A Midwestern Doctor
Many people believe the most significant issues facing the Western World are emotional in nature (e.g., anxiety is often termed the disease of the modern age). In turn, a common observation is how often the emotional patterns individuals carry end up controlling their lives (frequently causing them to make terrible decisions) and continually making it a miserable life to live.
I believe all of this arises from a few key things:
•Our culture has a misguided understanding of productively engaging with one’s emotions.
•Our economy depends upon systemic emotional dysfunction existing in the population.
•The medical field has been incentivized not to explore effective treatments for emotional conditions.
•Our modern society and environment are not conducive to mental health.
Because of the magnitude of this problem, many have adopted the perspective that unresolved emotional conflicts, past traumas, and psychiatric illnesses are the root cause of all diseases. While I have seen numerous instances where this was the case, I have also seen many patients who were given that assessment, did not improve from treatments for it, and instead had a completely different physical issue that needed to be treated for their recovery. More importantly, I have lost count of how many different (and widely promoted) approaches I have seen for addressing emotional issues. In most (but not all) cases, these approaches fail to do very much, which has created a massive industry of providing endless mental health support to those requiring it.
Image: Pier Monzon @ Unsplash
