The last moments of Abraham Biggs’ nineteen years of life were broadcast live via the Internet on Justin.tv. 

 Biggs, a Broward College student who reportedly suffered from bipolar disorder, had posted a suicide note on BodyBuilding.com before overdosing on a combination of opiates and benzodiazepine tranquilizers in front of his webcam. 

Just as shocking as Biggs’ decision to end his life publicly was the fact that strangers encouraged him to do it.  Some in the virtual audience texted entries like “lol” (for “laughing out loud”) and “hahahaha.”

Other viewers did contact the Web site, and police were eventually notified.  They found Biggs dead 12 hours later.

The lesson in this tragedy is the same whether we think about the lead actor in this made-for-the-Web reality drama or his viewers.  All were lost in a hall of mirrors that deprived them of real human connectedness.  When Biggs shared his overwhelming desperation with strangers, and when those strangers treated him without humanity, they were laced together—each and every one of them—in the peculiarly potent kind of depersonalization that today’s technology breeds. 

When we broadcast our life stories over and over again—whether on Justin.tv or Facebook or YouTube—we run the risk of slipping the bindings of our real feelings and experiences and becoming, in some small or greater way, actors in our own lives.   And as actors, some number of us will feel free to do and say things that are not a reflection of our true, deep character, but of the characters we have created for public dissemination.

Abraham Biggs may have committed suicide alone, without an audience.  But broadcasting his overdose may have made it seem just a little less real to him, a little like acting out his own death without having to really die, like an actor reading a script who stands up after the death scene and walks off the stage.  And those who watched and did nothing, or who watched and laughed out loud, or watched and egged Biggs on, might never have behaved that way were a person standing in front of them ready to end his life. 

While some may have believed Biggs was faking his death, I believe others were rendered inhuman by the fact that a camera turned the last pages of his life story into entertainment.

We are past due for major research into the psychological effects of the Internet on human emotion, behavior and relationships.  With tens of millions of Americans participating in online social networks and dating sites and photo sharing sites and (perhaps most toxic of all) Second Life, some percentage of users may be gradually disconnecting from themselves and others and reality.

Maybe it isn’t too big a leap to wonder whether that’s one reason Americans seem increasingly drawn into “bubbles” of fiction that eventually burst, causing real suffering.  Think about the near-delusional thinking that fueled the Internet stock bubble and the real estate bubble.  Think about the fact that our government is now injecting staggering amounts of capital into failed businesses to make them look like real businesses, in hopes that they will eventually become real businesses.

Biggs’ story is shocking because it captures the last minutes of a good and decent young man’s life.  It is all about private suffering turned inside out into a scripted, public spectacle in which the pain was meaningless to many of those made privy to it.  The Internet wrung the truth out of it. 

We’d better find out—and soon—how “connecting” through today’s technology may be disconnecting us from ourselves and from others.

Dr. Keith Ablow is a psychiatry correspondent for FOX News Channel and a New York Times bestselling author. His newest book, “Living the Truth: Transform Your Life through the Power of Insight and Honesty” has launched a new self-help movement. Check out Dr. Ablow’s website at livingthetruth.com or e-mail him at info@keithablow.com.

Police in St. Johns, Ariz., allege that an 8-year-old boy gunned down his father, Vincent Romero, and his father’s co-worker, Timothy Romans, using a .22-calibre rifle.  They say the crime was planned and methodically carried out.  Prosecutors have not yet announced whether they will seek to try the 8-year-old as an adult.

First things first:  Without access to the information that police have at this time, the public should withhold judgment about the veracity of the 8-year-old boy’s confession. False confessions are common enough in traumatized, eager-to-comply adults, let alone kids.  Three other children between the ages of 7 and 8 have confessed to murder since 1958; none of them committed the killings.

Assuming that the boy in Arizona is indeed the perpetrator, mental health professionals will have the task of trying to ascertain why he committed two murders.  Already, neighbors and friends and school officials have commented that the boy seemed perfectly normal, seemed to have a good relationship with his dad and had no history of violence.

As a forensic psychiatrist I have evaluated many killers and testified about them in court, not to mention treating dozens of very violent people.  And I promise you that, if responsible for these murders, there is indeed a psychological explanation why the boy committed them. 

Possible explanations include the boy suffering an underlying mental illness causing a delusion (a fixed and false psychotic belief) or hallucinations.  Conditions like bipolar disorder, for example, can (in a great minority of cases) trigger paranoia and even voices commanding one to carry out actions that would normally be abhorrent to the afflicted individual.   No one has suggested that Romero’s son suffered such a condition, but clinicians will need to rule out the possibility.

If the boy has been under treatment for any psychiatric symptoms with medications, the possibility of a medication side effect has to be explored.  Some psychoactive medications can, in rare cases, prompt violence against oneself or others.  The same is true, by the way, for some medicines used to treat medical conditions, like asthma.

Even in an 8-year-old, the remote chance that a mind-altering substance could be involved — perhaps belonging to someone else who was present at his school or in his home — has to be excluded.  That should be relatively easy to do by taking a detailed history from the boy and testing his blood and urine. 

Neurological explanations have to be entertained.  An MRI or CT scan of the alleged killer’s brain can tell investigators whether or not pathology like a brain tumor could be responsible.  The possibility is small, but can’t be dismissed out of hand.  Even an infection of the 8-year-old’s cerebrospinal fluid — the fluid that bathes the spinal cord and the brain—has to be formally eliminated as a possibility.

Chances are, however, that the why for these killings would reside in the emotional pathology of the alleged killer, not his brain pathology.  Some trauma or series of traumas, near or far in time, has to have occurred, in order to make this child either desperate enough to kill or cold-blooded enough to kill.  In sixteen years practicing psychiatry, I have never met a murderer who was born evil.  In every case, I eventually learned the circumstances that extinguished that person’s empathy.

So if this 8-year-old boy is indeed a murderer, the search will be for the roots of his violence.  We have only a hint which questions to ask from the news coverage to date.  But here are a few:  Why was the boy’s father awarded sole custody of him?  Why is his mother residing in Mississippi, rather than closer to him?  What are the details of the boy’s living arrangement, including the fact that his father had rented out a room in the house to his co-worker?

The truth of this 8-year-old and his alleged violence is knowable.  The key to finding it is in asking enough questions and never buying into the myth that killers are born.  They are made.  And when one is made by age 8, enough bad has happened in eight years to make the unthinkable actually occur.

Dr. Keith Ablow is a psychiatry correspondent for FOX News Channel and a New York Times bestselling author. His newest book, “Living the Truth: Transform Your Life through the Power of Insight and Honesty” has launched a new self-help movement. Check out Dr. Ablow’s website at livingthetruth.com or e-mail him at info@keithablow.com.

Barack Obama’s historic election as president caps an unprecedented campaign that broke through racial and socioeconomic barriers and has changed America forever.  His victory will fuel the self-esteem and hopes of many millions — not only minorities, but all those who yearn for the kind of interconnectedness that can only be achieved when each of us is judged for his or her inherent potential, not prejudged by prejudice of any kind. 
Obama’s victory also comes at a time when truth and reality are under assault on many fronts.  Americans are suffering the fallout of economic fictions that took hold of the mortgage and banking and financial management industries, much as they once distorted the valuations of Internet companies.  The Internet itself and other technologies—like instant messaging—are cleaving us from the human nuances of face-to-face and even voice-to-voice communication.  We are using prescribed medications at ever-increasing rates to quiet our unwieldy anxiety and mood swings and insomnia and distractibility.  Illicit drug use is up, transporting increasing numbers of young people away from the facts of their lives, toward illusion.  We are trading off insight for more and more potent doses of entertainment—obsessively tracking the chaotic (and often staged) lives of celebrities—rather than dealing with the real complications of our own lives.  And we are editing our life stories into made-for-the-Web “profiles” that require that we become editors and broadcasters of who we are. 

Many times over the past two years, I worried that the presidential election, too, had been captured by a desire to escape our pressing realities and entertain ourselves.  The protracted length of the campaign, the vast amounts of money spent on advertising and even the convergence on the world stage of high drama candidates—including (but not limited to) a former president’s wife (and U.S. Senator), a black man born to parents from Kansas and Kenya and a little-known, plainspoken female governor from Alaska—made the election feel like the kind of battle a television producer or screenwriter would contrive. 

Barack Obama’s eloquence moved people—for real.  But his good looks and youth and facility with language also created a kind of dream state of devotion in listeners, the way a movie star can.  He captivated a large percentage of American voters not only with his ideas, but with his delivery of those ideas.  The message and the messenger and the media through which both flowed became one very potent force. 

It is unfortunate that Sarah Palin looks so much like Tina Fey, if only because that contributed to the entertainment value of the election.  It is unfortunate that Barack Obama had nearly unlimited funds to script his message and ended with a closing volley of 30-minute television portraits that some criticized as “infomercials.”  It is unfortunate that Joe the Plumber was anointed a political force, when his moniker sounds more like one that would work for a spokesperson in an ad campaign for something to unclog your pipes.  And, going back further, it is troubling (but only as regards our confusion between fictional drama and our real lives) that Fred Thompson, a former U.S. Senator turned actor (he played a prosecutor on TV), was center stage in the Presidential race for a time.

There is indeed something about this moment in time that feels a little like watching a made-for-TV-movie or feature film of this moment.  And that sort of psychological confusion—if anything but very temporary—could spell trouble.  It does indeed invite (as vice president-elect Joe Biden noted) “tests” of character from those who question to what extent our leaders are genuine and courageous and grounded, and to what extent they are acting the part.

Dealing with Russia’s belligerence and Iran’s destabilizing agenda and the economic crisis are only some of the challenges that will move this American President from leading man, in the eyes of many, to proven international leader.  That journey is about to begin.  Success holds the promise of transporting the country and the world closer to the truth and justice and, ultimately, to greater strength and stability.  Failure could cost all of us dearly.

Dr. Keith Ablow is a psychiatry correspondent for FOX News Channel and a New York Times bestselling author. His newest book, “Living the Truth: Transform Your Life through the Power of Insight and Honesty” has launched a new self-help movement. Check out Dr. Ablow’s website at livingthetruth.com or e-mail him at info@keithablow.com.

Whether it is a fear of intimacy, a fear of heights or fear of financial collapse, the roots of fear are the same, and so is the way to overcome it.

What causes fear?  Essentially, human beings fear one core thing: losing control.  That’s why agoraphobics (those who fear crowds) are really most afraid of the visible panic that will embarrass them in front of those crowds.  It’s why those who shy away from romance or those who fear any potentially close relationship are actually worried about self-disclosure and self-exposure that leads to being vulnerable.  And it’s why those paralyzed by fear in these tough economic times are really most troubled by real or potential losses of assets that are outside their control and that have the further potential to deprive them of independence (which is really a metaphor for control).

Some people are far more vulnerable to fear than others.  Some of this may be genetic–the way our nervous systems respond to stress, from birth.  But much of it is learned by observing how our families dealt with stress and loss and danger.  And much of it relates to whether we were ourselves hurt by having too little control in the past.

Since the cause of fear in so many different situations is the same, it’s no surprise that the cure doesn’t vary much, either.  It comes in four parts:

1. Understand precisely what you fear. 

If you fear darkness, do you fear being attacked in the dark or do you fear being alone with your thoughts?  If you are experiencing terrible anxiety about the economy, are you fearing poverty, or being judged for not protecting your assets or reproducing your family’s rollercoaster economic ride during your childhood?  Different people fear the same events and conditions for very different reasons?  What is it–exactly–for you?
2. Get more information about what you fear than you want or think you need. 

Fear feeds on lack of knowledge; because being uninformed about anything–your stock portfolio or the government’s bailout plan or the construction and inherent strength of bridges or ways to protect yourself from being manipulated in intimate relationships–makes the problem feel all encompassing (when it isn’t).  Knowing the thing you fear cuts it down to size, even if it is still a big threat.   Gathering facts has another great advantage:  It makes you face your fear a little bit.  Once you resolve to collect information, you’re already starting to fight back.  
3. Resist staying alone with what you fear.

Isolating yourself while thinking about what you fear deprives you of doing what you need to do.

a. Get emotional, organizational or financial support from others by disclosing your thoughts and feelings.

b. Realize that many others fear what you do.  This will help you see that circumstances around you, not weakness inside you, almost always is responsible for fear.

c. Assemble a team with the skills to help you face and overcome the situation at hand.  For those who fear intimacy, that might mean getting the right therapists or choosing very sensitive friends.  For those who fear financial collapse, that might mean polling 6 friends to ask the best accountant or financial planner they know, then scheduling an initial consultation with one of them.
4. Start taking action — a little at a time, is just fine.

In the financial arena, armed with knowledge, support from others and an expert opinion, you might decide to move assets slowly in one direction or another.  You might contact your mortgage bank and inquire about working out new terms.  You might hire an accountant to renegotiate credit card debt.  In the realm of relationships, you might decide to go on one date–just one–and disclose something personal that you fear sharing (that friends of yours suggest is just fine to share).  If you fear crowds, it might mean walking in and out of a mall, as fast as you like.  The point is that taking action generally leads to taking more action.  And that’s the real antidote to fear that paralyzes.

Finally, I think it helps to expect choppy seas and to forgive yourself for getting seasick; all of us fear something, and nearly everyone of us feels overwhelmed more than once in life.  Feeling afraid doesn’t make you weak; it means you’re human.

Dr. Keith Ablow is a psychiatry correspondent for FOX News Channel and a New York Times bestselling author. His newest book, “Living the Truth: Transform Your Life through the Power of Insight and Honesty” has launched a new self-help movement. Check out Dr. Ablow’s website at livingthetruth.com.

With the days getting shorter, and sunlight becoming more precious, millions of Americans will experience seasonal affective disorder (SAD).  SAD is actual depression that afflicts sufferers again and again during the fall and winter months (although others experience recurrent depression during the warmer seasons, instead).  Symptoms typically include a decrease in mood, anxiety, low energy, trouble concentrating, an increased need for sleep, appetite changes (usually increased, including craving carbohydrates), decreased sexual feelings, hopelessness and a lack of interest in activities that the person used to enjoy.  Like other forms of major depression, SAD can also trigger thoughts of suicide.

The cause of SAD may relate to levels of two chemicals in the brain — melatonin and serotonin.  Excessive melatonin levels have been linked to depression, and melatonin levels in the brain tend to rise during the colder months.  Serotonin levels, conversely, fall during the winter, when exposure to sunlight is decreased.

Those who have experienced some of the symptoms listed above with the change of seasons last year should think about whether SAD is affecting you now or if it will affect you in the coming weeks and months.  If family members of yours have a similar pattern, that’s all the more reason to wonder whether SAD is responsible for what you’re feeling.

SAD, like every form of depression, is highly treatable.  Psychotherapy and medication are very effective.  But there’s a special treatment for SAD that can help in as many as 80 percent of cases: light therapy.  And trying light therapy first makes good sense, provided you aren’t experiencing severe symptoms, especially thoughts of harming yourself.

Many companies (including ETA Lighting Systems, Northern Light Technologies and LiteBook) sell light therapy devices that contain fluorescent or LED bulbs that mimic sunlight.  The bulbs are housed behind a plastic screen and don’t expose users to any harmful ultraviolet rays.  Sitting in front of a light box for as little as 30 minutes a day (although longer periods are required in some cases) can provide dramatic relief. 

Clinical trials haven’t yet convinced the Food and Drug Administration to approve bright light therapy as a treatment for SAD, but many scientists are convinced of its benefit.  Some clinical trials find it as effective as Prozac, with quicker results and many fewer side effects.  In my own practice, I’ve found it tremendously helpful for many patients over the years.

The first key to defeating SAD is recognizing it.  Too many people suffer needlessly, thinking they just hate the fall or winter, or get the blues when they can’t get outside enough.  But if you dread crisp air, falling leaves and the thought of snow on the ground, it’s worth wondering how intense that dread really is, and whether symptoms of SAD lurk behind it.

Dr. Keith Ablow is a psychiatry correspondent for FOX News Channel and a New York Times bestselling author. His newest book, “Living the Truth: Transform Your Life through the Power of Insight and Honesty” has launched a new self-help movement. Check out Dr. Ablow’s website at livingthetruth.com.

As Congress wrestles with the $700 billion bailout package, many proclaim the country is already suffering a depression.  It is no accident that the word “depression” can be applied in an economic context, as well as a psychological one.  The pathology and prognosis of an economy on the ropes and of a mind under siege have similarities that can learn from.

In both cases—whether an individual or a nation is depressed— the mood is low, or irritable, or both.  But when people become clinically depressed, they suffer more than a loss of joy or sense of peace. They often lose concentration, energy and self-esteem.  Without help from professionals, many cannot imagine the darkness that has descended upon them will ever lift.  The greatest danger comes when they can see no future.  For losing hope is even more toxic than deep personal losses that may have sparked the depression, to begin with. 

An uplifting message coupled with an understanding of which wrong turns were taken in the past, can be extremely helpful at such times.  But very often medicine is needed to alter the flow of chemical messengers in the brain, freeing up more calming and energizing neurotransmitters, like serotonin and norepinephrine.

The bailout package (or powerful components of it) is the equivalent of an antidepressant or anti-anxiety medication.  If it works, it allows the public and the markets—as medicine would allow a patient—to begin again to focus on a brighter future and to have the energy to take steps toward actualizing it. 

The writing and dispensing of a “prescription,” medicinally or economically, also has a kind of immeasurable benefit, beyond the balm of chemical messengers or dollars that begin to flow.  The “treatment” itself is a positive, forward-moving action that can confer new momentum on a nation or an individual.  That’s why even placebos (sugar pills) prescribed by doctors to people with real major depression can have inexplicable healing effects.  The expectation that a prescription should work, can make it work.

One of the reasons decided action combats the stagnation of depression is that indecision is such a prominent feature of depression itself.  I’ve treated patients (even executives and politicians) in the grips of clinical depressions that render them unable to choose which clothes to wear, let alone which deals to make.  Watching a confident healer take needed treatment steps with them helps them begin taking action, too.

I’ve always cautioned patients that major depression takes time to lift and that it often yields in jagged, unpredictable stages—like ice in the way of a ship powering through a frozen body of water that’s melting.  The ice cracks, then chunks of it break free.  There’s forward motion, then halting, then more forward motion.  A change of course may be necessary.  Then, another.  But the first signs of a clearing path shouldn’t be underestimated.  They predict victory over darkness and stagnation.  We should all remember this if measures to combat our economic “depression” begin to bring victories that seem uneven, or initially un-sustained.

I’ve also learned that depression is a tenacious adversary.  Declare victory too soon, and it can be snatched away by a second falling of the curtain.  When depression is severe, a doctor shouldn’t be overly cautious about increasing the dosage of a medicine or adding another or studying the roots of the problem from another psychological (or, in the case of the nation, economic) perspective.  Depression is always a boulder with the potential energy to roll downhill, until it can be pushed to undeniably safe, stable ground.

If the nation is in this case a patient, if we as a people are facing an economic depression with some of the characteristics of a clinical one (as I believe we are), then we need a firm, confident, multidisciplinary, unyielding and repeatedly reassessed course of treatment. 

One other thing:  While it may take a psychotherapist or neurologist and/or internist and social worker to battle the worst cases of depression, one healer has to be firmly in charge of the effort to defeat the illness.  There can be differences of opinion about treatment within the team, but the treatment should ultimately be administered as a team, with one voice and an unquestionable and singular concern for the well being of the patient.  Grandstanding or obstructionism for the sake of personal or professional (or political) gain is unthinkable when the enemy is a clinical depression.  It should be no less the case when the enemy is an economy under siege.
 

Dr. Keith Ablow is a psychiatry correspondent for FOX News Channel and a New York Times bestselling author. His newest book, “Living the Truth: Transform Your Life through the Power of Insight and Honesty” has launched a new self-help movement. Check out Dr. Ablow’s website at livingthetruth.com.

Plan your most powerful future.

 Once you have opened your mind and heart to the chapters of your life story to date, you are ready to embark on the most exciting part of the Living the Truth journey:  Planning the next chapters, unencumbered by denial, free from the weight of all the shields you have been carrying.

 The seventh step is about vision. We believe there is great power and possibility in envisioning what you want, but only when you are confident that your dreams for yourself are true to your heart and mind.

 Before beginning Living the Truth, you ran the risk that you were dreaming about, hoping for, and working toward things that weren’t good for you, or gravitating towards people, places, jobs, and relationships that were self-defeating. Even dreams that appeared healthy to the outside world might have, on closer examination, turned out to have been other people’s dreams for you. Living the Truth means that the horizons that you see ahead really belong to you. They reflect a need to please yourself, not others. They are a result of careful and determined introspection about who you are—your authentic self.

 Imagine a woman who grew up in the shadow of a powerful, very busy father. As an adult, she based all of her self-esteem on meeting the expectations of powerful people around her. It is no accident that she found herself rising through the ranks of a male-dominated corporation, succeeding largely because of her willingness to exhaust herself to earn the praise of her superiors. By using the eight steps of Living the Truth, she realized this job was not her heart’s desire, but the result of a pattern; she wanted to attract the attention and approval of her powerful dad, or authority figures like him.  Her shield was the “high” she got when these men and her family praised her, and she was able, for a time, to convince herself that this meant she was in the right place. The discovery that she actually found her career dull and stressful, and that she did not even respect the men whose approbation she so desperately craved, was, of course, unsettling. It was also sad to confront the fact that she was, at age 35, in pursuit of love she hadn’t gotten as a child. But all these realizations were the truth, and ultimately the path to personal freedom. She was able to forgive herself for letting her entire life revolve around pleasing others. She was able to forgive her family for having misguided dreams for her. She was even able to forgive her father, whose neglect of her in service to his job was merely what he’d been taught by his own family.  Free of anger, free of the need to be a reflection of other’s ideas for her, and fully cognizant of the unconscious dynamic she wished to stop, she was now ready for Step Seven.  She found herself thinking back to being a camp counselor in college. That was work she had truly loved, and this memory led to her vision: what she really wanted to be was a teacher. At first this seemed strange to her, because she’d always made lots of money, and thought that was important to her. More work in Step Seven led her to realize that she herself didn’t place a lot of value of the things that money provided. Wealth was just one more thing she thought she needed to gain outside approval. Over time, she did leave her job and became a teacher, and is now living a life in service to her truth – a life she enjoys and cherishes rather than regrets.

 It is very possible that before you began this work, you felt, as this woman did, that your future was not really yours to plan.  But the factors that gave you this false belief will not bear the scrutiny you can now give them. Like her, you can now finally let yourself feel the emotions you’ve spent your whole life running away from, emotions that you were afraid might overwhelm you. They will not.  You will emerge intact and ready to put the past behind you. Your fear will be replaced with strength and your resentments with forgiveness. Doubt and anxiety will be replaced with self-esteem and a growing sense of possibility.  All the energy you spent suppressing these emotions and avoiding reality will now be available for positive use, to move your life in the direction you want to take it.

 Ask yourself some of the following questions: If I could choose my work, what would it be? What kind of relationship would be the most healing and joyful and would enable me to give what I have to give and to get what I need? If I am in a relationship, what do I want from it? What kind of people can I surround myself with so that I feel empowered, supported, loved and challenged? How do I keep lowering the shields that I identified, so that I am not again held hostage to patterns of behavior and emotion that keep me from my truth?

 As you ask yourself these questions over time – questions that may initially frighten or overwhelm you– notice that you will begin instead to feel a sense of well-being and empowerment. Those feelings come from the realization that you have reached a point where your dreams can resound deeply with your truth, and at which you are also entirely capable of doing whatever it takes to turn those dreams into reality.   

Dr. Keith Ablow is a psychiatry correspondent for FOX News Channel and a New York Times bestselling author. His newest book, “Living the Truth: Transform Your Life through the Power of Insight and Honesty” has launched a new self-help movement. Check out Dr. Ablow’s website at livingthetruth.com.

 Forgive others and yourself.

One of the hurdles of seeking out the pain in your past and turning it into your power is that it can feel as if you are blaming others for your misfortune, including people you love (for example, your parents).

It is common for people to pause at the door of self-discovery and say, I don’t want to make it seem like my parents are responsible for what I am going through. But, that’s  like a cop-out.

 This worry reflects a core misunderstanding of the goal of Living the Truth. 

Living the Truth isn’t only about empowering yourself by refusing to pull away from your own pain.  It is about realizing that your parents (or anyone else) were limited by the same very human, very understandable, yet very toxic dynamics that you were. 

In doing this work, you will finally have learned to embrace your life story, good and bad. You have seen how you buried pain and disappointment behind shields that didn’t reflect your best self or demonstrate to people your true regard or love for them. If you can accept the actions of people who hurt you, you might be able to acknowledge that they, like you – like most people – were doing the best they could. You might be able to look at your father’s anger and see the tragic influence of his own father’s alcoholism. You might be able to recognize in your competitive sister the inevitable result of the extreme pressure your parents put on her to succeed.

 When we allow ourselves to see beyond people’s actions to their pasts, we take ourselves from anger to empathy.  This is the path to forgiveness.

 Of course, the most important person to forgive is yourself.  It is very difficult to forgive ourselves, because we know both our weaknesses and capabilities so intimately. We can always envision a million and one ways we could have been better, or have avoided a failure or loss. It helps sometimes to imagine someone we love who has struggled with her own demons. Would you give her permission to forgive herself for everything she has done that is not perfect, every misstep she has made in his own attempt to avoid pain and outrun the truth?  If so, can you imagine extending a similar kindness to yourself?

 You might find it useful to mark your decision to live a life in forgiveness.   We celebrate things like graduations and weddings; why not celebrate the day you decided to stop living in the resentments of the past in favor of living in the hope and promise of the future? There’s no need to be formal or to involve anyone but yourself. Simply writing down the date and a statement about who you have been angry at, and that it is your firmest intention to let that anger go, may be a sufficiently powerful gesture.

 Forgiveness isn’t something we do once and then forget about. It is a daily practice. After we have told people we forgive them, we show them by treating them with respect and kindness, and not letting underhanded remarks or lapsed responsibilities remind them that they somehow still “owe us.” We show forgiveness to our own parents not just by treating them better, but by being better parents to our children. The amazing thing is that by forgiving others, we are forgiving ourselves. We give ourselves the opportunity to live without rage. We resolve that unhealthy dynamics and patterns that have ruled our family for generations are going to stop with us.

 Living the Truth means feeling the pain of the past; forgiving those who blindly inflicted it on us, and resolving to do better for those we love. This is the highest form of human existence.

Dr. Keith Ablow is a psychiatry correspondent for FOX News Channel and a New York Times bestselling author. His newest book, “Living the Truth: Transform Your Life through the Power of Insight and Honesty” has launched a new self-help movement. Check out Dr. Ablow’s website at livingthetruth.com.

Hurricane Gustav’s 110-mile-an-hour winds, punishing sheets of rain and funnel clouds would test the psyche of any city, but the fact that this hurricane is assaulting New Orleans means it carries the potential for deep and long-lasting psychological trauma to residents there.

The mental health impact of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 was enormous. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration estimated that 500,000 people required counseling. According to one study, 31.2 percent of those who lived through it came to suffer a disorder of anxiety or mood or both. More than 16 percent fell victim to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a condition that can include not only distressing and intrusive memories and dreams, but also a sense that one is actually reliving the catastrophe. This puts Katrina in the same league as life events like serving in combat or being the victim of a rape. Studies of those who have lived through those traumas have revealed a rate of PTSD between 10 and 30 percent.

It’s particularly important, as well, that PTSD commonly causes changes in body physiology—including blood pressure and heart rate—when victims are exposed to stresses resembling the initial trauma. Body and mind are both affected.

The evacuation of New Orleans and the arrival of Gustav, with levees being tested again, means that millions of Americans are being traumatized—having to wonder and worry about their own safety, the well-being of their loved ones and what the storm will do to their property and finances. But it also means that a substantial percentage of them are being re-traumatized, compounding the psychological risks.

For an untold number of residents of New Orleans in 2005, Katrina wasn’t, of course, the only painful chapter in their life stories. That hurricane itself carried the potential to reawaken unresolved feelings of vulnerability and loss from years, even decades, before. Now, we have Gustav.

This layering of traumas, one storm after another, makes leadership in today’s crisis critical. It is inevitable that those who have fled New Orleans—including children and adolescents old enough to have survived both disasters—will look for signs that there is strong leadership in place, a plan for them and resources they can use as they return to their brave and battered city. Those resources will necessarily include mental health counselors, social workers, psychologists and psychiatrists. Residents of New Orleans should call upon their skills early on, with the certain knowledge that doing so for oneself or one’s loved ones is a sign of strength, not weakness, and a critical step on the road back home.

Think about the past in order to put it behind you.

We are told not to dwell on the past.  Looking back is seen as a sign of weakness, while forging ahead is seen as a sign of strength.

We at Living the Truth disagree.  We see tremendous value in examining what we have lived through—the roots of the emotional and behavioral patterns that have set the stage for our successes or failures. We know we must understand the events and relationships that make up our life histories or we will either repeat painful dynamics from the past or needlessly waste energy as we blindly flee from them.

In Step Four we applied ourselves to connecting the dots between the past and present. In Step Five, we made a pledge to allow ourselves to feel the emotions associated with our past life experiences—especially the difficult, complicated, painful ones. We do so knowing that we have a responsibility to choose insight and authenticity over a life of denial. We can live unconsciously and let tired, recycled patterns keep us in orbits defined by fear.  Or, we can live consciously, and accept these feelings as clues to who we are and what we can be.
 
 Let’s say that when you began this work, you knew that you were unfulfilled in your job. You might have written the statement:  Instead of blindly climbing the corporate ladder, I am going to examine why I don’t believe I deserve to pursue my dreams.  You resisted having the couple of after-work cocktails that used to transform memories of another disappointing day into a vaguely pleasant haze.  By spending sober time alone with your thoughts, you discovered you were deeply affected by your parents’ divorce, and ultimately uncovered your mother gave up going to law school to become a secretary so she could support you.  Further exploration yielded up more truth: Your mother was angry about this and tried to hide it from you, but it came through in her temper, especially when you failed at anything, or suggested you’d lost interest in something. The essential message you received growing up – one that still reverberates through your life – was this: Keep achieving, don’t get distracted, or you will not get love.

 This insight is real buried treasure.  You’ve unearthed it.  Now it is time to unlock it. In order to keep the past from running your present life you have to go back and let yourself feel what it felt like to be the kid living through this dynamic.  Remember what it was like when you were 11, and your mother lost her temper about your average grades in math, and placed the blame on you for wasting time playing guitar or acting in school plays?  If you felt scared, remember the fear; if you felt lazy, remember how shameful that felt; and if your mother’s anger made you angry, feel that as well. Let yourself be sad and mad that your childhood didn’t give you what you needed.

 There is nothing wrong with acknowledging loss, or accepting that someone you loved disappointed you.  These actions won’t make you get lost in the past. They are a way of putting these feelings where they belong—back in the part of your life story in which they unfolded, not free to contaminate your present reality or limit your horizons. When you remember and feel what it was like to be four years old, or 10 years old, you’re freeing yourself to move beyond those memories and feelings.  You are making a conscious decision to place the drama of this dynamic behind you.

Patterns from our past hold us in very powerful orbits, and these orbits can only be disrupted by our will to open our minds and our hearts to what we have lived through. This determination to stop living defensively, avoiding our life histories, allows us to exit the dramas of our past, and make healthy decisions that give us back our free will and ability to choose the path that will make us most authentic and powerful.

 Before Living the Truth, your past was like loose paperwork you couldn’t seem to complete or find the right place for. When it got in your way, you just stuffed it into a different drawer. In Step Four, we started to take those pages out and look at them.  Step Five is about taking these pages and reading them carefully so you can put them in order, and bind them into their proper place in your life story. And by binding these pages, we accept they are completed - and we can’t change them.  We can learn from them and write new chapters, true to ourselves. 

Dr. Keith Ablow is a psychiatry correspondent for FOX News Channel and a New York Times bestselling author. His newest book, “Living the Truth: Transform Your Life through the Power of Insight and Honesty” has launched a new self-help movement. Check out Dr. Ablow’s website at livingthetruth.com.