There's Still Space Available....

[JayB]

There's help for a great many of you available, for free, in Florida - of all places.

 

"Florida Kerry supporters meet for group therapy

Voters shout epithets at President Bush during first PEST counseling session

 

 

Twenty John Kerry supporters met for their first group therapy session in

South Florida Thursday, screaming epithets at President Bush as they shared

their emotions with licensed mental health counselors.

The first of several free noontime therapy sessions at the American Health

Association in Boca Raton was designed to treat what mental health

counselors have dubbed Post Election Selection Trauma (PEST).

“If I had a cardboard cutout of President Bush, and these people wanted to

throw darts at it, I would let them do it,” Robert J. Gordon, AHA executive

director, told the Boca News after the session. “It’s no joke. People with

PEST were traumatized by the election. If you even mention religion, their

faces turn blister-red as they shout at Bush.”

Although the meeting was closed to the press, AHA therapists obtained

permission from participants to provide an anonymous transcript to the Boca

Raton News.

“I’m scared,” said one man. “Democracy is at stake and nobody is rising to

protest this president.”

“I want to be a patriot, but it’s impossible to be a patriot in an immoral

war,” said another participant, a woman. “Bush is breaking up marriages and

dividing families by keeping our troops in Iraq.”

Gordon said the participants also granted reluctant permission to open up

next Thursday’s meeting to the general press. Reporters will be forbidden

from taking photographs or using the real names of patients.

“The media outlets, especially Rush Limbaugh and his ilk on talk radio,

scare our patients to death,” said Gordon, facilitator for the meetings.

“More than anything else, people with PEST tremble physically.”

Gordon said the Kerry supporters in therapy are predominantly Jewish and

older than 50. Most are registered independents and all live in Palm Beach

County.

“We mostly let them vent during the first session,” Gordon said. “By the

third session, we’ll be doing some meditation exercises to aid some of their

symptoms. We may use visualization and some techniques designed for bipolar

disease and other mental disorders. That might help them adjust to reality.”

According to AHA officials, symptoms of PEST are similar to post-traumatic

stress disorder. They include nightmares, sleeplessness, hostility,

listlessness, and emotional outbursts including threats to leave the

country.

“There’s an overall sense of emotional helplessness and abandonment,” said

Sheila Cooperman, a licensed AHA psychotherapist from Delray Beach. “In

psychology, we call it ‘learned helplessness.’ After you zap a caged dog

twice, he stops moving because he knows there is no place to go. That’s what

happened with these Kerry voters. They’ve been zapped so many times that

they’re on the verge of giving up on politics.”

Cooperman, also a practicing psychic, added, “One person today said he

thinks the country is now run by fascists. Another felt personally

threatened by the president’s love for big business. Many believe Bush is

going to draft their grandchildren. The anxiety may not affect them every

day, but it affects their energy level.”

An additional 30 people are signed up for two other AHA election support

groups, which will meet for the remainder of the year and possibly beyond.

Gordon said his patients’ emotional problems typically started with the

“hanging chad” debacle of 2000.

“First, they need to realize they’re not going to overturn the 2004

election,” Gordon said. “They have to live with it. The problem is they have

no faith because they think the religious right has hijacked the political

system. We try to tell them there is still an election in 2008. You can’t

just give up and be apathetic.”

The AHA, using a holistic approach to health that has been mocked as new age

voodoo by some national talk show hosts, has stressed to patients that their

post-election emotions are normal and deserve to be taken seriously.

“These people talk about the 2000 election being stolen,” Gordon said. “They

talk about Theresa LePore and the Ohio recount. They feel it’s the ‘Right

House,’ not the White House. They feel the world is not safe with George W.

Bush as president. They spewed out a lot of anger. They are angry at the

Democratic Party for being aimless and leaderless. They have a right to

these feelings.”

The Boca Raton News first reported on Nov. 9 that depressed Florida Kerry

supporters were seeking trauma therapy in the wake of the Nov. 2

presidential election. One Boca psychologist alone, Douglas Schooler,

eventually treated 20 Kerry voters with intense hypnotherapy — for a sliding

fee.

The trauma specialist, whose bills were covered by clients’ insurance

companies, was later accused by some colleagues of unethically “cashing in”

on the misery of Kerry voters. In interviews with the Boca News, Schooler

said many of the Kerry supporters had visited him for severe mental problems

prior to the election.

Unlike Schooler, the AHA is a registered Florida non-profit and its

therapists do not charge for sessions. Conservative talk show hosts Sean

Hannity and Rush Limbaugh recently offered their own “free therapy,” irking

the AHA counselors."

 

http://www.bocaratonnews.com/index.php?src=news&prid=10324&category=Local%20News

[cracked]

[willstrickland]

Florida?

 

That's the shadowy state where activist partisan Democrat DAs are slandering poor Mr. Limbaugh (God bless his soul) and attempting to persecute him for his terribly unfrotunate pain medicine illness when they should instead be praying for him and spending their time pursuing real criminals like those pagan queers who want to make a commitment to each other. Why does Florida hate America?