Cognitive Strategies for Suicide Prevention, Addiction And Anxiety (ePub)

The author has been a psychiatrist for thirty-nine years and has worked with thousands of patients. His impression is that many of their problems have to do with the way they process or deal with information. Often, maladaptive pathways of thinking are employed to the person's detriment. When this occurs, it tends to be repeated again and again and becomes habitual. Eventually, symptoms such as anxiety, depression, suicidal feelings and addiction are generated and become more and more problematic. In the author's experience, this can be interrupted by mentally training oneself to only travel down adaptive pathways of thinking. With this approach, old pathways of thinking are abandoned.
There are a number of techniques that can be employed to establish and reinforce newer adaptive pathways of thinking. It's not for everybody and should not be used exclusively, but first and foremost among techniques is mindfulness. The author has seen it work again and again. Introduced to the world by Buddha for the purpose of enlightenment, nowadays it is used for mental health issues. The mindfulness here is different from the type taught in DBT. The author is not saying that DBT mindfulness doesn't work; it's just that he has seen better outcomes with the type he teaches. He learned the basics of it at IMS at Barre, Massachusetts, during various meditation retreats.
Modern psychology does not address the invisible spiritual worlds that interface with the physical world. According to religious teachings, these worlds really exist and forces from them can influence our thinking. Reportedly, an archangel rebelled against God and was booted out of heaven. A third of the angels went down with him to earth. They seek to have us act in such a way so that when we die, they can claim our souls and torture us in hell. The present work at least addresses this issue. Likewise, energy medicine is discussed briefly.