Operating Principles

Operating Principles

"Changing to Live and Living to Change" is the book this section is taken from. It is a potpourri of operating principles concerning my work with the outside and inside world of a person, the conscious and unconscious mind of a person, and the basis of Positive Altered States of Awareness (PASA). (I throw in, from time to time, the serious business of a touch of humor.) [Ha Ha!]Operating Principle?: IF I CAN -- SO CAN YOU. Reading and using this book can help you make a turn-around in your life, so that you are more of a winner and less of a loser. No ifs about it, if I can -- so can you. Turn this around: YOU CAN SO - CAN I. The dropped "if," is how. I have a talent, God-given, for helping people. I discovered it relatively late in life -- actually when I was at the end of my teen-age and serving in the Army Air Corps during World War II. I grew up during the Depression and we were poor because my father was only able to work part of the time. In the other times, occasionally, we got welfare from New York City. I was called "Crazy Itchy" because I acted immaturely quite often. The combination of being poor and my low self-worth made me "stuck," without much of a future. I use the word stuck to mean that inner thought and feeling that no matter what you do, you won't find a solution to your problem. Example: Being stuck with your car in soft sand. No matter how hard or long you step on the gas you only increase your stuckness. Just spinning your wheels never gets you anywhere. Operating Principle: Unsuccessful solutions never become successful. For example a rich business man became "stuck" one day. He bought an article for $10 and began selling it for $9. His partner was furious, screaming at him, "We're losing a dollar every time we sell one.". The reply was quick and concise, "What are you worried about? We're doing a big volume." The mind can be divided into the front part and the back part, to make it easier and simpler to explain. (If you don't mind?) In psychiatry we call these the conscious and the unconscious minds. We have a good and bad part to the front of our mind (and the same for the back part) - that is, to our emotions, thoughts and body sensations - and how we react to them. In the front part (amd the back, too) is our behavior, verbally and non-verbally, along with, (again) our feelings, thoughts and body sensations. It is not possible to directly contact the back of the mind but it can be done indirectly. Think of the mind as you think of your muscles: if you don't train or exercise then they become weak. The more we exercise it -- in a positive way -- then the more we'll strengthen it, thus being more in contact with the "good me." The result makes it easier to bring the good me up into our behavior where it is expressed as: love, intimacy, intelligence, wisdom, imagination, trust, respect understanding, better communication -- and much, much more. Operating Principle: IF YOU ARE GOOD TO YOUR POSITIVE UNCONSCIOUS IT WILL BE GOOD TO YOU. DO YOURSELF A FAVOR BY FAVORING THE "GOOD YOU." We are brought up believing that if we have the right things such as an education, a family, a job, a car, a house, vacations, etc., and if we do the right things we'll be happy. You have to turn around the sequence: "have, do and be," to be, have and do. Why? In the present, here and now, we can "be" in touch with the positive parts of the front and back of the mind; then when we have the appropriate thoughts, feelings and body sensations, then we will choose to do things, (our behavior) that will bring us success with our family, on the job, etc. Operating Principle: THINK OF CHANGE AS BEING SUPERFICIAL, OUTSIDE OF US; ON THE INSIDE OF US IT IS CALLED TRANSFORMATION. Transform your life, from inside - out. In other words the positive within us, our strengths, intelligence, creativeness, love, and understanding are waiting to be mined. If we know where to search, the treasure is there. There is the story of a righteous and poor man who wanted to win the lottery and he prayed and prayed for it. Finally an angel came down from heaven and told him, "God is willing to help and it would help Him if you buy a lottery ticket." The moral of this story is to be in touch with God, do a lot of praying but don't forget to buy your ticket. (There is a little bit of God within us.) That's the ticket! How do I get to this inner treasure?", I hear you ask. I'll show you a way of describing where the treasure is and how to get to it. Again, for the sake of simplicity, imagine that inside of you there are four major elements: a. the body sensations. b. the emotions. c. thoughts. d. our awareness of a, b, c. These are in what is called our inner space, (all that space that is enclosed within us.) This is called our inner awareness. We also have an awareness of what is going on outside of ourselves, in the outer world. We call that outer space. We relate to what goes on around us, (inside too,) through our five senses. Visually, this is shown by the drawing of the SPHERE IN THE CUBE The OUTER SPACE is all that is around the cube and its contents. It covers everything from our skin, out. The INNER SPACE is where we have our awareness of our thoughts, emotions and body sensations. So we can talk about our inner being - doing - having, and our outer being - doing - having. Operating Principle: WE ARE ALWAYS IN THE HERE AND NOW OF THE INNER AND OUTER WORLDS. WITH MORE CONTACT WITH THE POSITIVE INNER WORLD, WE WILL FUNCTION BETTER IN THE OUTER WORLD. In the first twenty years of my life I didn't like myself, inside or out. I had a lot of good stuff in me such as a high intelligence, a loving nature, a drive to succeed, a need to help others. I also had the label: "Crazy Itchy". This nickname was born in my family and quickly spread to friends, neighbors and others. (To be labeled crazy and nicknamed Itchy, I thought and felt, "If that's the way every one says I am, then that's the way I am. I was aggressive, emotionally unstable, impulsive, a comedian and a crybaby. You'll read more about my background in "Irving" and "Itchy. Then World War II came and for me it was a life-saver. It gave me the chance to transform my life, and cut out a lot of spinning wheels. For three years in the Army Air Corps I lived, learned and worked in places such as Florida, Illinois, Wisconsin, Tennessee, California, Hawaii, and three little islands in the South Pacific. I had the chance to meet new people who didn't know about my labels. I still acted like Crazy Itchy at times but gradually I began to get in touch with more of the "good me." I met and became friendly with intelligent and educated guys my age and even a little older, and they liked and respected me; and even asked for my advice. I remember being on the island of Eniwetok in 1944 and around midnight, after Mario and I finished our shift in the radio shack we were eating in the dimly lit mess tent. He was twenty-five years old and I was nineteen. The last joint of his little finger was missing. He was telling me about a Dear John letter he got from his girl-friend and asked me what to do. I don't remember what I told him but it helped him. Operating Principle: RICH OR POOR IT'S GOOD TO HAVE MONEY -- BUT IT'S BETTER TO HAVE A FRIEND. Eugene was another friend, my age, a college student when he was drafted. He was brought up in the wealthy Shaker Heights suburb of Cleveland. He was as big as I was and had trouble adjusting to the rough, sometimes crude life of the army. Being a street kid from New York, I showed him how to "operate" and how to transform doe into 'do'. What I got from him was a friendship of equals. He taught me how to 'be' in touch with my intellect. We had frequent conversations about "life" and philosophy and psychiatry. Operating Principle:  IF AT FIRST YOU DON'T SUCCEED, TRY, TRY AGAIN -- CRANK UP YOUR NERVE AND TRY A LITTLE CHUTZPAH. I had been given a boost to my ego when I was nineteen, and I made the life-saving decision to be educated. I wrote letters to universities asking them to accept me as a pre-med student. (I had a barely passing high school average.) I was rejected by all with form letters. I rewrote to the Dean Of Admissions of Harvard, stamping it with chutzpah. I wrote him that if my name was Irving Bronsky III I would have been accepted. I got a personal letter in return explaining why I was rejected. Not long after I began college I found another way to make a major change (transformation) in my life: psychotherapy. And of course, meeting my future wife was the third vital way of turning my life around from being a loser into being a winner. It will not be easy to transform your life but it will not be that hard. It's the bad habits we learned as we grew up that we have to get out of the way, to make room for the good ones. I'll give you a personal example. My mother and father fought a lot, mostly because my mother nagged him, criticized him, at times to the point where there would be a major row. He would become so frustrated and red-faced that he would yell at her. The big fights were on a Friday night after the Sabbath meal in the presence of the four of us children. If my mother became too frustrated with him, she would sometimes faint. My father would run out of the house and my sister Nettie would run for the smelling salts. In the early years of my marriage when my wife and I fought I would sometimes storm out of the house just like my father. But I soon learned that there were better alternatives to marital disputes. Operating principle:  IF YOU COMMIT SUICIDE I'LL KILL YOU. I have been a psychiatrist for more than forty years and I have never lost a patient in treatment with me. There are several explanations for this phenomenal record. I'm lucky. I am very well trained. I have a great need to help others and patients quickly become aware of it. None of the patients I treated in my private practice or in the many clinics and hospitals I worked, ever died or committed suicide -- while they were in treatment with me. I would sometimes jokingly say to some of them, "If you get sick and die I'll kill you." I tell them that we are in it together, that we are going to make it. They soon learn that I will do anything to help them, and I am always available for them. Operating principle:  IN ORDER TO TURN THINGS AROUND ASAP, MAKE IT PASA (Positive Altered State of Awareness) The four different kinds of Awareness (here we are emphasizing the positive): 1) the ordinary awareness of day to day things like driving a car, reading a book, eating. . 2) the awareness of our dreams. 3) the awareness when we sleep or when we are unconscious. 4) PASA where we are in touch with the "Good Me." Operating Principle:  IF YOU ARE GOOD TO YOUR UNCONSCIOUS, IT WILL BE GOOD TO YOU. USING THE FOLLOWING FOUR WAYS WILL MAKE YOU #1. PASA: It is based on the relaxed awareness of the four basic elements within us. 1. Physical Relaxation of the body such as our muscles. 2. Physiological Relaxation of those body functions such as breathing and the eye-blink. 3. Thought Relaxation by thinking positive thoughts, using positive imagination and visualization. 4. Emotional Relaxation results from 1, 2, and 3. When we come back to the usual kind of awareness after PASA, we are more relaxed, clear-minded and we feel good about ourselves. Then, our problem solving ability is increased, along with our ability to get along with ourselves and others. Operating Principle: PREGNANT THOUGHTS OF NINE MONTHS OF PASA WITH MAMA. We had PASA in our mother's womb, which was a Garden of Eden for nine months. All we had to do was to grow and develop normally. (Of course we got Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder from the separation from our mother and the birth trauma. More about that in another book.) As babies we were in PASA most of the time, because our basic needs were taken care of and we were loved. As we became older the stresses of adjusting and adapting our inner world to the outside world of the family, friends and others, increased the "Bad Me," (which made the little PTSD we started life with that much bigger.) We gradually reduced our contact with PASA because of the pressures of daily life, sicknesses, accidents and traumatic emotional and psychological experiences. Yet we are in and out of PASA every day: thinking about some pleasant experience, watching TV, enjoying a family experience, loving and being loved. We have forgotten how good we used to be at being in PASA. Operating Principle:  THE IMBALANCE BETWEEN MENTAL HEALTH AND THE MEDICAL MODEL. Psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers and counselors emphasize the negative, the mental illness and neglected the health of mental health. This is because the medical model emphasizes the treatment of symptoms and has largely ignores the positive in people. This negative approach is illustrated in this drawing of a balance scale. (drawing) Imagine a finely tuned, balanced - balance scale. It is clear to see that we can change the balance to be positive in two ways: 1. Add to the positive. 2. Reduce the negative. It regrettable that mental health professionals traditionally emphasize the medical model that "You are sick. You come to see me and I will help you to get rid of feeling bad." I see people as basically being healthy with psychological and emotional problems. I help them learn better ways of coping with their problems. And, no less important, I teach them to become experts again in using PASA. (There are certain illnesses which are organically based such as some forms of schizophrenia and manic-depression that no amount of analysis, therapy or counselling will help them and they need medical treatment.) By the end of this book you will have learned how to change the balance in your life so the "Good me" outweighs the "Bad Me." Your improved self-awareness will help you to re-balance your Self to be more self-loving, self-worthy and more self-respecting. (And to others.) Operating Principle: WHAT WAS, WAS. WHAT WILL BE, WILL BE. WHAT IS, IS, (it sure is!). We can't change the past but we can learn from it. There is no way we can change the future because the future, when it arrives, becomes the present. Therefore all the action is in the present, in the Here and Now. Operating Principle:  YOU CAN REMEMBER TO FORGET. Forgetting comes naturally when we think about something else; the previous thought is forgotten. We do this naturally like breathing or blinking our eyes. Remember when you were a kid and hurt your knee? Mommy kissed the booboo and you forgot about the pain. You can use this same technique actively when you have negative feelings: You consciously become aware of something positive, such as a success or a good relationship, and whatever bad thought was there is forgotten. We know that nothing lasts forever, yet when we feel bad we think that it will never end. When we feel good we know it will end too soon. What can you do about this? Two things: 1.- When you are feeling bad learn to remember you have always gotten through the bad patch and the bad feelings went away. Etch it, draw it, print it, imprint it into your awareness. if you don't make it worse and you get unstuck as quickly as you can, you will suffer less. 2. Remember some positive experience you had and the good feelings that accompanied it. Remember what you did feel good, what conditions you helped create for the successful experience. Then, practice the positive. Van Cliburn is an American pianist and the first foreigner to win the Tchaikowsky Piano Competition in Russia, in 1958. When he returned to America he was a hero and Eisenhower invited him to play in the White House. He made a grand tour of the United States. His last concert was in Carnegie Hall in New York. On the night of the concert it was pouring cats and dogs and he couldn't get a taxi from his hotel to 57th St. He was told there was a subway station under his hotel and given directions as to where to get off. Of course, he got lost and wound up on the Jewish lower East Side. He was confused as well as looking kind of weird in his white tie and tails. He stopped an old Jewish lady and asked her, "Excuse me Madame, how do I get to Carnegie Hall?" The old lady looked him up and down and said, "I'll tell you Sonny, prektis, prektis." Operating Principle:  THE BEST WAY TO GET IS TO GIVE. I discovered that when I share my thoughts, feelings and experiences with my patients and students, when it is relevant, they will trust me more and give more of themselves. This theme is clearly seen in the experiences I write about. I have opened the double doors to the world of the mental health professional. My hope is that by connecting and communicating with you, the reader, you will be positive with me by being more positive with yourself. (All epigrams are quoted from: American Indian Prose and Poetry: An Anthology, edited by Margot Astrov (New York: Capricorn Books Edition, 1962.) Paperback. Originally published as The winged Serpent. Both copyright 1946 by Margot Astrov. (Permission to reproduce to be requested.) "My father went on talking to me in a low voice. That is how our people always talk to their children, so low and quiet, the child thinks he is dreaming. But he never forgets."(Maria Chona, a Papago woman, to Ruth Underhill)