Target Behaviors

lander083077 wrote:I have to disagree with your disagreements.

1. This is not between me and a leader of a faith. Atheism is no more a faith or religion than not having a hobby is a hobby.

Christianity provides one with a set of coping skills. Coping skills i can no longer use as an Atheist. They are broken. Does DBT not deal with coping skills? Some examples of typical coping skills a Christian might use is saying "god works in mysterious ways" to deal with some confusing event. In the conversion to Atheism, those coping skills are lost. When you really think about it, there are far more examples of this kind of coping skills lost in the conversion. Another coping skill was to realize that God still loved me, even when others don't. Atheism provides no such safety net. I agree with you, and said in the first place, that DBT did not deal effectively with these issues.

2. I never said there was a need for more focus on psychology. I said there was a need for the psych world to focus more on the issues involving the transition of the religious to atheism. Please don't misinterpret me again and think I'm saying they need to advocate atheism. That is not what I'm saying. However, as the world increasingly abandons religion, there is a void of hundreds and thousands of years of the social construct called religion. This construct developed alongside real word problems as a means to cope.

Also, the group is a psychology group. Where do you think the research came from? More accurate might be to say.. its an applied psychology group. All of the skills taught by DBT have roots in PSY 101. As a sociology major, my classes range from psychology, sociology, anthropology, and even the sociology of religion. All those skills in DBT are derived from a systematic study utilizing those resources.

Finally, on this point, even though i never said there should be more focus on the psychology behind DBT, I do think their should be. I learned much more from studying the research behind DBT, than I did being in DBT and i feel many who suffer from BPD would benefit from the reasoning behind DBT.

3. DBT is designed to not only include skills training, but individual therapy. Why would you assume we did not discuss these things during those therapy session? The secular therapist, who was personally catholic, was not equipped to understand the complexity as they were seeing through a filtered lens themselves. Their underlying motivation is to "get him back to god", when i cant believe in god anymore than a child can go back to believing in Santa Clause after learning the truth.

I have valid, well thought out reasons for the statements I made. The psychology worlds needs to pay more attention to the issues involving a world transitioning from religion to atheism. I also understand that from the perspective of someone who IS religious, religion would seem a world away from psychological issues. .. but from a sociological perspective, religion is just one of the many social constructs in the world where humans might need psychological help.