Reflections…

As a student of depth psychology, I study lots of different mental disorders.  I have often joked with my fellow students about my tendency to self-diagnose in every class, seeing a bit of myself in each of the “disorders” as we learn about them.  This got me to thinking, what if we stopped labeling ourselves and each other with these very limiting terms?

Disorder: If I look at the breakdown of the word, from the Classical Latin, it is a combination of two ideas: dis- “take away” + ordinare “to order, regulate.”

From the perspective of mental disorders, this could be thought of as, the “taking away” of one’s ability to mentally “order, or regulate.”  So, without an ability to mentally regulate, one many experience a mental disorder.

In our world where clinical symptoms are rattled off as fast as is humanly possible during each TV commercial break, medical terminology is entering our everyday language.  How many times have you heard the phrases, “She’s bipolar!” or “What a narcissist!”?

With the root of the word “disorder” in mind, it became clear to me that a person in fact is not their mental disorder.  We are each so much more.  All joking aside, I have experienced many of the disorders about which I read.  There have certainly been times of depression, and narcissism, and neuroticism, and the list goes on.  Each time, I have been able to “restore order” for myself, in other words, they were temporary states of being for me, they were not “me.”

Another way of viewing disorders is as a state of being, and not as the being itself.  It is much different.  If I shift my thinking to see a mental disorder as a temporary state of being, where the person’s mental capacities can be restored to order, that is much different than labeling them a Narcissistic personality disorder, for example.

What would it be like if we stopped saying things like, “I’m depressed” or “She’s a depressive personality disorder” and started saying things like, “I’m experiencing a depression.”  Pulling the “I” out of the identity with the label assists in being able to understand these states as temporary, and I believe, immediately supports the person in finding the internal strength to endure the dis-order.

The clinician must know the signs and presentations of different disorders to be as effective as possible in aiding the client, of course.  The shift in paradigm I’m wondering about comes in seeing the client as someone who has the capacity to “order” their life, and is however experiencing a dis-order in it.

The first sentences Pema Chödrön wrote in her book, Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living, are these: “WE ALREADY HAVE EVERYTHING WE NEED.  There is no need for self-improvement.”  What a concept.  Having been on a long quest for self-improvement, the words haulted me as I first read them and then I felt a huge wave of relief.  What if this is how we all viewed ourselves?  And what if this is how we all viewed each other?  How would your world change if you lived it like this?

Note:  I originally published this post on www.depthpsychologytoday.com on February 22, 2009.

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