Tarhan: Death is an inevitable reality, we cannot see it as impossible. We need to look at how to face such a reality. For example, one of the examples given in the mindfulness technique is this; in severe illnesses, in things that are considered calamities, it is necessary to relax the inner world of the person. Because there is an increase in anxiety and suffering. In the West, those who cannot do this resort to methods such as euthanasia. If we think of the situation as being caught in a flood, we can look at it as swimming with the flow of the flood by riding on a log, that is, teaching us to move forward together by taking us along.
I knew that this interview would not be so easy. I tried to ask the questions by putting myself in your shoes. Here was a psychiatrist who had lost his wife to cancer, who had lived nose to nose with death for 3.5 years, who had felt death to the marrow, but who had to support people and stand upright against these feelings due to his profession. As the saying goes, 'a tailor cannot sew his own clothes'. Was it really so? While reading the sentences he wrote on social media in the middle of the night, I texted him for some reason and said, 'Let's talk about this. Death is a difficult subject to talk about. Life is something we all love but always complain about. Even though we complain so much, when we feel the feeling of death, don't we stop complaining about life and give everything we have not to die? I hope that this interview will maybe support our awareness a little bit. And what I see as the most valuable issue is that I am happy if we can be a small awareness, a small breath to our people who are afraid of death or to everyone who is facing death right now, to people whose relatives are suffering from inexplicable diseases. Life is beautiful despite everything. We talked to Prof. Dr. Nevzat Tarhan, the Rector of Üsküdar University, who was the target of criticism with the message he wrote after the death of Neslican Tay, who defeated cancer three times and lost her fight for life against cancer for the last time, about the awareness of death, being able to face death, what he meant by the message of the secular world, how we can benefit from the power of religions to give meaning to life and comfort, is illness an enemy, is it wrong to see it as an enemy, all these questions and more.
The place and the topic we should start with is about your tweet. You talked about death consciousness. What exactly did you mean? Do you think you were misunderstood?
I unintentionally touched emotions with a message I wrote on the death of our daughter Neslican Tay. My aim was not to upset or hurt anyone. First of all, I wish God's mercy to our daughter and condolences to her family and all her relatives.
I tried to express what I could express in a space of 280 characters. In Greek Mythology, it is said that Pandora's box has been opened. It is a situation like that. I think like this; our Neslican girl opened the box of fear of death, pain and cancer in people. I think I hurt some people with my post. I wish I could find a way without hurting them. I apologize to those people. Because I couldn't tell them what was wrong with me for a long time.
CLARIFICATION IS NECESSARY
What is death consciousness? What does it mean?
In the past, the subject of death in psychiatry was regarded as a field outside the rules. Patients were not allowed to talk about death, it was seen as the domain of theologians. That was the old approach in psychiatry. However, in recent years, there is a branch of science called Tanatology, which studies death, which explains the science of death, and there are also therapy techniques that manage the subject of death, such as mindfulness, (ACT) Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. Here they work on creating death awareness and how to approach those who ignore issues related to death. It is necessary to create death awareness in the person. Living by ignoring death does not reduce that person's anxiety about death. Death needs to be explained.
In other words, do we need to know how to approach a patient who we know is going to die?
It is necessary to study the perception of death, the confrontation with death. Because when this is not done, there is great pain. Even if he/she smiles, he/she cries blood inside.
What should one do when a person who knows they are going to die, or someone who knows they are going to lose a loved one, is melting in front of their eyes every day? For example, their relatives suffer more than themselves, what should be done in such cases?
There are various treatment methods in terms of approach here. In such cases, it is necessary to work on the perception of death. Techniques such as Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) look at how to reconcile the person with death. Here the belief system of the person is addressed. They look at the high values they believe in. For example, there is a model in addiction, where a person's belief in high values is used for treatment. Some people may have a belief in a guardian angel, others in one god, others in a mental refuge, others in nature. It is examined whether they have a high value that gives meaning to their life. Accordingly, we think that the person should interpret the problem they are experiencing under these values.
Death is an inevitable reality, we cannot see it as impossible. We need to look at how to face such a reality. For example, one of the examples given in the mindfulness technique is this; in severe illnesses, in things that are considered as calamities, it is necessary to relax the inner world of the person. Because there is an increase in anxiety and suffering. In the West, those who cannot do this resort to methods such as euthanasia. If we think of the situation as being caught in a flood, we can look at it as swimming on a log with the flow of the flood, in other words, teaching us to move forward together by taking it with us.
Living as if there is no death
What exactly do you mean by the secular world approach?
The word secular world has so many meanings... Political scientists perceive it as secularism. We can look at its definition as worldliness, death and living as if high values do not exist. In the age we are living in, there is a wind of living as if high values do not exist all over the world. Modernism has also brought the wind of living by ignoring spiritual values.
The teaching of living as if ignoring death, and when death is near, euthanasia or putting to sleep in the terminal stage. Personally, I don't want this, I want to think about and explain life after death. Some people may not prefer this. In situations that are expected to result in death, if we provide the right explanation for death for both the person and his/her relatives, if the person logically solves this, if we make the analogy of a river and a flood, during this flood, he/she finds a log, hugs it, guides it and continues to move forward in the river, but does not stop hugging the log. This log here is "Medicine". It is the treatment methods used.
But what is the spirituality of it? Our brain and emotions trigger each other a lot. Are there spiritual causes of diseases?
A human being is not the sum of its constituent parts. We have inorganic substances arranged in the body, but the human being is more than the whole of these. Man is a psychic being. Because when we examine our mental faculties, there is a spiritual field that cannot be solved mentally. Previously in psychiatry it was called the bio-psycho-social model, now we call it the bio-psycho-social and spiritual model. This issue is taken seriously in the world. The World Congress of Psychiatry has a working group called "spirituality, religion and psychiatry", of which I am a member. This working group discusses the relationship between the body and the soul and spirituality.
I mean, does our soul have an effect on our body?
What we call the soul is a psychic entity, but we cannot prove it scientifically at the moment. But we have clues about some of its consequences. For example, quantum science gives us a serious approach to this issue. Previously, the universe was considered matter-based, but quantum science says that the universe is energy-based. It is said that everything happened in an energy band. For example, let's think; there is a wave called P300 produced by our brain. When a person makes a decision and then puts that decision into practice, for example, after deciding to press a button, the brain produces a P300 wave. After 300 milliseconds, this wave gives an action potential. If we look at a period of 300 milliseconds, the decision-making organ is outside our brain. It creates the idea that there is either a field inside our brain that is independent of the waves or that there is an organ outside our brain. Quantum says there is another holographic brain in this case. In quantum dynamics, the biggest thing is the smallest thing and the smallest thing is the biggest thing. Man is only a subjective observer. When you don't observe you are energy, when you observe you exist.
In the book What The Bleep Do We Know, there are three people arguing. One is a quantum physicist, one is a psychiatrist and one is a theologian. They discuss the question of what consciousness is. They are discussing consciousness connected with quantum energy outside the human brain. How we make decisions, consciousness is being discussed. These lead us to this. The universe is a magnetic energy, we are just a point in this energy. Unlike other living beings, human beings have a free will. Other living beings live according to what is in their genetic codes, but since human beings have free will, they are capable of being infinitely good and infinitely bad outside of their genetic codes. He has the freedom to decide and object.
There are four truths that lead people to the truth; the first is positive science - experimentation and observation, the second is reasoning methods, the third is rational intuition - inner voice, and the fourth is beliefs. If these three cannot explain something, beliefs lead to the truth. In the case of death, some people take refuge and comfort in their beliefs. I couldn't do that and I used reasoning to convince myself. My late wife was treated for cancer 10 years ago for 3.5 years. She died in stage 4. The thought of how to relieve her suffering in that process gave me experience. She never complained about her illness, she had a consciousness about her future and death. The peace of mind that this consciousness gave him was a relief. If he hadn't believed in such a high value, if he hadn't thought that we would meet again in the future, he wouldn't have had this peace.
For example, when French President Mitterrand was diagnosed with cancer, they told him that his condition would end in death. When he asked what would happen at the end of this time, they brought evidence from quantum dynamics. They say that after a person dies, there is a time break, time is bent and you move to another dimension. His book is also a bestseller. So people feel the need to find an explanation for death. When people face death, they are looking for a branch to hold on to. Because human beings are not like other living beings, they have a perception of death. Man is the only being who knows that he will die.
EMOTIONAL CAUSES OF DISEASES
They say that when someone close to us dies you face your own fears, do you think this is true?
Facing death is a great pain. It is very painful for a person who has not prepared himself mentally for death after his earthly life. You see the other person melting away despite the classical suggestions that you will get rid of it, that you will do it. He is also aware... In such cases, he may resort to methods such as sedation with medication. If the person is mentally ready, they can work with that person if they wish. There are spiritual counselors abroad for such situations, for example...
In diseases that lead to death, one's own inner feelings, the psychological causes of diseases, they say that people make themselves sick, for example, do you find this true?
This is not 100 percent true. For example, there are many genes that cause cancer. But psychological factors also affect it. When the brain secretes stress hormones, there is pressure on the immune system. The functioning of the immune system weakens. As a result, cells with DNA damage are affected. For example, when the security system is weakened in a country, theft and terrorists attack. Stress is effective not directly but through the pressure it exerts on the immune system. But we are talking about chronic stress. A person does not get sick just thinking that they will get sick. If a person knows a strong meaning against his illness, he is not afraid of his illness, he can face his illness.
So is this acceptance?
In such cases, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is referred to as acceptance and interpretation therapies. There are things that people can afford and things they cannot afford, things they can control and things they cannot control. If he fights with the things he can't afford and the things he can't control, he suffers. Abraham Lincoln said, "I destroy my enemy by making him my friend." If you see illness and death as enemies and you want to defeat them, you defeat them by making friends and you will be at peace.
In life, everyone has the fear of getting sick and dying, this is a universal situation. In such situations, sometimes you develop a defense mechanism. You can relax with the role of being strong in something that you are not strong enough.
Man is not only a material being. There is some invisible reality that we cannot prove at the moment, but we believe in its existence with some reasoning methods, which we explain with quantum dynamics. One's ability to connect with this invisible reality. When the person achieves this, the state of well-being, mood, peacefulness that it gives, gives that person a calmness and they are at peace with themselves. A therapy technique is used to teach people who have to face death how to relate to these illnesses and be at peace with themselves. This therapy technique is done if the person agrees.
The word happiness, which people need the most before dying and is always on their lips... How can we be happy? What can we do to be happy more easily? Is there a method for that? Or is there eternal happiness?
Happiness is not a goal but a process. If people live right, they can achieve happiness. When we see happiness as a goal, happiness runs away. The more you say "I'll catch happiness, it will come," the more it runs away, but if you do your routine work in your daily life, happiness comes by itself. Happiness is about knowing how to live right.
What do you mean by the right way of living?
When I say living right, in psychological health there are 4 areas to be at peace... One is to be at peace with oneself... Not by ignoring one's negative aspects. Because we all have good and bad feelings inside us. We will nurture our good feelings and control our bad feelings. We accept them, not ignore them. There can be grudges, hatred, jealousy, enmity. It exists in all of us as a nucleus. It exists as nuclear energy. So an atom produces nuclear energy. If you send it to the right place, it illuminates something. If you send it wrong, it explodes. The second is to be at peace with one's close environment, one's family. The third is to be in harmony with the social environment. The fourth is professional compatibility. If there is harmony in these 4 areas, the person will be happy. The secret of happiness is to establish good cooperation. Pleasure and happiness are confused. Pleasure is different from happiness... Pleasure is a momentary feeling. Pleasure is tangible pleasure. Eating, drinking, reproduction, sexuality are concrete pleasures. But happiness is in abstract pleasures. For example, being part of a meaning is happiness. Having a goal is happiness. Believing in a higher value is happiness. Not only dreaming of one's own goals and pleasures, but also dreaming for the society one lives in, dreaming of one's favorite team, living by feeling that one is a part of it in terms of one's beliefs... This gives meaning to one's life.
I would like to talk about the 5 items in Seligman's PERMA Model, the latest theory of Positive Psychology. The letter P (positive emotion), E (engagement), R (relationships), M (meaning) and A (accomplishment). One of the pillars of positive psychology is positive emotion. In other words, looking for positive emotions in every event... You tripped on the road and fell. Instead of saying that everything is going wrong, what will happen to me, you can say that there is a good in this, maybe there is a benefit that I cannot see and make a positive comment. Someone you love didn't say hello to you... Instead of saying what kind of a man he is, his nose has grown, you can say that he didn't see it... In other words, to be able to make a positive interpretation of events.
The second is perma engagement... That is, being constantly engaged in an event. Waking up in the morning and having a full day. Having a planned goal for the future. Belonging to something. Being idle negatively affects one's happiness. They must have a job. If this is a high value, there must be something to be attached to. For example, what can a person at the moment of death be attached to? It could be the Creator, or it could be the high values he believes in. It could be the unseen power. This is faith... Here the belief system of the person comes into play.
The third is to have healthy, positive relationships in life. The fourth is meaning... In other words, a person needs to have a meaning in life in order to live. If there is no meaning to live, then why should that person live? The remedy for existential crisis is to add meaning. The person experiencing this crisis says, what is the purpose of life? Where did I come from, where am I going, what is eternity? These questions are a search for meaning, but this is only in human beings. We have meta-cognitive genes, we have supra-mental genes. These genes tell us that we have a sense of time, a sense of death. There is a gene for seeking novelty. These genes do not allow us to grow up ignoring the perception of death like other living things. You cannot declare war on nature, you take precautions against earthquakes. You don't wage war against floods. Just like that, you cannot declare war on death. Because it exists, it is real. Something that humans cannot control and cannot afford. You will accept and manage something that you cannot afford, something that you cannot control, but... You will not let yourself be carried away by its current. You will not lose control, but you will take its wind behind you. In other words, waging war on things that are beyond our power is something that hurts. Instead, we need to think about how to walk with them. This is a therapy technique.
Well then, when we look into your life, we shouldn't declare war on any of our emotions. As you say, happiness, unhappiness, hunger, pain, everything, should we take them with us and love them?
In such cases, for example, bad thoughts come to our minds. A mother, for example, thinks, what if I harm my child? Now, if that person takes that thought seriously, what if I do that, that thought grows and makes her unable to hold her child again. But the thought is not mine. It will not cause any harm if one continues on his/her way by saying, "No way".
So can our thoughts turn us into another person?
If we don't strategize against our thoughts, that thought can lead us into depression, but if we can strategize against those thoughts, the negative thoughts become a whip, a motivation. How do you become while struggling with those negative thoughts? Your psychological defense, your ego gets stronger. The thoughts give you resilience training. They train perseverance, resilience. This is called resilience in positive psychology. In other words, gaining elasticity. How to behave in the face of stress? There is a rubber model, a sponge model and a Teflon model. In the sponge model, when you encounter stress, when an event happens, you ask why it happened, how it happened, you absorb that stress, you swell up and you become unable to move. And what happens in the Teflon model? You try to live by ignoring that stress, you become indifferent. Teflon, you know, doesn't burn itself, but it burns those inside. That's how they take the stress, they upset others but they don't upset themselves. This is also a defense... The third is the rubber model. In the rubber model, you yawn in the face of stress, but don't fall apart. Rubber stretches as a suspension after a while, but it doesn't crumble or break. So if you are rubbery, you absorb energy and give it back. So you have resilience, something that absorbs energy, something that disperses events, but does not disrupt its own integrity. Mindfulness therapy is a way of meeting events without disrupting our own psychological integrity. In psychotherapy techniques, the first generation psychotherapy technique is psychoanalysis. When psychoanalysis was not enough, cognitive cognitive theory was found. That was not enough either. Now the mindfulness technique has emerged. We call it the 3rd wave therapy technique. It is a type of therapy that focuses on things that other types of therapy cannot solve. For example, it works very well in trauma treatment.
A person dies, and the people behind them experience things worse than death. There is a serious problem and we need to think about this side of it. A mother loses her child at a young age. A man loses his wife or a woman loses her husband or a child loses his mother or father. They cannot cope with it. What is done there? Shouldn't these people also receive support?
If the person requests it, they can get therapy support. If the person does not demand support, those traumas can shake the person's psychological defenses. When a person encounters a trauma, there is a 4-stage reaction. At first he protests, does not accept it, ignores it. But then they realize that it is real. When it is real, in the second stage, he becomes depressed, stagnant, collapses. He asks what will happen. Anxiety about the future starts. In the 3rd stage, the person starts bargaining. He says let me do these things and then it will happen. The 4th stage is acceptance. If the person is strong, they quickly overcome these 4 stages and come to acceptance. In therapy techniques or in such catastrophic, shocking experiences, in trauma treatment, we briefly try to lead them to acceptance. This is important. He enters the stage of fighting depression, the stage of fighting illness, the stage of bargaining quickly without the need.
People's sense of worth, the sense of worthlessness, takes people to very different dimensions. It can also cause depression, it can enter those phases that can lead to illnesses. For example, what is the way to increase the sense of worth?
It's about self-perception. A person has a real self, a self they want to be, and a self they feel. The closer these three are to each other, the more at peace they are with themselves. If the self they are not is too high, the person is in a state of anxiety to reach that self, they cannot relax themselves. If the person's real self and the self they feel are the same, they are already at peace with themselves, but if the person's real self is lower than they are, that person's real self is valuable. He tries to extract his real self from the self he feels. Also, if the imaginary me is high, they can usually be in other kinds of diseases.
A person who is at peace with himself establishes a balance between his real self, the self he feels and the self he imagines. A person with low self-worth is a person with low self-esteem. That person cannot see his real self. Therefore, therapy is done on his/her positive sides. On the positive sides, we say, "According to these tests, you have this and that, these are your positive sides. Let's strengthen them to improve the negative aspects" and when those aspects are strengthened, the person normalizes his/her self-perception. So this is self-perception.
It is the same with the perception of death. All studies conducted on elderly patients show that people do not want to die, they have a desire for immortality. This is a universal feeling. In other words, just as we have a feeling of hunger in our stomach, we also have the desire for immortality in our genetic structure. People live with such conditions, but as they get older, the desire to live comes alive more and more. An older person always says, "What can I do to live more? In this way he invests in his mind, in his head. When he realizes that he cannot live, he lets himself go. If that person is at peace with himself, he says, "I am part of a great meaning. Death is just a change of place for me. For me it is passing into another dimension. There are good things and bad things that I have done in this world, but I have done more good things." Then a person is at peace with death. For example, in such cases, many people tend to do more good at the end of life, thinking that at the end of my life, there will be people who will remember me with good deeds.
This is the message of the Prophet: The Prophet's message is that after a person dies, 3 books that cause his spiritual gain will not be closed; one is to be a good son (the good deeds done by him are recorded in his book), the second is to be a useful individual, and the third is to leave a caravanserai or a fountain. That is why our ancestors built fountains and so on. These 3 mean that people's books of good deeds and good deeds are open even after they die. For example, this is the book of being at peace with death. In our belief system, if you want to be at peace with death, you have to behave in this way.
For example, Hürrem Sultan is the most charitable governor sultan. There are still things she did, she is still remembered. I am leaving this world, but I can leave it in peace. So, in fact, this is where the consoling power of religions and belief systems can come from. The most important issue where positive science is helpless: Death. On the subject of death, positive science can no longer find results through experimentation and observation, it can only find results through reasoning.
'Human beings are not only composed of positive emotions'
There is a perception in the world that "Think good, be good" and life coaches and personal development experts have started to write books on this subject. Why did this happen and is this the right method? Is it right for everyone to talk about it?
Here we are dealing with the victims of those methods. There are various personal development techniques, life coaches. Because a human being is not only made up of positive emotions. It is a mixture of positive and negative traits. Life coaches, personal development people ignore the negative traits of those people. They say, "You are a good person, you are strong, you are powerful, you are important, you are successful." They ignore the negative aspects of the person at that moment and give them temporary relief through their positive aspects. But since this is not a rational relief, he doesn't like anyone. He says, "I am strong, what am I? The biggest feature of those techniques is that they inflate egos and isolate people. It relaxes the person for the moment, but in the long run it isolates them. Those techniques can be used if necessary. It is a success technique, not a therapy technique. It can be used for therapy or for success, but it is not a therapy technique. If it were in the hands of a professional, it would address the positive and negative aspects of the person, help them make peace with their negative aspects, and enable them to move forward on their positive aspects. The philosophy of prepare for the worst but expect the best. Those techniques don't say be ready for the worst, they say ignore the worst and wait for the best. This is not realistic. Then you make wrong decisions. Because one does not know one's own weaknesses and weaknesses, one makes an unnecessary exit in an unlikely place. This is not possible. First you will understand the person, you will know his/her strengths and weaknesses, then you will manage his/her stress and pain.
