First off, a disclaimer:
This post is not intended to diagnose or treat a mental issue or disorder, nor does it denote any protocol about what anyone is supposed to do for any such issue. Please consult a mental health counselor or therapist for these concerns.
Nonetheless, while such possibilities for assistance may arise, this post concerns a way to become more informed as to what is happening, to then be better able to discern disciplinary activity toward the support of mental health.
Ok. Lets get real.
I have an ailment. When I drive in the mountains I get massive panic attacks. I am unable to drive in the mountains.
My question has been: why?
My solution is simply not to drive in the mountains. I have a partner and friends that would drive me anywhere I need to go in the mountains, and if there’s any place that i need to go in the mountains where I would have to drive myself, I simply don’t go. While this answer might not be satisfactory to others who might have found themselves in a similar predicament, it is 100% satisfactory to me. I have no question about anything being wrong with me, i have no insecurity or doubt about me not driving in the mountains. There is nothing wrong. I’ve come to terms with that in every way possible. There is no longing, no sadness, no worry; if anything, there is a comfortable laughter at the ridiculousness of it all.
What is the problem with having no problem?
So here I have presented two sides of a single issue: the problem and the solution. The basis by which mental health is the criterion of psychology is significant, not merely argumentative. So it is, I say there is a subterranean problem that most people might not recognize; I say this is the difference between psychology and mental health.
I’m drawing out this discrepancy because of the audience I am imagining. Some people reading this reflecting upon their own experience (reflecting upon if they were to have panic attacks when they drive in the mountains, say) would have all sorts of judgments. I would imagine that for most people this would be seriously problematic. I would guess that most people reflecting upon their own experience would want to solve the problem because they would feel, somehow, intrinsically, that they must be able to drive in the mountains or something is wrong with them. The question is not why they would think that, for then we would have to start to have a psychological explanation for the psychological explanation of having panic attacks while driving in the mountains; when would it end?
It is here that we find the difference, the distinction that shows the significance of mental health over psychology. I would imagine those people reflecting upon their own experience, unto my experience, would have some sort of disclaiming qualifier about how I have failed somehow, or some sort of patronizing opinion that I’m afraid of dealing with the truth, that I’m avoiding things, and the list could go on.
In short, they would be deferring to psychology, some sort of theory about the way things are supposed to be, and not actually dealing with the truth of the matter.
Do I have a Panic Disorder? General Anxiety Disorder? Might have a Mountain Driving Anxiety Syndrome?? Did I develop an Imposter Syndrome around feeling like a fraud in my ability to drive in high traffic in the mountains? Like I am not a valid Coloradan ? Am I insecure about my driving ability? For sure psychology could formulate any problem, make a term for it, and start to define it.
The truth of the matter is that if anyone were to have the same problem, they would have to deal with it in the way that they have to deal with it, regardless of the opinion of psychology. Maybe they would come to the same resolution that I have, but maybe they would insist that they must be able to drive in the mountains, and they would do all sorts of psychotherapy, exposure therapy, consult doctors and psychiatrists, take medications, look to natural remedies, and what have you, to get them back into that “proper healthy human psychological state” where they would not be limited in where they’re able to drive.
If this is the case, then my question is where does psychology reside? By what criteria, by what standard of reasoning is there any sort of psychology occurring at all? I say only with reference to mental health.
Here we find entrance into mental health philosophy, and it is here by which I’ve suggested in other papers that psychology is a subset of mental health and not the reverse. But my argument even goes further: where it is the reverse there is a certain attitude upon what reality is, and I say this is the psychological problem.
So let us ask why.
At the time, first I just had to get safe. I was in such a panicked state, it was though I kept almost falling asleep, it seemed, kept almost nodding off so anxious I was, and was on the verge of crashing, literally getting an accident and possibly dying. I was driving 50 miles an hour on a winding mountain road jam-packed with big trucks and traffic in Colorado. When I was able to pull over, my mind was racing with “what the hell is going on!”.
As people find with panic attacks, I didn’t know it was a panic attack; I literally thought that there was something physiologically wrong with me. I thought I was having a heart attack, a stroke, all sortsof terrible things about that my body was dying. This is because I had never had a panic attack before. In fact up to that point I was perfectly comfortable driving in the mountains, indeed, driving anywhere under any conditions (within reason). I literally took myself to the hospital once I got off the road safely (which took about five times as long as it probably would have if I was driving without a panic attack). And after about 20 minutes of taking my blood pressure they told me I probably had a panic attack.
I’m a counselor. I’ve worked for years in a psychiatric hospital on the floor with distressed patients of all issues. I’ve sat with many clients experiencing panic attacks; intellectually I knew what they are, I’ve witnessed them first hand, I know how to help people through them. The whole bit. But when it happened to me, all that knowledge went out the window. I have to admit, it was kind of ridiculous. I wasn’t really embarrassed when the hospital staff told me, though; it was a really more of an “of course” moment. I didn’t want a Valium, Atarax, any medication they offered me, though, and I went and had some lunch. It still took me about two hours until I could calm down enough to get back on the road, and even then I could barely drive to get to where I was going because my panic would peak again and I’d have to pull over.
As any mental health practitioner knows, during a panic attack the last thing you’re trying to do is figure out what’s wrong: you have got to stop trying to figure out what’s wrong. You have to breathe, try to either distract yourself or more fully immerse yourself into the experience. But I could not stop trying to figure out what was wrong with me. Was it my blood pressure? Was it the less oxygen at 10,000 feet? Was it the food I ate that morning? Did I drink too much coffee (I drink a lot of coffee)? Was I dehydrated? Was there some sort of bad interaction between the medications I take and whatever food I drink I had that morning? I even thought of the person I was going to visit and ‘bigger questions’; was there some sort of underlying issue that was coming out at this moment as a kind of anxiety? Should I heed some sort of spiritual notion that the world or the universe is trying to tell me not to meet with this person; am I doing something wrong? Should I be doing something else? What does this mean? What is the matter with me?
I came to a tentative answer, but it couldn’t be verified because I found that after that day, whenever I would begin to drive in the foothills anywhere, i would begin to have a massive panic attack. And there simply was no common features that I could find between these numerous situations and the occasion of entering the mountains. At some point while driving, once I have entered the foothills, my anxiety overtakes me, I cant get enough air, I get head-rushes, feel like I’m falling asleep, then the panic takes hold.
By the way I don’t get panic attacks if I’m riding with someone, not even close. And I don’t get and have not gotten panic at any other occasion.
Now, of course some of my imagined readers are likely thinking that something must be terrible wrong with me. Psychology also would want for an answer to suggest any number of causes, from purely semantic, to physiological, to spiritual, to existential, to, who knows.
But from a mental health standpoint, none of those psychological explanations matters one iota; if a number of people had similar experiences, then, I am sure, they and various psychologists could get together and come up with a proper name for the phenomena; then it would have credence as A Problem.
But why?
From a mental health standpoint, and as a point of therapeutic intervention, there is no problem. As a point of pure philosophy: there is only the problem that is being addressed. But, if there is no problem, then there is no problem. Yet further, if there is a problem, It only matters to that individual person that feels like it’s a problem – including here, reading this paper. And, I say that has to do with their (your) mental health, and less their psychology, less what psychology is coming up with as a reason for the problem and applied solution.
This is the difference between mental health and psychology. It is the actual fact of what is happening that is neatly avoided in recourse to psychological explanations.
As well, I don’t mean this to say that it’s really the solution that matters. Because the solution doesn’t matter either. If there is no problem then there is no solution. This concerns mental health, and not really some grand idea of reality in which everyone exists. The grand idea is a reflection of mental health where psychology is the problem inherent or evidenced of that reality.
Again I have to refer to my imaginary audience, those who are questioning as they read this paper what was going on with me and reflecting upon how they would deal with it, or how they’re understanding it, or how they’re rebutting my thoughts expressed in this paper, or their answers about how psychology could answer this and so on.
My answer is simple. The simple answer is that psychology is a subset of mental health. Your concern is probably psychological, and so we must ask why. This concerns mental health.
The only reason why I would have to have a psychological explanation for what happened was if that was part of my subjective experience. Let me repeat that: in every instance of psychology, it only matters inasmuch as I give credence to the problems that psychology is outlining. I may have a problem with driving in the mountains, but must it be psychological? Must it be a problem? But further, the insidiousness of psychological issue is revealed when I say that this isn’t another suggestion of how people are supposed to think; rather, this is a disciplinary distinction.
Psychology, in every thoughtful consideration, arises only in the dimension that I think that there’s some sort of issue that I need to solve for the situation. So it is I say that therapy is therapy upon one’s psychology, but that really what is happening has to do with mental health and not psychology, by the simple fact that whatever course I were to go along to find out the reason why I’m having panic attacks in the mountains, say, ultimately supplies a solution for me in the manner that made sense to me. It wouldn’t matter if I had a predisposition to anxiety, or if my mother abandoned me when I was 3, or if I had an Oedipus complex, or if i was avoiding something. None of these psychological explanations would have any bearing; only the exact one that would make sense to me would be the effect of a solution. And the solution would thereby nullify that a problem ever existed; mental health is retained while psychology appears and disappears given various conditions.
Mattering
To wrap up, this is an anecdotal exploration of the difference which indicates a necessary epistemological order of operations. I’m not saying that people are not supposed to try and come up with psychological solutions, or that there isn’t some sort of reason. I am outlining a discernment, a distinguishing of real disciplines, and suggesting that the tendency to search for problems is part of the problem. By this distinction we find that psychology is not as true as it poses, but it is only exactly true in the sense that psychology is something distinct unto itself, that I have a relationship with this thing, and that ultimately psychology is just something else I have to contend with. I indeed have to contend with it, but it does not have to define me in any way whatsoever –indeed, when we really look, it never does –or only to the extent and way that i think it does.
Hence the substantive difference between mental health and psychology.