My second internship would prove to be the most rewarding. All in all, during my second year of full-time graduate studies, I was feeling good about every aspect of my life. I was doing great in classes, in my internship, and at work.

A Master's in Social Work is a two-year program and so the second year is our final year. As I was saying, during our second year, we take classes and work in a setting that closely matches our primary interest area for where we want to work upon graduation.

An Epiphany - An Answer to a Question

I wanted to start with an insight that I had gained during a class that was titled "Abnormal Psychology." I touched on this a bit earlier, but I wanted to add a few things. Anyway, in this class, we studied and learned about the entire range of psychiatric disorders as they are described in the DSM-IV (the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychiatric Disorders, fourth edition).

We used a big book that is used by psychiatrists and other mental health professionals to make a diagnosis.

Anyway, when we started covering personality disorders, that's when I had an epiphany.

We were considering public figures as examples of people who may have a particular personality disorder. Some people on YouTube seem to walk on eggshells when it comes to speculating about the disorders of public figures. I don't think our professor was quite so worried about making an error in diagnosing someone. I suppose our professor wasn't speaking to a large audience nor was he making a definitive diagnosis.

I remember we discussed OJ Simpson as an example of someone with Narcissistic Personality Disorder. We were also encouraged to consider people we might know who might have a variety of different personality disorders. The thinking was that this would make things more clear and easier to understand.

There are some rules in the US that discourage diagnosing public figures. Those "rules" do not seem to be hard absolute rules.

With regard to personality disorders, it's not rocket science nor is it necessary that you sit down with someone to make a diagnosis. Another argument is that the person being diagnosed should be seeking treatment. Sometimes people are involuntarily committed to a psychiatric hospital and so they didn't seek treatment or a diagnosis.

Mental health professionals make observations, gather information from people other than the person being diagnosed.

Anyway, it was in this class when it hit me!

Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) is the problem that my mother had. The questions that had racked my brain for decades finally had an answer or an explanation. I don't know if this diagnosis of the problems that Kathy Whealton had would have been helpful earlier but at least I had a sense of clarity as to what was wrong.

In many ways my father, Bruce Sr. seemed to have the same condition. It wasn't so obvious with him though.

It was obvious that my mother could not see things from a different point of view.

That is the difference that I noticed with my mother. She NEVER could come forward and say, "I am sorry for the way I acted... that was wrong."

There is more to it than these observations. Both parents had a condescending and judgmental attitude toward others. Only certain "special" people could meet their high standards for being worthy of their attention.

These are symptoms of NPD or characteristics of a narcissistic family.

Anyway, I do not say these things with an angry heart. Nor is this an effort to make my parents look bad. This epiphany was an answer to a question I have been asking for the past 15 years or so.

Getting back to the topic of second-year graduate studies.

We had courses that covered a variety of techniques for group, individual, family, and couples therapy/counseling. I won't give you an education here into a typical second-year graduate program in social work. While learning the "basics" we were also encouraged to learn more about certain theories, therapies, and techniques. This is not unlike the way that psychotherapists will specialize in the use of certain types of therapy that they do best. No one can know everything about every form of therapy.

In graduate school, during our second year, we take classes that ask us to research different treatment techniques and therapies. For example, in one class I did a long paper on treatment options for people with dual diagnoses like a mental illness and a substance use disorder. I felt that the 12-step programs of Narcotics Anonymous (NA) and Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) had some limits and potential flaws.

My concern with NA/AA is that people get advice from others who have no specialized training. On top of that, I had noticed from the literature that these people will tell a person that the main and primary consideration is to avoid the addictive substance. That discounts a person's overall suffering and pain.

So, I looked for recent scientific journal articles that presented research findings that might be relevant to this topic. I remember my paper was 30 pages long.

I was learning about a variety of treatment techniques and theories.

My Internship at The Oaks

During this second year of my education, I did my internship at "The Oaks" psychiatric hospital under the guidance and supervision of Chris Hauge. Yes, he is the same Dr. Chris Hauge that I mentioned when speaking of my volunteer work at "The Oaks" in an earlier chapter.

The doubts that I had during my first year, however infrequent they were, now were non-existent. I had no doubt that I had made all the right choices to get me here finally. Chris had worked in the field for decades, longer than anyone I ever knew, and he was very well respected.

Chris was happy to have me do my internship there at "The Oaks" as we discussed previously. He saw my passion and drive to help others who were hurting, in distress, or having problems in life. He nurtured that hunger and drive giving me opportunities to do the things that I wanted to do... For example, it wasn't long before I had a chance to do some therapy with patients in the hospital.

I was participating in groups led by Chris - therapy groups.

What I loved about the way Chris did the groups is that the "staff," psychiatric nurses, other interns, medical students, and others were expected to participate in the group. What I mean is that they were not there to just observe what others were doing.

I'm going to have to be more specific to describe what I mean. Patients were in the hospital in most cases for no more than about two weeks. So, we had to figure out what could be accomplished in a brief period of time. Chris happened to be skilled in the use of experiential therapy techniques, which I will describe below.

Let's consider some examples. In a relaxation group, we might talk about natural ways to relax and deal with anxiety. In a survivor's group, we would start with deep breathing for relaxation and then Chris would guide us into a guided visualization exercise with our eyes closed. As an example, we might visualize a younger version of ourselves sitting in a chair in front of us.

It was really powerful and amazing. As the name implies, a survivors' group was for those who experienced abuse and/or trauma. This younger version of ourselves was our wounded inner child... or it could be a younger version of ourselves when we were younger adults.

Technically, it's important to note that we were younger a month ago and if something traumatic happened at that time, we would say that we were psychologically wounded. We could also call this wounded inner part of ourselves an "ego state." It's almost as if a part of our "self" is frozen in time. Our task is to help a person move past the experience and find closure.

The use of self-disclosure was also encouraged by Chris. That means that the staff or a group leader will share personal details about themselves. To me, it seemed that this would encourage or make it easier for patients to open up as well.

Think about it. You are a patient in the hospital, maybe there against your will if you were committed involuntarily. For whatever reason, you decide to go to the group to see what is happening, and maybe in the back of your mind, you are thinking that you were hurt at some time in the past and it still bothers you.

As long as you don't have to talk about it, you will come. You enter the room with chairs that are in a circular formation with an opening in the middle. You are invited to close your eyes and take a few deep breaths. Everyone closes their eyes including those wearing a staff badge/id. So, you feel safe, and something happens.

What happens? Well, this is called experiential therapy and experiential is a word that is easy enough for the patients to understand because it means what the name says. This is about creating an experience. It's non-directive in the sense that no one is telling you what to focus on or making suggestions about what did or did not happen that was meaningful to you.

I was able to observe that the therapy did have positive effects on patients during the sessions. This was evident from the direct feedback from patients during the group therapy sessions and by observing their facial "affect" – displayed emotions.

What was intriguing for me was that people who were in the hospital with a wide range of different diagnoses seemed to be coming to the survivors' groups and working through past trauma and abuse. The idea that mental illness is only caused by chemical imbalances that occur just because of some genetic predisposition alone must be questioned.

At the very least, some stressors in life seem to be able to create symptoms that one finds in various disorders.