Over the years (and having done psychology 1st degree at uni) I've come to think less and less of explanations as purveyed by modern psychology and to value more the simple explanations and the physical/neurological.
In law, e.g. PTSD is classed as a 'psychological injury'. That is, physically and emotionally abuse someone enough and they sustain a neurological (i.e. physical) injury. Research is now beginning to discover these physical brain changes in PTSD and similar injuries via as yet rudimentary fMRI scans etc.
For the most part though, our mainstream psychologists are still largely in the dark about the wondrous mechanisms of the brain and they seem to lump so much into a category which could be described as 'faulty thinking skills' which they think is the target treatment area to aim for.
We are also very familiar with e.g. training children and training dogs and dolphins and gorillas and even elephants. Train any dog/dolphin/elephant/gorilla to expect abuse and to hate themselves and we have no problem with the fact that they will experience all sorts of problems later in life. We don't ask them to think their way out of the injuries or give them 50mins of retraining a week. Instead, if the animals are lucky, they encounter love and kindness, patience and understanding - as well as the assurance that their practical needs are met - from rescue shelters and sanctuaries. Quite often, these animals respond well and enjoy a better quality of life apparently.
Yet, with children, why is it we ignore the abuse they suffer, why do we send them off to the equivalent of youth prisons and when they're grown treat them like ne'er-do-wells and criminals because they never had that love and kindness etc and are deeply injured....? Ditto, adults whom we insist should work on their 'depressive ideation' and see the abuse as not-so-bad after all...and that after perhaps many years of similar mind-games from abusers.
If you have a physical brain injury there's no amount of thinking that will make it better! Yes, we can decide to make ourselves more comfortable, to distract ourselves from the dreadful memories, to avoid situations that remind us of the past, and stop putting ourselves under pressure to 'perform-on-demand' etc. but personally I'm less and less convinced of the efficacy of relying on the drugs and 50mins of talking a week that is mostly what's on offer in the mainstream view of mental health.
Where is the kindness, patience, understanding...? I've also read many histories of patients who attribute their progress and even recovery to one kindly and consistent therapist, the high quality of the relationship being the crucial determinant of therapeutic success, not the therapeutic techniques.
I'm a mammal too, I have PTSD because my stalker (and subsequent opportunist abusers) trained me 24/7 to be terrified out of my mind and under their control, mostly surreptitiously. That was the purpose of continual attacks, to terrify me, to keep me in a constant state of terror. I can't will my nightmares, nor the exaggerated startle reactions to stop, nor the fear of people that instantaneously arises in situations that trigger memories before I can intervene with conscious, rational thought, for example. (But let's face it, a lot of humans are in reality unkind, scary, even evil - especially when in authority!) I can however be kind to myself, not expect too much, protect myself as best I can from others' demands, whilst I do my best to inch towards some sort of recovery.
The Lie of which you speak,
@stenni is, to my mind, exactly the problem. Appearance over reality, gloss over grit. Depressive realism indicates that those who are depressed actually see the world more clearly, that 'normal/healthy' people are deluding themselves!
The Lie is everywhere. Especially in therapies that try to rush you to 'think positive' etc. Putting it simply, nothing ever healed by brushing the pain aside and overlaying it with complex mental exercises or knock-out drops. Accepting the injury and pain and gently, kindly soothing them away over time in ways that are comforting and nurturing is more often efficacious, surely. I plump for 'honestly bad' every time but recognise that one has to appear in some circumstances to be 'dishonestly ok'. ("Humankind cannot bear too much reality." !)
[Thank you for reading this, I didn't mean for it to turn into a whole essay but I'd value others' thoughts as I continue to expand out of the box that is modern mainstream psychology - because, quite obviously, it's not working for some or maybe many people.]
