TOUCH AND GO !

It's time for Dr. Sanity to practice a few touch and go's around the mental health blogsphere--or "psychsphere" if you prefer! What follows are some of the topics my fellow mental health professionals are blogging about.

GM Roper, a therapist who is fighting lung cancer (and winning as we speak) has a wonderful post up on "Conquering Fear"

When I first received the diagnosis of lung cancer, my first thought was, "Not me, it can't be, it must be a mistake" followed immediately by "Crap, now what do I do," and of course the answer was "fight back, fight on." And this is exactly what I have done. But I've also watched my beloved wife cry when she didn't think I was looking. I've seen my daughter cringe inwardly, but put a brave front up as long as she thought I was watching. I've heard people ask "How are you doing, oh George, I'm so sorry to hear that."

And I have to ask myself, what do they know that I don't know. Why aren't I afraid, and if I really am afraid, why am I hiding it. When I told my employer that I had cancer she remarked "How can you be so calm?” The answer is of course that I could choose to be something else. But what would it accomplish? How would unmitigated worry help me beat the cancer, a task I fully intend to complete?

Our next stop is Dr. Helen, who after watching the Dr. Phil talk with a young murderer and her victim's family, wonders if forgiveness is always the anwer.

ShrinkWrapped continues on his series that discusses some of the implications of the trend where "patients" are referred to as "clients". He says, "the most salient difference between a client or consumer and a patient is that patients come to Doctors when they are in pain and distress. This makes all the difference." Check out the entire series and see why.

If we fly over to One Cosmos, we find Bob and his alter ego Petey explaining one of Petey's infallible axioms--that liberals do not Speak Truth To Power. Rather, they Speak Lies to the Powerless, in order to keep them that way. This is so intriguing we make several passes over the site and discover this gem:

Thus, speaking lies to the powerless is not some kind of intellectual parlor game for liberals. It is the very key to their survival. For example, if they did not get 90% of the black vote, they would no longer be a viable party in something like twenty-six states. Speaking lies to the powerless is absolutely essential to keeping power in the hands of those who create the perception that blacks are powerless, helpless children. It's entirely circular. Trillions of dollars later, there is still no "exit strategy" for the War on Poverty

Bob never fails to be stimulating in his prose!

Assistant Village Idiot starts a series in which he will eventually work in wombats, the bathrooms in McDonald's and the Reduced Shakespeare Company in London. Certainly worth looking forward to.

SC&A highlights a post by The Anchoress and takes on her discussion of whether or not political debate is futile. SC&A think that the only real political debates occur between neighbors, who have a motivation to compromise. Everyone else (i.e., the media, bloggers etc.) are simply participating in an "orgy of self-indulgence."

Shrinkette has several very interesting posts up-one on Ice Dancing (or what its like sometimes to be on-call); one on Art Buchwald saying no to dialysis; and one on Van Gogh's crisis. Just keep scrolling down.

Our final stop before returning to base is at neo-neocon, where neo revisits the old "Bush Lied" mantra; reporting on an article from Foreign Affairs about Saddam's delusions. She concludes with:

This increasing paranoia/irrationality and its effects--the fact that no one can tell the tyrant the truth--has its good points and its bad. The good is that it tends to lower the leader's effectiveness in the decision-making process, and may cause major lapses of judgment that can be fatal to his cause. The bad news is that no one can count on that, and in the meantime the tyrant spirals more and more out of control and can do even more damage, both domestically and internationally.

And then she predicts that someone in the comment section will say the article actually describes BusHitler. I can see she's been blogging for a while and knows exactly how certain people will react (see the post at SC&A for more discussion of this issue!) .

That seems to be all that's new in the psychsphere this evening, so we will return to Dr. Sanity's blog much more knowledgable and certainly much wiser than we started. ENJOY!