Do psychiatric diseases exist?
Let’s say you grow up in an environment where you don’t feel safe. You don’t speak out. Every time you want to say something, you swallow your words. You hold back emotions.
If you do that 30 times a day, 365 days a year, for 20 years, that’s 219,000 times of not speaking out.
This translates into electrical tension in your body, especially in your mouth and jaw. Since electrical tension works with a plus and a minus, this is very hard to spot. You don’t notice it; it progresses slowly over time. And because you don’t only stay silent at home, you will probably also do this at school or at work.
After 20 years, you start to fall apart. You have no idea that you’ve been doing this your whole life—you forget these things because you learned them so young. So you go to a doctor. Since you are not functioning well and there is no visible physical damage to your body, you get diagnosed with a psychiatric disease.
In a way, this is correct. Your brain is an electrical network that registers tension in your body. And indeed, your body and brain are not functioning well. You are not functioning well.
You have no idea what is going on. Since you feel bad 24/7, it’s tempting to start abusing substances.
The problem in these scenarios is that nobody—except perhaps the parents—made a clear mistake. The doctor is trying to help. You have no clue what is happening.
Psychiatric diseases are multidimensional. They exist as physical phenomena (for example, tension in your jaw), as ideas (such as the beliefs you have about yourself), and as brain processes (which you would likely see on a scan). But finding the real underlying problem is extremely difficult.
In my opinion, the main problem is that not dealing with your emotions properly— not speaking out—can make you physically sick. In that sense, there is no border between the physical and the mental or ideas. Everything is connected and communicates with everything else.
I often use the phrase, “Connection is the key that always works.” When in doubt, move toward the pain in your body. Try to feel it. Disconnection is the dangerous part.
Buddhism has a tendency to disidentify with thoughts.
I prefer the reverse. You see everything as a part of you. You see your stomach as a part of you. You see your thoughts as a part of you. You see your feelings as a part of you. All your pain—it’s yours. Not somebody else’s, not the universe’s.
This gives peace of mind. It’s about being grown up: you don’t try to make everything not yours; you make everything yours.
Trying to disidentify with thoughts is a bit like trying to amputate a part of your head. The thoughts are already within you; it doesn’t make any sense to deny that.
About ego
This is a strange concept. I think it’s dangerous, especially in translation. By labeling everything as “ego,” you create a narrative of “there is no you,” which doesn’t make much sense. That there is no permanent you may be correct, but whether there is a you or not easily becomes a matter of wordplay.
Pretending there is no you at all is not something I would ever do. If there were no such thing as ego, you wouldn’t even know how you feel.