The Toilet Function of Friendship (and Other Relationships)

Joseph Burgoin
Relationship Issues
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Rules of the Road
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Social Behavior
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Unbearable Emotion
55

Do you have any friends who "unload" or "dump" on you, who dominate phone calls or monopolize dinners together by talking about their problems forever and showing no interest in you?  Do you dread these encounters because you always feel "shitty" afterward?  Welcome to the toilet function of friendship.

When Freud first developed the "talking cure," he recognized that his patients experienced emotional relief after psychoanalytic sessions during which they discussed their difficulties; what he didn't at first understand was that many of his patients were unconsciously using those sessions as a way to evacuate their pain and unhappiness rather than to gain insight about them.  I'm not sure that he ever truly recognized this phenomenon, though he did grow more pessimistic about the possibility of psychological change over his lifetime.  Many other theorists have since described this problem; many psychotherapists have the experience of very devoted clients who come into the office overflowing with pain, who fill up the session with endless words about what's bothering them, go away feeling relieved then come back for the next session and do the same thing all over again.

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Autism Symptoms in Other Disorders

Joseph Burgoin
Detours
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Unbearable Emotion
13

[NOTE:  The following article discusses autism symptoms that may appear in other psychological disorders of adolescence and adulthood; for information on how to recognize and distinguish autism from other early childhood disorders, please click here.]

One of my clients, a young woman in her 20s, would come into session and sit for long periods in silence.  She found it almost impossible to make eye contact.  Later, I learned that she was mentally "singing" brief repetitive songs she herself had composed.  Usually they were but a few bars repeated over and over.  Or she might get a famous song "stuck in her head" and keep the loop running.  The Beatles' "She's Got a Ticket to Ride" was a favorite.  At those times, I felt as if she were shutting me out, almost as if I didn't exist.

At other times in our work, she would communicate with me and use words in a normal way, although she was quite troubled and in a great deal of obvious pain.  She had a few stormy friendships; she mostly dated women and developed one intense, merged relationship that lasted more than a year.  In terms of background, she came from a chaotic and emotionally violent family;  she remembers as a small child regularly crouching behind a chair in the living room, intoning a single word over and over in a monotone way.  She had other such repetitive rituals that soothed her.  She also recalled an early childhood fascination with small hard objects and continually pressing them into her hands.  She didn't like soft toys.

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Insufficient Mind in Anxiety Attacks and Disorders

Joseph Burgoin
Anxiety
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Points of Departure
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Unbearable Emotion
13

This discussion may sound a little abstract at first but it's crucial for understanding many psychological difficulties, especially in the realm of anxiety attacks and disorders.  It concerns the literal inability to tolerate one's emotions. In an earlier post, I discussed how hatred can function as a kind of glue to hold the psyche together when a person is unconsciously terrified of falling into pieces under the pressure of intense experience; in my most recent post, I described the fear of psychic disintegration lying behind some anxiety symptoms and panic attacks.  If you haven't done so already, it would help to read both those posts before this one.

In my psychotherapy practice, I find it useful to think of the mind as a sort of container for emotional experience.  Think of emotions and feelings as shapeless liquid and the mind as a vessel that holds and gives them form -- that is, it makes sense of them and gives them meaning.  I know this sounds a little abstract; an example might help make it less so.  Say I'm watching a movie and I start to feel a sensation around my eyes and at the back of my throat.  There's a tightness in my chest, too; my breathing becomes a little quivery.  My mind brings all those sensations together, and from past experience, I understand that I am feeling sad.  This isn't a conscious process, of course, but I do believe it's how we assign meaning to inchoate experience.

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How Fear of Disintegration Gives Rise to Anxiety Symptoms and Panic Attacks

Joseph Burgoin
Anxiety
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Points of Departure
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Unbearable Emotion
29

Anxiety is a psychological state that can have different causes and origins.  I'd like to discuss one potential cause of anxiety symptoms and panic attacks with an example from my personal experience.

For the most part, I haven't been prone to anxiety during my life, but several years ago I had some full-blown panic attacks related to an investment that appeared to be going south.  Along with several friends and family members, I'd acquired a real estate asset with short-term financing; in order to get permanent long-term financing, the asset would have to meet certain performance criteria.  If it didn't, we wouldn't qualify for the new loan and we might lose our entire investment when the short-term loan came due.  I was the member of our team primarily responsible for dealing with the bank.

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What ’10 Signs of Depression in Men’ Won’t Tell You

Joseph Burgoin
Depression and Bipolar Disorder
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Points of Departure
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The Medicalization of Mental Health
63

In this video, I discuss the most common signs and symptoms of depression, offering advice for how to make sense of all the information available online, with suggestions about the different treatment options.

LinkedTube

If you've been searching the Internet for information about how to recognize depression, either in yourself or in someone close to you, this post will introduce you to the 10 most common signs of depression that appear on many mental health websites, with little variation; I'll also discuss how to understand and make use of them.  These signs of depression derive from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual IV issued by the American Psychological Association; the DSM-IV is the official manual of the mental health profession and is used by psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, etc. who must provide a diagnosis to insurance companies before the insurer will  issue reimbursement.  Here are the 10 most commonly recognized signs of depression: Continue "What ’10 Signs of Depression in Men’ Won’t Tell You"