Category Archives: popular culture

Military Mental Health

It seems as if daily we are told how shamefully the military handles the problem of psychological distress and emotional pain for our men and women in uniform. In May, the USA Today newspaper empire asserted that the “Pentagon [is] perpetuating stigmas that hang over treatment, study finds.” (Zoroya, USA Today, May 6, 2016). The military is criticized because it takes mental health issues seriously enough to reconsider security clearances…unnecessarily “stigmatizing” those who have sought treatment.

This supposed stigmatization merits careful consideration. These include the depth and breadth of existing mental health services for active duty personnel and veterans; the conflicted American mindset on mental illness and emotional distress; and the logical outcome of this strange ambivalence.

A person not in the military or close to military personnel, may reasonably be under the carefully groomed media misimpression that the emotional well-being of our soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines is some sort of vague afterthought. Perhaps the general public is unaware that military mental health officers (people who are qualified to be licensed solo practitioners in the civilian world) are found in forward operating bases, combat outposts, and other deployment settings, providing critical incident debriefings, assessments, counseling, and referrals for more comprehensive care. When young men in harm’s way are despondent over a wife’s philandering, or are heartbroken over missing their child’s birth, the mental health officer is there. When there are incoming mortars, the mental health officer is there. When someone’s reaction to the weekly required malaria medication is extreme (malaria meds cause short-lived anxiety in about 1 in 10 people, and for some of that 10%, paranoia kicks in briefly, too), the mental health officer is the one who can figure out what’s going on and have the physician provide an alternative medication for the soldier – saving a military career from dissolving due to what looks like psychosis but is a transient medication side effect. In short, when crises occur, the “doc” or “shrink” or “combat stress lady” (quotes from military personnel) is there.

It is understandable that most civilians are unaware of mental health clinics on military bases, where military personnel and their families can receive counseling. Besides basic counseling services, mental health personnel provide services such as outreach before, during and after deployment, support while preparing for new babies, parent training, marriage counseling, couples’ retreat weekends, substance abuse education, and more. All these are part of the routine in military mental health clinics. Mental health officers are also able to veto a transfer if any member of the transferring family’s health or mental health needs cannot be adequately met at the new location. So…if Mom is being transferred to Base “A” and that area doesn’t have the specialized services that one child in the family needs, the transfer is nixed – possibly by a licensed clinical social worker at Lieutenant rank. The 2nd Lt. just overrode the entire command structure, in the military that is decried for not taking mental health needs seriously.

Then there are the VA system and the Vet Centers. Vet Centers are cousins of the VA. Unlike the VA, Vet Centers require only a DD 214 to provide free individual, couple or family therapy. It doesn’t have to be service-related…but if the problem seems to be service-related after all, the Vet Center personnel can help facilitate connection to the VA proper. These, too, are staffed by people licensed in their respective states as solo practitioners. There are no “not good enough to make it in private settings” amateurs serving in mental health positions.

Finally, there is the difference between benefits (think, Tricare, which is insurance for post-military service) versus service-connected health care (think, the VA system). A lot of veterans get that confused, and any of us who have tried to deal with health insurance and making sense of what is/is not covered, copays and coinsurance, and in and out of network…well, it’s understandable that almost anyone would find it confusing. Fortunately, the VA system and Tricare have professionals who do a lot of work (and get yelled at a lot) in trying to help people understand their benefits/insurance/service-connected health care, and connect them to the right services.

There are mental health services for military personnel and veterans. There could certainly be more, and the services available could be better marketed. In addition…there are stigmas.

Those stigmata comprise one more disgraceful example of too many Americans wanting to have their cake and eat it, too.

The regrettable medicalization of mental health has resulted in the mythology – happily embraced by many in the medical, pharmaceutical and professional-helper fields, as well as by many in the general public – that all mental disorder diagnoses are brain diseases. For example, many professionals will assure you that depression is strictly medical in nature; a brain disease, incurable but treatable by manipulating brain chemistry. Likewise, anxiety is (supposedly) purely a physical issue. People collect Social Security Disability, disability from their employers’ insurance, and other benefits, based upon having some sort of lifelong brain disease (according to psychiatry).

There are plenty of people eager to buy into this. We hear depression is epidemic (what else could we call something that apparently affects at least 20% of women and 10% of men each year, based on prescriptions for drugs?). Well, here is a recipe for depression:

  1. Maintain a sedentary lifestyle
  2. Eat a lot of junk food and assiduously avoid adequate portions of healthy foods
  3. Smoke cigarettes and/or abuse illegal or prescription drugs
  4. Drink more than one drink daily (females) or two drinks daily (males), or more than your physician recommends, given your particular health profile.
  5. Cultivate poor sleep habits. Watch television before bed; heck, watch television in bed, or use your smart phone, or tablet, etc. at bedtime. Drink caffeine less than six hours before bed. Wait until night time to argue with your spouse. Have a “nightcap,” which is a short word for “the alcoholic drink that will let you fall asleep more quickly and then wake up at 2 AM and have difficulty going back to sleep.” Eat salty foods before bed to activate your dopamine system and feel a little hyper.
  6. Avoid exposure to natural daylight.
  7. Watch lots and lots of television, or streaming video, or play video games, or surf the internet. The more the better. Strive for the national average of 6 hours or more daily (non-work related).
  8. Spend lots of time on social media. In particular, notice how much your life stinks compared to other people’s (supposed) lives.
  9. Shop for recreation. Spend money you don’t have on things you don’t need and then keep being surprised when, no matter how fancy the clothes or pricy the electronics, you are still, well, you.
  10. Be selfish.
  11. Don’t apologize, and don’t say thank you.
  12. Think a lot about how much other people are unkind, selfish, lazy, and how generally you are not getting your fair share.

Yes, I just described what an awful lot of people do, and yes, if you do enough of these things, you will probably feel depressed. Yet, as can be seen, every single one of these behaviors is optional for most people. Perhaps someone has physical challenges that prevent them from being active, but otherwise, these all represent choices made, choices which could be changed. If you were to do these things, and feel sluggish, unhappy, uninterested in life, helpless to make things better, etc., and reported this to your doctor, you could easily be diagnosed with depression.

The label depression, of course, is itself suspect. Within the mental health field, we are well aware of a dirty little secret. This secret is carefully hidden by pharmaceutical companies from the unsuspecting, suffering, and happiness-seeking public. That is, the criteria for almost every mental disorder diagnosis is a checklist. Committees review the research, argue about what should and should not be on the various checklists, have professional feuds, and publish the criteria. People are then diagnosed based off a checklist of symptoms or complaints. Those categories are fuzzy – a complaint I hear regularly from graduate students who, perhaps naively, expect pure, clear science. As soon as one set of criteria is published, the process starts all over again. This is how it came to be that, in the current diagnostic manual for the American Psychiatric Association, there is no such thing as bereavement. If you are still moping around after two weeks because someone you love has died, the American Psychiatric Association, in its infinite wisdom, has decided you meet criteria for Major Depressive Disorder. That’s the same Major Depressive Disorder diagnosis that many forces are pushing us to believe is simply a brain disease that requires lifelong treatment. I am not being sarcastic or flippant; it’s their decision, not mine. I was Hospice-trained and, even absent that, I am human and understand that bereavement is a long and painful process, even for the resilient among us.

The decision to eliminate the “bereavement exclusion” was supposedly made, in part, to allow people to use health insurance to pay for grief counseling. (At least, that’s the gossip I hear in mental health circles.) In other words, you are despondent. Someone has died. You go to a counselor. They diagnose you with depression, which is supposedly a brain disease, because you meet checklist criteria. You are now labelled with what many people assert is a lifelong condition due to your sick brain. You will now be able to have insurance cover your counseling (after your deductible has been met, of course). The diagnosis of a major mental disorder will last forever – long after you have forgotten whether you paid a copay or full fee for a handful of sessions, or went to a support group in a church conference room that a therapist facilitated as a volunteer.

Depression is worth discussing as one of the most common diagnoses. Psychiatrists and other physicians provide prescriptions for antidepressants, for example, to about 15% of the adult population annually – and many assert that depression is just a disease, like any other disease, and you have to face that you will be sick and need medication for the rest of your life. If that is the case, then why criticize the Pentagon for being concerned about someone whom psychiatrists assert has a lifelong brain disease having their finger on a trigger, or button, or sensitive data? Why should one person with a particular diagnosis be placed on perpetual disability and another maintain top secret clearance? Which do the people complaining about how the military stigmatizes mental health want?

To be clear, this is not unique to the military. People seek counseling, are unwittingly diagnosed, and discover later that they are deemed mentally ill and a high risk for suicide; perhaps their life insurance rates increase, or their health care premiums increase, and when the premium bills come in, they can’t remember having any mental problems except that time they saw a counselor after their grandparent passed away. The labelling can happen without any mental health treatment at all; if your physician lists a mental disorder as a possible diagnosis (fatigue, depressed mood, and poor sleep being symptoms of lots of problems, psychological and physical) while ordering blood tests (for what turns out to be something medical), that possible mental disorder diagnosis is in your health record, now part of your profile, even if you turned out to be anemic, not depressed.

Even if you are diagnosed with depression, the diagnostic categories don’t adequately describe what is happening, and they should. It is reasonable to expect that professionals, viewing the diagnosis on a chart, immediately discern the difference between these types of experiences:

“I’m depressed and exhausted because I’m having hideous nightmares ever since my buddy was blown up and died in my arms” versus,

“I’m depressed and exhausted because the 5 years I spent doing meth have caught up with me and my brain has been damaged,” or,

“I’m depressed and exhausted (and right now no one, including me, realizes it’s because I am among the one in 10 women who suffer depression as a side effect of chemical birth control).”

Right now, the label doesn’t differentiate. As you dig into the chart, yes, it’s there – but the most superficial record just shows the diagnosis code.

So, let us not pretend that the military is some big, horrid bully for treating serious mental disorder diagnoses as a possible risk factor for clearance. As long as those in power – throughout the medical, insurance, pharmaceutical and government arenas – are manipulating the definition of mental illness, one can hardly blame the military for being overly solicitous about the mental health of our men and women in uniform.

The conundrum of diagnoses and the risk of damage to one’s life explain why some military personnel are suspicious about seeking mental health treatment. We ought not to assume ignorance when they instead go to chaplains (who may be precisely who is needed) for wise and useful guidance. Similarly, they may choose to be self-paying for marriage counseling, stress management or other issues…off the record and off the base, their privacy is as sacred as mental health treatment ever was, before psychiatry yielded to intrusive insurance, and, as the big player in the mental health field, dragged most mental health professionals with it.

 

Dr. Lori Puterbaugh, LMHC, LMFT, NCC

© 2016

Posts are for information and entertainment purposes only and should not be construed to be therapeutic advice. If you are in need of mental health assistance, please contact a licensed professional in your area.

The Cancellation

Another day, another call or email: a couple whose first appointment was scheduled for later this week has cancelled. They have “found a doctor who takes our insurance.” That would be fine but for one detail: the appointment was for marriage counseling.

This could create a dilemma for the doctor who “takes our insurance,” if the clients turn out to be shopping for marriage/relationship counseling. This is because unless one member of the couple is diagnosed with a mental disorder, and the treatment rendered in those conjoint appointments comprise empirically supported treatments for that disorder, it is probably not covered by their insurance, whether the doctor “takes it” or not. No doubt this will be part of the discussion during their first appointment, when they inform the doctor that the problem is not helping Partner A cope with depression or anxiety (or some other mental disorder diagnosis), but rather some sort of relationship problem. Now, if Partner A is depressed, and the treatment involves communication skills combined with cognitive-behavioral therapy, or another empirically supported form of therapy that can involve the spouse as a coach/partner in healing, that’s excellent and ethical practice; not so for relationship problems.

At least I found out in advance, sparing the mutual aggravation of patients who imagined somehow that their marriage counseling needs are someone else’s financial responsibility and of a psychotherapist who expects to be paid for services.

This sort of retraction prior to a first appointment happens sometimes in my practice. “I found someone who takes my insurance.” This, despite my spending 10-15 minutes on the phone before setting that appointment and providing this information about my practice. I don’t contract with health insurance companies: it’s clearly stated on my website, and I tell people during that first, free, fifteen-minute consult.

Why bother mentioning it? There are ethical issues at hand.

To be perfectly frank: health insurance is for health problems.

It ought not to be used to get a discounted rate, subsidized by every other person paying premiums to that health insurance company, for marriage counseling, or premarital counseling, or vocational counseling, or any other normal, problem-of-living, life phase process.

My website clearly states my position on health insurance: I don’t contract with insurers because the bulk of what I do is not billable. I do not want my work with couples to be tainted by ethically questionable gymnastics in which we justify treating the relationship because it will indirectly help with a mental disorder. I will not label children with a brain disease because their grownups are getting divorced and upsetting the children, resulting in a custody evaluator referring the children to me. I will not participate in diagnosing people when I am concerned it is not in their best interest – a position supported, as it happens, by the American Counseling Association.

So, no, I don’t “take” insurance. Insurance cards are not debit or credit cards, anyhow: there’s no “taking.” There’s submitting paperwork and hoping one is eventually paid, or being denied payment and then having to bill the client, who may have been discharged months ago.

I don’t diagnose people for the sake of billing. If a client meets criteria for a diagnosis, what we’re doing is aimed at treating the symptoms of that diagnosis and, after being provided information about the process, the client chooses to submit the information to his/her insurance company, I will provide the appropriate form for the client to try to be reimbursed.

I work with human beings who are having problems in their lives (provided they are in Florida, where I am dually licensed for mental health counseling, and marriage and family therapy), and who want life to be better. They want better relationships and a hopeful outlook; they wish to live with purpose and meaning.

Those are not mental disorders. They are signs of health and hope.

 

Dr. Lori Puterbaugh, LMHC, LMFT, NCC

© 2016

Posts are for information and entertainment purposes only and should not be construed to be therapeutic advice. If you are in need of mental health assistance, please contact a licensed professional in your area.

Oh, the drama!

It’s about 2/3 of the way through the spring term, so it’s time again for my intro psychology students to learn about the various personality disorders, as defined by the American Psychiatric Association. One interesting one – and not necessarily in a good way – is Histrionic Personality Disorder (HPD).

Traditionally, HPD was estimated to occur in perhaps 2-3% of the population. You know these folks; you’ve known them all your life. They’re exciting, intense, and fun; the life of the party, the center of attention…and they can’t turn it “off” when appropriate. It’s the “friend” who wears a very well-fitted white dress to your wedding; the family member who always has to make it “about them,” when it’s very, very much about someone else; the middle-aged parent who is trying to compete with a teenaged child to the point of embarrassment (for the child, that is). They lack empathy for anyone but themselves, but can emote with the best of them. Recent studies indicate that incidence of HPD is exploding – with some estimates as high as 27% of the young adult (under 35) population now meeting criteria for the psychiatric diagnosis. It’s thought that the two-generation long emphasis on having high self-esteem absent any achievement of good character or performance might be involved, as well as the current culture that elevates attention (any attention) as better than just chugging along, living your life happily with the people you love.

Which of our grandparents would ever, in million years, have imagined everyday people talking about how many “followers” they have, as if they were Jesus?

Like almost all psychiatric diagnoses, HPD is defined by a checklist; meet enough criteria according to the clinician holding the checklist, and you’ve earned the label. Of course, someone with HPD isn’t coming for therapy for help with HPD. Others may come for help with them, or it may become apparent within the context of counseling for some other issue: relationships, work conflicts, etc.   It’s sad, really, that it can be so difficult to realize one needs help, because at the root of this is a small child, still jumping up and down crying out, “Mommy! Watch this! Mommy – look at me!” and that small child in the unconscious just doesn’t realize that all the jumping up and down cannot make them feel “seen,” and they need to find other ways – more adult, meaningful ways – to feel connected and recognized. After all, everyone wants to be seen by eyes that love them; didn’t the film Avatar touch on that well, where the most intimate thing people could say to another living being was, “I see you”?

Like some of the other personality disorders, particularly Antisocial Personality Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder, and Narcissistic Personality Disorder, the person with Histrionic Personality Disorder will seem fine…in fact, better than fine. All four can be very charming, interesting, and fun. They can seem special and their attention can make the next victim caught in their vortex feel special until all heck breaks loose.

Be compassionate but beware. No matter how wonderful, loving and patient you are, healing the wounded heart under HPD is not a one-man or one-woman task.

Dr. Lori Puterbaugh

© 2016

Posts are for information and entertainment purposes only and should not be construed to be therapeutic advice. If you are in need of mental health assistance, please contact a licensed professional in your area.

Toxic Myths, revisited

A lot of people ask about toxic myths: what does that mean? Why “myths?” (I’d like to say, well, buy the book, and sometimes do).

The toxic myths are examples of lies dressed up as truths. Our culture is seething with them, but in Toxic Mythology, I only addressed a few.

For example, consider the myth that people can compartmentalize their lives. Someone can, within this myth, be an absolute scoundrel in their personal life but supposedly be capable of being completely trustworthy and honorable in their public/vocational role.   Conversely, they can (per the myth, at least) be a sociopath in their professional life but be kind, tender and good in private.

So…if you buy this myth, you have to be willing to:

Vote for someone who swears to uphold a particular principle while having a personal and/or professional life littered with betrayals and a habit of acting on expediency, not principle;

Believe your child who promises she didn’t really cheat on that exam or plagiarize on the paper (despite the software evidence) after same child was grounded for “borrowing” money out of your wallet without permission.

Keep on an employee whom you overhear lie to customers because you haven’t caught that employee lying to you.

Convince yourself that your gossipy acquaintance never, ever would talk about YOU behind your back.

Does any of that sound reasonable? Of course not; these are, however, the toxic myth in action. Our culture tells us that it’s perfectly reasonable to believe that compartmentalization of character is possible and (further) that we should be “judgmental.” That’s another myth for another day.

 

Dr. Lori Puterbaugh

© 2016

Posts are for information and entertainment purposes only and should not be construed to be therapeutic advice. If you are in need of mental health assistance, please contact a licensed professional in your area.

Review: The Collapse of Parenting: How We Hurt Our Kids When We Treat Them Like Grownups, by Leonard Sax, M.D., Ph.D.

A friend recommended this book and this past weekend I read a large portion of it. It’s aimed at parents and others who are directly involved in raising children, and cites some pretty striking research about the negative outcomes of giving children more freedom and flexibility than they can handle. Children being given the control over their lives that ought to be reserved for responsible adults are far more likely to develop anxiety, depression and obesity; they have less attachment to their families and adults in general, and are more likely to turn to peers for advice. Their peers, of course, are not apt to know any more than them about making wise choices about life.

It’s a conundrum for some: after all, kids have to learn how to make choices, but they can’t handle the full variety of options that many parents want to give them. Learning how to present a narrow, fair range of choices is, apparently, a challenge for parents who are desperate to be liked. This craving for their children’s approval underlies a lot of dysfunctional, but seemingly well-intended, parenting. I described a parent’s style as a “democracy” (the children are school age) and the parent took it as a compliment…as if being democratic with children, where no one is really in charge and knows best, was a good plan.

Do kids need choices? Absolutely. Do they need – or can they even handle – the full range of options that an adult might handle? Absolutely not.

For parents, teachers, grandparents and others who work with children, this book is a friendly, accessible but thoroughly footnoted guide.

Dr. Lori Puterbaugh

© 2016

Posts are for information and entertainment purposes only and should not be construed to be therapeutic advice. If you are in need of mental health assistance, please contact a licensed professional in your area.

Way 29/Day 29: Make it a great year: Get better at recognizing trouble

In Toxic Mythology (© 2015), I spent one chapter discussing the difference between someone being “antisocial” and someone being introverted, quiet, or reserved. The terms are used interchangeably in non-psychology circles. Someone wants to stay home with a book instead of going out to a party, and their friends or family accuse them of being, “antisocial,” or, perhaps worse, a “Loner,” as if being naturally quiet was a dangerous character flaw leading, ineluctably, to pathology and dysfunction. Not so much.

As many of you know, “antisocial” is the newer term for what used to be called sociopathy or psychopathy. It means a person who is against (anti) society. The antisocial person (ASP, for short, here) feels no remorse or empathy and views others as merely a means to the ASP’s ends. Quiet/introverted people usually have very close relationships – with a few people. They like people, and they recharge their batteries via quiet times and discussions with one or a few, rather than many. An extrovert recharges by being around people. These traits are on a continuum; on one end is the rare, very highly introverted person; on the other, the rare, extremely extroverted person. We find most people closer to the middle, with a preference in one direct or the other. This is a biological trait, not something people pick.

Because ASPs can be charming, outgoing and generally fun to be around, a lot of people get fooled – and burned. Do some homework; learn to identify the warning signs that someone may be not as nice as they seem, and learn to differentiate between the kind, quiet person in your world and the person who is troubled and, possibly, troublesome.

That could make it a very, very good year!

Dr. Lori Puterbaugh

© 2016

Posts are for information and entertainment purposes only and should not be construed to be therapeutic advice. If you are in need of mental health assistance, please contact a licensed professional in your area.

Way 25/Day 25: Make it a great year: Follow your own advice (or keep quiet)

Many people are really, really good at giving advice. (That doesn’t meant they are necessarily good at giving good advice, though!) Some of them keep their advice to themselves, but most people have pretty strong opinions about what other people ought to do –the way they drive, how to handle relationships, how to overcome bad habits…you name it.

If you think about the pattern of advice you either give or keep to yourself, you might notice a particular pattern, or a couple of patterns, are dominant. “Lighten up,” you grumble inside about a cranky boss, a whiny coworker or perpetually dissatisfied family member. “Get over it and move on; it’s probably for the best,” you urge the friend with the broken heart, the family member who didn’t get a promotion…

Maybe the advice is meant for you.

Often the traits that drive us craziest about others are the things we struggle against within ourselves.

Make it a great year; reflect on your own (perhaps silent) advice for others and how it fits something you need to take of within yourself.

Dr. Lori Puterbaugh

© 2016

Posts are for information and entertainment purposes only and should not be construed to be therapeutic advice. If you are in need of mental health assistance, please contact a licensed professional in your area.

Way 23/Day 23: Make it simple.

Make it a great year – simplify…something.

People like to have things complicated. Oh, we say we don’t – we read “Real Simple” and make anti-clutter books bestsellers and have all sorts of gadgets with all kinds of apps that are supposed to make things simpler. It seems, though, that a lot of the time we’re putting a lot of complication on top of what could be simple.

Pick something and just make it simple. Maybe it’s your breakfast routine, maybe it’s streamlining housework. Really simplify it – don’t just incorporate a lot of gimmicks. Experiment. Be flexible. Check to see how simplifying in that particular realm works for you. If having the same menu every week for the work nights makes life easier and no one is crying over having to suffer through pizza every Friday, well…does it make things from grocery shopping to planning the evening a bit simpler? Maybe you’re not going to be Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg and adopt a personal uniform to wear every day, but on the other hand…is there an opportunity there to make things simpler?

Every decision takes mental energy. Our brains automatically seek to put things on “auto-pilot” to reserve focus for critical issues. Find ways to cooperate with that survival-friendly function and free up energy, deliberately, for something more compelling than “What to wear?” or, “Gee, what do we feel like eating?”

Dr. Lori Puterbaugh

© 2016

Posts are for information and entertainment purposes only and should not be construed to be therapeutic advice. If you are in need of mental health assistance, please contact a licensed professional in your area.

Way 18/Day 18: Realize that sometimes YOU know better

In the film Love and Mercy, based on portions of Beach Boy Brian Wilson’s life, it is apparent that early in the Beach Boys’ success, when the stress of performing, producing, writing – and a history of abuse – were weighing heavily on Brian, that he knew what he needed. He knew and struggled to express to those around him that he needed to pull back – to reduce external stressors and focus on what was most critical. The pressures from others – his family, investors, hangers-on, his manipulative and exploitative father, and, later, the unethical therapist who became a sort of Svengali/mooch, all professed to “know better” what he needed – led to increasingly intense psychological suffering.

(I don’t know how accurately the film represents any of the characters and am describing the characters as portrayed in Love and Mercy, not on the real people)

Sometimes we know better than other people. It’s hard to discern, sometimes, the voices of those who really have our best interest at heart and those who have their own agendas foremost. Too, some people are well-intentioned and, knowing what would be best for them, presume that it must also be best for others.

Seek wise guidance. Perhaps the greatness of the year comes from careful discernment on what is actually right for you.

Dr. Lori Puterbaugh

© 2016

Posts are for information and entertainment purposes only and should not be construed to be therapeutic advice. If you are in need of mental health assistance, please contact a licensed professional in your area.

Way 11/Day 11: Make it a great year – play.

Have fun. Play. Every day.

Go down the sliding board. Get on the seesaw. Play tag with your retriever and let your cat chase you while you scamper around dragging a piece of ribbon on the floor like prey. Do things where the end result isn’t anything in particular so you can let go of being focused on producing something “worthwhile.” A laugh that makes your belly hurt is worthwhile.

Playing means: enjoying an activity for the fun of it, not for the end result. That makes “play” different from sticking religiously to an exercise routine, or letting your competitive side take over and turn a game of kickball into some sort of gladiator blood-sport. It’s doing stuff – so watching other people “play” a sport for money isn’t play. It might be fun, but it’s not play.

If you have a pet or a child in your world, it’s easier. Follow their lead for five minutes or a whole lot more.

Go have fun. Go out and play.

Dr. Lori Puterbaugh

© 2016

Posts are for information and entertainment purposes only and should not be construed to be therapeutic advice. If you are in need of mental health assistance, please contact a licensed professional in your area.