Life, by its very nature, is a series of"ups and
downs".Grand-parents andMums and Dads
nearly always die before their children and
grandchildren.
Pet dogs and cats practically always live shorter lives than their owners and, in the process of learning about relationships, most couples meet, share a life together for a short time and then move on to a new partner a number of times before having learned enough to become confident about settling down with the "right" person "for the rest of our lives".
Accordingly, in our modern society "breaking-up" is inevitably a regular occurrence which, like toothache and extraction, we learn to live with as our baby-teeth are lost and replaced by the adult version.
So when we lose our pet dog, favourite grand-dad or best girl (or boy) friend, because in the latter case "there are plenty more pebbles on the beach", in anything from three to twenty-one days, nature normally helps us recover from our loss - if we can avoid too much sympathy, too many experts telling us what we should now think and do, and too many so-called professionals seeking to counsel us on where we went wrong and how we ourselves might in fact be to blame !
Two groups of self-styled "professionals" or "experts" seek to take advantage of what would normally be a rather temporary misery in order to earn their living, and even make more profit by helping our normally short-lived despair to become a much bigger factor in life and one from which we can even appear to benefit by gaining attention from others.
At university when Jonnie's best girl moved abroad with her family so that her dad could take up a better job, because Jonnie had lots of study to keep up with, he was initially coping pretty well until his Dean, having been told by others of Jonnie's recent loss, suggested he might like to see the local psychiatrist who could "probably do something to help him."
What was he going to do? Fit him up with a new and more attractive girl-friend? Of course not. But the initial counselling session did provide Jonnie with a lot of missing attention. At the same time, Jonnie's own attitudes were examined, admired, evaluated and criticised, none of which helped Jonnie handle his own loss - an action he is totally capable of doing for himself under the right circumstances.
Instead he became aware that his loss could gain him more sympathy and attention from others - sufficient for him to be able to control other people's actions - and his influence in this respect was reinforced when the doctor prescribed anti-depressant medication to "help him through the worst of things", etc.
Unfortunately, a friend, colleague or family member on "behaviour management" drugs often seems to deserve sympathy and attention - and gets it. As a result, and usually quite unknowingly, Jonnie and others like him start to regard their loss or break-up as "valuable".
So much so, that solving their "break-up" would lose them sympathy, attention, medical support and often even government Income Support. As a result, losing this valuable attention can lead to a break-down thoroughly exacerbated by their daily consumption of Prozac, benzodiazepines, tranquillisers, Ritalin or any of a number of other addictive or hypnotic psychiatric drugs commonly, profitably and totally unnecessarily prescribed in these circumstances.
The factor which probably does most to strengthen character and develop resilience is the confronting and handling for yourself of the "downs" of personal losses and break-ups which inevitably occur in everybody's life.
Resorting to psycho-pharmaceutical relief or the street drug and alcoholic alternatives are ways of trying to escape life. Unfortunately, to the degree that we do so escape, we inevitably also lose the many "ups" which life can provide, moving towards membership of the daily drug and alcohol consuming fraternity - and thus a lifetime loser, too often supported in this by the State itself.
ENDS. 745 words.
