Stunderman's blog: "Latest Ramblings"

I draw heavily upon my own experience and observation-I'm not a psychologist or a mental health professional. However-I've come across several revelations in life that give rise to a pet theory of mine.

Human beings possess a powerful stabilizing mechanism. When a hurricane comes along and wipes out a township people pick up the pieces and go on living for it seems that's all there is to do. Likewise I've seen grown men who lie chronically and find that the roots go back sometimes to childhood molestation survival. A painful traumatic instance is dealt with by denial. As a bedwetter myself till the age of twelve I understood only into my early twenties that subconsciously, I was trained to tread lightly in the mornings when people were sleeping. Likewise Id urinate in bed because as a toddler my father would beat me for being up when I was supposed to be sleeping. He loved me and I never questioned that but his own blindness when he was sleep-stupid and angry and not using his head pretty much answered my curiosity. I learned why my behavior was there and how it came about and there was no resentment for this-it was unfortunate but the man simply didn't realize what he was doing at the time.

Every child has an instinctive feeling of fairness. Once a child is pushed to a certain point where this inner sense of fairness is betrayed they give up and refuse to try. As we grow and learn, we collect stigmas that are planted early on, incidents, false beliefs or outright lies and guilt manipulation. Rooting these out and understanding them is the key to healing in a spiritual sense.

Now! If we are dealing with too much negative baggage for too long and we suffer too many traumatic incidents in a row the mind cannot stack or restock fast enough to deal with emotional trauma. It's akin to climbing down a ladder of our subconscious and finding several rungs missing below us. This can result in a fall into a kind of mental black hole. Some turn to drugs and alcohol to cope, others to false religious beliefs. Still others seem to have been hardwired to never have had any boundaries or structure mentally and emotionally-the results can be devastating. Still others have a brain dysfunction.

Recently I heard a female family member speak of when she was molested at the age of twelve by a man. To hear her tell it she was an innocent victim. As a young woman she was sexually promiscuous and I had witnessed her carelessly testing her sexuality far too often to deny what I saw. Even challenged her on her behavior in a few incidents for her lack of respect for herself. To hear her speak of this particular incident though, while I wasn't there to see how it unfolded and came about, I had my suspicions for years she was not being truthful and honest. When it came to light that she was being sexually abused everybody rushed to her side and insulated her as a tragic shivering little fawn when in my opinion she was old enough to know right from wrong and was able to shuck any personal sense of responsibility. Her life is littered with a string of failed marriages and relationships that ended badly or tragically for one reason or another. I reconnected with a long lost aunt recently and she confirmed many of my suspicions. The denial and the stigma it brought about I believe was the key to her bout with being diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and the feelings of persecution the delusions had brought about. She is in her 50’s now in the care of a mental health professional so the outcome is up in the air.

So the causes of mental illness are due to many factors as I have seen. Personally I'm so thankful that I've had it “easy” comp[ared to many I've encountered.