“Isn’t there a pill that I can take to make these feelings go away?” It’s a plaint I frequently hear. The client, faced with powerful feelings, feels overwhelmed and is looking for a means—any means—of altering the feelings, making them go away. And I understand that impulse: who enjoys the experience of acute anxiety, or depression, or grief, or rage? The urge to change uncomfortable feelings is, I think, a very human one. However, I also think that strong feelings, when carefully managed, offer opportunities for insight, for creative solutions, for growth. I think that medications are not, in and of themselves, the sole means for dealing with powerful feelings. Rather, they may be part of a strategy—but usually only a part.
The search for a magic pill for managing difficult feelings has become more pronounced in the age of Prozac—one that appears to have become more urgent in recent years. While feelings of all kinds can be powerful and even seem overwhelming--especially uncomfortable feelings like anxiety, sadness, anger, and depression--they are less and less tolerated; we want to make them go away as soon as possible. Quite frankly, there are times when medications are necessary and effective. Medications provide relief when carefully prescribed and monitored. But there are other times when medications are mis-used. Sometimes the line between elevating mood and eradicating feelings is difficult to discern.
These days, though, there seems to be an increasing movement to medicate away any feeling of discomfort. Pharmaceuticals would seem to offer unlimited panaceas to all our ills, allowing us to live in worlds where there are easy solutions to life’s challenges.
It’s not that easy.
Most of us have developed beliefs about our feelings. That we label feelings as “good” or “bad” reflects some of our beliefs, as does the assessment that some feelings are more “appropriate” or “acceptable” than others. The impulse to make feelings “go away” also reflects beliefs about our relationships to our feelings (that they are alien to us and must be erased). Reaching for alcohol or a pill to alter our feelings reflects our dis-ease with some of our feelings as well as beliefs about our ability to cope with strong feelings. (And the impulse to self-medicate is an especially strong one in a culture where the chemical means to alter mood is so readily available. It’s also a tricky impulse: self-medication is a common path to addiction.)
Feelings just are. They are neither “good” nor “bad”. They rise and fall throughout the course of a day, an hour, even a minute. We don’t have much control over their existence, but we do have control over our responses to them. The trouble is, too many people respond to their feelings by trying to eradicate them instead of working through them, letting them teach us about ourselves, letting them lead us to insights and even change.
Mental health involves the ability to manage feelings. Sometimes managing feelings may require medical help. There are psychiatric conditions that are effectively managed with medications. Certain depressions, anxieties, and thought disorders respond very well to medical intervention. However, even these are usually treated most effectively with both medication and psychotherapy.
Let me be clear: there is a time and place for medications. Psychotropic medications have value and can be an enormously effective means for helping alleviate anxieties, depressions and other mental ills. Medications can be useful for helping people develop cognitive clarity, thereby supporting problem-solving efforts. However, medications by themselves do not usually lead to optimal mental health. For that, some combination of medication and psychotherapy is most effective.
In any event, I think that the question to ask yourself when reaching for a chemical solution to a difficult feeling is this: what is my intent? To erase a feeling? To develop greater clarity in my thinking? To support my growth? Talking about this with a professional might be a first step toward discerning an answer and working through to a solution.