Blog #111; Part 2, Nationwide Mental Health Initiative

 Defining the Crisis

This one instance is just a recent example of the dangers inherent in allowing those without training or license to practice as mental health professionals, so the first step would be to gather the experts in mental health and spiritual fields to train and speak to professionals regarding what constitutes sound mental health, and establish, based on the Utah state model, a licensing procedure for “life coaches”.  I have known many with less knowledge and experience in the mental health field than I have that have hung out their shingles as “life coaches”.  I personally am not writing this essay as a qualified mental health professional.  Think of this document as a letter to the editor from a concerned constituent of Utah and the US.  It is intended as an opinion piece.  Like I mentioned, I am no journalist, nor do I want to write about this particular case as “hard news”.  What I am interested in is how people can easily get off track when the “life coach” role as a professional does not rely on sound reasoning and hard psychological science to support the approaches taken and the tools implemented to solve the struggling people’s issues.

 

Most Effective Way to Attack Illogical Thinking: The Albert Ellis Method

Around 100 years ago or so, a New York City psychologist named Albert Ellis founded an organization that promoted using logical thinking as an answer to the dilemma of ill mental health.  Ellis had a great deal of success with this approach, mainly because using rational thought to undercut unhealthy beliefs usually wins out over damaging emotion-driven, or shame-based self-talk that lurks behind the disruptions in self-perception, and our perception of others.  This proven track record of success is something that is verifiable and found easily in any simple internet search or library visit.  Albert Ellis and Rational Emotive Therapy can be understood and applied fairly easily to thought issues and problems.  This is time-tested and not confusing.  It does not rely on a overbearing therapist assigning value judgements to the client that would force the struggling person into unhelpful labels like “living in truth” and “living in deception”.  These terms are misleading at best, and destructive and powerfully shaming at worst.

Blog #110; Intro to the Nationwide Mental Health Initiative

 In the next few blogs, I will be outlining and filling in some ideas I have regarding the mental health crisis we face in this country.  I do this as a concerned, active, thinking citizen, and as someone who has endured abuses while seeking help for mental/emotional issues.

In this first blog, I will share the introduction to the essay.

Peace,

Chris

Introduction

There is a fact-based case playing out right now in the Utah legal system regarding the role of untrained and poorly trained therapists and their abusive impact on the vulnerable.  But I am leaving reportage of the particulars of the news stories to the writers who craft it best: the news journalists.  My aim in this short essay is to draw from my own experience with the therapy communities in the West, particularly Utah, and from that experience define and comment on for the reader the “truth” and “distortion” that certain life coaches and therapists use to treat their patients’ emotional and mental trauma.  The philosophy of distortion enacted particularly on these vulnerable children in question is what led to the abuses that broke the headlines in 2023.  As time goes on, no doubt more abuse, and of more and more people, will be unearthed by the reporters on the case.  Meanwhile, I believe I am in a unique position to shed some light on how this crisis in the mental health industry in Utah blew up to such grave proportions.

 

In this essay, I will map out what a healthy, balanced Rational Emotive approach to illogical personal beliefs looks like, and how one can dismantle erroneous beliefs about oneself and others in such a way that one can clear the mental and emotional debris of false beliefs and start embracing a more positive and logic-based view of yourself, and others.

 

Next, I will outline the severe harm that certain “life coaches” cause when they attempt to practice therapeutic medicine without the proper licensing and testing.  Let me be clear: I am not a life coach.  I have personally benefited from many counselors over the years but I am hardly an expert in anything other than learning from my and others’ mistakes.  I have an advanced liberal arts degree from a major university in the South, and worked many years as both a professional writer and a college writing and literature instructor.  I consider myself a self-educated student of life.

 

At the end of the essay, I will describe the psychological harm outlined earlier and give tools that you can use to combat destructive beliefs about yourself and others.   It will end with a call to action where legislation on the federal level could be introduced in a comprehensive way to help those in this country struggling with mental issues find a more rational, peaceful way to co-exist with others.  I suggest nothing less than sparking an animated discussion including religious, psychiatric, and social leaders that together could fashion a very workable solution to this particularly troublesome aspect of modern society in our country.   In 2024, especially in America, it is more important than ever before that citizens learn to peacefully co-exist.  Our very survival as a society, and as individuals, hangs in the balance, as well as our way of life that so many have fought and died for over the decades and centuries.

Blog #109; James R.: An Irish American Family Saga by Chris McClelland (Author) new episodes on Kindle Vella

I have new episodes on Kindle Vella of James R.: An Irish American Family Saga by Chris McClelland (Author). Please click below to read:

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Blog #108; Free giveaway of Swimming Among the Olympians (digital version) for the next three days; some thoughts on the literary genres

 

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As you can see from the title of this blog, starting 1/30/24, for the next three days, I am giving away a collection of stories with a nonfiction memoir included.  Many of you have already bought or read this collection, but I am offering it for free for all who are interested.

Today, I would like to vent my spleen about narrow-minded thinking in the creative world.  But first, sometimes a bit of stereotyping can be useful.  If a reader or viewer is looking for a cozy mystery, they generally know where to look.  Same with Sci-Fi, Sword and Sorcery, etc.  The same basic guidelines to good writing apply in all genres of fiction.  (See some of my earlier blogs regarding Aristotle and others' thoughts regarding conflict, plotting, character development, motivation and the like.)  But what I have found very recently is a genre beyond fiction that I haven't explored much in my writing life.  Poetry.  I have always been interested in writing poetry, but was never quite sure if I would be any good at it.  Most of the poetry I have written before now has been personal and unrelatable outside my private life's context.  But recently I heard from Irreantum that they would like to publish one of my poems, and suddenly a door opened where there wasn't one before.  My whole adult life (in grad school, teaching college, etc.) I always thought creating and publishing poetry was a particularly insider's game.  A kind of  mysterious academic club whose secret password would always elude me.  That is why this first poetry acceptance means so much to me.  I feel I am free to explore another genre, an ancient and noble craft.

I like the attention to language and detail poetry involves.  I love playing with words, with imagery, with meaning, with sound quality.  I am learning.  It is quite an adventure...

Blog #107; The New Year, Many Promises to Keep

I start the New Year with many irons in the fire, as usual.  Ideas for essays.  Short fiction.  The foremost and most important one is the soon to be finished manuscript for A Contrite Spirit.  This is a novel that stretches the boundaries of what a “spiritual novel” is, and challenges preconceived notions about Heaven and Hell, Good and Evil, and the struggle between them for the human soul.  Readers of my last novel, In Love and War, will recognize a backdrop of vicious combat from which a saner, more compassionate understanding between the two sides comes about.  Please know that violence doesn’t have to lead  to understanding (most likely it leads to just the opposite) but I believe we human beings have a responsibility to try to fashion meaning out of that which destroys meaning in the traditional sense of the word.

 

The main character, Hyrum, is an everyman who endures Hell on Earth and his spiritual healing is the focus of most of the book.  As his family grows and prospers so too does Hyrum’s spirit.  But then another war comes, this time consuming not only him but his children’s lives.  How will Hyrum and his family survive? 

 

There is madness, both of combat and of mental illness, a disease of the soul.  There is haunting borne of guilt and transgression and a redemption as these things are overcome.

 

Blog #106; Merry Christmas, Everybody!

As a special thank you to all my loyal readers who have not yet read the prequel, Under Old Glory, it will now be available Christmas Eve and Christmas Day for free at the link below. This short novella will give you a taste of some of the main characters and themes of  the epic novel, A Contrite Spirit, which I will be releasing soon. 

Merry Christmas and happy reading!

Chris

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Blog #105; Next Vella story, James R. An Irish American Family Saga

 A continuation to the Kindle Vella James R. An Irish American Family Saga I have been creating. Hope you enjoy!

https://kdp.amazon.com/kindle-vella/story-details/TQH0YDV5D7P