Any time I am asked to generalize on personal problem areas, I feel a little like the man who was asked if he were still beating his wife. No matter what I say, there's something misleading about my answer.
- "About how long will it take for me to feel better about this thing?"
- "Have you ever known someone to be as messed up as I am about this?" [And if I say "sure," the next question comes quickly, about 100% of the time....]
- "Did she ever get any better?"
- How long does it take to grieve the death of my [family member]?
My caution about generalizing arises from the fact that every personal problem I've seen is different from every other problem. There are qualities that are similar in each Simple Phobia, each Major Depressive Disorder--there have to be in order for me to make the diagnosis. But just stamping out the diagnosis is not enough. Just running off a standardized treatment plan for a particular diagnosis is not enough. Why?
This is due to the fact that a diagnosis is not of a set of symptoms floating around in the air, disconnected from a human life. They are
your symptoms, or someone else's symptoms. So one person's fear of riding elevators will be different from another's, have different root causes, different degrees of severity, different ages of onset. While the treatment plan may be similar for each, there will be significant variations to fit the different personalities in whom the symptoms reside.
Having said that, let me get to the heart of this article. I was once asked to describe the common themes I see in my clientele. The person said something like, "What kind of issues are folks struggling with who ask for help from a therapist?" It occurs to me that a response to that question might fit well where people come, who are shopping around for a therapist. So I'm going to give it my best shot, so long as you understand at the outset--all problems are unique to the person dealing with them!
- I find that many folks are mourning the loss of a simpler life. It may have been that their own lives were simpler in a former time. Or they may have known their parents' or grandparents' generations to have lived simpler, less complicated lives.
- In the urban context I practice in, and I think in our society as a whole today, children are struggling to give meaning to their lives, such that many leave high school without a firm understanding of where they are heading, toward what goals.
[This statement will be expanded in the next several days. jh - 05/14/07.]
