THE PSYCHSURVIVALIST

My response to #SamAltman, #RayKurzwell, #JensenHuang et al. How they are feeding the machine through their passive enabling of politicians' wars that we as individuals and as a society have no business supporting. How #AI and #AGI are rendering our concepts of #intelligence meaningless and how all the efforts of the entitled, well-financed, and empowered will eventually encounter the same end as the rest of us rendering all their efforts meaningless. Or as the #Who said, "Meet the new boss, like the old boss," even though it is only a machine, having no instincts or feelings. Now, meet our guide however unconsciously, the #LizardBrain, our most intimate #LimbicSystem that through feeling and instinct allows us to adapt to the broader environment flying in the face of all that the our minds tells us.

In which I discuss how to recognize the #limbicsystem in #psychotherapy and in life. While we are talking to a client about the things that concern them, there is a more basic, perhaps primitive mode of thinking that is ever present influencing that person's thoughts and actions just as much as and perhaps more than what they are presenting. We can either pay attention to it or adhere to what is being presented. This is a reminder to #therapists and their #clients that a question is a question and is not necessarily a hint and that there may be any number of ways to understand the story of our lives. Alternative views are not a threat, but an invitation. The #lizardbrain may become frightened in response to questions that elicit #personalobservations. In a nonthreatening place a properly asked question may provide an opening to #selfexploration and to the #psyche.

#TheSnake is the origin of #Personality. We thought we knew what a #PersonalityDisorder is only to learn that we have never defined what personality is. We can discuss, even define symptoms related to personality disorders, but we can't say what it is in #HumanExperience that makes us the way we are, why one turns out to be a #Psychopath and another a #BorderlinePersonality. Each of us equally, even the most normal, feel ourselves to be unique. Perhaps at a very early age, we find ourselves at a crossroads leading to a diversity of experiences that separate us from others, leading us to a sense of our #Individuality that we feel is our primary interest to protect, This is about cortical learning, but with the recognition that our deepest learning would occur much earlier in the #Limbicsystem. #StarWars is who we are. It is the human experience.

This is episode 13 with the artwork included. Sorry for any inconvenience due to my error.How the #limbicsystem may contribute to our cognitive experience not only as a means of passive, scientific observation, but as an active contributor to our learning and experience. #Cognitivepsychology is used to interpret how life events affect us as we go from passive observer, however scientific, to active interpreters of our own experience and vicariously through others. How this might be what was intended by the psychiatrist #ViktorFrankl in his theory of #Logotherapy In which I ask the question, What might the limbic system be doing when it is not reacting to influences that are intended to cause us #fear, #pleasure or pander to our basest needs? What might the limbic system be doing when we are not actively using it?All AI is credited when it appears in the discussion. The conclusions are all my own. AI is only used for clarity and to develop content.

How the #limbicsystem may contribute to our cognitive experience not only as a means of passive, scientific observation, but as an active contributor to our learning and experience. #Cognitivepsychology is used to interpret how life events affect us as we go from passive observer, however scientific, to active interpreters of our own experience and vicariously through others. How this might be what was intended by the psychiatrist #ViktorFrankl in his theory of #Logotherapy In which I ask the question, What might the limbic system be doing when it is not reacting to influences that are intended to cause us #fear, #pleasure or pander to our basest needs? What might the limbic system be doing when we are not actively using it?All AI is credited when it appears in the discussion. The conclusions are all my own. AI is only used for clarity and to develop content.

An introduction to how the #rational prefers to overlook the part of us that is #irrational that may have still more influence on our actions. This is the #unconscious of #Freud and #Jung, but that is played out on a much larger stage, a part that influences all of our actions on an ongoing basis and that often impels us to decisions that may be #self-serving and #harmful of others, but that may lead to a deeper truth of who we are.

In which I present the notion that the #unconscious mind doesn't only express itself in our #dreams or when we are not fully aware or in control of what we are doing, but that it is an ongoing participant of our daily life and in our thinking. I argue that it is the basis for what we regard as #internalconflicts because it may not be in agreement with who we perceive ourselves to be and may take an oppositional stand as we refuse to accept certain aspects of ourselves that are discordant with who we believe we are and who we would like to be. I express this idea more fully and dramatically in my novel, Spiders Kill Their Young, available on Amazon that received an excellent Kirkus review, I once again discuss #storytelling as the best medium to understand human problems in context and further examine why this is so.

Applying #instinct to #psychodiagnostics. Incorporating feelings in the process of diagnosis. Going beyond #ActiveListening Theory to a more indepth form of listening.

#Psychsurvivalist What is a #psychiatricdiagnosis anyway? Is it the name of a disease? Is it mental? Biological? Is it a negative character assessment? Or is it simply name calling, a way to ostracize a person with whom we find fault for any reason or for no reason at all because we just don't like them? This episode explores several reasons for attaching a #clinicallabel, although there may be others I haven't thought of yet. This is the beginning of an answer to the very common question, #Am-I-crazy? Going to the cover art, do you ask the educated doctor or do you ask the monolith that symbolizes the repository of experience? Maybe we are looking in the wrong place for our answer.

Here is an #exploration of how AI interacts with humans at a #psychological level, how it influences us and how we influence it. Without a based understanding of ourselves and our machines, we could get lost n the pursuit of #psychsurvival, by getting overwhelmed by conflicting information from different sources with different #motives. This is a first approach.

This episode is a clinical comparison of AI functioning with human brain processes, how they are alike and how they differ. The unfortunate, creepy conclusion is that each is mirroring and replicating the other, reenforcing each other even in destructive ways.

I asked MSCoPilot/AI to create a self-portrait. Like any politician #AI deflected and said that it could create a portrait of me, of my thinking as a #Psychsurvivalist based on our discussions. The result was what it called "The Minimalist Logic Monolith & Institutional Mind". This was partly based on what it understood to be my character and also on what it construed from our prior discussions of how I do #psychotherapy. This is my critique of its work on the project and how it diverges from the true intention of my work, comparing what it grasped from inside the box and what I know about myself outside it, that is the me that must survive in the world. Nevertheless I will keep the image, the monolith, as a symbol of what I do, recognizing that some people see me in this way. I suggest you blow it up on your computer screen so that you can appreciate what I consider an important work of minimalist art in detail, an image that some people may recognize as me, their therapist, and others not. But I admit there is some amount of truth in it.

In this episode, I describe my experience working with #Veterans, many who were combat veterans, in various stages of #PTSD. I touch on the interface between psychology, at least my background in it, and the VA system. as I recently experienced it. What it means to be a #Psychsurvivalist in a world where survival is merely taken for granted and not a major focus of any assessment or therapy.

How many psychologists does it take to screw in a lightbulb? One. But the lightbulb has to want to be screwed. Change is only a small part of the equation. #Psychsurvival looks at thought and action in relations to the intended goal. Psychiatrists make the diagnoses, then write med orders with the goal of managing symptoms.. Nurses monitor patient functioning and note behavioral changes. Psychologists assess stability and reality contact. Patients just want to get back to what is familiar however dysfunctional. We were taught that the head of the treatment team is the patient. But everyone knows better.. Like the Tower of Babel, everyone uses different languages and understands roles differently toward purposes that are hardly discussed. Is this a flaw or a feature? #criminalbehavior #insanity

#Forensicpsychology #Criminalpsychology #Psychsurvival #Psychiatricdiagnosis If the case of #NickReiner were to come across my desk, whether for my assessment of mental health considerations of a criminal case or for Social Security Disability, these are the questions I might ask and what I would be looking for in my review of any available records in order to make a recommendation or determination. The questions I ask here are based entirely on information I have found in public reports in the news media, including statements from his father, Rob Reiner, and from Nick himself. As I say in this podcast, answers to some of my questions may be found in the clinical records from his years of treatment, still others may yet be answered by specific types of examination that he might have had or more likely might never have been subjected to. This is intended to be the beginning of a discussion, not the end of one.

#psychology Here are some early essentials of #Psychsurvivalism, that is, separating truth from lies especially when dealing with #attorneys, #politicians, and among #uniformedofficials. I will also introduce the role of #morality in all our actions, what separates morality of the #helpingprofessions whose jobs are to assist from #Iceagents who are given a uniform, a gun, and a mask with nothing else to identify them and whose morality tells them to follow orders and to draw a paycheck.

PsychSurvivalism: What you need to know about psychology to promote your and your family's survival and well-being.This podcast is about survival, specifically about psychological survival Most survival discussions are about weapons and methods for their use, They usually don't do as well in explaining the situations in which you might use those weapons and how to avoid getting into them. That is the main focus here.. It is about the psychology of the influences that result in misjudgment and poor outcomes, how to recognize and avoid them.This is about how to think or how to think about thinking, how to recognize and train yourself in how to respond mentally and emotionally when a response to threat is required, even in situations when threat is inobvious to all parties involved. Or as Leonard Cohen said in his song, Hallelujah, "...all I've ever learned from love Was how to shoot someone who outdrew you." It is about how to recognize and respond to mental and emotional uncertainty, even with intimates. This presentation discusses how to recognize environmental factors that could result in threat and the people who live and function in those environments that are exploitative or threatening even when there is no intention of causing harm. I might not tell you what to do in specific situations, but I hope to provide useful information on how to recognize them, interpret them, and how best to react to them.