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In professional circles my name is; Dr. Johann Hampton-Wagener, BA, MS, PhD. My acquaintances call me “Doc.” My friends (and those that pretend to like me) call me “Johann”. I've also been called many other names that I’d prefer not to list here.
My degree(s) were in Education and Psychology, from both a counseling and clinical perspective. I spent a few decades “practicing” in “shrinking” people who I had assured was the only way to growth. An oxymoron if there ever was one. It turned out to be a two-way process, in that the patients taught me everything I know about "mental health".
This is stuff the text books don’t tell you about. The literature describes the “illness” and the “symptoms” with very little in the “cure’. The truth is, there is no cure. Mental illness is a misnomer, based on an assumption that there is a true definition of mental “health.”
For example, Koreans eat dogs for dinner while in the USA we cherish them as much as our own children. So, who’s “crazy” here?
In my work with patients I learned that in helping them to unload the psychic junk they were fed and stuffed over many years is what ultimately made them sick. The objective, or goal, was to make space to start re-defining themselves and their lives. What they, as well as I, discovered was simply to “keep it simple”.
An existentialist would say; life is really simple. You’re born and then you die. The path you choose, how painful it is, what you do along the way, is up to you.
Some say “God put me here for a reason” or “whatever happens to me is God’s will”. What we conveniently forget is that He endowed us with “free will” which came with a write-it-yourself manual and a do-it-yourself tool box for us to use in building our lives. Holding God responsible for what happens in our lives mistakenly leads us to avoid responsibility for who we are, our decisions, our actions, and the consequences that follow. We try to dodge the bullets by throwing God in front of us.
Good luck with that one.
There are plenty of examples of why we have no real definition of mental health. Some people would swear that even though they believe God created the universe he gave us “dominion” because we’re special; made in His image. Anything pre Adam & Eve was just a big glob of dough from which we were baked. Makes sense? Depends on who you ask.
Most of what I learned about life came from patients that: for the sake of anonymity, I’ll refer to as
• The “man who knew too much” This individual was a nerd-extraordinaire. One of the primary architects of computer science as we know it today. He was addicted to it; an “information junkie” would be adequate in describing his diagnosis.
There were many others;
• The “woman with no stomach”
• The “tweaker”
• The “world’s most eligible (and lonely) bachelor.
• The blue-eyed blonde I nicknamed “Mata Hari”
• The “Mistress/Wife” That pretty much says it all about the “game” you’re going to play.
But that’s for another time.
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