FILTERS WE CAN NOT PURCHASE but ones that influence our thoughts, beliefs, and actions!

The most common filter that comes to mind is the one we use in our coffee makers each day. Yet, the number and variety of filters used for almost every conceivable purpose, is not the sort of filter that’s occupying my thoughts at this time.

Specifically, I’m thinking about how each of us filters how we see, hear and experience our individual and collective realities from a psychological perspective. Just as when we’re driving and are confronted by a blind spot when our car’s mirror is positioned in such a way that we can’t see another vehicle that's only feet away or, if we do see it, we misjudge its distance from us - so too, we each have blind spots regarding how we think, what we think, and how we behave.

Although I’m calling them “blindspots” for the purpose of cutting to the chase, what they truly resemble are the filters through which our beliefs and subsequent actions are colored. Another way of stating it is the particular lens through which we have been taught to view our world.

Something all of us have no doubt experienced is how siblings convey what they perceive to be true about their family. There is never ONE truth, of course, and often the stories told by siblings sound as though they’re talking about living in different families. Here, too, throughout history, all people, every nation, every religion has claimed to hold fast to truths that work to protect their identity, to make sense of the world as they wish to see it. For good and for bad, the bottom line is that is how and why prejudices are formed, wars are fought and people everywhere, in every age, have come to know their own brand of reality. They do so through how they filter what they view and what they believe.

In the art world, for example, Christian Skeel and Morten Skriver claim that “art serves as a filter through which the artist captures and expresses an inner experience in a tangible form. But it also provides a filter whereby the viewer of a work of art has the opportunity to enter into resonance with the artist and touch the inner spirit that guided the work’s creation.”

In the world of psychology, psychoanalyst Ruth Rosenbaum―when addressing the role of “filter-shifts in the process of change and growth in psychotherapy” concludes that “this dynamic is examined from the perspective of the interaction between patient and therapist, and how each affects the other through the modification and expansion of their respective conscious and unconscious filters.”

What does all this mean and why do I feel so preoccupied with thinking about how each of us filters our thinking? For me, it’s a preoccupation with today’s world as I see it with my perspective and how I experience it through my particular filters. My concern is about the world we are leaving for our children and grandchildren.

A refusal by many to acknowledge that there is no one truth keeps us all ignorant of inevitable consequences.

Those who are rigid and hold on to beliefs, never changing anything about the way in which they perceive or think, have very narrow filters. They are least likely to experience a life rich in variables that teach about other ways of viewing the world around us. Case in point: the times in which we are living now are filled with ambiguities and contradictions in perception. There are those who believe in global warming and those who de-bunk all scientific evidence that prove its existence. There are those who believe in tolerating all people and those who believe in tolerating only those who are like themselves, whether it be the color of their skin, their religion, their cultural inheritance, their sexual orientation … and the list goes on. This is true today and has, no doubt, been true throughout the ages. Where it becomes a threat to our very existence is when the filters that shape who we are and define us as individuals and nations also separate us and turn us against one another, each rationalizing that his way is the only way, his belief the best belief, his notion of what’s right and wrong, good or bad, is the only notion to be believed and followed.

What we must ultimately ask ourselves, then, is how do we—given the fact that such filters will always exist―move toward being a more civilized world when we have among us those whose extreme fundamentalist thinking and actions do, more often than not, lead to acts of horrific destruction and hatred? How do we protect ourselves from a world which seems at the edge of economic, social and religious disaster?

Please submit your thoughts and opinions on this subject to this website and I will publish them all, in the hope of opening a dialogue that will help each of us to broaden our filters and help us to influence the current patterns of destruction in positive, creative, and mindful ways.

Yours,
Linda
http://www.applemanshapiro.com/
*If you have not yet done so, please visit my website and listen to the interview with me on Bookpod.
There, too, feedback would be much appreciated. Thanks.



TWO WOMEN OF VALOR: Betty Ford, Former First Lady of the U.S. and Marsha Linehan, PhD

                                                    First Lady Betty Ford (1918-2011)

                                                  Dr. Marsha M. Linehan 1944 -    )

Although people have suffered from mental illness since the beginning of recorded history, until recent years they did so in shame, totally stigmatized, often “put away” and always living - and more often dying - without hope.

Former First Lady, Betty Ford, who at ninety-three died Friday, July 8, 2011, gave a public face to cancer and addictions, while Dr. Marsha Linehan added greatly to the field of mental illness. Both women have influenced the treatment of these diseases in profound ways and their impact has had a lasting effect on those victimized by pain, living with inadequate care, in shame, and without hope.

Most importantly, they have helped to de-stigmatize those suffering from one or another of the diseases: advocating not only for cancer and the proper treatment for substance abuse and various addictions, but also furthering the advancement of our understanding and acceptance of those suffering from mental illness. Ford and Linehan have each offered significant solutions for people who would not otherwise have been able to live productive lives with dignity and courage.

A survivor of breast cancer, Betty Ford took the whispering of the word "Cancer" (the big "C") out from of the closet, becoming one of the first advocates for the care of women diagnosed with cancer.
In addition, her family - the President of the United States, Gerald Ford, and their four children - did an "intervention" to convince the First Lady that she was suffering from alcohol addiction and that her suffering was affecting the entire family. After agreeing to receive treatment, she went on to co-found the BETTY FORD CENTER, a rehabilitation haven for those "affected by alcoholism and/or other drugs." Many thousands of people have entered the facility since its doors were opened in 1982 - from the rich and famous to every day citizens who are offered financial assistance when needed - and all of whom, in the Center's mission statement, are offered "treatment to begin the exciting journey to a new life."

Professor of Psychology, Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle, and Director of Behavioral Research and Therapy Clinics, Dr. Marsha Linehan, whose biography notes "her primary research is in the application of behavioral models to suicidal behaviors, drug abuse, and borderline personality disorder" is best known to those of us in the mental health community as the developer of DBT (Dialectical Behavior Therapy), a therapy which combines behavioral science with concepts of "acceptance and mindfulness derived from eastern and western contemplative practices." She has saved countless lives with her groundbreaking research and treatments which include helping patients to identify their thoughts, beliefs, and assumptions and then teaching them different ways of thinking and reacting.  In effect, Dr. Linehan tells patients, "Your problem is that you don't know how to regulate yourself, and I can teach you how."  Mentoring others to use DBT has created a significant number of qualified therapists who now help those who are diagnosed with "borderline personality disorder."

However, in Dr. Linehan's case, it was not until last month, in June, 2011, when she - for the first time - in a speech presented at the Living Institute in Hartford, Connecticut, disclosed (much to the shock if everyone in the audience) that she has suffered from that very disorder. She revealed a life-long history of multiple suicide attempts and years of deplorable hospitalizations and only after attempts to heal herself and then entering the field of psychology did she ultimately contribute greatly to our understanding of the brain and its various disorders.

For Linehan the treatment modality known as DBT was, in no small measure, discovered through her own suffering and has subsequently helped thousands of people, even before she self-disclosed.

As we here in the States mourn the death of former First Lady, Betty Ford, we must acknowledge the strength of character and the service provided by her courage and willingness to he help others, reaching beyond herself and her loved ones to all who suffer, thereby taking away harmful, destructive stigmas and fear, providing us, instead, with life-affirming gifts of recovery.

The courageous spirit of both these women is to be commended as we continue to treat all patients, allowing them to come out from the chaos created by their demons where once there were the equally if not more harmful diseases of secrets and shame.

As a society, we can hold our heads high, knowing that people such as Ford and Linehan (and many others not mentioned here) are willing to give a face to their own disease, and beyond that provide treatment for all in need of help.

As a psychotherapist/addictions counselor and the daughter of a mentally ill mother who suffered before the days of modern medicine when current treatments were not available, I am personally indebted to both these women and encourage everyone to read about their lives, their challenges and their accomplishments.

Yours,

Linda

http://www.applemanshapiro.com/