Dr. Yukio Ishizuka has made numerous television appearances as a psychiatric expert on major networks such as NBC, NHK (Japan), Fuji-Television (Japan), TV Asahi (Japan), and Antenne 2 (France).  Newspaper and magazine articles featuring Dr. Ishizuka and his work with Lifetrack have been published in the New York Times, Newsweek, USA Today, Reader’s Digest, Psychiatric News, L’Express (France), Voice (Japan), and Nikkei Business (Japan).  His first book, Self-Actualization (Kodansha Tokyo, 1982), sold over 45,000 copies in Japan.  The book was reprinted nine times.

Dr. Ishizuka has presented models of individual and organizational health with diverse organizations including AT&T and IBM as well as many Japanese, American, and European elite CEOs.  He is the founder of Japan International Students Association, the recipient of the coveted Japanese Health Culture Award in 2007 by the Minister of Japanese Health at the Japanese Imperial Palace.

Interview or Article

If you would like to contact Dr. Yukio Ishizuka for an interview for Lifetrack Positive Mental Health call 914.967.6210 (New York, USA time).

Please Download Ottawa Journal Article (3MG) for more information on LifeTrack Therapy (succinct for therapy, academics or the press).

Visit http://www.PositiveMentalHealthFoundation.com to understand individuals at their best, happiest, and most creative form.  Link to us to promote health and happiness.

Q :  I have read about Positive Psychology and how it focuses on the positives, is Positive Mental Health the same thing ?

A : Positive Psychology is a movement taking place within psychology and academia, and a welcome one. It is finally swinging the pendulum in the direction of positive human traits and scientifically measuring them. In this respect, it can be most helpful in classifying, understanding and measuring approaches that lead to health.

As I understand it, positive psychology is not a therapy nor a personality model, but analyzes a variety of approaches for positive outcomes such as the human capacity for resistance, or the benefits of gratitude. It is the birth of a new field analyzing tools and methods, which can help measure human strengths.

Positive Psychology can of course study the Lifetrack model of positive mental health which is an integrated personality model based on health (see criteria for positive mental health models by Jahoda).  The model is a step in the direction of a science of health, and defining and quantifying wellbeing.

While the Lifetrack model is not born of the positive psychology movement, it admires its founders Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Dr. Seligman for taking psychology and academia in the right direction. Our hope is that psychiatry will soon follow.

The Lifetrack model of positive mental health is developed by a Japanese psychiatrist Dr. Yukio Ishizuka.  Dr. Ishizuka developed his model on insights from both the East and West and tested it daily by treating a large number of patients over the last 35 years.

The approach uses breakthrough intimacy to help patients in distress overcome and go far beyond a previous best level of adjustment (close relationships, achievement and self).  With the predominance of the pharmaceutical industry, the bias of psychiatry towards the disease model, and the focus on the disbursement of medication, Ishizuka has remained happily isolated from the mainstream.  With only recent awareness of the positive psychology movement, he hopes new doors and directions can be opened.

Towards an understanding of the Mind in Optimal Health and Disease

The Lifetrack model of human personality model can be used to understand both optimal health and disease.  It has been tested on the well, and those in dire distress with ‘psychological illnesses’ such as borderline personality, deep depression and others.  Due to the model’s breadth, it provides fundamental insights on the mind at its best and worst.

Such an understanding of healthy human beings can be taught to psychiatrists and non psychiatrists, it can be applied to the sciences, and used by the general public.

At the same time, because psychiatry is prepared to deal with important symptoms of distress, should the field of psychiatry transform its understanding of health, psychiatrists may be ideally suited to help extremely defensive individuals such as those with borderline personalities (or with other overwhelming defenses) change fundamentally.

The reason psychiatrists may be useful in this role is because they are comfortable with dealing with certain distress signals such as anxiety, anger, physical symptoms, depression or psychosis.  In highly defensive individuals, such symptoms may initially escalate as one attempts to surpass a previous best level of adjustment.  In this sense, a past understanding of distress and disease can be a useful tool.  Should psychiatrists be capable of re-orienting their practice beyond mere symptom relief to the greater goal of building inner health and happiness, this dual expertise will be particularly effective.

Naturally, one does not have to be a psychiatrist to integrate a better understanding of health and happiness or the functioning of the mind.  It is knowledge that should be accessible to all.

Copyright © 2010 Lifetrack Corporation

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No matter how resilient or smart you may be, there may come a time when you have reached your threshold for Stress.

Your threshold can be triggered by both positive and negative events in life.

Hate Life ?  Are you at your threshold of stress?

There is nothing wrong about reaching one’s threshold of stress tolerance — even when such a limit is triggered by positive events (new job, fiance, promotion, newly wed). If you are highly resilient and determined, you are likely to push yourself to your psychological limits faster.

Anyone reaching a threshold of stress tolerance faces five basic alternatives.

These Five Alternatives are: (1) experience more defensive reactions (2) breakthrough (3) retreat/withdrawal (4) suicide/homicide (5) ‘escape’ through addiction or stop-gap measures.

Five Alternatives at the Threshold of Stress Tolerance

Reaching one’s threshold may occur regardless of how resilient or strong one may be.

(1) Stress:

We might experience escalating stress symptoms (anxiety, anger, physical symptoms, depression, and psychosis) warning us that our past experience and current capacity to cope is being exceeded.

Stress is there to warn us that our present capacities are being exceeded.  However, stress may also appear whenever one deviates from a well beaten path, even for the better.  When this happens, stress may cause the individual to resist the very action that is necessary for better long-term adjustment.  This may include becoming far closer to one’s fiance, spouse or partner; achieving what we desire most in life, or becoming at peace with our self.  (See Stress, Stress Types, and Stress Techniques, as well as Life Purpose when facing resistance).

(2) Breakthrough:

Breakthrough involves using a crisis or setback as an opportunity to grow. When we breakthrough and attain a higher level of adjustment in the three spheres (self definition,love definition, work definition), we often free ourselves from distressful symptoms.  When we can not breakthrough on our own, we should reach out for help from others.

(3) Retreat:

We might withdraw or retreat from the immediate source of Stress.  In the context of a close relationship, withdrawal can take the form of de-escalating closeness with one’s partner, separating or divorcing.  In work, in can take the form of changing schools or jobs, asking for an extension, staying home from work.

(4) Alcohol or Drugs:

We might turn to alcohol or drugs in an attempt to numb our stress symptoms and temporarily escape the pressures of reality.  The problem with this ‘solution’ is that after escaping one returns to the same reality, and often with a hangover or addiction to boot.

Addiction to alcohol or drugs is serious.  Not because it may be illegal, but because it reduces or often eliminates the chances that a person can become and remain sufficiently close to another human being.  Since our happiness is dependent on such a close one on one relationship, those who value his or her own happiness and worth need to think twice about this dangerous form of escape.  Drugs consume individuals – destroying the very self it is meant to relieve.  Drugs and alcohol addiction can also destroy those who attempt to love us.

(5) Suicide/Homicide:

Convinced that we are unable to (1) experience more stress (2) breakthrough (3) withdraw, (4) drugs or alcohol no longer provide enough relief, some turn to (5) suicide, homicide, or other violent and destructive action in desperation.

In the mind of someone contemplating suicide the ‘logic’ behind the decision is compelling.  This explains why some individuals go to extremes to make sure the attempt will be successful.  While it is true that the dead and those under the influence of mind altering symptoms may not suffer, they lose the opportunity to breakthrough and grow beyond the limits of their previous experiences.

Both we and our environment changes rapidly; every year, month, week, day, hour, or even second.  Even if outside circumstances do not change, our ‘subjective’ realities can change.  They can do so in such a way that what may have appeared to be a hopeless or intolerable situation may become acceptable.

Suicide is said to be a permanent ‘solution’ to a temporary problem. That is one reason why it is so tragic.

The crisis or problem that causes one to lose perspective, is always a temporary one. Circumstances do change, and if they do not, our perceptions of them can.

Many of those who failed to commit suicide are living proof that the circumstances that once were seen as insurmountable, could be overcome.  Over the past decades ever since the famed Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco was built, some 900 people have jumped from the scenic bridge to their death.  To do so they have climbed over fences and barbed wire in the hope of making sure that their leap will end in certain death.

Miraculously, however, one out of fifty survived.  The survivors accidentally entered the water vertically as they struck its surface.  The survivors suffered multiple fractures and injuries, but did not die.  A study followed the survivors over two decades and found that not a single one of them tried to kill himself or herself again.

Despite compelling reasoning that lead to the conviction that life was not worth living, when a new perspective opened up, the same lives became worth living.

In retrospect, one has to wonder what would have happened to the rest of the forty-nine, if they lived to develop a new perspective on their lives.

Retreat When Necessary and Breakthrough When Possible

Breakingthrough

For all of us, the goal is to breakthrough when possible and retreat when necessary.  To do this successfully, we must accurately assess external realties, inner capabilities and limitations, and the consequences of our decisions and actions in the three primary spheres of life.

The process of an individual going through maximum distress to reach optimal wellbeing provides a rare opportunity to understand the structure of personality and its functioning.  In the experience of Dr. Ishizuka, the greater the distress, the greater the opportunity for a profound and life changing breakthrough.  In Lifetrack therapy, breakthrough is accomplished through breakthrough intimacy, the process of becoming far closer than ever before to another human being.  If you are single or alone, then you will be helped or encouraged to find someone with whom you can work.

For those seeking more help to overcome stress, see Stress, Overcoming Fear,  Stress Types, and Stress Techniques (four key steps to health).  For those overwhelmed, reach out to others and do not hesitate to seek professional help.  In the United States, one can call 911 if one has suicidal thoughts or go to your nearest emergency room.  In both cases, you will talk to a mental health professional.  A friend or loved one can accompany you. As a health care consumer, you are entitled to ask as many questions as you need, ask for reasons behind any decisions, ask for a second opinion, and be involved in all decisions regarding your care.

While it is true, that most states do have laws requiring that individuals who are in imminent danger of harming themselves be hospitalized for a period of time in order to provide psychiatric treatment (even if they do not want to be hospitalized), in most states this hold period is 72 hours.  This period can be re-assuring when filled with panic or depressive thoughts.  It may be a turning point, one that assists you in the relief of suffering, and opens a door for building a new life of meaning.

One should not take a chance with the beauty and fragility of one’s life.  Taking action by asking for help can lead to new insights and relieve suffering.

There is only one of you here in this world.  You are here for a reason; a beautiful one. Reach out and get help.

Copyright © 2010 Lifetrack Corporation

Visit http://www.PositiveMentalHealthFoundation.com to understand individuals at their best, happiest, and most creative form.  Link to us to promote health and happiness.

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When we face new challenges that exceed our existing capacity to cope, previously successful patterns of thought, feeling, and action become ineffective.

To breakthrough these obstacles one should follow four key steps:

Four Key Steps

Practice taking 4 key steps.  These steps can help you make a breakthrough to reach higher levels of adjustment.

Each step is important.  The quality of each step depends on what precedes it.  The effectiveness of your action depends on your capacity to decide.  This in turn is based on an accurate perspective and recognition of realities.

When you fail to recognize realities, perspective is biased, and your decision or resulting action does little to reduce distress and build health.

1. Recognition

When experiencing stress one has to recognize which of the five stress types one may be experiencing (anxiety, anger, physical-symptoms, depression or psychosis).

Awareness of Your Inner State

• Is one of the five stress types stronger than the other?
• Are you experiencing a mixture of the five?
• Are the stress symptoms escalating as in the hierarchy of defense?
• As you ignore each of the defenses in turn , does another distressing symptom come to replace it?

Naturally, when faced with physical symptoms, you should first consult a physician to rule out physical illnesses.  Once you have ruled out a physical cause for the illness, take a close look at how you are choosing to live your life in this present moment.  Is there room for improvement in your sense of self?  Close relationships?  Work?

Notice when the stress arises.

Intimacy and Stress

• Are you experiencing stress in the context of a close relationship that is just beginning?
• Are stress symptoms arising in marriage intimacy or as commitment increases?
• Are you frustrated in your capacity to find love?  To keep or build love?
• Do you feel like you get scared or ‘mess things up’ just as you are becoming closer and happier?
• Do you fight just after a nice night out together or finally some time alone?
• Is it as you become closer that you encounter a setback?
• Is there one dimension of intimacy (intellectual-social, emotional, physical-sexual) that is harder for you to become close to than others?
• Is the experience of being intimate with one person in all three dimensions (intellectual-social, emotional, physical-sexual) difficult or impossible?

Achievement and Stress

• Do you find yourself making work excuses to stay home from work?
• Do you dread what you do?
• Are you overwhelmed by work goals, a difficult boss, an impossible job?
• Is there little sense of satisfaction from what you do all day?
• Are you always thinking of work first?
• Do you only feel a sense of mastery at work and feel that time spent elsewhere is wasted? Are you seeking your purpose in life through work alone?
• Do you think that when you achieve a goal, you will allow yourself to be happy?

Self and Stress

• Are you filled with negative thoughts or a situation that replays itself over and over in your head?
• Do you feel stuck in a role that you do not care for?
• Do you feel anxious as you lose your attachment to unhappy life events?
• Are you ‘in touch,’ ‘at peace,’ or ‘in control’?
• Do you experience outbreaks of anxiety, anger, physical-symptoms, depression or psychosis for seemingly small things?
• Do you feel out of control or filled with underlying anxiety?

Recognition: By placing our experiences in the context of the three spheres, we can improve our ability to recognize and understand our subjective response to life’s experiences.  When stress signals surface it is important to take this first step promptly, or the stress signals may escalate on the hierarchy of stress.

2. Perspective

Once you recognize that you are experiencing stress symptoms in one or more of the three spheres, you will need to gain perspective.

To do that effectively you have to first accept realities (positive and negative).

That is you need to accept the situation ‘as is’.  To be in the moment with whatever is occurring rather than denying its presence, wishing it could be otherwise, or thinking of anything that you could have done to make it any different from it the present.

When the current moment is painful, you may wish to avoid this at all cost.  But, if you wish to breakthrough you will have to come to terms with the present.  To do so, allow yourself to feel the emotion, even a painful one.

When you have loved, or worked hard for something and are disappointed by loss, it is natural to feel pain and hurt.  When you have lost a loved one, loss is particularly painful. Although some grieving is important and necessary, when we replay the loss over and over in our mind we suffer over and over.

Accept the Present

To change stress into an opportunity for breakthrough, we accept the current challenge, however difficult. If we do not, we only create more anger, anxiety, physical symptoms, depression or psychosis.  Only after acceptance of the negatives can we take positive action (action not consumed by stress or negative energy).

When we learn to accept the moment, even a painful one, a new perspective arises. The challenge then becomes an opportunity for breakthrough.

Learn to Stop Negative Thoughts Replaying in you Head

When you replay the events that triggered stress in your mind over and over, you increase or accentuate symptoms of stress.

To calm the mind, you need to recognize that those negative thoughts are not you. Thoughts are subjective and respond to something that may be occurring in your life, but thoughts are not the objective event, nor are they you.

When a negative thought arises, look at it as if you were watching it from the outside. Do not judge the thought.   The thought is a subjective interpretation of an objective event. It is not the event itself, nor is it you (you are something far greater).

While you cannot always change your external environment or a difficult reality in your life, you can change the way you think, feel, and act about those same realities.  In this area (the subjective response), you alone have control.

By accepting the moment, however difficult, you can change the inner subjective experience of pain and suffering.   If you can learn to accept the inevitable negatives in your life and increase the positives, you can take full advantage of your leverage over the subjective factor.

Perspective: By accepting reality ‘as is’ one can take positive action from a state of strength.  By building one’s three spheres despite the inevitable negatives in one’s life, one can emerge from a challenge transformed.

Track Inner Health and Happiness to Gain Perspective

For those experiencing distress, tracking oneself (in each of the three spheres) and viewing graphs of one’s progress, can help to improve one’s ability to recognize patterns in thoughts, feelings, and actions over time.  Tracking helps you to accept what is without replaying it over and over.

The act of self rating helps you control the inner subjective experience of life that contributes to our happiness or distress.  As one rates oneself (this takes 5 minutes), one can better understand and accept the present realities.  One can use the data to view graphs on our inner state.  In doing so, we can look back and gain perspective on past patterns.

We rate ourselves to make the present more alive.  To become conscious of the subjective factor and the areas of our life that contribute to well-being.  Even if you may not yet know how to interpret the scores, the very act of rating psychological spheres that determine your inner health can open a new perspective.

Tracking inner health is a tool.  Accept the ‘bad’ you cannot change.  Build on the ‘good.’

To build inner health, we must gain perspective on our whole life, to learn to accept the inevitable negatives in any one sphere, and to increase the positives.

Stress Exercises to Gain Recognition and Keep Perspective

If you want to track yourself, use the Lifetrack positive health adjustment sheet found in the Ottawa journal download LifeTrackTherapy (3 MG).

3. Decision

By asking yourself where you stand in relation to the five alternatives, you can improve your ability to breakthrough to higher levels of well-being.

Will the decision you are about to make, move you towards:

• Breakthrough?

• Withdrawal?

• Addiction?

• Stress?

• Death?

  Breakthrough when possible, withdraw when necessary.

4.  Action

After acceptance of the situation ‘as is’ and recognition that we are far more beautiful and profound than the anxiety, anger, physical-symptoms, depression or psychosis that may pervade us, we gain the perspective on the whole of our life and not just one life event.

We emerge capable of making decisions in a state of  health.  Effective action follows.

Effective action comes after successfully taking the other three steps.   If you have an accurate recognition of what builds health, a more informed perspective, decision, and effective action will flow.  In other words, if you have recognized what determines your well-being, gained perspective on how to achieve and maintain it, and have decided to take steps to change, then you are ready for effective action.

Action that comes from acceptance of a situation is stronger than action driven from any negative energy or positive hopes for future happiness.

Copyright © 2010 Lifetrack Corporation

Visit http://www.PositiveMentalHealthFoundation.com to understand individuals at their best, happiest, and most creative form.  Link to us to promote health and happiness.

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Since symptoms of distress can be overwhelming, the Lifetrack model categorizes stress symptoms (including psychiatric symptoms) into 5 broad categories and teaches us how to recognize them as escalating warning signals that the mind is overwhelmed by the challenges it faces.

According to Dr. Yukio Ishizuka, stress is not a disease or the cause of suffering but a natural and inevitable consequence of the interaction between one’s pattern of personality and life’s challenges.

Stress signals us that our ways of thinking, feeling and acting — our personality — is inadequate to handle the challenges we currently face.  The symptoms of stress often will persist and escalate until we are forced to pay attention.

Five Stress Types

At different moments in life, one may encounter symptoms of stress. One can experience anxiety, anger, physical symptoms, depression or psychosis — or a mixture of all of them. They can be triggered by an event, or our perception of an event, in our self, intimacy or achievement spheres.

All signals of stress have the same mission: to force you to reach out for help.  It is important to recognize that regardless of how bright, strong and resilient you may be, if the challenges you face are more than you can handle at one time, any of the five symptoms may manifest. Which symptoms you experience depends on your innate characteristics, vulnerabilities, and earlier experiences of successful or unsuccessful coping.

Anxiety

Anxiety can mobilize you to do what needs to get done. However, when you are constantly anxious, you may be getting a signal that something is wrong.

Anger

If you are forced to do what you feel too difficult or uncomfortable, irritability and anger may join or replace anxiety. While anger can mobilize you to take action, when out of control it becomes counter-productive.

Physical Symptoms

If you are unwilling or unable to accept that you are under stress, physical symptoms may be the only way to force you to slow down. Even if you believe that your illness is psychologically induced, it is always important to seek medical advice.

Depression

A depressed mind shuts down, protecting itself much like a fuse designed to blow when overloaded. Depression usually forces people to reach out. Efforts to achieve “the impossible” are replaced by preoccupations with the distressful symptoms of depression.

Psychosis

When other distress signals such as depression are ignored or not tolerated, psychosis may be triggered. Thoughts, feelings and actions become incoherent, confused, inappropriate, ambivalent or paralyzed.

Someone who experiences psychotic symptoms loses his or her capacity, to think, feel and act coherently and would not be able to recognize the symptoms of psychosis nor to rate himself or herself until medication has returned the mind to normal functioning.

Psychotic symptoms must be treated by professional help.  Medications are essential to control such symptoms.  Once controlled, the individual can then return to the same challenge of becoming closer to another human being, developing a sense of self or achievement.

The Hierarchy of Stress

The five stress types (anxiety, anger, physical-symptoms, depression and psychosis) can sometimes be experienced as a hierarchy of stress.

As a first defense the mind may experience anxiety.  If anxiety is not heeded, the mind may then experience anger.  Should that too not be heeded, physical symptoms may develop.   For some depression could follow.  And for others, psychosis.

Not all individuals experience a hierarchy of symptoms.  Some have a mixture of the five. Others have a clear ‘preference’ for one of the five stress types that seems to effective in slowing them down.  Each time a symptom works in the past or is successful at stopping us from a stressful situation, it may become embolden, and re-occur at times seeming to manifest itself as a disease.

Copyright © 2010 Lifetrack Corporation

Visit http://www.PositiveMentalHealthFoundation.com to understand individuals at their best, happiest, and most creative form.  Link to us to promote health and happiness.

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Fear and love, love and fear go together.

Some experience fear as a fear of people, others as a fear of bad love that ultimately disappoints, still others as fear of failure or fear of death.

Fear and love accompanies each other, as we push ourselves far beyond a previous best level of intimacy, self or achievement.

Only, after we push ourselves several times beyond a previous best, does fear lessen.  As such, fear should not stop us as we build inner health.  Our goal is not to lessen fear at all costs, but to experience inner health and happiness despite fear and initial resistance.

Fear and Love: Fear of the Unknown?  Fear of People?

Stress or fear can be encountered as we build inner health beyond a previous best level of achievement, intimacy or self.

In the Lifetrack model of positive mental health, Dr. Yukio Ishizuka defines and measures fear as the five stress types (anxiety, anger, physical-symptoms, depression or psychosis).   Some experience this fear as a fear of love, a fear of the unknown, fear of death, fear of people, others as a fear of success (fear as one move towards a desirable goal).

In achievement, fear may take the form of feelings such as ‘ I don’t want to work ‘ or ‘ I have too much work ‘, or simply being fed up with ‘ endless weekend work .’  A need to trim work, a creative and increasing number of work excuses, or the loss of work motivation are all signals that one is exceeding one’s capacity to cope.

In relationships, fear may be experienced as you grapple with the question of whether and when is a relationship over, a fear of people, a fear of bad love, a fear of love hate relationships, being overwhelmed with marriage life, intimacy in marriage, fear of commitment, or growing marriage intimacy.

Hate Life Itself ?

Do you hate life itself?  The incapacity to be at peace, in touch or in control of one’s self prevents one to live laugh love.

To overcome fear one must learn to love again, to find meaning in what we do, and a sense of lightness in life.  One does this by building intimacy, achievement and self at much higher levels than a previous best– despite fear.  This is not easy and when an individual is depressed this often involves professional help.  It is important to seek help early and not wait until when is no longer willing or able to reach out.

To overcome fear one must understand the nature of fear or stress (stress definition), the types of fear or stress symptoms (stress types), and (stress techniques) to overcome challenges.  The perspective that fear or stress can be an opportunity for a breakthrough is the first step to changing one’s life (going far beyond ‘ I hate life ‘ to a new experience of wellbeing.)

Copyright © 2010 Lifetrack Corporation

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When we encounter a challenge in our Self (self definition), Intimacy (love definition), or Achievement sphere (work definition) that is either positive or negative, we can experience Stress or Fear.

In the Lifetrack model of health, individuals rate their peaks of stress as they relate to changes in their sense of self, intimate relationships and achievements.

This helps us understand not only the nature of stress, but how we can use challenges to overcome symptoms of stress and anxiety.

Five Stress Types

Symptoms of stress can be varied.  For simplification Dr. Yukio Ishizuka groups them into five major stress types: anxiety (symptoms of stress and anxiety), anger (stress and anger), physical symptoms (physical symptoms of stress), depression (depression stress), and psychosis.

Regardless of how bright, strong, or resilient you may be, if the challenges you face in life are more than you can handle, one or more of the above symptoms may manifest itself.  These symptoms may not subside until you respond to the source of distress.

Observe them and recognize that these distress signals are there to alert you that you have surpassed your stress threshold in one or more of the three spheres.  You may have to slow down and re-assess what is causing stress.  Only after a proper recognition of realities can one gain perspective and take positive action to build inner health.

As overwhelming as such symptoms may be, they are temporary.  They are not you.  Seek a proper recognition of realities, perspective, decision and action that build health.  If you cannot bear the suffering or are not able to breakthrough, reach out to loved ones, to your spouse, a friend or a professional.

Stress Definition

Negative Peak: Negative peak experiences within a given rating period.

Anxiety: Thoughts, feelings and actions that signal anxiety, nervousness, tension, worry, and fear.

Anger:  Thoughts, feelings, and actions that are angry, unfriendly, hostile, and mean

Physical Symptoms: Any and all physical symptoms and feeling of illness

Depression: Thoughts, feelings, and actions that are negative to the point of being beyond your control

Psychosis:  Thoughts, feelings, and actions that signal inconsistency, confusion, inappropriateness, ambivalence or paralysis

Note on Psychosis:

Psychosis as defined here can be even applied to the ‘healthy’ mind.  Traditionally psychosis is used to describe the ‘mentally ill’ ie. a person talking to himself or herself out loud or experiencing visions.  Most of us have fortunately never experienced such a painful state (although many ‘healthy’ people when placed under enough stress such as a battlefield do).

Even healthy people think to themselves.  You may be aware of a voice (your own thoughts) constantly replaying what you should have done yesterday or will not get to do tomorrow.  For most of us, this is normal.

However, negative or inconsistent thoughts when playing over and over may contribute to paralysis, confusion, scattered behavior or exhaustion.  When we obsessively think about what to do next or what we should have done yesterday, our ‘inner voice’ is out of control.  We can rate this ‘loud’ inner voice in the Lifetrack scale as ‘psychosis.’  This state can occur in ‘healthy’ human beings. When trained our state of mind can be clear and in the present moment, free of such incessant noise.

Someone who experiences traditional psychotic symptoms (frightening visions, or cannot distinguish the inner voice from outer voices) may lose his or her capacity, to think, feel and act coherently.  He or she is not able to recognize the symptoms of psychosis nor to rate himself or herself until medication has returned the mind to normal functioning.

Psychotic symptoms must be treated by professional help.  Medications are essential to control such symptoms.  Once controlled, the individual can then return to the same challenge of becoming closer to another human being, developing a sense of self or achievement.  Due to the nature of the symptoms, however, such individuals need a strong support system and most must continue medications even when feeling well.

Copyright © 2010 Lifetrack Corporation

Visit http://www.PositiveMentalHealthFoundation.com to understand individuals at their best, happiest, and most creative form.  Link to us to promote health and happiness.

Read more about overcoming fear, five stress symptoms (stress types), stress techniques, and alternatives of the threshold of stress (don’t hate life).  In Lifetrack therapy the objective is not the mere elimination of stress symptoms, but building inner health and happiness.

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Although each of the three spheres (Self, Intimacy and Achievement) is fundamental to the experience of well-being or happiness, the central and most difficult challenge for adults is the struggle to become and remain close in a close interdepenent relationship.

Our capacity to love grows with us.  As an adult, the most interdependent and meaningful human relationship is the couple.  As this relationship has an intellectual, emotional and physical dimension it has the potential for the greatest level of human intimacy. Conversely when this adult relationship fails, disappoints or is lost altogether, it becomes the most important source of stress, pain or suffering.

Find Love, Marriage Intimacy, a Happy Close Relationship

To love a man or woman in a couple relationship is not easy.  It encompasses the capacity and willingness to give and receive acceptance, dependence, commitment, concern, affection, love, companionship, sensual pleasures and sexual excitement.  After the initial stages of ‘infatuated love’ or ‘passive fusional love,’ relationships require effort.  An individual will encounter defenses or stress symptoms in oneself (anxiety, anger, physical symptoms, depression or sometimes psychosis) and in one’s partner as he or she becomes far closer in the nine elements of intimacy (love definition).

When defenses are too strong, a breakthrough in intimacy may require the help of a third party.  To achieve a closer relationship than ever before, one has to be open to a new experience of intimacy that goes beyond our traditional experience of passive love.

New Love Definition

Intimacy or closeness goes far beyond understanding better marriage communication.  It is not just how you communicate in a close intimate relationship, but what you communicate that is important (see love definition).  To understand our fear of rejection or getting hurt in close intimate relationships is not enough.  We must overcome our defenses (anxiety, anger, physical symptoms, depression or psychosis) provoked by increasing levels of intimacy.  It is only after breaking through in all nine elements of intimacy at a far greater level than our previous best, that inner transformation and a release from stressful symptoms occurs.

The experience of breakthrough intimacy is life changing.  It does far more than save marriages.  Intimacy is central to an individual’s quest for inner well-being (peace, friendliness, physical health, happiness and mastery).   For this reason, in Lifetrack therapy breakthrough intimacy is an integral part of marriage or family therapy, as well as a fundamental experience in all individual therapy with adults.

Intimacy: Largest Impact on Human Psyche

Dr. Ishizuka has found that regardless of the problem (self, intimacy or achievement), working on the intimacy sphere (a close intimate relationship) creates the largest impact on the human psyche.

Even if the problem arises in the self sphere (being in touch, at peace and in control of the self) or the achievement sphere (difficult job, work goals, the desire for work first, the compulsive need for weekend work, loss of a job), intensive work on human intimacy can create a breakthrough in all three spheres of one’s life.

Intimacy Increases Self and Achievement More than Direct Work on Achievement Sphere

In fact, despite the many reasons people come to see a psychiatrist (they are as varied as your imagination will allow you to suppose), Dr. Ishizuka has found that working intensively and almost exclusively on the intimacy sphere produces the most dramatic and long-term change–particularly on a person’s sense of self and achievement.  To examine the four stages of transformation through intimacy and its effect on self and achievement read Stages of Inner Transformation.

There is something about human intimacy at a much higher level that has a profound healing effect.  This baffling phenomena convinced Dr. Ishizuka that a close loving relationship is the critical factor in experiencing individual happiness and optimal adjustment.

Self and Achievement must Catch up to Rising Intimacy

Although intimacy is an important lever for fundamental personality change, alone it is not sufficient to sustain internal adjustment.  A sense of self and achievement must catch up with a high level of intimacy for well-being to be experienced and maintained.

Breakthrough Intimacy Eliminates Symptoms

Breakthrough intimacy (closeness beyond a previous best) eliminates symptoms by making them unnecessary.  This is done by repeatedly focusing on improving closeness until defenses such as anxiety, anger, physical symptoms, depression or psychosis disappear altogether.

To succeed one must help both individuals in the couple, regardless of the person who initially sought help.  Breakthrough intimacy consists of getting the couple several times closer than their previous best (or when they were happiest).

Success entails helping the couple overcome symptoms on both sides, to attain a much higher level of intimacy where defenses such as anxiety, anger, physical symptoms, depression or psychosis become unnecessary.  Symptom elimination of anxiety, anger, physical symptoms, depression or psychosis is a by-product of a successful Lifetrack therapy, but it is neither its goal nor the criteria by which it measures its result.

Copyright © 2010 Lifetrack Corporation

Visit http://www.PositiveMentalHealthFoundation.com to understand individuals at their best, happiest, and most creative form.  Link to us to promote health and happiness.

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Econometric Modeling, Quantification and the Subjective Mind

Ishizuka, Nathalie, “Travel inside the Mind of an Executive: To Hell, Back and Beyond,” Analyzes the extensive daily self-rated data by one of Dr. Yukio Ishizuka’s patients over a five month period of dramatic change (200 pages), Econometric Modeling Applied to Examine Model on Well-being and Happiness, July 1996.

Kishi, N., “A Man Who Dares: A Psychiatrist who Quantifies the Human Mind,” Bushu Weekly, November 4,1993. Interview with Dr. Ishizuka.

Casey, E., “A New Computer Tool,” Wall Street Micro News, Oct. 1985.

Wadie, M., “Psychiatric Software Moves Ahead,” American Business, Winter 1986. Interview article with Dr. Ishizuka.

Samuels, R. Ph.D., “Life-Track,” Computer Software Review, Psychotherapy in Private Practice, Spring 1986.

Ishizuka, Yukio. “Breakthrough Intimacy – Treating Personality” APA (American Psychiatric Association) Annual Meeting, San Diego, May 2007. The paper discusses the quantified results of 1,172 patients treated with Lifetrack method over the last 20 years.

Ishizuka, Nathalie and Ying Zhao, “Applying quantitative modeling to the study of the Mind,” Submitted in class on quantitative methods at Haas School of Business, May 1998.

APPLYING QUANTITATIVE MODELING TO THE STUDY OF THE MIND

ABSTRACT
In this paper we will use Dr. Yukio Ishizuka’s model of mental health (Ishizuka, 1982, 1988) and the extensive daily self-rated data presented by one of his patients (who shall be called Mike) to better understand whether inescapable causes of well-being really exist. Simple multiple regression will be used to allow the reader the pleasure of jumping into Mike subjective world.

It is the hope of the authors that the theory, data and methodology found in this research can in time lead to (1) better understand the nature and interaction of human psychological needs for self-actualization, (2) provide the first quantifiable means to examine and refine an understanding of psychological health from a systems perspective, and (3) explain how subjective perceptions of a person’s sense of self, intimacy and achievement can contribute to overall psychological health.

This paper is a shorter version that builds on the earlier work by Ishizuka, Nathalie “Travel Inside the Mind of an Executive: To Hell, Back and Beyond.”

Editors and Journals

If an editor is interested in a chapter for book format, or journal form, please notify the author. If you have a syllabus with assumptions about healthy human beings applied to organizations, economics, negotiation, political science or other fields contact Nathalie Ishizuka through the Positive Mental Health Foundation Contact Form.  She is interested in collecting these for future use and sharing.

More on Psychology of Health, Organizations and Nations:

• Organizations
• Nations
• Japan
• Economics
• Negotiation
• Crisis Management & Diplomacy
• Economic Integration
• War, Crisis & Health
• International Affairs
• Political Science

A Need for Models based on Healthy Human Beings

Organizational and International behavior should be based on assumptions about healthy human beings.  Read section a Science of Health (life way), Criteria for Health Models (science of happiness), Happiness Defined? Quantified?  (cycle of life),  Happier? (fear of the unknown),  Why Positive Mental Health Works (objective subjective), and Insights (life purpose).

Visit http://www.PositiveMentalHealthFoundation.com to understand individuals at their best, happiest, and most creative form.  Link to us to promote health and happiness.

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Applications about healthy human beings to economics, international affairs, nations, organizational behavior.  A new organizational behavior concept or simply a new field of international behavior based on healthy human beings?