WORK WITH BILL

Dr. Bill Pettit has shared the Three Principles within his psychiatric practice for more than 40 years and was mentored personally for over 26 years by Sydney Banks. 

One Cause. One Cure.

“Whatever we have been doing for five decades, it ain’t working. And when I look at the numbers – the numbers of suicides, the number of disabilities, the mortality data – it’s abysmal, and it’s not getting any better. All the ways in which we’ve approached these illnesses, and with a lot of people working very hard, the outcomes we’ve got to point to are pretty bleak.”   — 2012, Thomas Insel, MD, Director of the National Institute of Mental Health USA (from 2005 to 2017)

In a recent study of mental well-being throughout the United States, researcher and Positive Psychologist, Corey Keyes PhD, found that:

• Only 18% of people are Thriving (high degree of mental well-being and resilience)
• 50% of people are Stressed (coping daily, while experiencing considerable stress in response to life’s challenges)
• A whopping 32% are Languishing (struggling daily with feelings of overwhelm, lostness, and despair).

“Problems will never be solved at the same level of Thinking and Understanding that they were created.” — Albert Einstein

In the spirit of offering a new level of thinking, I’m proposing an understanding that could simplify our approach to mental health, and bring hope to a field that is struggling to create significant positive change.

In the 40+ years of clinical and life experience since meeting Sydney Banks, it has become crystal clear to me that there is only one cause of mental suffering, Chronic Mental Stress and the resulting chronic activation of the emergency stress response.

One Mental Illness. One Road to Peace.

“All human psyches are rooted in universal truth and no person’s psyche is better than any others. Only to the degree of the individual’s psychological and spiritual understanding does it appear to vary”   — Sydney Banks, The Missing Link

Rather than focusing on the wide range of possible mental illnesses, and the many separate  clinical treatments that exist for each, I propose that there is just one cause of mental distress, and one road to peace.

This approach is founded on the following :

• There is one mental illness and its name is Chronic Mental Stress (CMS)
• There is one solution and its name is Love and Understanding (they fly together)
• There is one state of mind all people seek and its name is Peace. (It is a byproduct of living in Love and Understanding)
• There are many paths to Love and Understanding
• Understanding through insight, the spiritual (formless) truth pointed to via the Three Principles is a reliable, logical, and joyful path to Love and Understanding.

Over the past 40 years I have seen this approach bring a reawakening of innate mental well-being in thousands of people labeled with mental illness diagnoses, who had been told that they were broken and/or lacking, and may never be able to find peace.

I propose that an incremental understanding of the spiritual nature of life via the Three Principles, results in increases in both ‘stress resistance’ (not taking on undue mental stress in response to life’s challenges) and ‘resilience’ (bouncing back quickly and fully after an initial reaction to a life challenge).

In this mental/spiritual state, our physiology has its best chance to serve us with physical health and vitality. It also naturally leads to an increased ability to maintain a lighthearted, loving and peaceful state of mind, regardless of past painful experiences, present life challenges, or future uncertainties.

Utilizing the same research survey as Dr. Corey Keyes (mentioned above), Three Principles researcher and psychologist, Dr. Tom Kelley, evaluated a cohort of people with significant exposure to the Three Principles. He found that 88% of them were Thriving, 9% were Stressed and 3% were Languishing. Imagine what our families, our cities, our country, our world, would be like if this were the norm, rather than the exception.

If there is indeed only one cause — and one cure — to mental distress, this offers a story of great hope and possibility. One that is worth exploring.

Who I Work With

I feel blessed to support adolescents and adults who have struggled with Chronic Mental Stress — with diagnostic labels such as, Depression, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Bipolar Disorder, Addiction disorders, PTSD, and Schizophrenia — discover their true nature as whole, healthy beings. I also find great joy working with psychiatrists, physicians, other health professionals, educators, Three Principles practitioners, and clergy, who are dedicated to having a loving and contented experience of life, and better helping those they serve.

How I Can Help You

When working with you, I have three goals that will guide our time together. First, I will always encourage you to tell me anything  you feel is important for me to know. Second, I want you to understand, at a deep level, why you experience the difficulties you have, both now and in the past. Third, that together, we will awaken hope that you can live considerably more of  your life in a peaceful, loving state of mind.