How far can you run from your own mind? – Page 9 – Inside The Mind of a Psychiatrist

To hate your parents, really feel it, is against the judeao-christian ethic, society, and our own inbred belief system.

In my psychiatric practice, countless patients have spent many hours “discovering” how they really feel about their mother and father. Even the most obviously abusive, alcoholic, and violent parent often remains immune to justly deserved hateful feelings. The parent who puts up a good front to the world, but in the privacy of the home is critical, distant, unempathic and devaluing is often more complicated to unravel.

How can you hate the person who gave you life and who you were dependent on? It feels immoral. It’s also crazy-making to know on one level that you can’t stand to be in the presence of a parent and at the same time doubt your right to have those feelings. Without our parents we wouldn’t exist. Often a patient or friend says, “I don’t hate my father. I just can’t talk to him, don’t want to be around him, and wish he’d just disappear. If I never saw him again, it would be okay. But…I don’t hate him.”

Well, how about EXTREME DISLIKE, which to me sounds a lot like HATE. If our parents have earned it, we have the right to our feelings.

In Chasing Backwards, Joe Belmont, a 24 y/o medical student who just learned his mother was killed, struggles with these feelings as he’s being interviewed by Detective Barneggi.

I glance back out the window. The light patterns are hypnotic, cars barreling down Vine Street, streaks of yellow and red swirling about in the darkness. Where will I bury her? What the hell do I do for money? I close my eyes and involuntarily shiver. What kind of asshole thinks about money at a time like this? I grip the coffee mug and picture heaving it through the plate-glass window.

A major bonus about getting in touch with hateful feelings is the possibility that when the hate is dealt with, there is the possibility that love still exists.

Thanks!

Sgt. Dakota Meyer, Medal of Honor winner, saved 3 dozen fellow marines and the remains of 4 fallen comrades. At the time he defied orders, he was a 21-year-old corporal. He was told to Not take action! He defied orders and did what HE knew was right.

How old are our congressmen and how many advanced degrees do they have? How much more rhetoric can we take from the god-is-on-my-side gang versus the god-is-a-falacy gang? Then there’s the voice-of-reason gang who haven’t done much but add more blame and negativity to the mix.

Can’t any of these “bastions of power” do what a 21-year-old corporal did? Why are they so afraid of their leaders? Fear of rejection? Fear they won’t be re-elected? Fear they’ll make a mistake and look bad? I think they are incapable of thinking for themselves.

For a politician to actually question his party’s stand on religion, race relations, gun control, abortion rights or OMG even the need to have taxes, takes a person who’s willing to risk crossing at least partway over to the enemy camp. One year Mitt Romney is for abortion; now he’s against it. Wouldn’t it be courageous for him to say, “Let people make up their own minds. I’m a Republican and I’m neutral.”?

Dakota Meyer deserved the Medal of Honor because he did something unique. He disobeyed a superior officer and risked his life.

Believe nothing, no matter where you read it or who has said it, not even if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense. Buddha

If just a few republicans and democrats have the courage to risk their political futures and cease being so rigid, they could make a dramatic change. Cross the line! Do what we’re paying you to do. TAKE CARE OF US. I’ll vote for you. Thanks, Art Smukler MD