Defense Mechanisms
Our minds may deceive us but our bodies never lie. The autonomic nervous system has a life of its own and pays no attention to what the mind wants to project to the outside world. When it feels like blushing, it blushes. When it feels like crying, it cries. When it's alarmed, it breaks out in gooseflesh. Because of this truth-telling disparity between mind and body, when people first come to Janet Greeson's "A Place For Us" we watch as much as we listen. Their actions speak so loudly we can hardly hear a word they're saying, and we know that no matter what they try to convey to us with words, their nonverbal language tells the truth.
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Some are full of shame. Their eyes are cast down, they readily weep, they cover their face with their hands when they talk as if they had something to hide, they are angry at themselves and feel empty or numb. The very obese are often suicidally depressed. Nothing seems to work for them now, and they have completely submerged their identity under layers of fat. The heaviest patient I had weighed 470 pounds. She was barely able to get herself dressed and thought she had no reason for living except to eat herself to death.
Most people come in depressed. Some are hostile, blaming others for their problems, angry at everyone but themselves and full of complaints. Gerald G. Jampolsky, MD, author of Teach Only Love, remarks, "The most offensive patients are the ones who need the most love." Sometimes that's difficult to remember, but I've never failed to acknowledge the truth of that statement.
Still other people are placid. They will calmly tell you there's nothing the matter with them except a need to control their weight. They will go out of their way to please people and do whatever they can to get approval.
Surprisingly, the passive people are the most difficult to treat, for there is no struggle. The shame-based people are struggling with themselves, the anger-based people are struggling against the world, but the passive people-pleasers are not struggling against anything. They want somebody to fix them without taking action themselves.
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In order to get the passive types to work, we have to shake them up a bit. We don't respond to their need to please. Getting them to drop their defensive behavior is no game; if we can't shake them out of their passivity, they usually go home without doing any real work on their emotions and don't get better. What 1 do is make them into bad patients. I'm always glad when I see their anger and feistiness begin to come out. My nurses say they don't like them as well as they did when they first came on the unit, but that's okay by me. They're learning to challenge and create boundaries, developing an identity beyond just being nice.
Our minds may deceive us but our bodies never lie. The autonomic nervous system has a life of its own and pays no attention to what the mind wants to project to the outside world. When it feels like blushing, it blushes. When it feels like crying, it cries. When it's alarmed, it breaks out in gooseflesh. Because of this truth-telling disparity between mind and body, when people first come to Janet Greeson's "A Place For Us" we watch as much as we listen. Their actions speak so loudly we can hardly hear a word they're saying, and we know that no matter what they try to convey to us with words, their nonverbal language tells the truth.
Visit the Web's Most Respected Diet Information Site!
Some are full of shame. Their eyes are cast down, they readily weep, they cover their face with their hands when they talk as if they had something to hide, they are angry at themselves and feel empty or numb. The very obese are often suicidally depressed. Nothing seems to work for them now, and they have completely submerged their identity under layers of fat. The heaviest patient I had weighed 470 pounds. She was barely able to get herself dressed and thought she had no reason for living except to eat herself to death.
Most people come in depressed. Some are hostile, blaming others for their problems, angry at everyone but themselves and full of complaints. Gerald G. Jampolsky, MD, author of Teach Only Love, remarks, "The most offensive patients are the ones who need the most love." Sometimes that's difficult to remember, but I've never failed to acknowledge the truth of that statement.
Still other people are placid. They will calmly tell you there's nothing the matter with them except a need to control their weight. They will go out of their way to please people and do whatever they can to get approval.
Surprisingly, the passive people are the most difficult to treat, for there is no struggle. The shame-based people are struggling with themselves, the anger-based people are struggling against the world, but the passive people-pleasers are not struggling against anything. They want somebody to fix them without taking action themselves.
Visit the Web's Most Respected Diet Information Site!
In order to get the passive types to work, we have to shake them up a bit. We don't respond to their need to please. Getting them to drop their defensive behavior is no game; if we can't shake them out of their passivity, they usually go home without doing any real work on their emotions and don't get better. What 1 do is make them into bad patients. I'm always glad when I see their anger and feistiness begin to come out. My nurses say they don't like them as well as they did when they first came on the unit, but that's okay by me. They're learning to challenge and create boundaries, developing an identity beyond just being nice.