

that's it for now. waiting for a really cold morning for the next one.

therapydoc

Lars and the Real Girl

When I told my mother that I went to see a movie (Where were you?) about a man who loved a life-sized doll, she said, "Oh. You went on a busman's holiday." Meaning it's not a holiday when a busman takes a bus.

It's why FD wouldn't see The English Patient.

But she was wrong. Lars and the Real Girl is real professional escapism.

In Chicago this movie is only playing at the Landmark Cinema, 2828 N. Clark Street. I'm telling you this so you should go.

The fact that I got it together, dragged FD to the show, faced the nauseating indoor parking garage (while he made telephone calls), and made the movie on time (autumn construction at every known city artery) is nothing short of a miracle.

Usually, I just stay home.

But I thought, What if it's not released locally? That would be bad. I'd miss it.

And it's PG-13 (!)

Cast includes Ryan Gosling, amazing; Emily Mortimer, so expressive; Paul Schneider, Kelli Garner, Patricia Clarkson, Nancy Beatty, Maxwell McCabe-Lokos, Karen Robinson, and a host of naturally engaging others playing the townies. Craig Gillespie directs a perfectly spartan script by Nancy Oliver.

The performances are wonderful.

If you work in mental health or are going into one of the mental health professions, or perhaps any health care profession, you want to see this movie. I'll have all of my students watch it and might even see it again, which is not like me.

Lars and the Real Girl is the best movie about a mental disorder since A Beautiful Mind, but much more hopeful.

That's the best thing about it, and there are many good things about it. The story is uplifting for people who have given up hope on loved ones suffering from serious mental disorders. When it seems things are psychotic, life-defining, and irreparable, sometimes they are not.

In my biz we see patients like Gus (Paul Schneider), Lars' brother, broken-hearted, who are sure that all is lost and blame themselves.

Which is wrong.

Seeing this movie will help you understand that there are softer, kinder eco-systemic interventions that make simply sending a sick person off to the doctor seem pathetically remiss treatment of the mentally ill. Not that the family doctor (a captivating performance by Patricia Clarkson) isn't remarkable here. She is. But she's not enough. The best psychiatrist wouldn't have done as good a job, either.

Sublime intervention like you'll see in this film is so rare that for a moment I wondered, Do such things even happen outside of Hollywood? But I know that good therapists can and do put good therapy into motion, they use significant others. That's the trick, you see. Our stage is simply smaller.

One would assume that to exact what you see here requires a deep understanding of what's really going on with the patient. Yet here the town stumbles upon the cure without so much as an introduction to Psychology 101.

Family therapists are known as intrepid screen-writer/directors, such is the nature of their creativity in treatment, especially if they naturally lean towards strategic family therapy. Indeed, a creative therapy is sometimes the only therapy that will work. When a seemingly effortless, yet on-the-mark intervention is uniquely woven into the fabric of a particular context, surprising things happen.

It is what we aspire to as we wonder, crunching the facts of a difficult history, What, oh what in the world, does this person need to get better?

I'd call this an example of unintentional strategic ecosystem family therapy (the freshly coined oxymoron treatment modality of the day, you heard it here first). My tag line?

A close-knit rural community works together and seizes new opportunities to help a young man with his relationship with. . . yes, a doll. Not really knowing why.

FYI, the architects of the formal US social service delivery system, community-based mental health, had nothing on Ms. Oliver, the screenwriter. Lars gets out of his bedroom in a garage and into the world.

But back to me going to the movies.

FD is sitting next to me in the theater. "His treatment would go a lot faster and be a lot cheaper with a little psychotropic intervention."

SHUSH, I say.

It is the town, a very small, cold, snowy, foot tingling town of simple loving, like-minded people who orchestrate the intervention. The sole town family practitioner, nibbling at mid-day sandwiches while talking to her patient, kick starts the process by treating the life-size doll that Lars has ordered from the web, as a patient.

She is not a fancy psychiatrist in a plush downtown Michigan Avenue office, but she does the job splendidly with a little understanding and a lot of love.

That's all the plot you get. You have to spend the ten bucks and see the movie. I'll make this a 2-part post with the salient mental health issues and treatment implications in the next one and won't publish it until most of you have seen the movie or DVD. My hope is that it really does hit theaters near you some time soon, and I'm pretty sure it will. The performances, the direction, the story, everything about this film is, well, perfect.

And I don't idealize movies about mental health.

As I said to FD as we slugged down Devon Avenue from Assyria to India to Pakistan to the kosher pizza shop for overcooked, almost edible falafel,

Theses films are so often negative, depressing, and wrong, or they inappropriately try too hard to be funny. They're too silly and lack empathy, and are clinically off the mark, too, which is why I hate most of them. I loved Lars because not only did it have heart, but because for the most part, it was right.

So no, not a busman's holiday. But a holiday in every sense of the word, a feel-good, people-are-good movie. And the doll, if a little scary at first, kind of grows on you.

therapydoc

Albus Dumbledore and Being Gay

Apparently they gave Jo K. Rowling a standing ovation in Carnegie Hall when she revealed that Albus Dumbledore was gay. She responded, "If I had known this would have made you this happy, I would have announced it years ago." Click here for more on the story.

If you don't know the actual plot, and I don't think I'm really spoiling anything here, Harry Potter learns that Dumbledore, the headmaster at Hogwarts and Harry's hero, had a best friend, Gellert Grindelwald, a young man who went in a different direction, magically speaking. So the boys parted ways.

I think the relationship ended because Gellert chased after the Dark Arts, but since I sort of buzzed through Deathly Hollows, correct me if I'm wrong.

No matter. Such a wonderful affirmative world we live in, that Ms. Rowling would get a standing ovation for having the courage to make the headmaster, the supporting protagonist of her novels, a gay man. But I wondered, Why wasn't it made more obvious in the text? Why didn't Dumbledore say, Harry, you know I'm gay, of course, don't you? I was in love with Gellert.

Maybe for a few reasons.

(1) Having a gay headmaster might not have seemed politically correct for an international readership of children. And yet, what an opportunity it was to change an internationally ever-so -heterosexist perception of gays.

(2) Why should Albus discuss being in love with Harry? Since when do teachers talk about their love life? Since when does ANYONE have to talk about his or her sexual orientation? Shouldn't some things simply be private?

(3) Just because he was gay didn't mean his relationship with Gellert was necessarily sexual, be it requited or unrequited. He LOVED his friend, his intellectual equal. That should be enough for teenagers, love.

And finally, (4) She never said he wasn't gay. She left it open. Indeed Dumbledore loves Harry, too, and there's never any hint of sexuality in that.

Same sex love between peers is very powerful and very good, and when I went to school, when I read Freud, Theordore Lidz and Erik Erikson, and other developmental theorists, it was considered GOOD to love your friends, to choose them over your parents. It constituted a developmental leap.

These days everything has to be sexual or it's not salable.

Even Harry Potter.

Sense and sensibilities. Call me old fashioned, but not homophobic in the least,

therapydoc