WillSpirit!


∞ Where Mental Skills Heal Mental Ills ∞

A former physician writes about mental health and recovery using insights from life, science, and spiritual practice.








  • Red_Exclamation_DotDisclaimer
    • Dear Visitors:
      Although I trained and practiced as a physician, my background does not include formal instruction in psychiatry beyond basic medical education. This journal presents ideas about treatment philosophy, but must not be considered therapeutic advice. Abrupt changes in one's psychiatric medications can trigger profound cognitive, emotional, and physical symptoms, including suicidal thoughts and actions. Consequently, pharmaceutical agents should not be increased or decreased without supervision by a mental health clinician.

    • ON THE OTHER HAND, your brain belongs to you, and your opinion counts. If you decide that changing your medication regimen will serve your best interest, then I believe your providers have an obligation to help you try to achieve your goals. I want everyone to be educated about their options, and do what will be most helpful for themselves. No one should feel pushed around by dogmatic and/or limited viewpoints, whether those of psychiatrists, anti-psychiatry advocates, or myself.


Holding Two Views at Once

I’m learning HTML right now, in order to build a better template for my blog and create pages for my site. I’m also thinking about what the next step might be in developing my WillSpirit concept. I would welcome any ideas, if anyone were to read this. But for now I’m on my own, obviously. My mind has been playing with the way one person’s psyche (for instance, mine) can accommodate multiple views on religion. I think it is the easiest way to deal with doubt. One part of me does not believe, another does. Since I’m not strongly attached to belief in unitary truth, this approach is fine for me. When I’m in my doubt phase I lean toward the stance that any supernatural being is unlikely. When I’m in my faith phase, I buy into the God concept, at least in a general sense (and on rare occasions, in the Judeo-Christian sense). Which view is right does not concern me very much. We’ll never know. Science does not support the existence of anything supernatural, but it does not rule it out, either. There is plenty of room in what we don’t understand about matter, light, and energy on their most fundamental levels for some kind of extra-sensory phenomenon to arise. Maybe science will someday pin such a thing down, or maybe not. Either way, there is room for speculation. “Absence of proof is not proof of absence.” So I can sit on the fence easily, by just compartmentalizing the two ways of seeing things. Ultimately, I think it comes back to the Will and Spirit dichotomy. (See earlier posts.)

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Hello Everyone

I’M STARTING BLOG #184,876,598 ON THE INTERNET!

Just kidding. I don’t know what number blog this is, though I imagine I’m within a hundred million or so of being correct. Which means I doubt you are even reading this. If you are, in fact, an actual person reading my actual first post, then you deserve my eternal gratitude. Thank you. Thank you.

I am working out what this blog will be about, but I see three main subjects as likely to come up. They are related, it least in my mind:

1.   God, or something like it.

2.   Biology, our essential nature (though refer to ’1′ above for a possible add-on to our biology).

3.   Mental health, which I interpret broadly. I don’t think anyone has perfect mental health. It is a question of working toward improvement. In my mind, mental health includes emotional, spiritual, intellectual, and even somatic health. Only with all these components in harmony, more or less, can we be said to be in a state of true mental health. But what do I know?

Actually, I believe I do know some things about mental health. I also have a long history of studying biology, including an undergraduate degree in Zoology, a Master’s degree in Biophysics, and an MD. As for God, well I’ve been working on that one for a long time, but no one can really say anything definite about it. I have my ideas, and I look forward to sharing them here.

I have so much to say, but the hour is late. I am only starting to post right now because I finally got my website and blog working, after a fashion. So much to learn…

So good bye and good night for now. If you are out there reading this, I would be thrilled to receive an email from you.

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