what if?? a paradigm shift for treatment and healing

  ​Have you ever offered up an idea in a committee? “Hey. You know what? What if…? “
 Your new idea might generate some mild discussion, some grunts and dismissals, with a concluding “…not gonna happen. We’ve never done it that way before.”
     If your new idea generates an entirely way of thinking about the topic, then we call it a paradigm shift. In my new book, The Healing Journey: Overcoming Adversity on the Path to the Good Life (Amazon, 2024), I offer a paradigm shift in our thinking both about getting well and about the nature of diagnosis and treatment of mental health issues.
     Historically, probably since Aristotle’s times, we talk about people being sick, needing to get well. Our job, as their doctor, has been to help people get better and make them well. This is the medical model. While our reference book, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, 5th Edition, has made progress in expanding the emotional, cognitive, and behavioral descriptions to account for diagnoses, the overall attention is on people being sick and needing to get well.
      In her book, Mentalligence: A New Psychology of Thinking (HCI, 2017), Dr. Kristen Lee attaches brain functioning to the outcomes of downward spiraling or upward spiraling, using the brain’s neuroplastic capacity to create new neural pathways toward upward spiraling. I have taken these concepts and applied them to our work in counseling and psychotherapy, introducing a new treatment strategy, mentalligent psychotherapy. (MPT)
     In this paradigm shift of perspective and treatment, our patients are not sick, not mentally ill. Rather, they are stuck, emotionally, cognitively, and behaviorally stuck. In their treatment, our goal is to help them identify their stuckness and guide them toward getting unstuck. Stuckness leads toward downward spiraling in thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Helping them get unstuck frees our patients to chart their life’s path toward freedom to upwardly spiral and be the best they can be.
     In the medical model, doctors are healers. They have a plethora of gadgets and gizmos to help them find the broken part and either fix it or remove it. Their goal is symptom relief, mostly through medication management. This model has worked well for millennia when we treat physical ailments. Not so much in treating mental health issues.
     With this model, therapists are also healers. They can use psychological evaluation to pinpoint problem thoughts, feelings, or behaviors and then talk therapy to help their patients feel better. We focus on answering their “why” questions. We generate pearls of wisdom and aha moments where our patients feel better and get it.
In mentalligent psychotherapy, we dabble in “why” questions, just to gain perspective on our patient’s thought processes. However, we focus on looking at “what” questions. What’s going on now? What are your thoughts and feelings about this? What’s within your control to change?
     With MPT, the focus is not on being your patient’s doctor, from whom you will be given answers for symptom relief. Rather, we are patient guides for a moment on their life journey. MPT is less outcome-oriented and more process-oriented. The great Greek philosopher, Socrates, was a teacher famous for never answering a question from his students. His response to their questions was to ask questions of his own, leading them to come up with their own perspectives on the issue at hand. Thus, MPT is less about the outcome of psychotherapy and more about the process. A bit of old Chinese wisdom captures the process. “Feed a man a fish and feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and feed him for a lifetime.”
     Stressed out and overwhelmed? Get an idea about effective therapy with your purchase of The Healing Journey: Overcoming Adversity on the Path to the Good Life. Graduate students learning different intervention strategies of psychotherapy? Pick up my book as adjunctive reading for your coursework. Practicing clinicians? Add to your toolbox of intervention strategies by purchasing this cutting-edge paradigm shift describing mentalligent psychotherapy for effective treatment. Purchase your copy from amazonbooks.com today.
Blessings,
Dr. Jon

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