This is Part 1 of a four-part series introducing the BCA Holistic approach to mental health.
What makes people change? How do they change? How can we initiate intentional mental health changes that are stable, durable, and can be generalised across time and situations? These are easy questions to ask and incredibly difficult to answer.
Change requires that we think, feel, and act differently to become something more than what we just were, which happens every day. Each day we level up in life by experiencing another day. We are constantly changing and cannot stop changing. Change is a constant. But intentional change is not a constant. Intentional change requires us to choose, put effort into, and create for ourselves, even if we cannot see or understand what we are doing or where we are going.
Intentional change is challenging. Intentional change moves thinking into believing.
To use a metaphor, change is like floating in an ocean. The ocean’s tides, currents, and waves are constantly tossing us about. The ocean’s fish, animals, and plants are constantly interacting with us. And then there is you, just floating and changing. With effort, you can intentionally change by swimming in a desired direction. You can develop skills, gain experience, use tools, and get help in your swimming efforts. Intentional changes matter.
A more useful question is: what is your process to intentionally change? What internal motivation makes you decide to start swimming towards a distant, unseen shore? How do you use your mindful insight to assist mental health clients to embrace intentional changes?
As a mental health therapist for over 20 years, I have seen many clients lost and floating in an ocean, unaware that they have a choice to direct the changes they are experiencing. Many of these clients have been floating for years. Many have repeatedly sought therapeutic help, only to discover that the therapist is also floating in an ocean. These clients are everyday people, including therapists, doctors, teachers, and many with extensive education, incredible skills, and insights. Often, clients possess greater abilities than the mental health therapist. Mental health struggles impact everyone, as they are much more than just personal skills or abilities. Often therapy helps, but sometimes it does not. A major struggle to improve is summed up by Albert Einstein: “You cannot solve problems using the same level of thinking that was used to create them.”
Levelling up to solve a problem is easy to show in the ocean metaphor – GPS (global positioning system). If you are floating in the middle of the ocean, even an idiot showing up with GPS can easily level up your awareness and tell you the shortest direction to an unseen shore. If a kid shows up with swimming fins, you now have a levelled-up ability to swim faster. Regardless of where it comes from, levelling up facilitates intentional changes, which are the bedrock for improving mental health.
Levelling up when dealing with mental health issues is difficult but possible and necessary if we want to improve mental health services. Level-up thinking is behind the motivation and creation of the BCA Holistic approach to mental health – a process that began when I, as an ADHD teenage nerd, embraced Mark Twain’s quote: “Never let schooling interfere with your education.”
That quote prompted my first levelled-up shift in thinking: while schooling is essential to build an understanding of life, academia is not the only means through which we are educated or learn about life. Thus began a journey to embrace schooling, without letting it interfere with seeking a more expansive, integrated, and levelled-up education about life.
Kids and clients, teenagers and students, often level up their understanding by embracing Euripides’ idea: “Question everything. Learn something.” A quote I was unaware of, but enthusiastically embraced in college while trying to understand my mental health process.
In 1979, as a University of Minnesota freshman, I asked a psychology professor: “Do our lives and how we choose to live make a difference in our DNA?” I wanted to know if our life choices made a difference. His response was: “No, DNA is just how things get mixed together and does not change.” At that time, this was the current level of thinking. But levelling up, “we are finding out that our DNA is not always set in stone,” according to 2017 research led by Professor Thom McDade, which shows that DNA can be modified by childhood experiences. Today, epigenetics seeks to understand how our lives impact DNA. As Phoebe Crawley wrote for The Royal Institution in 2023, “Epigenetic chemical changes influenced by our life alter the availability of the genetic code, ‘switching’ genes on or off.” As a civilisation, we have levelled up to discover that our life choices do impact DNA.
In 1985, as a University of Michigan graduate social work student, in a class on substance use and addiction, I asked a professor: “Could TV be an addiction, based on causing rapid behavioural changes, impacting our biology, and being ingested visually?” That question was met with laughter from my fellow students and the professor’s emphatic “No, it is not.” Since then, the world has changed and we have levelled up our understanding of social addictions.
Research shows that social media, integral to contemporary life, offers significant connectivity and entertainment benefits. But its pervasive use has given rise to social media addiction, particularly among teenagers, characterised by excessive screen time, compulsive checking, and detrimental effects on real-life relationships and responsibilities. Addictive social media use mirrors the patterns seen in substance use disorders. Once again, we have advanced our understanding by recognising that social entertainment can also become addictive.
The first point I am trying to make is that levelling up requires acceptance of a certain amount of curious, fearless stupidity. “If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research,” to again quote Albert Einstein. Upgrading our understanding starts by being foolish, silly, and questioning everything. As Bruce Lee insightfully expressed: “A wise man can learn more from a foolish question than a fool can learn from a wise answer.”
Which brings up a second point: how do we know when that “something new” we learned is useful? If we are foolish enough to ask, seek, and discover something new without acquiring any levelled-up insights of understanding, we may not know what we have just discovered. We may embrace our ignorance and ignore our insights because yesterday we did not know they existed. Don Herold brilliantly expresses this idea by saying: “Unhappiness is not knowing what you want and killing yourselves to get it.”
Killing yourself while striving to get to an unknown place is frustrating and painful. Yet, when the unknown is validated and embraced, it becomes a complex and powerful motivation for intentional change. As Alan Watts expressed in The Wisdom of Insecurity: “Nothing is more powerful and creative than emptiness.”
That is how and why, in 1985, during a statistics class on Deming’s quality concepts, an unexpected creative spark began a search to discover the BCA Holistic approach with the quote: “If you cannot describe what you are doing as a process, you do not know what you are doing.”
BCA is about seeking to validate and understand the unknown and often overlooked process of mental health. A holistic view that incorporates academic insights and research, but also embraces the powerful real-life experiences and strengths of a struggling client. BCA is about levelling up to discover or create previously unseen opportunities for intentional changes to improve the process of mental health therapy practices.
Dane Jorento, MSW, LICSW is a speaker available for keynotes, seminars, and workshops on mental health, emotional well-being, trauma, ADHD, self-esteem, relationships, and sexual health. His expertise includes BCA Holistic Therapy, EMDR, and DBT approaches.
