What all Therapist should Know and Books don’t Teach

Introduction

Every time I introduce this topic at any discussing, the first thought that crosses the mind of those to whom I am speaking is that it cannot be true because that was not what they were taught and if it wasn’t taught in a particular university, college or specific setting, utilizing certain textbooks and case studies then it can’t be true. The second is the almost immediate dismissal of anything else that comes out of my mouth because I did not take the same path that they took to achieve recognition of their accomplishments.
Needless to say, my retort to these concerns is always the same. I ask where the information used to educate you originate? Often the real answer is that it originated from other people’s experiences which was transferred into a book, the very same book from which they are learning.
For the next question, I ask them to explain to me why they believe that the best teacher can only be found in some type of classroom setting and whether one’s personal experience is just as competent, if not more so.
So, let’s get this party started and suggest to you that a mental illness is not a medical condition and therefore explains why medication only works if there is a strong belief in the person taking the drug that it does.

Consider the many different kinds of medication for your headache, if you favored one over another but later find that there is still yet another that works even better for you, I would argue that when you first began to suspect that the first had lost its luster was when you started to believe that it had ceased working and whether you heard it from a friend or simply tried it yourself, you discovered/believed that the newest one worked better.
A mental illness originates from a traumatic event and the degree of trauma is not a particular number or on a particular scale for anyone. It is that which affects you even in the smallest of sense. Since this origination does not have anything to do with a medical condition, it cannot never be cured by medicine. Now there are times where a medical condition can have massive affects upon a person’s behavior and mind-set, for those times medicine is paramount but not for the mental condition but for the medical condition.
There is only one sure fire way to remedy the destabilizing effects that a mental illness has and that is to build up your array of coping skills to deal with each of those tenants extending from that mental illness. The only other way is to develop a time machine, go back to that time the traumatic event occurred and prevent it from ever happening. Which sounds more plausible?